Chapter 32
We broke through the pool’s surface into Naiadon. My lungs expanded for the first time in hours as I hacked up salt water.
Hylos and I poured off my mount. My hands shook and my palms burned from pulling at that thick netting that had entangled him.
The truth was slamming into me.
Hylos was right all along.
My father knew of sirens. He could take them straight from the sea. He was capturing them.
Hylos shot into consciousness. His storm-blue eyes opened wide and ready. He staggered to his feet, raised his palms into the air, and let out a deep sonorous note that clattered my teeth.
Exhausted, he hunched over, his hands on his knees as he panted. “Do you believe me now?” he spat between breaths. “Or do you need more proof?”
Excuses caught in my throat. I saw it with my own two eyes: a ship in my father’s colors capable of incapacitating sirens.
“Now you see why I must act. Terras are against us. They are coming after us. After my people, Elowyn!” He was working himself up into a fury. “We need your help. To stop him from hurting our people and his own.”
“Hylos … I … I can’t do that.”
Hylos grabbed my shoulders. “Try!”
Anger wasn’t the only tempest that brewed in his eyes. Desperation swelled there too.
“Hylos,” Lumina ran into the room dressed in a thin silk nightgown. Thoughtlessly, she reached out to him, her fingertips tracing the angry indentations of red crisscrossing his flesh the netting had left.
For a second, he looked at her. I could have sworn the love that reflected in her eyes was mirrored in his. Then it faded as he looked up and past her to Calypstra, who was pacing into the room.
Hylos brushed passed Lumina, and I tried to ignore the hurt in her eyes.
“Oakhaven attacked us,” he said, racing to his lover, who looked over his shoulder at … me? Anger was slick in her oily black eyes. This was getting ridiculous. I had nothing to do with any of this. What the fuck was her problem? What did I ever do to her?
“Hylos,” Raylik shouted as he ran toward his ruler, short sword in hand, ready to fight. “You sent a battle call? Are we under attack?” Nixie was not far behind him, two daggers clutched tightly in her fists.
“Tonight, after showing the High Circle leaders The Womb of Nymphaea—”
“You did what?” Raylik exclaimed.
“Oh shit,” Nixie cursed, pink eyes wide.
“On the way back, an Oakhaven ship attacked us.”
The group straightened up at Hylos’s words.
“How did they attack you?” Lumina asked as she walked back into Hylos’s view.
“It was like siren magic, similar to lulling, but it worked on me. I was completely stunned, but Elowyn was not.”
Lumina took in what he said, thumbing through that endless library of knowledge she held. “How is that even possible?”
“How did you get away?” Nixie asked, shock marking her features.
My eyes remained trained on Calypstra. She didn’t show an ounce of emotion at the fact that Hylos was almost taken. No fear showed on her features, no sadness. She did not care. She just stared at me with tight-lipped resentment.
“Elowyn saved me …” Hylos said, realizing it for the first time himself.
Lumina, Nixie, and Raylik all turned to me, staring with a mixture of disbelief and awe.
Calypstra stepped forward. “We must retaliate.”
Hylos nodded a terse yes, agreeing.
“We need answers,” Lumina said, “before we charge blindly in. We have no idea what we’re up against.”
“You dare make orders of your liege?” Calypstra hissed, baring her sharp teeth.
Lumina ignored her, turning to Hylos. “You were almost lost tonight.”
She almost lost him tonight.
“Nonsense,” Calypstra scoffed. “The king of all three seas does not fear humans. We will retaliate against them. We will fight them. We will make them pay.”
“If we charge into battle without strategy, we risk losing too much. We already lack numbers,” Raylik said, desperate to slow this madness too.
“A risk worth taking,” Calypstra said to Raylik, fury in her eyes. “And we will cut down anyone who stands in our way.” She would cut down anyone who stood in her way.
“We have the numbers now, my friend,” Hylos said with a wild-eyed grin at Raylik. “Tonight, every Circle leader pledged their arms to our cause.”
Everyone but me.
“So ready our forces and those of the other Circle leaders,” Hylos ordered.
Nixie retreated to Raylik’s side. A look transpired between them. She was afraid.
Raylik said nothing. He only looked at his leader and friend, baffled.
“What of the Hydroxia feast? It would be disrespectful to Nymphaea if we waged a war on her most holy of days,” Nixie said.
She was buying them more time. She didn’t want this war either. None of them did. Besides Calypstra and Hylos, desperately. Blindly.
“Who cares about some foolish religious bullshit?” Calypstra hissed.
Lumina stood there, her large brown eyes softening as she said definitively, “Hylos cares.”
“Hylos,” Morvyn called from the entrance. His body was rigid and tense as he stalked in.
“What took you so long, you know you must respond to the war summons call immediately Morvy—”
“Hylos,” Morvyn repeated, sadness sinking into his eyes. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” Hylos asked.
“The prisoners …” he started, like he couldn’t even bear to finish the sentence. “I’m so sorry, Elowyn.”
My heart sank like a stone.
“They’re all dead,” Morvyn said.
No. No. No.
Lumina rushed to my side.
Arlo. Please, not Arlo.
Nixie was beside me in an instant as well. Both her and Lumina supported me as my knees gave out.
“Arlo, he is alive. Whatever killed the others spared him.”
Arlo was safe. Thank the Guardians above. That bloody brooding fool was safe. A sick, twisted sense of relief worked through me, hand in hand with grief. But every member of his crew was dead.
Then anger screamed through me like a banshee.
“Did you order this?” I rose to my feet and ran to Hylos, ready to pound fists into his chest, but Morvyn swiftly scooped me up in his long, pale arms.
I fought against his hold. “Were you behind this?” I shouted.
“No, I would never—” He started, but I cut him off.
“Did you fucking do this?” I shrieked, the words shredding through the room.
“I would never order something like this.” He looked me squarely in the eyes, compelling me to believe him. But how could I? How could I ever trust him. How could I fucking trust any of them? They promised the crew would not be harmed. They swore.
It was as if this whole time, I had been floating in this dream, and now I was slammed into cold, hard, reality.
I was at the bottom of the sea. Surrounded by my father’s enemy, and they had just killed every man I arrived with.
“You cannot control anyone or anything in this damned place!” I screamed, so loud I tasted blood, my throat raw from the force.
“You want me to take over my kingdom? You can’t even control your own!
” Tears were streaming down my face, hot and angry.
“You Guardians-damned fool. You fucking child! Their blood is on your hands!” I did not breathe, I only yelled.
It was hitting me repeatedly like waves of reality, surging. “I couldn’t help them!”
I crumpled in on myself.
Morvyn kneeled with me as he held me tightly.
Tears streamed down my face.
“I couldn’t save them.”