Chapter 3
“Nah. She can’t be.”
“I’m telling you, that’s a siren.”
“Are you daft? She’s got legs. Same as me or you.”
“Her legs are a good deal nicer than your gnarly gams, Berolt.”
Riella became aware of a steady rocking sensation. A hard surface beneath her body. Voices above her, male and rough. It was still nighttime, firelight tinging her vision.
She tried to speak, but coughed instead. Saltwater spewed from her mouth. She pushed herself up, hands clawing at the wooden surface.
The rocking almost toppled her sideways. More water came up from her stomach in a heave—a seemingly impossible amount for her to have swallowed.
Metal dug into her wrists. She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus her vision. Manacles.
Everything came back to her. The mage named Polinth captured Riella. Seraphine the elf traded her freedom to save the siren. And Riella had legs.
“I reckon we throw her back in the water. Last thing we need are the sirens thinking we kidnapped one of their own. It’d start another war.”
“She’d drown, numbskull. You want them to think we killed one of their own, instead?”
“What do we do with her then, if you’re so smart?”
Riella chanced a look at her legs. They were definitely real—pale and strange and useless. They were not some horrible nightmare.
Her body was tangled in a net, seaweed clinging to her naked body. Without her tail, she felt exposed in a way she never had before. And without the ability to use Sirensong, she was trapped.
Her hands grappling with the slippery deck of the ship, she sat up. Dawn was coming, a mauve tint beginning to supersede the darkness of night.
Riella’s legs flopped around awkwardly. She tried to move them, like she would her tail, and they splayed at the knee, causing her to gasp in pain. Human legs were so terribly angular and hinged. How did they manage to walk around on these things?
The manacles felt several times heavier than when she’d been in Polinth’s cave. She tried not to think about what that meant—about how much he’d weakened her. Poor Seraphine was still at the sorcerer’s mercy. Riella had abandoned her, only to end up in a possibly worse situation. What a waste of the elf’s sacrifice.
“Oi, she’s awake.”
Not wanting to look up at their faces, she stared at the legs surrounding her. Male human legs, dressed in grubby trousers. One of the men squatted in front of her, attempting to put his face to hers. On instinct, she lashed out at him with her hand, swiping with her diamond-sharp talons. At least she still had those.
“Jeez!” The man skittered backward in panic. “Yeah, that’s a siren alright.”
She bared her teeth at him. His face was weathered and he was missing a chunk of his ear. Tattoos covered his arms. Her blood turned to ice when she recognized one in particular. The mark of the sirens’ most sworn enemies.
Heart thumping, she forced herself to look up at the masts, confirming her grim suspicion.
Atop the highest mast, above the flapping white sails, was a black flag bearing a pair of crossed cutlasses. She’d been fished out of the ocean by Dark Tide Clan pirates. Perhaps she fought some of these very men during the war.
The pirates stared at her, but she avoided meeting anyone’s eye. What in the seven seas was she going to do? If she jumped overboard, she’d likely drown. But she didn’t know anyone in the human world, unless she counted Polinth, which she absolutely did not. Where was she supposed to go?
“Say what you want about sirens,” one of them murmured. “But no one could ever accuse ‘em of being ugly.”
Several wheezed with amusement.
“Pity she’d bite your pecker clean off,” said another one.
All roared with laughter this time, Riella’s head pounding as she struggled to suppress her anger.
Never in her life had she been forced to swallow her rage. She had always had an outlet. Singing. Fighting. Swimming. Polinth had completely neutered her. All because he wanted some amulet that may or may not exist, and to find out what happened when you magicked away a siren’s tail. If only she’d heeded her friends and not troubled herself with human affairs. She’d be with them right now, safe and whole, having celebrated Thera all night.
“So what do we do with her?” asked one man.
“Take her down to the brig.”
“Are you kidding? Those bars won’t keep a siren. She’ll rip a hole in the hull trying to get outta there, and sink us.”
“You got a better idea? Captain’ll be back soon, and he won’t want to deal with this. Not when?—”
“Brig it is, then.” The man knelt, well outside of the striking distance of Riella’s talons. “Can you walk, little fishy?”
Picking up the chain attached to her wrist, she flung it at him. He seemed to be ready for it, though. He ducked out of the way, the chain lashing the deck instead.
“Pass me that sail over there,” he said to one of the other crew members. “Help me grab her.”
With the voluminous sail in his hands, the man came at Riella like she was a wild animal. Tangled in the net, she couldn’t fight off the pirates when they descended on her. They wrapped her in the thick fabric while she wailed and thrashed. Grunting and swearing at each other, they hauled her down a narrow set of stairs.
Below deck was dark and humid and smelled like the sweaty, unwashed bodies of male humans. Riella retched from the stink as they dumped her on the floor. She wriggled partway out of the sail, glaring up at the three men eyeing her warily. They’d brought her to a cell with iron bars, and the gate was open. She could still escape.
“Don’t even think about making a break for it,” said a man with red hair and a scruffy beard. “Be easier on us if we slit your throat, and that’s exactly what we’ll do if you don’t stay calm.”
A dilapidated mattress stuffed with moldy straw was the sole furnishing of the cell. There were no portholes, and the only light came from a few sputtering candles and a lantern held by a bald man with beady eyes. The lantern swayed in time with the rocking of the ship, causing the shadows in the cell to do an eery dance.
“Here, put this on,” said the red-haired man.
He removed his shirt, a cotton long-sleeved garment that perhaps one day had been white, and threw it at her. She grimaced, making no move to pick it up. Better to be naked than to wear a pirate’s smelly shirt.
“She needs pants, too,” said the third man, who was tall and wiry and wore a large silver hoop earring. Riella felt the intense urge to rip it out.
“Yeah, go get her some pants, Berolt,” said the bald man, his eyes on the siren. “I ain’t giving her mine. How about you?”
The red-haired man shrugged and plodded up the stairs, leaving her alone with the other two pirates. They gave each other a long look while seeming to silently debate something between themselves. A chill of premonition came over Riella, and she twitched the cotton shirt off the floor, after all.
She pulled the garment over her head and body, feeding the chains through the oversized sleeves and letting the hem fall. The ballooning fabric covered her body to the knees. Riella had never worn clothes before, and she did not like it. But she disliked the sick, uneasy feeling these men evoked in her more.
The bald man took a step toward her. He held the lantern aloft, emphasizing the cragginess of his face. The tall one glanced at the stairs, before huddling next to his friend and bearing down on Riella.
“I ain’t never seen a siren with legs before,” said the bald man while leering at her body. “Have you, Lovel?”
“Nah, Terrick. Me neither.”
Riella tensed, readying herself for a fight. Weakened or not, she would not tolerate foulness from these men. But her legs buckled when she tried to stand and she fell painfully to her knees. Were these limbs faulty? Or was she just not used to them?
Terrick leaned in closer. “Show us a look between yer legs, why don’t you?” he breathed. “If you’re shy, I’ll be a gentleman and show you mine first.”
Riella grasped the lantern, ignoring the scalding heat of the glass, and smashed it into his face in a blaze of orange. He shrieked, trying to put out the flames with his flailing arms. The fuel from the lantern doused his clothes, his frantic movements making the fire spread.
As the other one, Lovel, lunged at her, she ripped out his stupid earring. Blood spurted across the cell wall and she cackled, despite herself. He bellowed in pain, groping at the handle of the dagger on his hip.
Before he could seize it, she slammed him bodily into the iron bars. It took a considerable amount of her effort, and he had not died on impact like she’d expected. She was shocked at how weak she was now—she was nearly as weak as a man.
Terrick stumbled from the cell to where a pail of water caught leaks from the deck above. He upended the bucket on his head, shouting in relief as the flames went out. Red welts covered his face and neck, his skin steaming.
“Siren, you are dead!” shouted Lovel, his shoulder drenched in blood.
He charged at her with outstretched hands. She punched him in the face before he could touch her, then spun him around and slung one of the chains tightly around his neck, strangling him. He gurgled in panic, his legs kicking wildly.
Distracted, Riella hardly registered the heavy footsteps descending the stairs. An immense shadow loomed over her, blocking the candlelight. Terrick still cursed and hollered from outside of the cell.
A large hand clamped down on her shoulder and jerked her backward. Lovel scurried to the corner of the cell, coughing and massaging his throat. Riella was lifted into the air by the mountain of a man who’d arrived in the brig without a word.
He dragged her up, level with his eye-line, crashing her wrists into the wall over her head and holding them there. Her already-useless legs reached new levels of uselessness as they dangled in the air, far off the ground.
To her disbelief, she could not throw him off, no matter how hard she bucked her body. His arms seemed to be threaded with steel, the muscles under his tanned, heavily tattooed skin bulging. She screamed in his face in frustration and tried to bite him.
He reacted by slamming her wrists harder against the wall.
“Stop moving.” His deep, low voice washed over her body, like a wave. “And stop trying to kill my men.”
Emboldened, Terrick jeered at her while edging nearer. “Yeah, it’s bloody rude. I reckon we ought to teach her a lesson. Right, boss?”
Lovel closed in too, a vicious smile spreading across his blood-splattered face. Riella fought against the large man’s grip, to no avail. If he was the boss, that meant he was the captain of this ship. No man became a leader of the Dark Tide Clan without claiming the title through ruthless violence. Her situation had drastically worsened.
Although he looked and smelled cleaner than the others, she suspected that had to do with his rank. His square jaw was stubbled and his dark hair was disheveled by sea spray and wind. Tattoos covered his broad chest, peeking through the material of his shirt, and a heavy gold pendant hung on a chain around his neck. The symbol stamped on the pendant was familiar, but she had bigger concerns than his jewelry. He likely stole it, anyway. The man was a pirate.
“Now, what are we going to do with you?” he muttered as he inspected her.
His green-gray eyes swept over her face and down her body, which was mostly hidden in the baggy borrowed garment.
As the other two men gawped at her, true fear bloomed in Riella’s chest. She was completely at their mercy. Desperately, she tried to conceal this new and unwelcome feeling, but her face betrayed her. Lips trembling and brows knitting together, she squeezed her eyes shut, just for a moment, to collect herself.
Willing herself to be strong, she opened her eyes and jutted her chin. In defiance, she glared directly into the captain’s eyes. She may not have had a tail or been at full strength, but she was still a siren. She would show this brute exactly what that meant.
He frowned thoughtfully, returning her gaze. She sensed that he was distracted by whatever was going through his mind. She decided to make the most of it, and that the situation was dire enough to utilize her siren charm.
Seduction was always a last resort for Riella, because she much preferred the simplicity of fighting. But now, running her tongue across her bottom lip, she gazed deep into his eyes, praying she’d retained the ability to hypnotize and lightly stupefy mortal men.
“Come closer,” she whispered, so that he would not quite hear her over the creaking of the ship and the rush of the waves. “I bid you, come closer.”
Obediently, his eyes slid unfocused. He leaned toward her, even as his hands remained clamped on her wrists. Seizing her chance, she head-butted him as hard as she could, making the bones in his face crack. Blood sprayed across her skin and his grip on her finally loosened. The man grunted, screwing his eyes shut and reaching for her.
But she was too quick. Riella snatched up the sharpest, longest shard of glass from the broken lantern. Then she rose, driving the point of the shard into the man’s chest.
With satisfaction, she felt the glass breach his ribs and plunge directly into his heart.