Chapter 19
The next morning, Riella and Jarin set off into the ocean on a rowboat to contact her friends.
“Do you believe this will work?” asked Jarin, his body moving with the steady back and forth of his strokes.
He was much better at rowing than Riella, having the advantage of years of experience. The siren found handling the oars to be cumbersome and awkward. Hieros Isle out of sight, the glittering blue ocean extended in every direction.
“I can only hope,” she replied, struggling to make the oar enter the water at the correct angle. “I haven’t tried to Send since Polinth changed me. I’m not sure I can still do it.”
“I suppose we’ll find out.”
The siren had awoken that morning in his arms. For a few blissful seconds, she’d forgotten everything bad about her past, present, and future. All she felt was the soft tickle of the morning breeze through the window and the lingering glow of the pleasure he’d given her in the early hours of the morning, when the moon still shone.
But the peace did not last, and cruel reality came flooding back. Ferrante’s prophetic words repeated in her head. In her mind’s eye, she saw the red flash of Polinth’s spell as he caught Seraphine.
Riella was now in a race with him and Artus to find the Amulet of Delphine.
She and Jarin’s one big advantage was the map, thanks to Yvette’s light-fingered ways. If the siren could communicate with her friends and enlist their help, her advantage would be two-fold. The hard part would be getting the message to them.
Physical mass could interrupt a siren’s telepathic waves. If an island or ship or even a giant squid was in the path of her signal, the Sending would scatter to pieces. And even if nothing was in the way, Sending over long distances was a shot in the dark. She’d have no way of knowing if the message reached a siren’s mind at all.
Without her Voice, she couldn’t Sing to other sirens, which would move through the water with greater force and durability than a Sending.
A terrible thought occurred to her. What if Polinth used her Voice to lure other sirens? Force them to do his bidding, and dive for the amulet? The prospect chilled her. With Polinth, she couldn’t rule out anything. He was powerful and disturbed and, if he truly was dying, he had nothing to lose.
Well, the same could now be said of Riella, and she vowed to stop at nothing to defeat him. And Artus too, if she could help it. The man was a scourge. Now that she’d experienced sexual intimacy for herself, she understood the true seriousness of Artus selling her to Madame Quaan. She’d liked sharing her body with Jarin, very much, but the thought of being forced to do such a thing with any man who could pay was terrible.
More and more, she was glad to be with Jarin. Her life as a land-walker would’ve been so much harder without him. And she’d be facing death completely alone.
Although, when the actual time came, she would no doubt be alone. That was the nature of death. No one could go with you.
Riella sat at the boat’s bow, trying to concentrate on her stroke, determined to master the rhythm. As they slowly progressed, she gazed straight down into the blue depths with longing. Swimming had been second nature to her—something she’d never had to consider. All her life, she’d taken her tail for granted. She’d taken her very life for granted.
“Do you know what it feels like to die?” asked Riella as an atoll came into view. “When I stabbed you in the heart, did you get a glimpse of death, I mean? Or do you feel nothing at all when wounded?”
The atoll—a small ring-shaped island—was lush and green with vegetation, edged by white beaches. An aqua-blue lagoon sparkled in the center. No manmade structures or signs of habitation were visible. Jarin had recommended the atoll, having passed it many times but never visited.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” replied Jarin. “The shard barely tickled.”
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows.
He laughed. “No. It hurt like the seven hells. I’m not impervious to pain.”
“Oh. You hid it very convincingly.”
“Yeah, well. Pirates can’t show pain. But no, I haven’t experienced dying. I doubt death is painful, though. It’s life that’s bloody painful.”
Waves surged the rowboat to shore. Riella and Jarin dragged the vessel up the smooth sandy beach, beyond the clutches of the coming tide.
The atoll was pristine. The sand was fine and white, like powdered diamonds. Seabirds nested in the trees and palms created shade at the tree line.
Riella looked around. “I suppose there’s no reason to delay. What will you do while I’m gone?”
Jarin sat on the sand and kicked off his boots, gesturing at the narrow strip of jungle. “I’ll go have a look around. Never know what you might find.”
Her blood tingling with the anticipation of returning to the ocean, she stripped off her dress and underwear, throwing them on the sand. Jarin gazed at her with raw lust, the muscles in his arms and jaw flexing, as if physically restraining himself.
Riella allowed him a few more seconds to look, then she turned and sauntered toward the surf. Right as she got to the water’s edge, she turned and smirked at him. Jarin beat the sand with his fists and roared with frustration.
“Get in the water right now, before I drag you back here and desecrate you!” he shouted.
Waist-deep in the water, waves breaking around her, Riella cackled. She took a breath and dove under the surface.
The cool serenity embraced her like she was having the sweetest dream. Sunlight danced on the sandy floor and the crystal-blue water curled overhead as it crested in waves.
Immediately, she forgot she no longer had a tail, and went to kick it. Her legs cut through the water instead, barely creating any movement. She swam as best she could with her arms and legs, remembering how she’d derided Jarin for the way humans swam. It really was very difficult without a tail.
Soon, she was in deeper water, gliding over a coral reef that shimmered with pinks and greens and purples. Schools of tiny fish angled around her, moving as one.
Once she’d traveled far enough to Send a signal, she required another breath. She kicked straight upward, her chest burning, and gasped for air the moment she broke the surface. Her inability to breathe underwater made her feel even less like a siren than losing her tail.
In the distance, Jarin was a small, anonymous figure on the white beach. She had swum farther than a human could’ve with one breath. But that wasn’t saying much.
With another lungful of air, she dove underwater. She tried to access the pocket of her mind that could Send telepathically. To her immense relief, she found it thrumming and receptive. To experiment, she Sent a general probe, calling to any siren nearby.
It went unanswered, but she’d expected as much. Sirens had no cause to swim these waters, which were far from any of their settlements. The important thing was that she could Send the signal to begin with.
Concentrating hard, she summoned all her mental strength to Send into the blue aether as far as possible. The message she crafted was simple, and attuned to her pod. If any of them received the message, they’d recognize her as one of their own. Or at least they would’ve, before Polinth changed her. She prayed that was still the case.
“This is Riella,” she Sent. “I need help. I’m at Hieros Isle. Approach with caution. Humans on shore.”
She stopped short of mentioning Dark Tide Clan pirates, because her friends would assume she was abducted. The sirens would destroy the Pandora on sight, thus restarting the war.
Intuitively, she also said nothing about the amulet. She couldn’t be sure where the message would end up, exactly. It was bad enough mentioning her location, lest Polinth somehow caught wind of it, but she could see no way around that part. If her friends were to find her, they’d need to know where she was. Right now, the sirens were Riella’s only real hope of retrieving the amulet.
She pushed the message through the water until it disappeared from range. Now, she would wait. Even if the message found her pod, it could be hours or days before the sirens were able to reach Hieros Isle.
For pure pleasure, she stayed underwater a little longer. She did backward somersaults and visited coral and simply drifted along with the current, basking in the joy of the weightlessness and penetrating blue silence. Eventually though, she could ignore her burning lungs no longer, and she surfaced. The tide had taken her even farther out to sea. She could still discern Jarin on the beach, although something seemed amiss now.
He paced up and down the sand, waving his arms frantically, trying to get her attention.