Sable stands near the main nest, his body held back by three men gripping his arms and shoulders as he fights against them in desperation. Blood streaks his skin, and even from here, I can see the rapid rise and fall of his heaving breaths. He shouts my name, over and over again, and my world narrows down on him.
On his grey eyes, and how they remind me of the sea before a heavy storm. On his voice, stripped of command and certainty as he fights against the men holding him back. Desperate. My gaze lingers on his face, on the strain carved into every line of it, on his dark hair that usually sits on his head like a crown, but is now flat and soaked through with blood.
They drag me away from him. Each movement sends a jolt through me, but the pain barely registers beneath the suffocating absence of the sea. His gaze never leaves mine, not even as the distance between us grows and they haul me up towards the plank that connects the two ships.
“I’ll find you!”
His voice breaks on the promise, the sound tearing through the fog closing in around my mind. His shadow presses close and sticks to my side, but as I try to reach for it, my hands do not move. Darkness creeps inward, swallowing the last fragments of light and sound.
The last thing I see is his face, not the man held back by the hunter’s hands, but the shadow that chose me, who still refuses to let me go.
With what is left of me, I scream, and the sound tears out of me, carrying a strained, almost creaking note as it echoes through the cave.
Then everything disappears.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Painstealsthebreathfrom my lungs, and dryness tightens my skin, making the delicate surface of my scales stiff and aching.
I do not remember the journey here.
Only fragments remain, broken pieces without order and meaning. The air was suffocating in the hold of the ship where they kept me in a dingy cell like a helpless fish. They carelessly threw saltwater over my body now and then, barely enough to keep me alive. The moisture kept drying too quickly, and I barelyescaped death a few times with the tankards’ worth of water they splashed me with.
I have always imagined the day of my transformation to be the happiest day of my life, and the truth is, I never stopped clinging to that hope. Somehow, for a short moment, it was. That very first glimpse, that blissful pain, the reflection of shimmering scales felt like the beginning of my life.
But it might have been the beginning of the end instead.
As my awareness sharpens further, I become more conscious of the unnatural strain pulling from my body. Rope cuts into flesh at my wrists, making it impossible for me to move. But it is the position itself that sends waves of pain tearing through me.
I am hanging upside down. The pressure gathers immediately in my skull, and my tail bears the full weight of me where it has been secured to something above. Every small movement sends a tremor of agony through the length of it.
Voices drift through the pain, some close, others distant and muffled. Fragments of conversations reach me, discussing prices and the value of goods. I force my eyes open further and ignore the sharp protest of my dried eyelids. Deep down, I already know what awaits me. There has only ever been one ending for a siren in human hands.
The markets.
I’m back on Aurelith.
The stand across from me, like all others, is set on a wooden platform that rises on thick wooden posts. Beneath it, the sea has retreated, leaving behind a wide stretch of exposed seabed. Fish are laid out in uneven rows, their bodies split open to expose pale, bloodied flesh. Their glassy eyes stare outward without seeing, their mouths frozen in silent protest. Between them lies the tail of a siren, its torn end blackened where blood has already begun to clot.
My stomach twists violently. I gag around the cloth forced deep between my teeth, tearing open the wounds in my throat that have barely healed. I think of the siren that this tail belonged to, and if she at least found her peace in the depths of the sea before her end. My body recoils against the rope, not only because of what was done to her, but because I understand that this is what they intend for me.
A voice cuts through the fog of my thoughts.
“Well, would you look at that?”
I force my eyes to focus on the two figures in front of me, standing at the base of the stand, their boots planted wide against the damp wood. I would recognize his voice anywhere.
Grimsbane, the Rat.
He looks exactly as I remember him, like an aged, slimy eel covered in layers of worn leather. His eyes drop to meet mine, and an ugly smile spreads across his face, revealing crooked, yellow teeth.
“Took you long enough,” he says, amused.
Beside him stands another hunter I know just as well, broader but just as repulsive. His gaze drifts slowly along the length of my body, pausing where the rope binds my tail.
Anger stirs beneath my skin as I curl my hands into fists. They hunted me my whole life, across this sea-cursed island, and I always managed to escape them somehow. I had plenty of practice, I guess. But now they stand there, watching me as if I am already nothing more than scales and blood. Money.
It’s strange how my siren used to be a separate, darker part of me, somewhere hidden deep inside where I once kept her contained. Now she lives in the center of me, her presence woven into every fiber of me. Most importantly, she does not recoil from the men who stand before me. I want them dead at the bottom of the sea, where their bodies will surrender to time and tide until nothing that ever touched me remains.