In the Veins of the Drowning(100)

It had been blighted by a spell and abandoned. A spell I could only assume Eusia herself had cast. Its land had grown black and toxic, as did the waters around it. There was no passing its outer reef, no touching foot on its inner shores without the blight seeping through the soles of your boots. As a result, Ligea had lost her seat. She’d been a queen only in title after that. The Sirens had spread out through the rest of Leucosia’s islands, welcomed by all—at first.

I crawled toward him and yanked at his shoulder, forcing him to look at me. His eyes bled, shredded and nightmarish. “How did you get on Anthemoessa?”

He shook his head like he wouldn’t answer me. It was growing nearly too dark to see, but as the ship rocked, I could hear the slide of metal on the deck behind me. The sword. I followed the sound, scraping my body toward it. My pain was deep and beating but I managed to take the wet leather hilt in my hand.

The storm cracked the sky. I rose, dragging the sword tip over the wet planks as I stumbled back to him. Nemea didn’t move. Only the faintest of groans filled his chest. I stood above him and positioned the blade so it hovered over the soft hollow of his throat. “How did you get on Anthemoessa, Nemea?”

He stared up at me, unmoving, and had the gall to laugh. Like I was no threat to him at all. Like he believed he’d done such a thorough job of defanging me that the worst I could do now was gum him.

I jabbed him quickly with the sword, enough to just break the skin. He snarled like a feral animal. “Eusia allowed it.”

“You and your whole crew? She let your whole ship past the outer reef?”

He shook his head. I couldn’t tell how well he could see me through the blood in his eyes and the impending night. “She let my ship pass the outer reef. She only let me and Nivala on the main island.”

Oh Gods. Foreboding choked me. My hands cramped around the sword’s grip. “The empress?”

He nodded. “She still feeds her.” His teeth gritted, he tried to move, but I held the sword above him steady.

My voice shook. “The empress still feeds her bodies?”

“She feeds her Sirens.”

Dread hollowed me out as pieces of the past day fell into place. The empress was not simply a devotee of Eusia, she was all but a priestess, working vigilantly to keep her alive. She knew who I was—she never would have told me the story of the Nels otherwise. She’d come to my room in the healer’s quarters that night, distraught by the state I was in, as the healer had said. She’d meant to take me, but I’d been too ill to leave. Lachlan hadn’t been able to find Agatha.

Agatha.

She’d gone missing the night before the empress had left.

Agatha.

“No,” I breathed. She had taken Agatha. She had taken her—but she’d wanted me. “No, no, no.”

The wind and rain slashed at me, roaring as loud as the blood in my ears. I could just hear Nemea’s strained chuckle rise up from his sprawled, soaked body.

“You’ve lost, haven’t you?” he asked in a shaking voice. “Did you just realize?”

I pushed the sword tip down and held it firm against his neck. The next pitch of the ship, the next crashing wave, would send it straight through him. He sobered. Raised his hands in surrender.

But I didn’t wait for the next roll of the ship. The raging storm and lurching vessel would not be the executor of his fate.

I would.

I shoved the sword down. I felt it crunch through the tough pieces in his neck. I felt when it hit the bones of his spine, when it hit the wood beneath him.

I was grateful for the shroud of night.

I released the sword. Stumbled backward. Fell to my knees and vomited.

The seabirds roused me.

Aching, I rolled my head to the side, then rushed to cradle it in my hands. I cracked open my eyes. Dim light… morning. Above me, the dregs of last night’s storm clouds hung low, gray-hued and wrung out.

My eyes began to focus, and I traced the lines of the drooping sails, the ropes swaying in the humid breeze. Panic tightened around me as my mind cleared fully of sleep.

Agatha. I needed to get to Agatha.

I’d huddled beneath the risers that led to the quarterdeck in the night, and I gripped them now as I pushed myself up to sit. My panic only grew as I took stock of myself. The air was warm, but I shivered. My skin looked gray, covered in gooseflesh and cold sweat. The thumping pain in my stomach was consuming, profound. I blew out three slow breaths in a weak attempt to ease my racing heart, then peeled back my wet tunic.

“Shit.” The hole in my stomach oozed a steady, thin trickle of blood. The skin around it had grown tender and red, and I let out a wobbling cry when my cruel mind pushed forward a memory of Theodore. His bright, healing warmth, the press of his calloused fingers, the way his presence and power beat back the darkness that nipped perpetually at my heels.

“Nemea did it wrong.”

I gasped, head snapping toward the creaking voice that had come from across the deck. My body pricked with awareness when I realized the voice had come from within my own head too.

Eusia.

One of her nekgya sat on the deck, right where Nemea’s body had been. Her dark, silken hair stuck to her shoulders. She was wan and smattered in black, ragged wounds. Decay crept over her mouth and fingers, over her chest and arms. The sea held her together with bits of kelp and a patchwork of delicate, pale barnacles.