“A warrior,” he says.
“A siren killer.”
Lies and lies, all mingling with half-truths on my tongue.
Kye throws his hands up in the air and stalks forward. “Where are we supposed to get siren blood?” he asks. “Why would you wait until now to tell us that?”
“It wouldn’t make a difference when she told us,” Madrid says, staring at me with an unreadable expression. “Sirens don’t have blood; they have acid. We can’t capture that if they turn to sea foam, and even if we did, it would eat through anything we put it in.”
“Your knife.” I point to Elian’s belt. “The only thing on this earth that can carry the blood of a siren.”
“It doesn’t carry it,” Elian says. “It drinks it.”
“Absorbs it,” I correct. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that with every siren you kill it feels a little stronger? A little heavier?”
Elian stays silent.
“How would you know?” Yukiko tilts her face to the side. “There’s something about you I can’t quite settle on.”
I ignore her and keep my focus on Elian. His eyebrows crease, and I know in that moment he doubts me. That even if I’m ignoring Yukiko, he isn’t. He’s suspicious – perhaps he always was – and though he has every right to be and part of me is proud of him for it, it hurts all the same. I cannot be trusted and it kills me that he might know that.
All the same, I can’t let him be the one to free the eye.
I give him a carefree smile. “I told you that I would be useful to keep around.”
Elian pulls the knife from his belt and holds it up to the cavern light. He twists the blade in his hand and takes a step toward me. I consider backing away, but stay rooted in place. Retreating now will only make me look guilty.
“Well?” I ask.
“Well, nothing,” he says. “I believe in you.”
He pauses a beat, as though waiting for me to contradict this and tell him that it’s a mistake. Even more ridiculous is that I want to. I have the urge to tell him that he should never do something as stupid as believing in me. But I say nothing, and so Elian turns to the frozen waters of Diávolos and plunges his knife into the center.
I WAS SUPPOSED TO be happy when it failed.
The blood inside the knife is long gone. Drunk and swapped into magic that kept it invincible and allowed it to absorb the life of a siren. I knew this, but I gave Elian hope, because that’s what liars do when they don’t want to get caught. And I had to let them think I believed the knife would work, because why else would I have waited until now to tell them blood was the key?
I had to let Elian fail so I can succeed. I just wasn’t supposed to feel so bad about it.
Hours have passed, and I’m sure it must be night. Either way, the crew is sleeping in various small chambers outside the dome. Sentries and trespassers. They’re determined not to leave until they find a way of freeing the eye. If Elian’s resolve wasn’t enough, Yukiko’s fury would have kept them all there anyway.
Try, she said. Try leaving without the glory you promised my brother.
I grip the lightweight sword and stare down at the Second Eye of Keto, suspended in the water of my home. Against my skin, the seashell necklace calls out. It yearns to be reunited with the powerful sea that created it. I can feel it too, the steady pull of Diávolos stretching out its arms to jerk me into its wake.
I grip my sword and slice it clean across my palm.
I’m indifferent as blood dribbles down my arm and drops onto the eye. There’s no scorching pain or endless acid cold. It’s warm and red and so very human. And yet.
When the blood touches the water, it dissolves. The top of the steeple folds down on itself, melting into an opening large enough for me to reach inside. I pick up the stone and sigh. It looks so tiny now, but I can feel the power coursing through me. The potential for savagery. It almost burns in my hand.
“All along, I sensed something in you.”
I whirl around, clutching the eye tightly in my fist.
“I knew something was not quite right,” Princess Yukiko says. She sniffs the air as though she can smell the monster in me. “You’re not quite human.”
I sheathe the sword and keep my voice low. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Probably not, but let’s say it anyway. You’re one of them, aren’t you? A siren.”
I don’t reply and she seems to take this as an answer. She grins, her thin lips slanting to create apples in her cheeks.