Elian is watching when I emerge. There’s so much written on his face and so much rushing through me that I can’t seem to decipher one emotion from the next or decide which belong to him and which to me. Seeing him now is like seeing him with new eyes.
He’s brighter, more vivid. Eyes reflecting every glint of the sun and skin no less than the burnished gold of his land. Every inch of him is a contrast, light and dark mixing and rolling into one until I can barely think of looking away.
I lay my arms against the snow and watch him like a hunter.
“Bring me his heart,” the Sea Queen says.
Her order hisses through the wind, and when I tear my gaze from Elian, I see her fingers tighten over the trident, where her share of Keto’s eyes waits to be reunited with its sister. I can hear it now. The call of the two halves as they hover so close to each other. It’s too steady to be a song and too wild to be a drumbeat. A heartbeat, then. Thumping mercilessly in my ears, as the stains of my blood coat one and the stains of my mother’s magic coat the other.
“Take it from him,” the Sea Queen hisses in our murderous tongue.
There is a note of desperation in her voice, birthed from the fact that she thinks Elian freed the eye from its hiding place. She fears what will happen if he tries to use the eye against her and if its magic will overpower that of the trident she has used to enslave our kind into slaughter.
Elian may not know it, but right now the Sea Queen thinks he is her match.
I crane my neck to the side and hold out a hand to beckon Elian forward. His eyes twitch, but he doesn’t come, and I would smile if I didn’t think the gesture would crack my newly stone-etched face. Instead I lean my head back and breathe in the wind, letting my hair drift onto the water.
Behind me, the sirens begin to chorus.
Their melodies reach out and take ahold of the humans. Delicate refrains that cause the crew to sway where they stand, losing all sense of danger. Threats become dreams and fears a fading memory, until their hearts begin to thrum in time to the deadly aria.
“It’s beautiful,” Madrid says, her body slack.
Elian watches his enchanted crew linger on the melody of the Sea Queen’s army, bewildered at their sudden change. When he turns back to face me, his jaw pulses, and just that look nearly turns this impossibly unfrozen body of water into a glacier.
I smile, part my lips, and let the music follow.
At the sound of my voice, Elian walks forward, and when I turn my humming to singing, he drops to his knees in front of me. He still has a plan for every letter that follows in the alphabet and though he plays the part well enough, I can sense his heart racing through each beat. His movements are slightly too rigid. Too prepared. And I can see the wildfire blazing in his eyes.
He is unaffected by the song.
Elian clutches the Crystal of Keto as though it’s his lifeline. As far as he’s concerned, this newfound immunity is down to the tiny piece of my goddess that nooks in his palm. I smile at that, because Elian of all people should know better. He should know to have more faith in myth and fairy tale.
When Maeve dissolved to sea foam on the deck of the Saad, the small part of me that believed in stories was glad the prince didn’t have a chance to take her heart and glean immunity from the siren’s song. But when I told Elian about the legend of our deaths, I knew it wasn’t a story anymore. I felt the truth of it. And now that truth is kneeling before me with savage eyes cut from land and ocean. Leaves and seaweed flooding together.
Any human who takes a siren’s heart will be immune to the power of their song.
Only Elian didn’t need to take my heart; I gave it to him.
I reach out a hand to touch his face, and his eyes flit briefly closed. He inhales as though the very act of breathing is marking the memory in his mind. My fingers graze his arched cheekbones. He’s still warm, and unlike before, when the sun made my siren body crack and throb, Elian’s warmth makes me ache in an entirely new way.
I slide my hand around his neck and tug his head toward me, using his weight to inch my waist from the water. The longing is more than I can bear.
“Do you know what I want from you?” I whisper.
Elian swallows. “I’m not going to give you the crystal.”
When I reply, my voice is throaty. “I’m not talking about that.”
“Then what?”
I grin, feeling more wicked than I have in so long. “Your heart,” I say, and I kiss him.
It’s nothing like the soft and tentative tryst we shared under the stars. It’s wild and burning, something newly territorial in it. His lips crash fiercely onto mine, hot and soft, and when I feel his tongue slip against mine, every animal part of me comes alive. It’s inside of him, too. The predatory impulse. We claim each other, right here on the edge of war.