Elian drags his hands through my hair and I clutch him, pushing and pulling him closer against me. Even no distance feels like too much. His hand tightens on my jaw and we’re a tangle of fingers and teeth and the world obliterates around us. It’s all stardust.
I bite his lip and he moans into me. We devour each other, gasping desperate breaths until we exhaust the air.
Elian breaks away, as savage and brutal as the kiss itself. He doesn’t pull back, so much as he severs himself from me. Tearing his lips from mine. When he looks at me, his eyes are a feral mirror of my own. Dazed and furious and so, so hungry.
I run my tongue across my bottom lip, where his angler taste still lingers.
My mother watches us to the side, gleaming. She doesn’t realize that Elian isn’t enthralled, any more than she realizes that his army is about to gain another soldier.
“Elian,” I whisper, low enough that the Sea Queen can’t hear. I keep my fingers pressed to the base of his neck, inclining him toward me. “You have to trust in it.”
“In what?” he asks, hoarse and disbelieving. “In you?”
“In your dream,” I say. “That killers can stop being killers.”
Elian’s eyes search mine. “How can I believe anything you say?”
“Because you’re immune to our song.”
He frowns and it takes a moment, his gaze narrowing, before my words dawn on him. I can practically see the memory run through his mind and the new kind of uncertainty it brings. It kills me, but there’s nothing I can do but have faith that he’ll remember more than just the story and less than just my betrayal. I need him to linger on the taste of me and think about how we saved each other. How we could do that so easily again now, and take the world along with us.
“Elian,” I say, and he wets his lips.
“I heard you.” His face gives nothing away.
“And?”
“And nothing.” Slowly, Elian pulls my hand from his neck, eyes fixed like a target on my own. He shakes his head like he can’t quite comprehend what he’s about to do. And then: “I believe in you,” he says, and slips the eye into my palm.
The moment it touches my skin, I am infinite.
What I felt inside the ice palace is a mere fraction of it, and now I am a forest fire, burning, burning. A tidal wave rising and crushing and sweeping across the world. I don’t just have power; I am power. It flows through me, replacing the acid blood with thick, dark magic.
The Second Eye of Keto speaks to me in a hundred different languages, whispering all the ways I can use it to kill the humans. A picture paints itself so vividly in my mind, of the eye merging with my mother’s trident and creating a Sea Queen with all the might of Keto. A goddess in her own right, molding a world where sirens walk and hunt with grass and gravel between their toes. Impenetrable skin and enchanted voices and so much death that will follow.
And beside that, a dream.
The ocean glitters as though crystallized, and a human ship stops halfway through its journey, no land in sight for miles. The tired and bedraggled crew leaps off the edge of their vessel, feeling the soft wind butterfly on their skin before they hit the water. Sirens hover nearby but don’t attack. They aren’t hunting or assessing, but watching in a haphazard kind of harmony.
Peace.
“Give me the eye,” the Sea Queen demands, breaking me from my trance.
I close my hand around it. “I’d rather kill you instead.”
Elian lets out a breath, amusement and surprise and something far too close to pride. I shoot him a look and then turn back to the Sea Queen, as resolute as this new strength allows.
“You don’t have that kind of power,” she says.
“Oh, but you’re wrong.” I give her a smile to start wars. Or maybe to end them. “You see, it wasn’t the prince who freed the eye from its chamber, Mother. It was me.”
When she screams, the mountain shakes.
I’m her worst nightmare come true. The daughter she was always so reluctant to let take her crown, primed to usurp her. It hits me now that she has no power over me. For the first time, we’re on even footing. Each with the eye of a goddess, and each with the somewhat wavering loyalty of our kin. There’s an army in these waters, but their allegiance could pass between us so easily. They could choose my side as readily as hers.
The Sea Queen snarls a glance to her left and lets out a vicious roar of Psáriin. Her throat strains and throbs, and in moments a slice of gray swipes across my vision.
It takes me a moment to realize that Elian is gone.