My mother looks majestic, hovering in a circle of carcasses. Remains drip from the symbols on her skin and her tentacles sway lethally beside her.
My jaw tightens. “I can explain.”
“I imagine you have many explanations in that sweet little head of yours,” says the queen. “Of course, I’m not interested in them.”
“Mother.” My hands curl to fists. “I left the kingdom for a reason.”
An image of the golden prince weighs in my mind. If I hadn’t hesitated on the beach and been so concerned with savoring the sweet smell of his skin, then I wouldn’t need explanations. I would only need to present his heart, and the Sea Queen would show me mercy.
“You saved a human.” Her voice is as dead as night.
I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
The queen’s tentacles crash into the ocean bed, and a mighty wave of sand washes over me, knocking me to the floor. I bite back a cough as the shingle catches in my throat.
“You insult me with your lies,” she seethes. “You saved a human, and not just any human, but the one who kills us. Is it because you live to disobey me?” she asks. And then, with a disgusted snarl: “Or perhaps you’ve grown weak. Silly little girl, bewitched by a prince. Tell me, was it his smile that did it? Did it bring your heart to life and make you love him like some common mermaid?”
My mind spins. I can barely be outraged through the confusion. Love is a word we scarcely hear in the ocean. It exists only in my song and on the lips of the princes I’ve killed. And I have never heard it from my mother’s mouth. I’m not even sure what it really means. To me, it has always been just a word that humans treasure for reasons I can’t comprehend. There isn’t even a way to say it in Psáriin. Yet my mother is accusing me of feeling it. Is it the same fealty I have for Kahlia? That force that drives me to protect her without even thinking? If that’s true, then it makes the accusation even more baffling, because all I want is to kill the prince, and though I may not know what love is, I’m sure it isn’t that.
“You’re mistaken,” I tell my mother.
A corner of the queen’s lips coils in revulsion. “You murdered a mermaid for him.”
“She was trying to eat his heart!”
Her eyes narrow. “And why,” she asks, “would that be a bad thing? Let the creature take his filthy heart and swallow it whole.”
“He was mine,” I argue. “A gift for you! A tribute for my eighteenth.”
The queen stops to comprehend this. “You hunted a prince for your birthday,” she says.
“Yes. But, Mother—”
The Sea Queen’s gaze darkens and in an instant one of her tentacles reaches out and snatches me from the ocean floor. “You insolent thing!”
Her tentacles tighten around my throat, squeezing until the ocean blurs. I feel the shiver of danger. I’m deadly, but the Sea Queen is something more. Something less.
“Mother,” I plead.
But the queen only squeezes tighter at the sound of my voice. If she wanted, she could snap my neck in two. Take my head like I took the mermaid’s. Perhaps even my heart, too.
The queen throws me onto the ocean bed and I grab at my throat, touching the tender spot, only to snatch my hand away as the bones crack and throb with the contact. Above me the queen rises, towering like a dark shadow. Around us the water dulls in color, becoming gray and then seeping to black, as though the ocean is stained with her fury.
“You are not worthy to be my heir,” the Sea Queen hisses.
When I part my lips to speak, all I taste is acid. The ocean salt is replaced by burning magic that sizzles down my throat. I can barely breathe through the pain.
“You are not worthy of the life you have been given.”
“Don’t,” I beg.
Barely a whisper, barely a word. A crack in the air masquerading as a voice, just like my aunt Crestell’s had before she was killed.
“You think you’re the Princes’ Bane.” The Sea Queen roars with laughter. “But you are the prince’s savior.”
She raises her trident, carved from the bones of the goddess Keto. Bones like night. Bones of magic. In the center, the trident ruby awaits its orders.
“Let us see,” sneers the queen, “if there is any hope for redemption left in you.”
She taps the base of the trident onto the floor, and I feel pain like nothing I could have imagined. My bones snap and realign themselves. Blood pours from my mouth and ears, melting through my skin. My gills. My fin splits, tearing me straight down the middle. Breaking me in two. The scales that once shimmered like stars are severed in moments, and beneath my breast comes a beating I have never known. It feels like a thousand fists pounding from the inside.