“How many is that now, Lira?” asks the Sea Queen, looming down at me.
Reluctantly, I bow my head. Kahlia lingers behind me, and though I can’t see her, I know she’s shadowing the gesture.
“Eighteen,” I reply.
“Eighteen,” the Sea Queen muses. “How funny you should have eighteen hearts, when your birthday is not for two weeks.”
“I know, but—”
“Let me tell you what I know.” The queen settles on her carcass throne. “I know that you were supposed to take your cousin to get her fifteenth, and somehow that proved too difficult.”
“Not especially,” I say. “I did take her.”
“And you took a little something for yourself, too.”
Her tentacles stretch around my waist and pull me forward. In an instant, I feel the crack of my ribs beneath her grip.
Every queen begins as a siren, and when the crown passes to her, its magic steals her fins and leaves in their place mighty tentacles that hold the strength of armies. She becomes more squid than fish, and with that transformation comes the magic, unyielding and grand. Enough to shape the seas to her whim. Sea Queen and Sea Witch both.
I’ve never known my mother as a siren, but I can’t imagine her ever looking so mundane. She has ancient symbols and runes tattooed over her stomach in red, stretching even to her gloriously carved cheekbones. Her tentacles are black and scarlet, fading into one another like blood spilled into ink, and her eyes have long since turned to rubies. Even her crown is a magnificent headdress that peaks in horns atop her head and flows out like limbs down her back.
“I won’t hunt on my birthday as recompense,” I concede breathlessly.
“Oh, but you will.” The queen strokes her black trident. A single ruby, like her eyes, shines on the middle spear. “Because today never happened. Because you would never disobey me or undermine me in any way. Would you, Lira?”
She squeezes my ribs tighter.
“Of course not, Mother.”
“And you?” The queen turns her fixation to Kahlia, and I try to hide any signs of unease. If my mother were to see concern in my eyes, it would only be another weakness for her to exploit.
Kahlia swims forward. Her hair is pulled back from her face by a tie of seaweed, and her fingernails are still crusted with pieces of the Adékarosin queen. She bows her head in what some might interpret as a show of respect. But I know better. Kahlia can never look the Sea Queen in the eye, because if she did, then my mother might know exactly what my cousin thinks of her.
“I only thought she would kill him,” says Kahlia. “I didn’t know she’d take his heart, too.”
It’s a lie and I’m glad of it.
“Well, how perfectly stupid you are not to know your own cousin.” My mother eyes her greedily. “I’m not sure I can think of a punishment unpleasant enough for complete idiocy.”
I clench a hand against the tentacle that grips my waist. “Whatever the punishment is,” I say, “I’ll take it.”
My mother’s smile twitches, and I know that she’s thinking of all the ways this makes me unworthy to be her daughter. Still, I can’t help it. In an ocean of sirens who watch out only for themselves, protecting Kahlia has become somewhat of a reflex. Ever since that day when we were both forced to watch her mother die. And throughout the years, as the Sea Queen tried to mold both Kahlia and I into the perfect descendants of Keto. Carving our edges into the right shape for her to admire. It’s a mirror to a childhood I’d sooner forget.
Kahlia is like me. Too much like me, perhaps. And though it’s what makes the Sea Queen hate her, it’s also the reason I choose to care. I’ve stuck by her side, shielding her from the parts of my mother that are the most brutal. Now protecting my cousin isn’t a decision I make. It’s instinct.
“How caring of you,” the Sea Queen says with a scornful smile. “Is it all those hearts you’ve stolen? Did you take some of their humanity, too?”
“Mother—”
“Such fealty to a creature other than your queen.” She sighs. “I wonder if this is the way you behave with the humans, too. Tell me, Lira, do you cry for their broken hearts?”
She drops her grip on me, disgusted. I hate what I become in her presence: trite and undeserving of the crown I’m to inherit. Through her eyes, I see my failure. It doesn’t matter how many princes I hunt, because I’ll never be the kind of killer that she is.
I’m still not quite cold enough for the ocean that birthed me.