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January 18 - January 24, 2025
Madrid pokes her tongue out. “Lira?” she asks. “What do they sing where you’re from?” For some reason, Lira finds this amusing. “Nothing you would appreciate.”
“You can’t just kill everyone you don’t like.” “I know that. Otherwise you’d be dead already.” But it’s not true. It almost surprises me how untrue it is. Because I could have killed him—or at least tried—and fulfilled my mother’s orders a dozen times over.
Everything is murkier now. And Elian made it that way in a single second, with an action as easy as breathing: He smiled. Not because I was suffering or bowing or making myself malleable to his every whim and decree like I’ve done with my mother. He smiled because he saw me. Free and alive, and already making my way back to him.
Always a prince, never just a man.
“I suppose she’s pretty hard to be blind to.” “Yes.” Yukiko’s smile burns brighter than the fire. “It’s clear you believe that.”
“What if you were?” “It would change how you saw me.” Elian shrugs. “Then don’t tell me.” I roll my eyes. “What if you need to know?” “People don’t tell secrets because someone needs to know them. They do it because they need someone to tell.”
How strange that instead of taking his heart, I’m hoping he takes mine.
I school my features into indifference. “I can assure you,” I tell Yukiko. “The next time I face her, I won’t even blink.” I feel the compass jolt against my hand and, slowly, the pointer shifts.
By falling for a monster, I have become one for her.
“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.
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.
Elian lets out a breath, amusement and surprise and something far too close to pride.
“I don’t like you because you’re nice,” Elian says. His forehead touches mine, his lips hovering a breath away. “That says a lot about your psyche.”
The fire blots out and the smoke clears, and in the abyss of charred snow and melted gravel, two armies stare back at us. Human and siren, side by side. Waiting for their prince and their princess to deliver the promised end.
