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I HAVE A HEART for every year I’ve been alive. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom.
I’ve heard things: tales of lost hearts and harpooned women stapled to the ocean bed as punishment for their treachery. Left to suffer until their blood becomes salt and they dissolve to sea foam. These are the women who take the human bounty of their kin. Mermaids more fish than flesh, with an upper body to match the decadent scales of their fins.
And when they steal the hearts we keep, it isn’t for power. It’s because they think that if they eat enough of them, they might become human themselves. I hate mermaids.
A magnificence forged in salt water and regality.
“Then tell me who that is so I can kill them and be done with this conversation.”
Disregard for life
TECHNICALLY, I’M A MURDERER, but I like to think that’s one of my better qualities.
“Lies aren’t answers.” “But they sound so much better than the truth.”
Could it really be such a bad thing, to become a story whispered to children in the dead of night? A song they sing to one another while they play.
At first, the blues are muted. The whites of the clouds dotted with bronze as leftover shimmers from Midas float across my eyes. But soon the world comes bursting back, vivid and unyielding. The coral of the fish and the bluebell sky.
I would not have guessed that the infamous siren hunter had humanity in him.
Royalty cannot be unmade. Birth rights cannot be changed. Hearts are forever scarred by our true nature.
There’s comfort in his presence and how relaxed he disguises himself to be. As though he could belong anywhere if he truly wanted to.
Elian laughs. Loudly, monotone, and in a way that’s nearly as mocking as my comment. “Come on,” he says. “We don’t have time for you to learn how to be funny.”
Two kingdoms that come with responsibilities we each have trouble bearing. Him, the shackles of being pinned to one land and one life. Me, trapped in the confines of my mother’s murderous legacy. And the ocean, calling out to us both. A song of freedom and longing.
Is that what it means to be human? Pushing someone else out of danger and throwing yourself in?
Love and madness are two stars in the same sky. You cannot build a roof to keep out last year’s rain
I know that marriage is a side effect of royalty.
“Stupid girl,” she whispers, and then – as though it’s the worst thing she could utter – “stupid human girl.”
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 could be using the eye right now to force you all to bow before me,” I say. “I could strike each of you who holds me with all the power of Keto.” The sirens stir, lengthening their distance. “And yet I’m reasoning with you instead. Asking for your allegiance when I have every right to just take it.”
But I don’t need people to die for me anymore. And I don’t need them to die because of me either. The killing and the sacrifice end here, and I want each of them to see it so they can trust in the changes I’ve preached. A new world, with a new queen at its helm.
