I nudge his shoulder and when he doesn’t move, I roll him onto his back. Sand sticks to the gold of his cheeks and his lips part ever so slightly, wet with ocean. He looks half-dead already.
His shirt clings to his skin, blood seeping through the slashes the mermaid tore. His chest barely moves with his breath and if I couldn’t hear the faint sound of his heart, then I would think for certain he was nothing more than a beautiful corpse.
I press a hand to his face and draw a fingernail from the corner of his eye to his cheek. A thin red line bubbles above his skin, but he doesn’t stir. His jaw is so sharp, it could cut through me.
Slowly, I reach under his shirt and press a hand against his chest. His heart thumps desperately beneath my palm. I lean my head against it and listen to the drumming with a smile. I can smell the ocean on him, an unmistakable salt, but mingled beneath it all is the faint aroma of aniseed. He smells like the black sweets of the anglers. The saccharine oil they use to lure their catch.
I find myself wishing him awake so I can catch a glimpse of those seaweed eyes before I take his heart and give it to my mother. I lift my head from his chest and hover my hand over his heart. My nails clutch his skin, and I prepare to plunge my fist deeper.
“Your Highness!”
I snap my head up. A legion of royal guards runs across the docks and toward us. I look back to the prince and his eyes begin to open. His head lolls in the sand and then his gaze focuses. On me. His eyes narrow as he takes in the color of my hair and the single eye that matches. He doesn’t look worried that my nails are dug into his chest, or scared by his impending death. Instead he looks resolute. And oddly satisfied.
I don’t have time to think about what that means. The guards are fast approaching, screaming for their prince, guns and swords at the ready. All of them pointed at me. I glance down at the prince’s chest once more, and the heart I came so close to winning. Then quicker than light, I dart back to the ocean and away from him.
11
Elian
MY DREAMS ARE THICK with blood that is not mine. It’s never mine, because I’m as immortal in my dreams as I seem to be in real life. I’m made of scars and memories, neither of which have any real bearing.
It’s been two days since the attack, and the siren’s face haunts my nights. Or what little I remember of her. Whenever I try to recall a single moment, all I see are her eyes. One like sunset and the other like the ocean I love so much.
The Princes’ Bane.
I was half-groggy when I woke on the shore, but I could have done something. Reached for the knife tucked in my belt and let it drink her blood. Smashed my fist across her cheek and held her down while a guard fetched my father. I could have killed her, but I didn’t, because she’s a wonder. A creature that has eluded me for so long and then, finally, appeared. Let me be privy to a face few men live to speak about.
My monster found me and I’m going to find her right back.
“It’s an outrage!”
The king bursts into my room, red-faced. My mother floats in after him, wearing a green kalasiris and an exasperated expression. When she sees me, her brow knits.
“None of them can tell me a thing,” my father says. “What use are sea wardens if they don’t warden the damn sea?”
“Darling.” My mother places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “They look for ships on the surface. I don’t recall us telling them to swim underwater and search for sirens.”
“It should go without saying!” My father is incensed. “Initiative is what those men need. Especially with their future king here. They should have known the sea bitch would come for him.”
“Radames,” my mother scolds. “Your son would prefer your concern to your rage.”
My father turns to me, as if only just noticing I’m there, despite it being my room. I can see the moment he notices the line of sweat that coats my forehead and seeps from my body to the sheets.
His face softens. “Are you feeling better?” he asks. “I could fetch the physician.”
“I’m fine.” The hoarseness of my voice betrays the lie.
“You don’t look it.”
I wave him off, hating that I suddenly feel like a child again, needing my father to protect me from the monsters. “I don’t imagine anyone looks their best before breakfast,” I say. “I bet I could still woo any of the women at court, though.”
My mother shoots me an admonishing look.
“I’m going to dismiss them all,” my father says, continuing on as though my sickliness hadn’t given him pause. “Every sorry excuse for a sea warden we have.”
I lean against the headboard. “I think you’re overreacting.”
“Overreacting! You could have been killed on our own land in broad daylight.”
I lift myself from bed. I sway a little, unsteady on my feet, but recover quickly enough for it to go unnoticed. “I hardly blame the wardens for failing to spot her,” I say, lifting my shirt from the floor. “It takes a trained eye.”
Which is true, incidentally, though I doubt my father cares. He doesn’t even seem to remember that the sea wardens watch the surface for enemy ships and are not, in any way, required to search underneath for devils and demons. The Saad is home to the few men and women in the world mad enough to try.
“Eyes like yours?” My father scoffs. “Let’s just hire some of those rapscallions you ramble around with, then.”
My mother gleams. “What a wonderful idea.”
“It was not!” argues my father. “I was being flippant, Isa.”
“Yet it was the least foolish thing I’ve heard you say in days.”
I grin at them and walk over to my father, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. The anger disappears from his eyes and he wears a look similar to resignation. He knows as well as I do that there is only one thing to be done, and that’s for me to leave. I suspect half of my father’s anger comes from knowing that. After all, Midas is a sanctuary my father spouts as a safe haven from the devils I hunt. An escape for me to return to if I ever need it. Now the attack has made a liar of him.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll make sure the siren suffers for it.”
It isn’t until I speak the words that I realize how much I mean them. My home is tainted with the same danger as the rest of my life, and it doesn’t sit right with me. Sirens belong in the sea, and those two parts of me – the prince and the hunter – have remained separate. I hate that their merging wasn’t because I was brave enough to stop pretending and tell my parents I never plan on becoming king and that whenever I am home, I feel like a fraud. How I think carefully about every word and action before saying or doing anything, just to be sure it is the right thing. The done thing. My two selves were thrust together because the Princes’ Bane forced my hand. She spurred into action something I should have been brave enough to do myself all along.