Page 83 of From the Myths of Kings

A siren.

Tearing his eyes away from the deceased siren, Rook gaped at the remaining figures who stood a few feet away. He quickly identified three of the four Kinsmen: Aris, Vasia, and Raj. The Mer Queen Basilia was nowhere in sight. They were looking down at something. Rook tried to get closer, but his feet had sunken further into the sand, his muscles made of stone. A woman lay splayed at their feet, wrapped in thick iron chains. A tail the color of emerald thrashed against the sand, chains rattling as she writhed. A blood-streaked wave slid up the beach and washed over her. She choked on the bloodied waves. Another siren.

Raj the Stone King bent down and dug his fingers into the sand, the tendons and veins of his forearms popping as he strained. Deep red crystals emerged from the ground like a nest of dying embers. The bed of crystals surrounded the thrashing siren, rising up out of the sand like ice shards from a glacial sea, obeying Raj’s stone-singing call.

Bloodstone, Rook recognized.

“You will defeat the Titans in this age, but they will return one day,” the voice continued.

He realized that the chained siren was speaking. Her voice was ripe with power, echoing with layered harmonious voices like various instruments in an orchestra. It was otherworldly and eerie, yet simultaneously enchantingly beautiful. He could feel the air stirring around him, as if the fabric of the world shuddered under her voice and waited for instruction. She glared at the three Revelorian rulers above her, sharp hatred glinting in her eyes like broken glass.

“Leucosia, enough,” Aris warned. “This is necessary. This was the only way.”

Leucosia’s revulsion rippled off of her in palpable waves, undercut by a sorrow so intense that Rook nearly fell to his knees. Tears glittered in the siren’s eyes as Vasia pulled out an onyx flask from her satchel. Vasia almost looked sorry for the chained siren as she uncorked the vial, her mouth twitching ever so slightly, as though she tasted something sour on her tongue.

Finished with summoning the bloodstone, Raj stood and took the vial from Vasia’s awaiting hands. He turned toward the lifeless siren and strode toward Rook, splashing through the shallow tide. For a moment, Rook was terrified that the Stone King would see him standing on the beach, but Raj’s moon-pale eyes went right through him, completely unaware of his presence. Raj knelt next to the crimson-haired siren and pressed the lip of the flask against her slit throat, collecting several drops of rust-colored blood.

Rook watched in horror as the Stone King swirled the dead siren’s blood with whatever substance had already been stored inside. He didn’t have to see inside the vial to know that it was already filled with another’s blood.

Divine blood. If he had to guess, it was Selussa’s blood, obtained when they initially allied with the sirens to banish her from Revelore. The blood of an innocent and the blood of an immortal.

As he put the pieces together, horror smeared itself along his spine and his stomach revolted. They were going to banish the chained siren to the underworld using a Blood Gate.

Leucosia began to wail then, a sound so haunting that the fine hairs on Rook’s arms stood on end and the hot blood in his veins plummeted to ice. Her song held the sorrow of a thousand agonized voices and thrummed in the air like the vibrations of harp strings. He could feel the raw power in her voice, the salty wind thickening with magic that he couldn’t see but he knew was there. His bones felt heavier, his heart thudding slowly in his chest, as though her singing dragged the passing of time to a screeching halt.

Raj poured the blood concoction over the bed of crystals. If he was disturbed by her voice, he didn’t show it. The crimson stream sparkled in the sunrise like wine poured from a decanter, splashing across the bloodstone and speckling the siren’s beautiful face. Her mournful song turned bitter, the chords of her voice sharpening like a razor’s edge as she forced every ounce of rage from her lungs. A storm collected on the horizon and a shroud of black clouds stretched across the heavens like a curtain pulled taut. The wind picked up and ripped across the beach, sending shards of driftwood and grains of sand pelting over Rook. He shielded his eyes and fought the urge to run. The scent of rain and rage filled his nostrils.

The bed of crystals cracked as the blood concoction spilled over their jagged edges, hairline splinters forming along the sand beneath Leucosia as the bloodgate formed. She continued to thrash against the chains, emerald tail spraying damp sand, nails digging into the embankment. Vasia looked away, shame flooding her eyes as the wind tore through her hair. Aris grimaced but remained steadfast, clutching his wife’s hand as they watched the veil between worlds grow thin.

Leucosia kept singing and the tropical temperature dropped abruptly. Suddenly, the briney wind was ice-cold and crystalline flakes formed in the torrent of rain, needling Rook’s face with tiny pinpricks. Ice glossed over the pebbled beach and snow gathered in his lashes.

The Northern Wastes, he realized with a start.

He was witnessing its formation with his very eyes. Leucosia had summoned an eternity of glacial weather to shroud her former kingdom. With the lives of her people sacrificed and Anthemoessa in sinking ruins, her kingdom was empty and desolate, preserved in a shell of ice as unfeeling and cold as those who had betrayed her.

Rook felt his cheeks dampen, the hot trails of tears freezing on his skin as soon as they fell. The siren’s voice made his heart drop to his toes. In her presence, he felt all the despair of the world, so hopeless that it was a tangible entity with a dagger at his throat, a thick clot of anguish choking out any shred of faith. He wanted to yell, to stop them from banishing her to Hel, but his voice remained locked in his mouth.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Vasia breathed, chin upturned toward the swirling vortex of snowflakes churning above them. She stepped away from the edge of the Blood Gate and dug her fingers into Aris’s tunic as if to steady herself. “What if?—”

“No.” The Auran king didn’t meet his wife’s eyes, staring instead at the writhing siren on the sand. His frown deepened. “This is the only way.”

The tract of bloodstone beneath Leucosia gave way, imploding in on itself. Her hair had frozen across her skin, seaweed ribbons coated in a thin crust of frost. Her lips had turned blue and her eyes impossibly bright. But she kept singing even as the ground shattered and the void opened with a heaving roar. Melancholic notes sharpened into words, cleaving through the air like knives:

“From your kin shall rise again the mother,

From your line shall Revelore’s fate be sealed.

Truth, though you may revise and smother,

Will mark your kin and death shall not yield.

Bloodshed and chaos shall your bounty be.

Until truth is revealed and Sight is freed,

Until the Titans rise again to remake we,

Unity shall elude you and greed you will wield.”

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