Page 15 of Siren's Treasure

Thessa couldn’t lie—at least her reddened cheeks couldn’t. This was the last conversation she’d expected to have with the Sea Witch, and in such a cheerful tone… but she also didn’t have the brains of a guppy. Father had said Scylla was a trickster. Two could play at that game. “You came to our father to offer your help. Can you really heal him?”

“No, you really need to listen better, my dear.” Scylla glided to an apparatus that looked like it had been grown rather than crafted—a twisted spire of living coral sprouting glass chambers and crystalline tubes. Dark liquid pulsed through the vials like black blood in veins. Scylla began to adjust knobs polished bright as shark teeth. “It is you who must help him, but only if you find what is lost.”

Father had said something similar. In an instant, Thessa put it together. “Undine’s Blade?”

The Sea Witch let out a triumphant cackle that sent ripples through every potion in the room. “You are my goddaughter through and through. How can any deny it?” She gestured Thessa over to see what she was creating in a sphere of dark crystal that absorbed light rather than reflecting it. Figures flickered inside a foggy green luminescence that reminded Thessa of algae-choked waters. She jumped, then peered closer.

Within the sphere, a mermaid with a tail of mother-of-pearl writhed in a cocoon of magic that sparked like captured lightning. Thessa watched, horrified and fascinated, as the magic tightened around the mermaid’s tail until it split painfully into two human legs.

“Undine’s prince never deserved her, poor thing,” Scylla murmured, then broke that sober thought with a giggle that didn’t quite mask the predatory gleam in her eyes, “But well… what do I know about love? A lot of bother if you ask me.”

The vision of Undine flickered with a wave of Scylla’s fingers, sending oily ripples through the dark water. In its place appeared a dagger that made Thessa’s breath catch. The blade was forged from silver found only in the darkest trenches where ancient magic still lingered.

Yes, the blade was definitely a part of Father’s triton. The hilt, however, was wrapped in intricate patterns of woven sea-silk in colors that shifted like the aurora borealis seen through water—that was the mermaid hair belonging to Poseidon’s sisters. They’d sacrificed so much of their power to save the youngest of them.

Scylla clicked her tongue. “And then Undine wouldn’t use the blade against that viper? Such a waste. This is why your father is dying, of course. The weapon must be returned to him before his strength fades away… to nothing.”

Thessa’s heart raced in sudden excitement. “I can bring it to him!”

“Can you?” Scylla asked, in a tone that immediately made Thessa’s back bristle with suspicion. One tentacle idly stroked a vial where a fish thrashed weakly, its scales turned to crystal. “The dagger lies in the heart of the Isles on Undine Island, and those with the divine blood of the Sea Sovereignty aren’t about to be walking around on an island on their fins… unfortunately, and so the Undine Blade remains where it is. You understand the difficulty now, of course. It’s impossible to get at it. The curse of that mermaid hair will destroy any who touch it… except, someone like you.” With a wave of bejeweled fingers, Scylla wiped away the vision. The sphere turned black and still. “Enough of that, tell me how life is at the palace.”

“I need legs…” Thessa hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but seeing Scylla’s sharp look on her, she knew the woman had been pushing her to that conclusion.

“Well, perhaps, it is so,” Scylla said in a reserved tone that contradicted the hungry gleam in her eyes. Her tentacles curled and uncurled with barely contained excitement. “But I don’t see how.”

Thessa moved her hair behind her shoulder, refusing to give in to Scylla’s schemes and beg to be the next Undine. There had to be a way around this. “How hard can this be? All I must do is to return the dagger to my father.”

“No, dear, it’s really not that simple.” Scylla’s tentacles reached for different bottles as she spoke, almost absently. One held what looked like frozen lightning, another contained a swirling darkness that ate the light around it. “You must use the dagger for what it was meant for—to pierce the heart of your enemy.” The bright smile didn’t once dim from her face, but her teeth seemed sharper now, gleaming like polished pearls in the dim light. She truly was heartless.

“I’m supposed to stab someone with it?” Thessa almost choked on the words.

“Believe me… you’ll be happy to do it.” Scylla acted like it was a perfectly natural thing to do, her tentacles dancing through the water in an almost playful way that made the suggestion even more disturbing. “That is the only way to break the curse and return Undine’s Blade to its rightful place on your father’s trident. It hungers for the blood of the merfolk enemy since its creation.”

The living walls of the cavern pulsed faster, the embedded eyes watching with increased interest. Thessa felt their gazes like physical touches on her skin. “I don’t have any enemies.”

“Of course you do.” Scylla patted her arm consolingly with a cold hand. “I’myour enemy.”

Blunt, and slightly messed up. “I’m not stabbing… you.” As tempting as it was becoming.

“Of course not,” Scylla’s voice turned hard, “… because you need me to give you legs, or you’re not stepping one foot on that island. You want your father to live or not?”

“And what do you get in return?” Thessa snapped. “My voice?”

“Oh, come now!” Scylla swooped through the water in a swirl of tentacles and jingling jewelry. “Must you always think the worst of me? Well… here it comes, the pleading, the shaming, the accusations. I’m no angel, of course, but you can’t expect me to get nothing from this bargain, surely?”

Thessa laughed with no humor, the sound making several potions glow brighter in response. She’d wasted her time coming here. She turned to leave. “I’m sorry, we have nothing more to say to each other… godmother.”

In a flash, Scylla moved in front of her, tentacles spreading to block her escape from the cavern’s entrance. “Oh, my dear… just your pretty little powers—that’s all I want—who wants your voice?” One tentacle reached toward a bottle humming with captured music, and she swirled it like liquid silver. “What would I do with a voice, pray tell?”

And Thessa would say goodbye to her power of healing like it was nothing? All her hopes and dreams drained from her at the thought. She’d always hoped that one day her father would see the good in it. And how? How if he died? Her gaze strayed to the witch “You’d take my powers, but I could still speak?”

“What kind of monster do you take me for?” Scylla’s laughter echoed off the walls, and in their depths, the watching eyes narrowed.

“And the legs you give me will be as any female human’s,” she charged. “They won’t prickle and stab me through with pain as I walk or—or dance?” She remembered too well the stories of Undine’s suffering.

Scylla snorted, sending ripples through the water that made her collection of bottled horrors gyrate. “I’m not so careless as all that.”

“Then you punished Undine with that pain to be cruel!” The realization made the water around them feel heavy. What trick would the witch pull on her? “Will you stop me from getting to that blade?”

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