Page 13 of Siren's Treasure

He fought the vertigo that threatened to drop him back to his knees. The beasts behind him groaned in agony, clutching cauliflower ears.

Yeah, this delightful sea-viper must be a real pearl to live with.

As the sound faded and the last pieces of colored glass tinkled to the floor, Raggon’s lips curved up, with more rebellion than amusement. She’d killed his parents; his sweet sister was nowhere to be found, his cousins were never seen again. He glared. “Your argument doesn’t move me, hag. Sorry.”

The words had barely left his mouth when a gyrating convulsion erupted behind her hunchback. Snake-like tentacles ripped through the back of her dress, shredding the luxurious shadowsilk like paper. Raggon stumbled backward, his boots crunching on more broken glass.

The beasts scattered with whimpers of terror, though something else horrifying glittered in their eyes—dark anticipation.

A massive tentacle, black as deep-sea ink and covered in reptilian scales, came at Raggon, whipping around his stomach. Another, this one blood-red and glistening like wet muscle, coiled around his neck. His back slammed against the wall with enough force to drive the breath from his lungs. The tendrilaround his throat constricted, cutting off his desperate gasp for air.

“Only an heir of the Sea Sovereignty can touch the mermaid hair of Undine Blade.” Her shrieking voice penetrated his skull, making his brain feel like it would melt with her invasion. Lifting her delicately horrific fingers, she snapped at a tarnished silver frame hanging askew on the moldering wall that had been a mirror only seconds before, his reflection of writhing limbs and face reddening as he clawed desperately shifted into something even stranger and more malignant—a blade. Nothing unusual about the sight, only that its vehemence poured ice into his veins.

“All others will wither before it,” Circe cried. His eyes veered to a rainbow of silken strands blowing around a hilt, as she continued to explain this horror, “their mortal flesh turning to seafoam at the merest caress of those shimmering strands—woven from the tears of sirens and cursed by moonlight upon the deepest tides.”

The dagger pulsed in the mirror’s surface, seeming to reach for him across the boundary between worlds. Each strand of mermaid hair writhing, while the blade lifted with terrible purpose, as though seeking his heart specifically.

“How dare you look on Poseidon’s youngest daughter, human?”A whisper from the mirrored image poured through the room, deafening him like no whisper should:“To put your hands on her? Did you think to claim her sea-blessed heart for your mortal collection when you stole her kiss upon the waves?”

How had it known that? The reality of this ancient relic’s power shook him to the core; there was no denying the truth of the legends he’d always believed were old wives’ tales. Undine’s Blade truly existed.

“You heard its whisper, did you not?” Circe asked him.

Who didn’t? The mirror wasn’t exactly keeping its voice down, and its magic still consumed him, flooding him with ancestral memories—the blade had been forged for one purpose, to go through the heart of an ancient Sylphorian prince’s heart. Though it had failed, Raggon could almost feel the phantom pain of the sharpened point sliding between his ribs. The dagger knew him—knew his bloodline—and he could feel its hunger for vengeance across the generations.

“My enemy…”

How could Circe think that he could touch the hilt because he was also a descendant to Undine? Storms! The blood he’d inherited from Poseidon’s sister was diluted by more than a thousand years! He was not a true heir of the Sea Sovereignty! The instant his fingers brushed this bewitched mermaid’s hair; his heart would give out. He was sure of it—that blade hungered for his royal Sylphorian blood!

Circe’s gaze sharpened on him. “Have you dallied with a mermaid like your treacherous ancestor did before you? What was his name… let me see if I can remember, King Huldbrand, was it?”

She cackled when he refused to answer… couldn’t answer. The tendril around his throat constricted, cutting off his desperate gasp for air, the slick surface burning like salt in an open wound wherever it touched his flesh. “Surely, you believe in fairy tales now?”

Yes! Depths take him! And they would finish him off! She’d found the wrong guy. How could he get that through the witch’s thick head? The Sylphorian’s Sovereign Sea ancestor lived a millennia ago and was long gone. Undine’s curse had made King Huldbrand’s descendants something else entirely—neither human, nor merman, only beings of the air. But the tentacles squeezing him like the pythons from their jungles made itimpossible to retort. He couldn’t fight back, couldn’t even draw breath.

“You will bring me the blade, my dutiful prince, and I don’t care how you do it!”

She’d kill him before he could fulfill her impossible quest. Dark spots danced at the edge of his vision. All at once, she released him.

He crashed to the filthy floor, choking and coughing. His elbows crunched against spilled potion bottles, the fumes stinging his skin, the manacles scraping against stone. Through watering eyes, he caught sight of something in the Typhon’s Kiss—a hair-thin seam where the two metals met, where they seemed to resist each other despite their forced union. His gaze latched onto the flaw like a drowning man spotting a piece of driftwood.

“Aw… you wish to be free from your bonds?” The sound of stiff fabric rustling made his head snap up. Circe had already descended from her throne to glide before him, looming like a storm cloud ready to unleash lightning. “The Undine Blade will cut that clean through…” she gestured at his manacles with one elegant hand, “another reason to get to that treasure…or if you choose to become a beast rather than join me, perhaps your younger brother will take up my kind offer?”

Every muscle in his body tensed at the danger, even as hope flickered in his chest. “Is he alive?”

“You’d better hope he isn’t, or I won’t need you.” She marched from the room in a huff. He noticed the back of her dress ripped open, the tentacles, now bunched together against her back in a hideous mass of coiled snakes pulsing beneath the torn fabric.

She snapped at her beasts on her way out. “Take him to my dungeons.”

My family’s dungeon… but whatever.

Circe swept her many-layered cape around her shoulders, the movement graceful despite her monstrous appendages. “Let him rot there until he comes to his senses… or not.” Her smile returned when she glanced back, her gleaming eyes running over him. His stomach turned at her considering gaze. He was nothing more than a pawn to move at her every whim. “Though I’d rather have you as you are than another mindless minion. That would make my sister burn with jealousy!” With a final wink that made his skin crawl, she was gone.

The beasts seized him once more, their claws digging into his arms. The dungeon was a part of his childhood home he’d never visited, a labyrinth of narrow corridors that spiraled down into darkness. The walls reeked of decay. Each step took them further from the daylight until the only illumination came from sputtering torches that cast writhing shadows on the mold-covered stones.

The stench grew worse down here—a nauseating mix of unwashed bodies, and something else, something that reminded him of the creature in the moat. His boots slipped on stones slick with things he didn’t want to contemplate. The guards’ heavy breathing echoed off the walls, punctuated by occasional growls.

With one final shove from their ogre hands, he fell into a narrow cell barely wide enough for him to lie down. The iron door clanged shut with a finality that actually brought him relief—the barrier kept those monstrosities on the other side. Circe was the worst of them. Their shuffling footsteps and bestial breathing faded down the corridor, leaving him blessedly alone.

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