Page 44 of Siren's Treasure

Fluttering wings, smaller this time, soared through the remaining rigging. Sterling circled the dragon’s head, squawking in that grating voice that had become strangely familiar over the past days. “Blood! Need blood! What am I? Brother? What’s happening to me? Fire in my bones! Fire in my soul!”

Raggon uncovered his face, the air sticking in his throat when he stared up at the dragon and saw what remained of the Typhon’s Kiss clasped to its neck. The sea steel was a silver crescent that clung to the ridges of his scales, like a stubborn parasite, barely maintaining its hold.

It wouldn’t matter if it fell away now.

“Tobias,” he whispered, the name barely audible over the crackle of flames and splintering wood. Circe’s curse was complete.

Raggon stood frozen, numb with shock, guilt washing over him like the waves battering their ship. He couldn’t save his brother. Their royal blood had affected his transformation in a different way than it had the others. He’d taken on the raw, physical power that sylphs were rumored to share with the ancient skyborne. His brother was now a nightmare made flesh, everything terrible and imposing, everything that Tobias wasn’t.

Could Raggon find his brother’s soul somewhere within this hulking, leathery form?

Again, the parrot squawked, circling higher as the dragon’s massive head followed its flight. “See me and quake, ye scurvy dogs!” Sterling’s voice was oddly formal beneath its usual affectation. “I hold in me the blood of ancestors, their souls raised by the Sea Blessing! Fear me and bow before my power! The ancestors speak through me in all my terrible glory!”

“The ancestors?” Raggon fought to his feet. Had taking on this form connected Tobias to the souls he’d raised by playing his royal Sylphorian instrument just last night? But how? These powers only belonged to the first of the sylphs. Legends told of Undine calling forth any being that had ever touched water—mortal or immortal—and hearing their whispers across time and tide.

Raggon’s throat was raw from smoke, and still he shouted upward at the daunting creature made of his brother: “Do you speak for Undine?” He clung to the last of his desperate hope. If there was still a way to save his brother from this awful fate, he would! “Can you communicate with her spirit?”

Sterling swooped down, perching on a broken spar just out of the dragon’s reach. “What do ye ask of Undine, Seafoam Prince?”

Scarcely believing that he was having this conversation with Sterling, and with the stink of sulfur rising up from the smoke against the planks, Raggon steadied himself. “Where’s her blade? Tobias, do you know where we can find it?”

“Where the water pours forth from the heart is where ye’ll find it!” Sterling flapped his wings vigorously. “Never shall ye make it there, Sylphorian Prince. Dragon’s hunger grows! Dragon wants flesh!”

A great inhale erupted from the dragon, the sound of that horrible damper opening in its throat again. Raggon listened with mounting dread as a strange whistling wind traveled the length of its body. Tobias was getting ready to engulf his brother in flames.

“Beast! Is this yours?”

Raggon swung on his heel to see Thessa standing in the shattered doorway of the cabin, her copper-red hair flying wildly in the wind like flames against the brightening sky. She wore that same oversized linen shirt, the edges flapping aroundher knees, and a silk banyan she’d hastily dragged on—an elegant dressing gown that swept around her calves, something Maddox had likely traded from a merchant ship. The luxurious garment was crimson with golden dragons embroidered along the sleeves. A terrible mockery of what stood before them. In her hands, she held something familiar—the birthday gift that Tobias had given his brother.

Never seeing her look braver, with just a touch of that stubbornness that drove him out of his mind, she madly wound the contraption, her slender fingers working the mechanism until the wind whistler exploded into the air with a shrieking, gurgling symphony.

The copper gyrated, rising above the remaining mast, jerking wildly, tubes and bells spinning as it emitted its cacophony of whale song and storm wind, cutting through the roar of flames and splintering wood.

The dragon stilled; its massive head cocked to one side. Its eyes flickered, the molten gold fading to a familiar human brown.

“His eyes!” Raggon breathed. Hope surged in his chest like a wave. They’d changed when they saw the contraption. Was his brother’s love of invention the way to reach his humanity? “They changed when he heard the wind whistler!”

The parrot cried out, swooping between them. “Pretty magic! Bring me more, bring me more! It sings to my bones!”

Raggon watched the dragon carefully as it stepped closer to the coppery whistler, its massive nostrils flaring as it sniffed the contraption.

For a moment, the very air seemed to hold its breath. Then, with a violent crash that shook what remained of the ship, a thick black tentacle shot from the water and swatted the remaining mast. The massive wooden pole tumbled through the air, spinning directly toward Raggon.

He crouched low, watching it come, and dissipated into seafoam just as the massive timber crashed through where he had stood. The helm shattered in his place. Raggon materialized again near the rail, but another writhing black tentacle swatted the deck like he was nothing more than a fly, splintering wood in all directions.

The glistening black appendage came for him again. Too late, before he could shift. The great gaping maw of the dragon lunged forward and bit down on the tentacle, just a hand’s breadth away from Raggon’s arm. A wet, sickening crunch exploded through the air.

A scream, unearthly and piercing, followed from somewhere beneath the waves, and the dragon tossed the oozing, severed limb off the side of the ship. With a newfound playfulness that was terrifying to behold, the beast hopped across the broken deck, catching more of the flailing limbs as they reached for the ship, tearing them with savage glee. Tobias’s pupils had once again narrowed to the golden slits of a beast.

Thessa grabbed Raggon’s arm, her fingers digging into his skin. “We have to get out of here!”

Sterling fluttered above them, his feathers ruffled. “Go, go! Abandon ship, ye fools! Save yourselves or walk with the dead!”

Raggon couldn’t move, his eyes on his brother. How could he leave him like this? Everything in his soul screamed against surrendering him to this monstrous prison. The dragon’s tail whipped through the air, clearing the deck of debris. More tentacles surged from the water, encircling what remained of the ship. The deck cracked beneath them with a sound like the world splitting apart.

Grabbing Thessa’s arms, not knowing how to protect her, or how to protect himself, he held her against him as they fell into the blackness. The waves crashed over them with crushing force,stealing his breath, the tropical temperatures smothering his skin and filling his nose and mouth with salt water.

He scrambled for pieces of driftwood, feeling Thessa crash into him. She was here! The girl was born for the sea, but she no longer had the power of her fins to keep her afloat. He cried out her name, shouting out anything to keep her with him. “Hold on!”

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