Page 14 of Wicked Tides
Children were different. At least, I wanted them to be.
Kea stepped up beside me, the glow of her deepwater skin illuminating one side of my face. She was the same as Meridan and was easy to see in the dark. One of the girls gasped, speaking in a language I didn’t understand. The look of fascination on her girlish face was not what I expected to see at all. She pointed a shaking finger.
“Pasaio,” she said.
I cocked my head to the side with confusion, watching the other girls duck their heads and huddle closer together, whimpering softly.
“They’re from the ice,” Kea said. “Much further north. There’s a clan there.”
“The Maruhk,” I muttered. “I know.”
“They sometimes deliver fish and seal carcasses to the locals and the locals sacrifice willing villagers once a year in thanks. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
I scoffed. “Cooperation? Between humans and us? Another rumor spread by hopeful lips.”
Kea shrugged. “They’re only rumors. But she just called us sea angels, so perhaps they’re based on something true. Not that we can ask those coldfins about it. They never show their face outside the frozen waters.”
“How do you know what she’s saying?”
“There was a sister in my clan who was a northerner. Those frigid waters aren’t much different from deephome.”
No one ventured far enough north to see the Maruhk. Some clans didn’t even think they existed anymore, but hearing Kea confirm it piqued my curiosity. To live in waters so cold and covered in ice seemed impossible, but the furs and leather stacked on that ship suggested the crew was coming from somewhere where fur and leather were abundant. A northern tribe that relied on it to survive the cold seemed logical. Believing sirens could have any sort of honest relationship with humans, however, seemed too strange.
“Well, we can’t kill them,” Meridan said. All eyes fell on her. She looked almost ashamed to have spoken up. “They’re just children. Cold, frightened children.”
Her words strengthened my resolve. I needed her there to say what I wanted to.
“They’rehuman,” Voel said. Her gaze snapped toward me. “I’ll do it if no one else wants to.”
“We’re not killing them,” I said.
“Dahlia—"
“We’re not killing children,” I repeated, staring at Meridan’s face where my own naivety reflected back like I was staring at myself eighteen years ago.
But maybe I liked it. Maybe I missed her.
Those girls reminded me of the thing I could have been, but I never got the chance. I was born, and innocence ran away screaming.
“So? What do we do with them?” Voel asked.
I slowly walked toward the bars and crouched down in front of the girls. They could see me now. Barely, but it was enough. I wasn’t even sure they would understand my next words, but perhaps I was saying it for me more than them.
I held a finger to my lips and smiled softly.
“Cover your ears now, darlings,” I whispered. “It will be over so much sooner than I’d like.”
It took a moment for the girls to understand. It wasn’t until I lifted my palms to my ears to demonstrate that they knew what I was saying. It was one of the older girls that got it first and she started to help the younger ones so each of them was cupping their hands over their ears.
Kea was already gone. Voel was close behind her. I turned and looked over my shoulder, my smile turning into a grimace. Meridan had a disgusted look about her and turned to join her sisters. I let the vision of the children in the cell fuel me when I heard the first blood-curdling scream from the sleeping quarters.
I marched after my sisters and found Kea straddling a man in his hammock, driving her knife into his chest over and over again until she was painted red. Voel was dragging a man back by his ankle after he’d tried to run away. Meridan was just leaping onto a man as he was sitting up, her teeth gnawing a large chunk of flesh right off his face. His teeth were uncovered once his cheek was torn away and he let out a gurgling shriek. The coppery scent of blood filled the room and the beautiful song of death vibrated in my bones. I took a deep breath and clutched the handle of my dagger, cutting off a man’s escape as he tried to flee the room. My knife swept across his throat faster than he could figure out I had one. Hot blood sprayed my face and I reached out with my other hand to grasp his wiry hair, keeping him upright as he bled. He looked at me with wide eyes, clutching at his open throat as I licked my tongue over my bloodied lips.
He tasted foul. Sour. Full of drink and rancid food. And the hint of old hemsbane was bitter.
His eyes glazed over with shock and then slowly lost their luster entirely as death gripped him.
When he fell, his shirt stretched to the side, revealing a barely healed mark on his left pectoral where I expected to see a bronze pendant. It was sloppy but recognizable. I’d seen the same crescent symbol with a slash through it a thousand times before.
