Page 47 of Wicked Tides
Dahlia
We are children of a cruel mother.
Daughters of an absent father.
~ Unknown
Meridan was freed from the mast only to be taken down to the holding cell with me afterward. The hate bleeding off the crew’s faces was thick. I could see it in their eyes. None of them had kept a siren alive long enough to interact with one and their desire to kill us made them unpredictable. They were accustomed to capturing and beheading, but now their captain was allowing two to remain on his ship. It boggled my mind. But if there was one thing I could tell, it was that Vidar’s men trusted him. Maybe more than they trusted themselves.
If I could bend him, it would bend his crew.
Neither of us struggled when we were taken to the holding cell. I was too focused on being alone to ask Meridan what happened than anything. After we were shoved back into the hold, I watched the two men leave us there in the near darkness, listening to their footstepsfade toward the upper deck. Then I swung around to face Meridan, who had already settled on the floor against the wall.
“I hate it here,” she said, her eyes wandering.
“Then why did you come?”
“I didn’t mean to. I was nearby, using the ship to deter pursuers.”
Our eyes met and I immediately saw a shift in her demeanor. Without prying eyes to peel her apart, she dropped the hard mask and deflated her lungs in defeat.
“Kea is dead,” she muttered.
I stilled, unsure for a moment that I heard her right. “What?”
“When he took you, we followed. We stayed deeper so he would not see us. He didn’t… but they did. The xhoth. We fled, but Kea was killed.” Her voice turned stony and flat. “They speared her right beside me. Dragged her back. I saw them rip into her with claws and teeth. They are a menace. One that rivals hunters like Vidar because they swim our waters. I never thought I’d see the day when they came up from the depths like this. This is the third time we’ve seen them in as many months.”
My heart ached to know that two of my sisters had been killed in a matter of days by an enemy we barely believed existed until they appeared to us.
I had been so close to exacting revenge on Vidar.
I shook my head, enraged that I was being so selfish when Kea and Voel were both gone, brutally murdered by something that wasn’t even supposed to be there.
With a deep sigh, I walked over and slid down the wall to sit beside her.
“This is wrong,” I said, listening to the vast expanse of rolling water around us. It seemed darker. Deeper. Angrier now that new monsters occupied it. “We both know the xhoth shouldn’t be here. Have things really become so off balance?”
“I’ve never worshipped Akareth. Perhaps this is my punishment. Perhaps he has sent his sons just to eat us all.”
“Don’t be foolish. Akareth, if he exists, is of flesh and bone like anything else. And so are his sons.”
“Either way, now we are trapped between two enemies.”
I let out a breath, coming to terms with it all.
Above us, I knew the girls were freely roaming and I recalled the exact look on Vidar’s face when he held his blade to the older girl’s throat. He was crueler and more ruthless than even his father was. He was part of the reason the sons had crawled to the surface from their dark caverns and trenches. Ahnah still had the will to smile and it was problematic for me to want to preserve that when she was the spawn of the very thing that I hated. Humans. Men like Vidar.
But her smile was too precious to destroy. I knew what it was like to lose it. I might as well have died when my childhood was ripped from me.
I winced at my compassion. It made me weak, but I couldn’t help it.
I inched closer to Meridan.
“I don’t know how much safer we are on board this ship,” I whispered.
“Nowhere is safe. At least if these men choose to kill us, beheading is known to be their most popular method.” She swallowed, taking a deep breath of the stagnant air in the hold. “Kea was awake long enough to see her limbs floating away when the sons got her.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, saying a silent prayer for her before I let the overwhelming frustration burn through my heart. I didn’t have space to hate someone or something more than I hated Vidar, but the sons were making a rotten cavity for themselves in my terrible heart whether I liked it or not.
