Page 160 of A Storm in Every Heart
My heart stutters and my vision darkens around the edges. I knew I saw him, but I’m not entirely sure I believed it until now.
Kastian is alive, and he’shere.
His face is set in a kind of desperate focus, but there’s unmistakable fear there too, a terror I’ve never seen him wear before. He’s not looking at the queen, or the writhing mob of sirens, or even the black abyss below—he’s looking only at me, as if the rest of the ocean is just background noise.
Just like I can hear the siren queen, I can hear Kastian’s thoughts, erratic and loud, like he’s screaming over himself, every single thought broadcasted at once.Need to find her. What is that fucking thing? Can’t breathe. Not leaving you, Odessa.
I hear my own name through the din of jumbled thoughts, and latch onto it.
Kastian, no! Go back!I shout in my mind, trying desperately to make him hear me.
Evidently, he can’t, because his erratic internal monologue doesn’t slow for even a second.Lungs burning, can’t breathe. Should be dead. Don’t fucking touch her.
He clearly can’t communicate in his head, and doesn’t realize that I—we—can hear his every thought. I don’t understand how he hasn’t had to go back up for air yet—why isn’t he drowning? How much longer until he does? Or, will the other sirens attack him first?
I kick my tail harder, new, unused muscles burning as I slice through the water, eyes locked on his distant silhouette. If I can just reach him before the sirens pull us both back down, maybe we can both return to the surface.
It's a desperate, naïve hope, a fragile thread, but I hold onto it with every ounce of strength I have.
We’re only feet apart when the current shifts. Two sirens appear on either side of me. Their vice-like hands hold both my arms, tugging me back like the undertow. I thrash against their grip, blind panic surging through me, but their hands—webbed, inhuman, merciless—hold me fast.
I scream, and another unearthly wail escapes my mouth. The sound vibrates through the water, and the sirens holding me stop moving. They don’t release my arms, but it’s almost as if they’ve been stunned into inaction.
The screams upset them…or maybe it’s a command?
I open my mouth again, but before I can do anything another ghostly wail comes reverberating up from the deep.
The queen’s scream is different from mine—full of rage rather than terror. Kastian hears the scream too, and his body jerks as if he’s just been stabbed. He stops swimming, treading water with desperate kicks, his whole focus zeroed in on me.
Behind me, the siren queen's scream turns into something like a laugh; a hollow, bubbling sound that starts in her chest and seems to echo from every direction. The other sirens join in until it’s a ghostly, horrifying chorus of sound.
The queen’s voice breaks through the chorus, clear in my mind.Like every other siren before you, you must sever all ties to the land. If you are too weak, then I’ll do it for you.
The sirens restraining me tighten their hold, their cold fingers biting into my arms to keep me in place as the siren queen glides by, her tentacles undulating in deliberate, menacing circles.
A thick, sucker-lined tentacle snaps around Kastian’s ankle with the speed of a whip. He hardly has a moment to realize what's happening before she pulls him down, twisting him in a disorienting whirl. He fights back, thrashing and kicking, but the queen is so much stronger. She drags him down into the black water, out of sight.
My heart jumps into my throat and I act on instinct. I rake the ragged edges of my nails across the nearest siren’s face.
Her flesh shreds like kelp, releasing a torrent of inky-black blood that clouds the water around us. The pain stuns her, and she reels back, but still, she doesn’t let go of me. After a second, it’s as if I never hurt her at all. Her glassy eyes stare at me, unphased, even as her own blood fills the water around her.
I don’t understand it and I don’t have time to think. Panic wells up in me and I scream again in frustration, a raw, shredding note of rage and terror.
For a single heartbeat, all the sirens freeze. The two sirens holding me falter, their grip slacking.
And all at once, I get it.
It’s not that the noise upsets them, it’s that they react to it. In the water, the sirens are of one mind—only the queen can give the orders, and there can only be one queen.
I don’t waste the chance—I pull free from the sirens and I kick my tail, propelling myself after the queen and Kastian.
From somewhere down below, a reverberating musical note floats toward us. At the sound, the siren closest to me recovers,sharp fingers reaching for me. I evade her fingers, swimming as fast as I can past the other glassy-eyed sirens.
Except, they’re not so glassy-eyed anymore.
Some are still frozen, but others are moving, waking up. As I pass, one hurls a trident at me—one of those ancient, three-pronged ones, built from bone and coral and flecked with rust.
I see it spinning toward my heart and time slows. My hand moves before I can think to command it. I catch the trident mid-spin, momentum nearly wrenching my arm from the socket. The impact vibrates all the way into my jaw.
