Page 78 of Between Salt and Serenades
Tinelle released a sickly chuckle, motioning to the other sirens standing with her, Isla included. “As you can see, I have more than a few willing participants. Borrowing your magic was simply a pleasant, and much welcomed, surprise.”
“Willingparticipants?” Maisie made the mistake of joining us on the landing, staring down at the women below with hatred smeared across her tense features. “Don’t pretend that any of you subject yourselves to that pool or that the rest of us are willing.”
Isla’s face went impossibly pale as she stared up at Maisie, but she didn’t utter a word.
“You’re a very important piece of the puzzle, dear. You all are,” Tinelle sneered, the shriveled skin of her face scrunching further.
Breena leaned into my hair and hissed, “What point is there fighting with this woman? Just end her already.”
Her muscles tensed beneath me, her feet stepping towards the ledge. I shook my head and held her back, counting on that blue vial to prevent bloodshed. If the potion worked, these women would be incapacitated within minutes without having to add their deaths to my conscience. I also couldn’t let this woman slip through my fingers before understanding her twisted mind. Never knowing her reasoning behind all of this would surely eat me alive, chipping away at me through time.
My heart pounded in my ears as emotion slipped to the surface, raw and painful. “You take and you take, all for what? To kill the sea? To punish the sirens you once shared a home with? I don’t understand!”
“Of course you don’t! You were born with a song and a pretty little mask to keep you safe. Not all are so lucky. Some of us had a human parent who wanted us dead, all because they couldn’t keep their hands off our mothers. Monsters, they called us,” Tinelle spat. “We were finally getting somewhere in our war when your pod sank the Ever Wanderer. But then you gave up, gave in to the humans, leaving us hybrids with the burden of finishing the job you couldn’t.”
Her snarls sent me staggering back a step, the soles of my shoes grinding into the broken stone of the floor. Breena gripped my arms to hold me upright, my skin withering in pain as she forgot her strength. I forced my throat to relax, making it possible to shout back at the elder, “Gave up? We lost half of our pod that day! We didn’t give up—we aimed to preserve what remained of our home.”
My gaze shifted to where Zellia and Rory edged closer to the tunnel’s entrance. With a snap of my wrist, I waved them away. Tinelle and the others couldn’t see where they lurked in the shadows, and that was an advantage we needed to preserve.
My sharp gaze bore back into Tinelle. The woman tapped her wooded cane on the stone beneath her, splashing the thin layer of water coating its surface. “The only way to preserve our kind is by getting rid of the humans all together. Hybrids will never be able to live in peace until that day, and if we had to reignite the war by bringing the sirens to their desperate, starving end, then so be it.”
The air began to buzz around me with Tinelle’s magic, but I wasn’t finished with her.
“You risked destroying us for a bit of payback?” I scoffed. “You’re more delusional than I thought.”
Maisie winced and whispered, “That wording was a mistake.”
The puppet women all stared at their leader, fear licking up their faces like flames as they waited for Tinelle to make hermove. The elder’s face twitched as the cavern began to tremble around us. I could feel the water in the pools, the moisture coating the walls, and what loomed above us in the stone all vibrating, ready to erupt.
Maisie held onto a rock jutting from the ledge, gripping it for dear life as the entire place shook. “They must have completed their chant! No individual siren could do this.”
She didn’t need to clarify what “this” was. Each one of us could feel the power hanging heavy in the air. My jaw tightened as I realized they were using my very own magic against us, Zellia’s and Maisie’s too.
“Hold on,” I said, and the four of them took my words literally, grabbing onto anything sturdy they could find. “This isourmagic. I doubt a single one of them stepped foot into the siphoning pool, so we should have just as much claim over the power shaking these walls as they do, if not more.”
“You’re right!” Maisie shouted over crashing rock and the swirling pools below, a spark of hope igniting in her eyes. “Try tapping into it!”
I gripped onto Breena as I closed my eyes, and she held me equally as tight. If I couldn’t keep an eye on her in this mess of crumbling rock, the very least I could do was feel her skin on mine, warm and brimming with life.
When my eyes squinted shut, I focused on the familiar hum of my magic, homing in on the sensation coursing through my body, zinging right to the edge of my fingertips. I caught the whispers of my magic dispersed through the air like mist, mixing with more magic that did not belong to me. I hoped Zellia and Maisie also caught glimpses of their power and grabbed hold of it.
Just when I sensed mine was almost within reach, Breena’s grip on me loosened. She was getting ripped right out of my arms, the sound of her grunts tearing my eyes open. As I sawa giant hand made purely of water drag Breena off the stone ledge, I fought to channel every ounce of control, to not break my concentration on my magic. The hand tossed her squirming body onto the ground next to the siphoning pool—mere feet from the craggy old Tinelle.
Without thinking, I threw myself in the line of fire, closing my eyes and refocusing as another massive hand closed around my waist. Zellia screamed out, alerting the hybrids to her presence.
“Just stay alive for five more minutes!” Rory yelled out as the hand lifted me into the air. My own hands grabbed onto the fingers that wrapped around me, my magic pulsing and mingling with the fragments of my claim on it. My eyes flew back open as the hand became mine to control.
I was set down with a gentleness not extended to Breena only moments ago. I locked eyes with a seething Tinelle as the hand sloshed to the ground at my feet before reforming in front of Breena, who still lay crumpled on the floor. The watery appendage helped the selkie up until she was able to stand on her own, the sight alone enough to send a broken roar through the elder siren.
It wasn't until I heard screams rip through the air above me that I realized only Tinelle and one other hybrid remained. The three other women must have found Zellia, Rory, and Maisie in the tunnel, because my sister’s shouts were unmistakable.
Something dull and wet hit the side of my face, shaking me back into focus. I blinked twice as my eyes darted to Breena as she used her incredible strength to fend off Tinelle’s attacks.
Water beads formed in my hands, and I called for a deeper control of the monstrous hand. The power zapped through my bloodstream as I stole more and more magic in the air from Tinelle, taking as much as my body could contain before she could use it against my selkie.
Tinelle’s attacks appeared weaker, the water forms she hurled at Breena growing progressively smaller and slower. The other siren was already charging toward me, hands raised, fingers squirming. Taking in a lung-filling breath, I screeched, targeting my song directly at her as loud as my lungs would allow. She threw her hands over her ears, her knees buckling as she collapsed onto the damp rock beneath her.
Above me, Rory and Maisie fought sirens one-on-one, Maisie with her magic and Rory with a green vial of acid. He uncorked it with wide, desperate eyes, splashing the contents onto the siren approaching him. She screamed and fell out of view as her hair began falling from her head.
