Page 51 of Of Songs and Silence

“Princess,” she snaps impatiently. “Yes, I know.”

Of course she does.

He blinks at her irritably, his lips parting before I cut him off with a question. “Her father is the king?”

“No,” the Mayima corrects. “Her mother’s father.”

My mouth opens and closes as I process that. What it means for Mel. For Madame.

“Do you have a message for her?” he asks as another wave crashes onto the ship, sending a fresh surge of water sailing over the side, soaking us even more than we are now.

“Tell her we’re going to the island—” Zaina says.

“Are we?” I cut her off. “If she’s not in danger…”

“Then the rest of the world still is,” Remy bites out. “Fundamentally, this changes nothing except that we have less collateral damage to worry about.”

“One less player on the board,” Einar agrees.

“But we have more time to plan now,” I protest.

Usually, I’m happy to go in blind, but last time we tried to beat Madame with a half-arsed plan, people died.Katrianedied.

“And put our entire lives on hold while Madame rebuilds her seat of power?” Zaina demands. “You were the one who said we needed to end this, and you weren’t wrong.”

“When Mel was in immediate danger,” I argue.

It was different when there was urgency, but now…

“Tick tock, tiny human,” the obnoxious Mayima says to me.

Looking from Remy’s vaguely accusatory face to Zaina’s determined one, I realize there isn’t a choice here.

There never really was.

“Two weeks,” I say. “That’s how long before we land at Delphine.”

He nods, turning to go, but Zaina’s voice follows him.

“I have another message.” He looks at her impatiently, but she stares him down. “You said there was nothing we could do if she was in danger, but that’s not true. We have the dragons.”

The Mayima’s face pales.

“And if your king, or anyone, harms a single hair on my sister’s head, we will not hesitate to use them.” Zaina’s tone is frigid in a way I’ve rarely heard it, eerily reminiscent of Madame’s.

Even I can’t tell if she’s bluffing. She said herself that it was too late to go back for them. Besides that, we have no idea how the dragons would pose a threat to the Mayima all the way under the sea, so I would normally suspect she is posturing. But Zaina is not entirely reasonable when someone she loves is in danger.

Looking at her now, it isn’t hard to believe she means every word.

CHAPTERTHIRTY

MELODI

Ari follows me into my room when the contemptible show is over, shutting the door behind him.

There’s a strange energy humming in my veins, an entirely different kind of tension since I all but ordered the deaths I had to watch today.

Logically, I know that isn’t entirely true. But over and over, I hear myself think the worddragon. And over and over, I see them die by her fearsome teeth or claws or fire.

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