The wonder of whether the lips of a prince taste different from those of any other human. She says it as though it’s something to be proud of, but that’s because Kahlia is young and has taken only two hearts of her own. “You are a little heartless today, aren’t you?” Friendship and kinship taught to be as foreign as land. The kind reserved for moments when I am at my most dreadful, because that’s the trait sirens are supposed to value most. “Then tell me who that is so I can kill them and be done with this conversation.” “Are you sure you’re not out of practice?” “It’s been an age since your last kill, Lira,” she teases. “When I was spying on him, it was like looking at an angel. I ache for the ice of the sea, so sharp with cold that it feels like glorious knives in the slits between my bones. Its heat presses against my neck and causes my hair to stick to my wet skin. The only vessel on which the Adékarosin prince ever sails. After all, it’s the only one in the fleet with the painted wood and tiger flag. Humans enjoy flaunting their treasures for the world, but it only makes them targets for creatures like Kahlia and me, who can easily spot a royal ship. It’s smaller than most and made from scarlet wood that represents the colors of their country. The ship ploughs idly along the calm waters of Adékaros, one of the many human kingdoms I’ve vowed to rid of a prince. Her scales are deep auburn and her blond hair barely reaches her breasts, which are covered by a braid of orange seaweed. She sits beside me on the rock and stares at the ship in the distance. “Which will you take, cousin?” Kahlia asks in Psáriin. It’s a wonder we even need our song to steal hearts. We have eyelashes born from iceberg shavings and lips painted with the blood of sailors. A magnificence forged in salt water and regality. It’s a well-known fact that sirens are beautiful, but the bloodline of Keto is royal and with that comes its own beauty. In that ocean lies the sea kingdom of Keto. A selection of each so it manages to be neither. For me, that’s the great sea of Diávolos, with waters of apple and sapphire. My hair snakes down my back, as red as my left eye – and only my left, of course, because the right eye of every siren is the color of the sea they were born into. It’s because they think that if they eat enough of them, they might become human themselves. And when they steal the hearts we keep, it isn’t for power. Sometimes they save the lives of sailors and take nothing but charms in return. They steal trinkets and follow ships in hopes that treasure will fall from the decks. They have the capacity to be deadly, like all monsters, but where sirens seduce and kill, mermaids remain fascinated by humans. Fish and human both, with the beauty of neither. Their deep-blue flesh is dotted with fins that spread up their arms and spines. Unlike sirens, mermaids have stretched blue husks and limbs in place of hair, with a jawlessness that lets their mouths stretch to the size of small boats and swallow sharks whole. Mermaids more fish than flesh, with an upper body to match the decadent scales of their fins. These are the women who take the human bounty of their kin. Left to suffer until their blood becomes salt and they dissolve to sea foam. I’ve heard things: tales of lost hearts and harpooned women stapled to the ocean bed as punishment for their treachery. Hearts are power, and if there’s one thing my kind craves more than the ocean, it’s power. I count each of them, so I can be sure none were stolen in the night. Every so often, I claw through the shingle, just to check they’re still there. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. I HAVE A HEART for every year I’ve been alive. For those I love, who never got the chance to see this happen
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