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Fury fills Tia. "You don't understand! Living trapped under the surface is stifling. I wanted to see the world, feel the grass in the plains, breathe in the air."
"While I understand your hunger for adventure," sarcasm fills the king's tone, "was it really worth someone else's life?"
"Yes." Once again, not a single crumb of guilt bleeds from her. "Hundreds of lives, even."
My blood runs cold at her lack of conscience, unsure what hundreds she's talking about. "What do you mean?"
"Many, many more will die once you do," she tells me, still so sure that I'll be the one lying dead soon. "Your death brings the greatest war any of us have ever seen. And when Oksangui falls, then and only then will our legs be permanent."
"What else do you remember?" I ask, a hot and terrifying emotion filling me, begging for retribution.
"Tia," Veil cuts in, and Tia's annoyance at her begins to boil her blood. "The man... the man, so handsome. And the woman, too. They're both so beautiful. But... what do they look like?"
Tia blinks repeatedly, confused and furious at her lack of memories. "I don't know, shut up." Tia is self-aware enough to know what control I have over her, fighting it all the while she's dragging through giving us the information we need.
She slaps herself across the face again and again, the madness of not having control over herself taking hold. I've never pushed against someone this hard, usually only needing to exert a small amount of influence, along with the right words and smiles. I wonder for a moment if this much resistance is beyond my capabilities and if I've broken her entirely by doing this.
After the umpteenth slap, she jumps at me again, her mind and emotions scattered. Her fingers wrap around my throat, the bloody ends of them slipping as she tries to grip me.
Faster than the king or Tia can react, I scream to Veil for help, forcing her body to fill with protectiveness and loyalty and using her dormant dislike for Tia by growing it into full-blown hatred.
Kairon takes a step forward before halting, his frozen visage just on the edge of my peripheral vision. I can only imagine the way his brows might be furrowed in confusion, wondering why he's not the one I summoned to save me.
Veil grips Tia's hair, pulling her off of me and tackling her to the floor. The Syrens screech, their voices sharp and dissonant as they fight. Tia tries to scratch at Veil's face, but her fingernails are long gone, only smearing blood across it.
Tia screams at her to stop, trying to tell her that I'm controlling her and to wake up from the deception. Veil just shrieks, any manner of lucidity gone, her singular motivation being that she must protect me.
Kairon grips me underneath my arms, lifting me to stand and pulling me away from them. From somewhere inside me, a fury I've always ignored comes to the surface. My chest feels hot, and my fingers ache to join in their fight and bring them both immeasurable pain and suffering like they wanted for me. Like they orchestrated for me.
In front of us, the Syrens continue their fight, ripping chunks of bloodied hair from each other. Clearly, neither one of them has ever had to defend themselves on land, not even knowing how to throw a single punch or do anything besides grab and slap.
"Do you have any weapons on you?" I ask Kairon absentmindedly, captivated by the display of pathetic violence in front of me
Disbelief colors Kai's tone. "You want to give them weapons?"
"Only one," I correct.
He stands motionless for a second, silently thinking. "But she could turn on us at any moment."
"She won't," I assure him. "And if she does, you'll take care of it. We're not getting anything else that's useful from them."
From the corner of my eye, he disappears, the sounds of him exiting the cage not tearing the Syrens away from each other or my sight away from them. When he returns, he places a small, rusty dagger in my waiting palm.
I toss the dagger to the floor beside the Syrens, fueling Veil's desperation and fury as I do. Tia spots it first, but it doesn't matter. She's pinned to the floor, Veil's hand around her throat as she leans almost all of her weight on her. Either Veil will get the knife, or she'll crush Tia's larynx trying to keep her from it.
Veil's line of sight follows Tias, and she frantically snatches up the dagger.
"Veil!" Tia screams. "Veil, please, stop! Don't you see? She's doing this to you! You have to fight back."
Veil looks up at me, and for only a split second I worry she might listen. But instead, she grips the sharp object in her hand, lifting it up above her head as Tia pleads with her to stop, fear and anger and sorrow flooding her brain.
As Veil brings the dagger down, I try to instill a calm acceptance in Tia, not wanting her last moments to be full of terror. It works to some extent, but facing death will scare anyone; no amount of power or comfort will be able to change that.
The dagger lands with a sickening squelch and thunk as it hits the floor beneath Tia's chest. No one could survive a blow like that, and yet, I do nothing. I don't ease up on Veil's rage or her determination, letting her strike Tia again and again.
She strikes so fast, so viciously, that blood splatters from the wounds, hitting me across the face and soaking my hair. The sight before me makes me sick, and I have to hold back from heaving. But this is my doing, my violence, and if I look away now, I'm no better than the fucking cowards that sent them here to kill me while hiding in the shadows.
"Elva," Kairon breaks my concentration, and Veil finally stops, throwing the dagger to the side and crawling off her friend.
