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“What? Calix, tell me!”
Calix spoke in Dynosian once more, clearly too shaken to use a second language. “Zosime doesn’t know anything about my father’s past!” he hissed. “The whole thing was hushed up, even from our own family. The only reason I know about it is because...”
On the stage, Securia’s face flushed with the same panic as Calix. She snapped to her feet, pointing emphatically.
Pointing right at the two of them.
The high envoy dove to the deck.
Then came the roar.
There was an almighty explosion of smoke, billowing from the stage. It moved so fast it sent people tumbling over each other with clanks of armor and smacks of flesh.
Aurelius dragged himself up from the pile of fallen fighters. Calix was nowhere to be seen—not on the ground, nor in the panicked press.
A bloodcurdling scream snapped him back to the stage. Amongst the roil of smoke was something that turned his blood to ice.
Standing in the center of the wooden platform, looming over the crowd, was himself.
“A gift!” the thing screamed, using his own voice, drawing all eyes upon it. “A gift from the herald of Mestibes!”
The figure held something aloft, smoke curling around it.
Aurelius’s stomach turned.
It was the severed head of Selkus III, King of Ardora.
87
TEIGRA
Zosime dropped Teigra and ran up the stairs, joined by Elexis and Pikra from the other direction. The screams from above were piercing, punctuated only by the sound of horrific slashes and wet gurgling.
Teigra followed, poking her head slowly through the stairway portal.
She jumped as dead eyes glared right back at her. It was one of the sailors. His body was mangled, a pool of blood and organs laying in a disgusting heap beside him.
She spotted the cause. Her skin crawled.
Harpies.
They were just like those that had attacked her and Jaspar and Aurelius all those months ago. But this time, rather than three, there were a dozen of them—ripping and tearing and swooping everywhere she looked. Their hideous faces screeched, skeletal wings and bony bodies, blood-drenched from fang-filled mouths all down to their sagging breasts.
Other bodies were strewn across the deck. It had been only a matter of seconds, but there wasn’t a single sailor left alive.
The three Sisters stood as one in the center of the ship. Pikra dodged lightly as one swooped, sending a dagger flying after it, piercing it right in the head and sending it crashing down into the blue waters that surrounded them. Elexis didn’t even dodge, grabbing one out of midair and stamping on its razor claws. The harpy’s eyes bulged as it tried to escape. With a sickening sound, the big woman reached down and snapped its neck.
And next to them both, a vision of dancing death, was Zosime.
She moved with malicious grace, her sword deflecting and slicing, her boots skipping as the beasts hit nothing but empty air. When one at last connected, grabbing her sword arm in its awful talons, she flicked her trapped hand, sending her blade arcing behind her and catching it effortlessly in her free hand, before plunging the steel right into its heart.
In short order, the numbers were even.
One of the remaining harpies flew up and sat atop the sails, hissing. One swooped down to the front of the ship, accompanied by the frightened bray of hippocamps. And the largest one, its feathers a darker shade of brown, came to rest on the railing at the very back, right where Teigra had hidden on her first day onboard.
Without a word, the Sisters ran to their targets. Pikra jumped onto the mast, scaling the ropes effortlessly. Elexis took the fallen driver’s whip and propped herself over the edge, sending sharp cracks into the late afternoon air. And Zosime sprinted to the back.
Just as before, the princess was magnificent, like she could predict the beast’s every movement. But this one was older and more cunning than the others, feinting its wings, moving in one direction then swiping in another.
