Chapter 41 Replace
I flipped page after page. Descriptions of torture, of blood-letting, of how to keep a siren alive while her fins were harvested. But the section on the Bound Heart ended there. The solution—if there was one—had been physically removed.
"Looking for something, Little Fish?"
The voice was like a razor across my skin.
I spun around, slamming the book shut.
Lady Vespera stood at the end of the aisle. She wasn't wearing her ballroom silks. She was in a simple, dark traveling cloak, her face pale and sharp in the dim witch-fire. She didn't look humiliated anymore. She looked hungry.
"You're not supposed to be here," I said, my voice shaking. I moved to block the desk, my hand resting on the shark-skin cover.
"Neither are you," she countered, stepping into the light. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. "But then, you’ve always had a problem with boundaries, haven't you? First his room, now his secrets."
She walked closer, her heels clicking like a countdown. She stopped a few feet away, her nose wrinkling in disgust.
"You smell like him," she spat. " Ozone and rot. It’s pathetic. You think you’re saving him? You think you’re the heroine of this story?"
"I'm looking for a way to stop the Blight," I said, trying to keep the power in my voice from cracking. "Klaus is dying because of this."
Vespera laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound that made my skin crawl.
"Klaus has been dying since before your grandmother was a hatchling," she said. "The Anchor is his duty. He accepted it. He chose it."
"He chose to drown?"
"He chose to serve the Emperor," Vespera corrected. She leaned in, her eyes fixed on mine. "But you... you’re accelerating it. Every time you look at him with those big, sea-glass eyes, his heart beats faster. And the faster it beats, the faster the poison spreads."
She looked at the book behind me.
"I see you found the page. Too bad it’s incomplete."
"You did this," I realized, my fingers curling into claws. "You tore it out."
"I did nothing," Vespera said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The Emperor tore it out. Centuries ago. He doesn't want the Anchor to be broken. He wants the Admiral focused on the mission, not on his own survival."
She reached out, her long, sharp fingernail tracing the line of my jaw. I didn't pull away. I wanted to bite her. I wanted to rip the truth out of her throat.
"Klaus knows," she murmured. "He knows there is no cure. He’s just waiting for you to get strong enough to replace him."
"Replace him?"
"Who do you think becomes the next Anchor when he dissolves into ink?" Vespera asked, a cruel smile stretching her lips. "A Siren needs a vessel. If he dies, the bond seeks the next strongest thing. And after tonight... that’s you, Nerissa. You’ll be your own jailer. You’ll be the one coughing up the ocean until you turn to stone."
The horror of it was a physical blow. I stumbled back, my legs hitting the stone desk.
"He wouldn't," I whispered. "He’s trying to save me."
"He’s trying to save the Empire's toy," Vespera said. She stepped back, her cloak billowing around her. "Enjoy your reading, Arch-Duchess. But remember—the more you know, the faster you drown."
She turned and vanished into the darkness of the stacks, her laughter echoing long after she was gone.
I stood alone in the silence, the shark-skin book feeling like a tombstone beneath my hand.
I looked down at the torn page. The Bound Heart.
Klaus was dying for me. Not out of love, perhaps, but out of a duty that was killing him by inches. And the only way to save him was to find the piece of the story the Emperor had hidden.
I didn't cry. My tears were pearls now—hard, cold things that only had value to my enemies.
I reached for the book again, but my hand stopped. I felt a vibration through the floor. The iron bells were tolling.
The Diplomatic Summit.
I had to go. I had to put on the abyss-silk and the constellation of pearls. I had to sit next to a man who was drowning in black oil and pretend that I was the one in control.
I shoved the book back onto the shelf, but I didn't leave the aisle. I knelt on the floor, my fingers searching the dust.
There.
A tiny scrap of parchment, caught in the iron grating of the shelf. It was the corner of the torn page.
I picked it up. It had only one word written on it, in a script so faint it was almost invisible.
Salt-Kiss
I tucked the scrap into my bodice, the paper sharp against my skin.
I didn't know what it meant. But as I walked out of the library, the witch-fire globes flickering out behind me, I knew one thing for certain.
I wasn't going to let the silence win.