Chapter 62 Defense
He was at the prow, holding onto a guide rope. He looked wild, his hair whipped by the salt spray.
"Look!" I pointed toward the water.
Shadows were leaping from the waves. Not the sickly, grey scouts from the Rift, but warriors. They wore armor of polished abalone and carried tridents of black glass. Their songs weren't melodies; they were sonic blasts that hit the ship like physical blows, making the very air vibrate.
One siren leaped high, her scales a shimmering, angry emerald. She landed on the railing ten feet from me. Her eyes were wide and filled with a frantic, desperate rage. She opened her mouth to scream, her throat glowing with a faint, blue light.
SCREEEEE—
The sound hit me in the chest, knocking the air from my lungs. It was a frequency designed to shatter vampire glass and burst eardrums.
"No!" I screamed, the word tearing through the black fluid in my throat.
I stepped forward, ignoring Klaus’s roar for me to stay back. I reached for the power I had used on the feral vampire, but I didn't want to break her. I wanted her to see me.
"STOP!"
The command left my throat, laced with the resonance of the Trench. It wasn't a song. It was a hammer.
The emerald siren flinched, her scream cutting off abruptly. She swayed on the railing, her pupils contracting as the weight of my voice slammed into her. The warriors in the water below paused, their tridents lowered. For a heartbeat, the only sound was the crashing of the waves against the iron hull.
She looked at me. Really looked at me.
She saw the charcoal silk. She saw the black pearl veil. She saw the ink-black lines creeping up my neck.
"Princess?" she rasped. Her voice was thin, echoing with the same rot that was in mine. "The... Sapphire Witch?"
"Go back," I pleaded, my voice breaking. "Tell my father to move the people to the deep trenches. The fleet is coming. The fire is coming."
The siren looked at Klaus, then back to me. Her lip curled, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth.
"You sail with the butcher," she hissed. "You wear the pearls of our grief and you command us with the voice of the enemy? You are not a princess. You are the bait."
"I am trying to save you!"
"You are a traitor!" she shrieked.
She lunged. Not at Klaus, but at me. Her black glass trident was a streak of shadow in the grey air.
I didn't move. I couldn't. The betrayal in her voice was a sharper blade than the glass.
Klaus was there. He had leaped across the deck, his dark steel sword meeting the abalone trident in a shower of sparks. The force of the impact sent the siren flying back into the sea.
He didn't stop. He turned to the crew, his face a mask of cold, lethal calculation.
"Drop the anchors!" he roared. "Release the sonic dampeners! If they won't retreat, we crush the spirit of the water!"
"Klaus, no!" I grabbed his arm. My fingers were stained with the black sludge from my latest cough. "Don't use the dampeners! It will kill the young ones! It will shatter their inner ears!"
Klaus looked at me. His eyes were twin stones of blue fire, devoid of pity.
"They are attacking my ship, Nerissa," he said. "They are trying to sink the only thing standing between them and the Emperor’s fire. I am the Admiral. I will protect my fleet."
"By killing mine?"
"By doing what is necessary!"
He shoved me toward the hatch. "Get below. Now. Or I will have you chained to the cot."
I looked at him—the man I had begun to think was different. The man who had read me poetry while I was sick. He was gone. There was only the Grand Admiral, the master of the hunt.
I didn't go below. I stood on the deck as the sonic dampeners were lowered into the water—massive, vibrating iron rods that began to thrum with a frequency that made my very brain feel like it was melting.
I heard the screams.
In the water, the warriors began to thrash. They clutched their heads, their beautiful, shimmering bodies twisting in agony as the sound waves tore through them. The emerald siren breached one last time, blood leaking from her ears and eyes, before she sank into the dark indigo depths.
The attack was over. The silence that followed was the silence of a grave.
Klaus stood at the railing, watching the shadows disappear. He didn't look triumphant. He looked exhausted. He turned to me, his chest heaving, his hand still white-knuckled on his sword.
"I saved the ship," he said.
"You murdered them," I whispered.