Chapter 9 Glass Throat
The Music Room was a graveyard of stolen sounds.
It was located in the East Wing, a part of the castle that seemed to hang precariously over the cliffs. The walls were lined with instruments that had clearly been looted from conquered nations. Harps carved from elven wood, drums made of dragon skin, and a massive, brooding pipe organ that looked like a set of ribs cage against the far wall.
Dust motes danced in the shafts of grey light cutting through the high windows. It smelled of old wood, lemon polish, and the lingering, metallic tang of silence.
"Again," Klaus said.
He was standing by a black grand piano, his hand resting on the closed lid. He hadn't sat down for two hours. He hadn't blinked in ten minutes.
I stood in the center of the room, clutching the grey silk of my dress. My throat felt like it had been scrubbed with steel wool.
"I can't," I rasped. "My voice is gone."
"Your voice is a muscle," Klaus corrected, not looking at me. He stared at a sheet of music he had scribbled on parchment. " muscles fail when they are weak. Are you weak, Nerissa?"
"I am exhausted," I snapped, dropping my arms to my sides. "I haven't eaten a full meal in four days. I slept for three hours. And you have me singing opera scales until my lungs burn."
"The Emperor doesn't care about your lungs." Klaus looked up. His face was pale, the skin pulled tight over his cheekbones. "He cares about the show. If you can't fake the enchantment, he will demand the real thing. And if you give him the real thing..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. We both knew the cost. The black sludge in the ocean. The rot spreading on his own skin.
"Open your mouth," he ordered. "From the diaphragm. No magic. Just air. Just vibration."
I closed my eyes. I tried to find that place inside me where the song lived and shove it down. I tried to bypass the siren and find the human.
I took a breath. I sang a middle C.
It came out wobbling, thin, and hollow. It was a dead note.
Klaus slammed his hand on the piano lid. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.
"Terrible," he hissed. "You sound like a dying seal."
"I am a siren!" I shouted back, my frustration boiling over. "I am not a parlor trick! I can't just turn off what I am! It’s in my blood. It’s in my breath. Asking me to sing without magic is like asking a shark to bite without teeth!"
"Then find new teeth!"
He stormed over to me. He moved with that predatory grace that always made my heart stutter, closing the distance between us in two strides.
He grabbed my shoulders, spinning me around so my back was to his chest.
"You are breathing wrong," he growled in my ear.
He placed his hands on my stomach, right over my diaphragm. His palms were broad, heavy, and freezing cold through the thin silk of the dress.
"Here," he commanded, pressing inward. "You are pulling air into your chest. Shallow. Panic breathing. Pull it here."
I tried to breathe, but his proximity was a distraction that scrambled my brain. He was a solid wall of ice behind me. I could feel the hardness of his chest against my shoulder blades. I could smell the sharp scent of the medicinal salve he had put on my face earlier, mixed with the dark, earthy smell of his skin.
"Relax," he whispered. His fingers spread out over my ribs. "Stop vibrating. I can feel the magic trying to get out. Push it down."
"It wants to come out," I whispered, leaning back against him involuntarily. My legs were shaking again. "It hurts to hold it in. It feels like... like swallowing glass."
"Swallow it," he said harshly. "Choke on it if you have to. Just don't let it bleed into the sound."
He pressed harder against my stomach.
"Now. Sing. The note. Pure. Clean. Human."
I took a breath, forcing the air down against the pressure of his hands. I focused on the physical sensation of his grip, using it as an anchor. I visualized the magic as a dark tide and built a wall against it.
I opened my mouth.
Ahhhhhh.
The note was clearer this time. Stronger. But it still had that eerie, harmonic undertone, the double-voice of the siren that made men lose their minds.
"No," Klaus murmured against my hair. "Duller. Flatten the edge. Make it boring."
"I don't know how to be boring!"
"Pretend," he said. "Pretend you are safe. Pretend you are happy. Pretend you aren't a weapon."
Safe. Happy.
I closed my eyes tighter. I thought about the time before the blight. I thought about swimming through the kelp forests, the sunlight filtering down through the water in shafts of gold. I thought of silence.
I sang again.
This time, the note stripped itself of the power. It came out round, soft, and utterly ordinary.
Klaus went still behind me. His hands stopped pressing, simply resting on my ribs.
"There," he breathed. "Hold it."
I held the note. My lungs burned. My head spun. It felt wrong, like walking on a broken leg, but I held it.
Then, the door creaked open.
My concentration shattered. The wall I had built against the magic crumbled.
The note spiked.
It wasn't a choice. The startled gasp turned the hum into a weapon. A pulse of pure, sonic force blasted out of my throat.
It hit the grand piano. The heavy black lid, which Klaus had been leaning on moments ago, snapped shut with a deafening crash. The strings inside groaned and snapped, a cacophony of dying metal.
But the worst part was behind me.
Klaus let go of me as if he had been electrocuted.
I spun around.
He was doubled over, one hand braced on his knee, the other clutching his chest.
"Klaus!"
I reached for him, but he held up a hand, stopping me.
"Don't," he choked out.
He coughed. It was a wet, tearing sound deep in his lungs. He hacked violently, his whole body shaking with the force of it. When he pulled his hand away from his mouth, his glove was stained black.
Not red. Black. Like oil. Like the sludge from my nightmare.
I stared at the stain, horror cold in my veins.
"The anchor," I whispered. "It’s hurting you. Even here. Even just a slip."
Klaus straightened up slowly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the black fluid across his pale skin. He looked at me, and for a second, the mask was gone. I saw pain. Raw, ancient, exhausting pain.
"It’s not just the slip," he rasped, his voice sounding like gravel grinding together. "We are... close. The bond is reactive to proximity."
"Then why are you standing so close to me?" I demanded, my voice rising in panic. "Why are you touching me? Why are you teaching me?"
"Because you need to survive!" he shouted back.
The volume of his voice startled us both. Klaus never shouted. He was ice. He was silence.
He took a step toward me, his eyes blazing with that frantic sapphire light.
"You think this is a game?" he hissed. "You think I enjoy playing music teacher while my veins turn to tar? If you fail the Emperor’s test, he drains you. If he drains you, the ocean dies. If the ocean dies, I have nothing left to guard."
"You're guarding a graveyard!" I yelled. "And you're digging your own grave to do it!"
"It is my duty!"
"It is suicide!"
We were chest to chest now, breathing hard, the air between us crackling with energy. I could feel the heat of his anger, the cold of his sickness.
"Why?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper. "Why me? There are other sirens. There are other royals hiding in the deep."
"There are none," Klaus said. The fire left his eyes, replaced by a hollow darkness. "We hunted them all, Nerissa. You are the last one."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
"What?"
"The fleet," he said flatly. "The harvest. We didn't just take blood. We took them all. You are the last Princess. The last voice."
He reached out and took my chin in his hand. His fingers were sticky with the black blood. He didn't seem to notice.
"That is why you are the anchor," he said softly. "Because when you die... the song ends forever. And the silence wins."
I stared at him, the weight of his words crushing me. I wasn't just fighting for my father or my kingdom. I was the extinction event.
And he was the only thing standing between me and the end of my species.
"You're dying," I said, looking at the black stain on his lips. "Because of me."
"I have been dying for three hundred years," Klaus said. "At least this time, it has a melody."
He released my chin. He stepped back, putting distance between us. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hand, his face closing off again. The General returned.
"The note was good," he said, his voice flat and professional. "Before you lost focus. We will work on the duration."
"Klaus—"
"Again," he ordered, pointing to the spot on the rug. "From the diaphragm. And Nerissa?"
I looked at him, my heart aching in a way I didn't understand.
"Don't look at the blood," he said. "It breaks your concentration."
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I looked at the ruined piano. I looked at the dust dancing in the light.
I didn't look at him.
I placed my hands on my own stomach. I closed my eyes. I pushed the ocean down until it was just a drop of water in the dark.
I opened my mouth and sang the boring, human note.
It was perfect. It was lifeless.
And in the silence that followed, I heard Klaus let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief. Or maybe it was just the sound of a man who had bought himself one more hour of life.