TKaK35

## Chapter 35

**Chapter 35** of **To Kill a Kingdom.** The group continues the journey up the mountain where they find the **second eye of keto** and **Lira** tells the group they need siren blood to break it free, when everyone gives up she sneaks out to claim the crystal for herself.

## **About**

### **Characters**

* **Lira**
* **Elian Midas**
* **Madrid**
* **Kye**
* **Kolton Torik**
* **Yukiko Pagos**

## **Full Version**

THE PATH ENDS IN water, just as it began.

With Yukiko as our guide navigating us up her sacred route, we slice our journey in half, never lost or wavering. She leads us to camps with quickfires bright enough to burn a hole through the mountain itself, and up paths that cut as much through time as they do the mountain. Quicker routes, faster courses, trails littered with cheats. Technology that sometimes even carries us part of the way. It’s not a surprise that the Págese royalty are able to survive the climb with so many tricks at their disposal. It’s also not a surprise that anyone not from their bloodline doesn’t survive.

Though I hate to find any common ground with the likes of Yukiko, even I have to admit that her family’s scam is clever. Using everything they can to perpetuate the legend of their origins, ensuring the loyalty of their people through awe alone if nothing else. It’s not a bad hand to play. Like Elian and his golden blood. Or me and Keto’s deadly power. Though in my case, the legend happens to be true.

I stop dead and the rest of the crew stills alongside me. Elian’s gloved hand hovers dangerously close to mine, and though I feel the air spark and warm between us, I don’t look at him. I can’t. I can only stare ahead, my feet burying themselves farther into the snow the longer I stay still. But I can’t move, either. Ahead, there are wonders. There is the palace, carved from the last breaths of my goddess Keto.

Though we’re no more than five hundred feet from the peak of the mountain, we find ourselves at the base of a great canyon, surrounded by chutes of falling water that crash onto a pile of black rocks. They look like the remnants of a landslide, and when the water thrashes against them, it creates mounds of steam that hisses as it rises, before finally dissipating into the clouds. Amid the froth, the rocks float aimlessly on the edges of a great moat, like borders to keep the miraculously unfrozen water inside. In the center, surrounded by island tufts of snow, is the palace. It’s an iceberg that towers to the height of the waterfalls, with windows made from solid wind and ornate steeples that curve and protrude at awkward angles. It is a body of sculpted snow, a fortress of slants and edges that eclipse the glory of the mountain itself.

A broken path of ice leads to the palace, but it is too fragmented and unstable to ensure safe passage for an army of one hundred. Instead, we find a batch of large rowboats secured on the outskirts of the moat, where it is at its calmest, farthest from the three sides of the falling water surrounding us. We split ourselves between the vessels and row toward the mouth of the palace, our boat pushed half by Torik’s strength and half by the great gusts of wind that propel us forward in a crooked line.

When we dismount, the palace is leagues above us, and I have to arch my back just to get a good enough look. But there’s no time to take it in, or wonder how it’s possible that a palace built from snowstorms can seem somehow warmer. A degree or two above the rest of the Cloud Mountain. Yukiko powers ahead with purpose and we follow her into the depths of the iceberg, using her torchlight to guide us when she walks too fast for us to keep pace.

The walls gleam like halls of mirrors, so that suddenly our numbers are doubled. Tripled. All I see are faces and tufts of breath that mingle among us like fog. We can’t help but linger a little behind, walking slower as we try to decipher what is a reflection and what is actually Yukiko. When we fall too far behind and she rounds a corner much too far ahead, we’re forced into a fleeting darkness. Elian’s hand finds mine. He squeezes, just once, and everything in me quickens. Heats. My body curves toward him and I press my free hand to the glacier walls. When we find the curve to the corner, Yukiko’s light illuminates our faces once more.

I don’t drop Elian’s hand.

Yukiko pauses at a large ice wall that shines against the heat of her flame, echoing our faces back to us. She hooks the torch onto a small brace and takes a step back.

“We’re here,” she says.

Elian gives me a quick glance and then unhooks the key from his neck and hands it to Yukiko. His eyes are impatient as Yukiko holds it up against a concave in the wall. The dip mirrors the patterns on the necklace perfectly, from every ornate swirl to its fanged encasing. It’s the perfect lock for our key, and when Yukiko presses the necklace to the wall, it clicks securely into place.

Snow drops from the ceiling and runs from the walls like water. There’s a heavy groan, and then the thick pane of ice heaves itself backward and reveals a cavern too large to be housed inside this moderate palace.

Elian enters like the thirsty explorer. I follow quickly behind him, paying no mind to the princess I brush past. Everywhere is blue. Thick trunks of frost press against the ceiling and then drop back down in leafy tufts. They stem from the walls like branches, veins of ice paving the floor in roots. It’s a forest of snow and ice.

The crew swaggers slowly in and gazes around in wide-eyed wonder. Unlike the rest of this iceberg, the cavern is truly a place of beauty. A place touched by Keto. But Elian doesn’t marvel at his surroundings. He stares resolutely ahead, at the center of the dome.

A steeple of ocean water floats in a perfect mixture of emerald and sapphire, and I recognize it instantly as water from the Diávolos Sea. From my home.

In the heart of it is the Second Eye of Keto.

It’s like nothing I have ever seen. Even the eye of the Sea Queen’s trident doesn’t quite compare, with its form so roughly slashed into shape and its color dimmed from the decades underwater. This stone is unaffected by any of that. Crafted into a perfectly geometric circle, it is tinged with the florid eyes of my mother and the gallons of blood spilled in its name.

The steeple that houses it is a solid ice sculpture, but when Elian reaches out to touch it, he doesn’t recoil. It’s not frozen, but suspended. In time, in place.

“We can’t melt it, then,” Elian says.

“We can’t break it,” Yukiko urges. “It might shatter the crystal.”

He turns to her. “I doubt we could break it anyway. It even feels impenetrable.”

Yukiko shakes her head furiously. “We have to open it,” she says. “The ritual. What is it?”

All eyes turn to me, and I take in a breath, readying myself. This is the moment I’ve been working toward. The very thing I maneuvered myself back onto Elian’s ship to do. I look at him and how his hair curls by his ears, sticking up in a way that shows every moment he slept in a damp tent. The frown that pulses down to his jaw. The ridiculous smell of licorice whenever he sighs.

I am too close.

I clear my throat. “Siren blood,” I say.

Elian turns to me. “What?”

“Do you think just anyone can wield the Crystal of Keto?” I ask. “It has to be a warrior worthy of its magic.”

“A warrior,” he says.

“A siren killer.”

Lies and lies, all mingling with half-truths on my tongue.

Kye throws his hands up in the air and stalks forward. “Where are we supposed to get siren blood?” he asks. “Why would you wait until now to tell us that?”

“It wouldn’t make a difference when she told us,” Madrid says, staring at me with an unreadable expression. “Sirens don’t have blood; they have acid. We can’t capture that if they turn to sea foam, and even if we did, it would eat through anything we put it in.”

“Your knife.” I point to Elian’s belt. “The only thing on this earth that can carry the blood of a siren.”

“It doesn’t carry it,” Elian says. “It drinks it.”

“Absorbs it,” I correct. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that with every siren you kill it feels a little stronger? A little heavier?”

Elian stays silent.

“How would you know?” Yukiko tilts her face to the side. “There’s something about you I can’t quite settle on.”

I ignore her and keep my focus on Elian. His eyebrows crease, and I know in that moment he doubts me. That even if I’m ignoring Yukiko, he isn’t. He’s suspicious – perhaps he always was – and though he has every right to be and part of me is proud of him for it, it hurts all the same. I cannot be trusted and it kills me that he might know that.

All the same, I can’t let him be the one to free the eye.

I give him a carefree smile. “I told you that I would be useful to keep around.”

Elian pulls the knife from his belt and holds it up to the cavern light. He twists the blade in his hand and takes a step toward me. I consider backing away, but stay rooted in place. Retreating now will only make me look guilty.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well, nothing,” he says. “I believe in you.”

He pauses a beat, as though waiting for me to contradict this and tell him that it’s a mistake. Even more ridiculous is that I want to. I have the urge to tell him that he should never do something as stupid as believing in me. But I say nothing, and so Elian turns to the frozen waters of Diávolos and plunges his knife into the center.

I WAS SUPPOSED TO be happy when it failed.

The blood inside the knife is long gone. Drunk and swapped into magic that kept it invincible and allowed it to absorb the life of a siren. I knew this, but I gave Elian hope, because that’s what liars do when they don’t want to get caught. And I had to let them think I believed the knife would work, because why else would I have waited until now to tell them blood was the key?

I had to let Elian fail so I can succeed. I just wasn’t supposed to feel so bad about it.

Hours have passed, and I’m sure it must be night. Either way, the crew is sleeping in various small chambers outside the dome. Sentries and trespassers. They’re determined not to leave until they find a way of freeing the eye. If Elian’s resolve wasn’t enough, Yukiko’s fury would have kept them all there anyway.

Try, she said. Try leaving without the glory you promised my brother.

I grip the lightweight sword and stare down at the Second Eye of Keto, suspended in the water of my home. Against my skin, the seashell necklace calls out. It yearns to be reunited with the powerful sea that created it. I can feel it too, the steady pull of Diávolos stretching out its arms to jerk me into its wake.

I grip my sword and slice it clean across my palm.

I’m indifferent as blood dribbles down my arm and drops onto the eye. There’s no scorching pain or endless acid cold. It’s warm and red and so very human. And yet.

When the blood touches the water, it dissolves. The top of the steeple folds down on itself, melting into an opening large enough for me to reach inside. I pick up the stone and sigh. It looks so tiny now, but I can feel the power coursing through me. The potential for savagery. It almost burns in my hand.

“All along, I sensed something in you.”

I whirl around, clutching the eye tightly in my fist.

“I knew something was not quite right,” Princess Yukiko says. She sniffs the air as though she can smell the monster in me. “You’re not quite human.”

I sheathe the sword and keep my voice low. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Probably not, but let’s say it anyway. You’re one of them, aren’t you? A siren.”

I don’t reply and she seems to take this as an answer. She grins, her thin lips slanting to create apples in her cheeks.

“How did you achieve this disguise?” she asks. “How is it possible?”

I grind my teeth, hating the way she looks at me, like a fish on a hook. As though I’m something to be examined and studied, rather than feared. She walks toward me, circling until she is on the other side of the frozen steeple.

I cast her a withering look. “The Sea Queen seemed to think it was more of a punishment than a disguise,” I say.

“And stealing the crystal is your redemption?” she asks. Still so curious, still so unafraid. “I wonder what crime you committed to inflict such a thing.”

“Being born was the start,” I tell her. “The Sea Queen has never been one for competition.”

Just like that, the smirk leaves Yukiko’s lips, and something new paints itself in place. Awe, replaced by shock. Wonder, by uncertainty. Curiosity, by fear.

“You’re her,” Yukiko says. “The Princes’ Bane.”

Her expression stays faltered for a moment longer and then, just as quickly, the hesitation leaves her face. She smiles, cunning and shrewd.

“You of all people didn’t know?” she asks.

It takes me a moment too long to realize that she’s not talking to me anymore.

I whip my head around to the entrance of the dome, where Elian stands. His face is slack and expressionless, eyes lingering on the eye in my hand. I blanch and my heart goes still in my chest. Suddenly nothing feels solid except for the air that lodges itself in my throat.

I believe in you.

For a moment I entertain the pitiful notion that maybe he didn’t hear. But when his eyes hit mine, I know he knows. I know he has pieced together the puzzle I tried so hard to shatter. And when he reaches for his sword, I know this night will end in blood.