TKaK18

## Chapter 18

### Other Characters

Elian, Kye, Madrid, Torik, Sea Queen (Flashback), Kahlia (Flashback), Crestell (Flashback)

## Locations

### Mentioned Locations

Eidyllio, Kalokari, Agriosy, Mellontikos

**Chapter 18** of **To Kill a Kingdom** is when **Lira** is in the crystal cage and looks back on her memories.

## **About**

### **Locations**

* **The Saad**
* Crystal Cage
* **Palace of Keto**

### **Characters**

* **Lira**
* **Kahlia**
* **Sea Queen**
* **Crestell**

## **Full Version**

MAEVE DISSOLVES INTO NOTHING.

Killing a siren is not like killing a mermaid. Their rotting corpses stain the ocean floor and skeleton among the coral, while we dissolve into the very thing that made us. Into ocean and foam and the salt in our veins. When we’re gone, there’s nothing left to remember.

I thought I’d be glad when Maeve died, but the battle between our species wages on and I’ve just helped the humans in their bid to slaughter us. At the very least, the prince didn’t cut out her heart before he killed her. I’ve never paid mind to legends, unless I’m the legend of discussion, but even I know the stories. Ones that warn of any human who holds a siren’s heart being granted immunity to our song. It’s said that’s why we turn to sea foam when we die, that it’s not a curse to erase us from the world but a blessing from Keto to ensure a human can never take our hearts.

After Maeve disappears, I’m taken belowdecks to a windowless room that smells of aniseed and rust. The walls are not walls but thick drapes that hang from a varnished ceiling. Their damp edges catch the floor, and as the ship pierces on, they sway and reveal endless lines. Of books, weapons, and gold. Each curtain has its own secret. In the center is a large cube made from black glass. It’s as thick as I am long, with hinges and bolts that are heavy gold. The same kind that the eel-mermaid’s brooch was made from. It’s a prison of sorts and doesn’t appear to be designed for humans. Or, if it is, it’s designed for the worst kind.

In the kingdom of Keto, we don’t keep prisoners. Betraying the Sea Queen means giving up your life, and so we have no choice but to be what my mother says we are. Deciding differently offers no second chances; my punishment is proof of that.

I turn to Elian. “Why am I down here?”

With each passing moment, he takes on more of the ocean. A brown leather tunic is slung over his shirt, frayed black string fastening it at the neck. His legs are half trouser and half long brown boots that catch at the knees. A strap crosses from his shoulder to his waist, and from it a large cutlass dangles. His knife is hidden behind, away from strange eyes. I can still smell Maeve’s blood on it.

“You seem worldly,” Elian says. “Can’t you figure it out?”

Behind him, Kye and Madrid are resolute guardians. Less than a day on this ship and I already know who his most trusted are. Which means I already know his greatest weakness.

“I thought princes liked saving young women in need.”

Elian laughs, teeth flashing white against his handsome face. “You’re a damsel now?” he asks. “It’s funny, because you didn’t seem like one when you were trying to claw your way past me to attack a siren.”

“I thought killing sirens was what people on this ship did.”

“Usually not with their bare hands.”

“Not everyone needs magical knives to do their dirty work for them.”

“Not everyone can speak *Psáriin*,” he says.

I keep a coy smile on my lips, playing my role well. “I have a talent for languages.”

“Your Midasan says differently.”

“I have a talent for interesting languages,” I amend, and Elian’s green eyes crinkle.

“What about your own language?” he asks.

“It’s better.”

“How?”

“It’s more suited to me.”

“I dread to think what that means.”

Elian brushes past me and presses a hand to the cold glass of the cube. As his fingers spread over the would-be prison, I can almost feel the cold of it through him. The siren part of me aches to feel the frost beneath my fingers and know the cold like I used to. The human in me shivers.

“Where is your home?” Elian asks.

His back is to me, and I see his lips move through his reflection. He watches himself, keeping his eyes far from mine. For a moment I don’t think he’s asking me. That maybe he’s asking himself. A prince who doesn’t know which kingdom he should claim. Then Kye clears his throat and Elian spins back around. When he does, his face is all lights.

“Well?” he asks.

“I didn’t think I was going to be interrogated.”

“Did the cage not give it away?”

“I didn’t see a cage.” I arch my neck, peering behind him as if I hadn’t noticed my looming prison. “Your charm must have masked it.”

Elian shakes his head to hide the growing smile. “It’s not just any cage,” he says. “Back when I first started all of this and long before I knew better, I had it built with every intention of using it to hold the Sea Queen.” He arches an eyebrow. “Do you think it can hold you?”

“You’re going to throw me in a cage?” I ask.

“Unless you tell me where you’re from,” he says. “And why you left.”

“It wasn’t my choice.”

“Why were you out in the middle of the ocean without a ship?”

“I was abandoned.”

“By who?”

I don’t hesitate when I say, “Everyone.”

With a sigh, Elian leans back and presses a foot flat against the glass. He ponders my carefully chosen words, turning them over in his mind like the wheel of a ship. I dislike the silence that follows and the heavy weight that his quiet leaves in the room. It’s as though the air waits for the sound of his voice before it dares to thin out and become breathable. And I wait too, trying to anticipate what his next move will be. The situation is unbearably familiar. So many times I’ve hovered in front of my mother, biting my tongue while she chooses how I live my life. What I will do and when I will kill and who I will be. Though it’s strange to watch a human deliberate my fate, it’s not such an odd thing to wait while it’s decided by someone other than myself.

Hidden under my seaweed lies, there’s truth. I was abandoned, and now I’m on a ship with humans who would see me dead if they knew what I was. Below the surface, my mother rules a kingdom that should be mine, and if anyone questions where I’ve gone, she’ll spit whatever lies make me most forgettable. Harpooned by a passing sailor. Killed by a simple mermaid. In love with a human prince. It will leave my memory as more of a joke than a legend, and the loyalty of my kingdom will dissolve as quickly as Maeve did.

I will be nothing. Have nothing. Die as nothing.

I look at my necklace, still hanging from Elian’s neck. I don’t doubt that if I press my ear to the red bone, I’ll hear the ocean and the sound of my mother’s laughter rippling through it.

I turn, disgusted.

“We dock at Eidýllio in three days’ time.” Elian pushes himself from the glass. “I’ll make my decision when we get there.”

“And until then?”

A slow smile spreads across his face. He steps aside to reveal the full glory of the cage. “Until then.”

In the wake of the unspoken order, Madrid grabs my elbow. To my other side, Kye’s hands tighten around my arm. I struggle against them, but their hold is unbreakable. In moments I’m hoisted from the floor and dragged toward the cage. My writhing does nothing to steer them from their path.

“Let me go!” I demand.

I try to kick out with clumsy motions, but my body is squashed between them, leaving little room to breathe or move. I throw my head back wildly and thrash, furious at the lack of control. How frail and weak my body is now. In my siren form, I could tear them in half with a single movement. I bare my teeth and snap through the air, missing Kye’s ear by half an inch. He doesn’t even blink. I’m as powerless as I feel.

We reach the cage and they throw me in like I weigh nothing. I bounce off the floor, and when I rush back to the entrance, my palms meet a wall. My fingers spread over the surface, and I realize that it’s not glass after all, but solid crystal. I pound relentlessly against it. On the other side, Elian crosses his arms over his chest. My human heart thumps angrily against my chest, stronger than my fists on the prison wall.

I point an accusing finger at him. “You want me to stay in here until Eidýllio?”

“I want you overboard,” Elian says. “But it’s not like I can make you walk the plank.”

“Your chivalry won’t allow it?”

Elian walks to a nearby wall and pulls back one of the drapes to reveal a circular switch. “We lost the plank years ago,” he says. Then, in a voice much lower: “And I lost my chivalry around the same time.”

He twists the switch and the shadows take over.

THERE’S ONLY NIGHT INSIDE the crystal cage. The room is coated in damp darkness, and though the prison seems impenetrable, I can smell the musk of soggy air from the world outside. Every so often, someone comes with food and I’m allowed a rare few minutes of lantern light. It’s almost blinding, and by the time I’m done squinting, the lights are off and a tray of fish assaults my senses. It doesn’t quite have the taste of salties and white pointers, but I devour it in moments.

I don’t know how long I’ve been in the crystal cage, but the promise of Eidýllio weighs on me. When we arrive, the prince will try to throw me onto land with humans who know nothing of the ocean. At least in this place, I can smell the salt of home.

When I sleep, I dream of coral and bleeding hearts. When I wake, there’s nothing but dark and the slow wash of waves against the body of the ship. The first time I killed a human, it was so bright, I couldn’t go above water without squinting. The surface barely rippled, and in moments the sun melted any shards of my kingdom’s ice that still lingered on my skin.

The boy was a prince of Kalokaíri and I was twelve.

Kalokaíri is not much more than a beautiful desert in the middle of a desolate sea. It’s the land of endless summer, with wind that carries the smell of sand. In those days, my legend hadn’t been born, and so royalty sailed with no more trepidation than any human.

The prince was cloaked in white, with purple cloth wrapped tightly around his head. He was gentle and unafraid, and he smiled at me long before I sang. When I sprang from the ocean, he had called me *ahnan anatias*, which was Kalokaírin for “little death.”

The boy wasn’t frightened, even when I bared my teeth and hissed in the same way I heard my mother do. Taking his heart had not been such a nasty business then. He almost came willingly. Before I began my song, he reached his hand out to touch me, and after the first few clumsy lines, he climbed slowly from the docked sailing boat and walked until he was deep enough to meet me.

I let him drown first. While his breathing slowed, I held his hand, and only when I was sure he was dead did I think of his heart. I was careful when it happened. I didn’t want there to be too much blood when his family found him. For them to think he suffered, when he had died so peacefully.

As I took his heart, I wondered if they were looking for him. Had they realized he was missing from the boat? Above the water’s edge, were they screaming for him? Would my mother scream like that if I never came back? I knew the answer. The queen wouldn’t care if I was gone forever. Heirs were easy things to make, and my mother was the Sea Queen first and nothing second. I knew she would only care that I hadn’t taken the boy’s heart while he was still alive. That she would punish me for not being enough of a monster. And I was right.

When I arrived home, my mother was waiting for me. Surrounding her were the other members of our royal bloodline, arced in a perfect semicircle as they awaited my entrance. The Sea Queen’s sister was at the forefront, ready to greet me, each of her six daughters looped behind her. Kahlia was last, directly beside my mother.

As soon as the Sea Queen saw me, she knew what I had done. I could see it in her smile, and I was sure she could smell it on me: the stench of my regret for killing the Kalokaírin prince. And no matter how much I tried to avoid looking at her, the queen could tell I had been crying. The tears were long washed away, but my eyes remained bloodshot and I had done too good of a job trying to scrub the blood off my hands.

“Lira,” she said. “My sweet.”

I placed a trembling hand onto her outstretched tentacle and let her pull me slowly into her hold. Kahlia bit her lip as my mother regarded my clean hands.

“Have you come bearing gifts for mummy dearest?” the Sea Queen asked.

I nodded and reached into the netting tied around my waist. “I did what you asked.” I cradled the young prince’s heart, lifting it above my head to present it to her like the trophy she wanted. “My twelfth.”

The Sea Queen stroked my hair, her smooth tentacle slinking from my scalp and along my spine. I tried not to blink.

“Indeed,” the Sea Queen said. Her voice was soft and slow, like the sound of the dawn breeze. “But it seems you didn’t quite listen.”

“He’s dead,” I told her, thinking that was surely the most important thing. “I killed him and I took his heart.” I held it a little higher, pushing it toward her chest so she could feel the stillness of the prince’s heart against the coldness of her own.

“Oh, Lira.” She cupped my chin in her hand, sliding the talon of her thumb over my cheek. “But I didn’t tell you to cry.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant when I killed the prince, or not to do it now, in her grasp, with our royal bloodline watching. But my lips shook with the same fear my hands had, and when the first drop fell from my red eye, my mother breathed a heavy lament. She let the tear run onto her thumb and then shook it from her skin like it was acid.

“I did what you asked,” I said again.

“I asked you to make a human suffer,” the Sea Queen said. “To take its still-beating heart and rip it out.” A tentacle slid over my shoulder and around my tiny neck. “I asked you to be a siren.”

When she threw me to the ground, I remember feeling relieved. Knowing that if she was going to kill me, she would have crushed me under her grasp. I could take a beating. I could be humiliated and bloodied. If taking a few hits would quell my mother’s temper, then it wouldn’t be so bad. I would have gotten off easy. But I was a fool to think that my mother would choose to punish only me. What good was it to scold her daughter when she could shape her instead?

“Kahlia,” my mother said. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Sister.” My aunt swam forward, her face suddenly wretched and pained. “Please don’t.”

“Now, now, Crestell,” my mother said. “You shouldn’t interrupt your queen.”

“She’s my daughter.”

I remember hating the way Crestell’s shoulders hunched forward as she spoke. Like she was already preparing for a blow.

“Hush now,” my mother cooed. “Let us not fight in front of the children.”

She turned to me and stretched out her arm toward my cousin. It was like she was presenting Kahlia, the same way I had done with the Kalokaírin heart. I didn’t move.

“Kill her,” the Sea Queen said.

“Mother—”

“Take her heart while she still screams, like you should have done with the human prince.”

Kahlia whimpered, too scared to move or even cry. She glanced over at her mother, then back to me, blinking a dozen times over. Her head shook violently from side to side.

It was like looking into a mirror. Seeing the horror on Kahlia’s face was like seeing a rendition of myself, every drop of terror I felt reflected in her eyes.

“I can’t,” I said. Then, louder: “Don’t make me.”

I backed away, shaking my head so adamantly that my mother’s snarl became a blur.

“You stupid child,” she said. “I am offering you redemption. Do you know what will happen if you refuse?”

“I don’t need to be redeemed!” I yelled. “I did what you asked!”

The Sea Queen squeezed her trident, and all the poise that remained vanished from her face. Her eyes grew to shadows, blacker and blacker, until I could only see the darkness in them. The ocean groaned.

“This *humanity* that has infected you must be quelled,” she said. “Don’t you see, Lira? Humans are a plague who murdered our goddess and seek to destroy us. Any siren who shows sympathy toward them – who mimics their love and their sorrow – must be cleansed.”

I frowned. “Cleansed?”

The Sea Queen pushed Kahlia to the seabed, and I winced when her palms slammed against the sand.

“Sirens do not feel affection or regret,” my mother seethed. “We don’t know empathy for our enemies. Any siren who feels such things can never be queen. All she will ever be is defective. And a defective siren can’t be allowed to live.”

“Defective,” I repeated.

“Kill her,” my mother said. “And we’ll speak no more of it.”

She said it like it was the only way I could ever make up for my sins against my kind. If Kahlia died, then I’d be a true siren worthy of my mother’s trident. I wouldn’t be impure. The emotions I was having were a sickness and she was offering me a cure. A way out. A chance to rid me of the humanity she claimed had infected me.

Kahlia just needed to die first.

I moved closer to my cousin, clasping my hands behind my back so the Sea Queen couldn’t see how much they were shaking. I wondered if she could smell blood from the crescents I had stamped into my palms.

Kahlia cried as I approached, great howls of terror spilling from her tiny lips. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do as I got closer to her, but I knew I didn’t want to kill her. *Take her hand and swim*, I thought. *Get as far away from the Sea Queen as we can*. But I knew I wouldn’t do that, either, because my mother’s eyes were the ocean and she would see us wherever we hid. If I took Kahlia, we’d both be killed for treason. And so my choices were this: to take my cousin’s heart. Or to take her hand and let us die together.

“Stop,” Crestell said.

She swooped in front of Kahlia, creating a barrier between us. Her arms were spread wide in defense, fangs bared. For a moment I was sure she would attack, slicing her claws through me and putting an end to this madness once and for all.

“Take me,” she said.

I paled.

Crestell grabbed my hand – it looked tiny in hers, but nowhere near as delicate – and pressed it to her chest. “Take it,” she said.

My cousins gasped around us, their faces contorted in terror and grief. This was their choice: watch their mother die or see their sister killed. I stammered before my aunt, ready to scream and swim as far away as I could. But then Crestell shot a look to Kahlia, who trembled on the seabed. A worried, furtive glance, quick enough for my mother to miss. When her eyes returned to mine, they were filled with begging.

“Take it, Lira,” Crestell said. She swallowed and raised her chin. “This is the way things must be.”

“Yes,” my mother cooed from behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know there was a smile cutting across her face. “That would be quite the substitute.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder, her nails scraping over my skin, clamping me into place before she lowered her lips to my ear and let a whisper form between us.

“Lira,” my mother said so quiet that my fin curled. “Cure yourself and show me that you truly belong in the ocean.”

*Defective*.

“Any last words, sister?” the Sea Queen asked.

Crestell closed her eyes, but I knew it wasn’t to keep from crying. It was to seal the fury in so that it didn’t burnish her irises. She wanted to die a loyal subject and keep her daughters safe from my mother’s revenge. From me.

When Crestell opened her eyes again – one such a pure blue and the other a most miraculous shade of purple – she looked nowhere but at me.

“Lira,” she said. Her voice rasped. “Become the queen we need you to be.”

It wasn’t a promise I could make, because I wasn’t sure I was capable of being the kind of queen my mother’s kingdom needed. I had to be without emotion, spreading terror rather than feeling it, and as my breathing trembled, I just didn’t know if I had it in me.

“Won’t you promise?” Crestell asked.

I nodded, even though I thought it was a lie. And then I killed her.

That was the day I became my mother’s daughter. And the moment it happened was the moment I became the most monstrous of us all. The yearning to please her spread through me like a shadow, fighting against every urge I knew she’d perceive as weakness. Every flash of regret and sympathy that would lead her to believe I was impure.

Abnormal. *Defective*. And in a blink of an eye, the child I was became the creature I am.

I forced myself to think only of which princes would please my mother most: the fearless Ágriosy, who tried for decades to find Diávolos under the misguided notion they could end our kind, or a prince of Mellontikós. Prophets and fortune-tellers who chose to keep themselves apart from the war, rarely daring to let a ship touch the water. I toyed with the thought of bringing them to my mother as further proof that I belonged by her side.

Over time, I forgot what it was like to be weak. Now that I’m trapped here in a body that is not my own, I suddenly remember. I’ve gone from being my mother’s least favorite weapon to a creature who can’t even defend herself. A monster without fangs or claws.

I run a hand over my bruised legs, paler than a shark’s underbelly.

My feet arch inward as an awful cold snakes through me and small bumps begin to prickle over my new skin. I don’t understand what it means, and I don’t understand how I could have gone from darting through the ocean to stumbling among humans.

I heave a frustrated breath, turning my caress to the skin on my ribs. No gills. No matter how deep I breathe, the skin doesn’t part and the air continues to fog in and out of my lips. My skin is still damp and the water no longer runs off it, seeping instead into every pore and bringing with it an unbearable cold. The kind of cold that sends more bumps along the surface of my skin, crawling from my legs to my frail arms.

I can’t help but start to fear the water outside of this cage. If Elian were to throw me overboard, how long would it take for me to drown?

The lanterns glow, faint enough to give my human eyes the time to adjust. Elian presses a key into the crystal cage, and a section of wall slides open. I ignore the instinct to rush him, remembering how easily he pinned me to the wall when I tried to attack Maeve. He’s stronger than I am now and more agile than I gave him credit for. In this body, force is not the way.

Elian sets a plate down in front of me. It’s a thick broth the color of river water. Pale meat and sea grapes float curiously at the top, and the overwhelming smell of anise climbs through the air. My stomach aches in response.

“Kye and I caught sea turtles,” he explains. “It stinks to high heaven, but damn if it tastes good.”

“I’m being punished,” I say in a cold rendition of Midasan. “I want you to tell me why.”

“You’re not being punished,” he tells me. “You’re being watched.”

“Because I speak *Psáriin*?” I ask. “Is speaking a language a crime now?”

“It’s banned in most kingdoms.”

“We’re not in a kingdom.”

“Wrong.” Elian leans against the door arch. “We’re in mine. The *Saad* is my kingdom. The entire ocean is.”

I ignore the insult of a human trying to lay claim to what is mine and say, “I wasn’t given a list of laws when I boarded.”

“Well, now you know.” He twists the key around on his finger. “Of course, I could arrange for a more comfortable sleeping arrangement if you’d just stop being so evasive.”

“I’m not being evasive.”

“Then tell me how you can speak *Psáriin*.” The curiosity in his voice betrays his lax movements. “Tell me what you know about the Crystal of Keto.”

“You saved my life and now you’re trading comforts for information? It’s strange how fast kindness disappears.”

“I’m fickle,” Elian says. “And I have to protect the *Saad*. I can’t just go trusting anyone who climbs aboard. They need a good enough story first.”

I smirk at that.

If a story is all I need, then that’s easy enough. The Second Eye of Keto is a legend in our waters, too. The Sea Queen hunted it for years when she began her reign. Where previous queens dismissed it as a lost cause from the outset, my mother was always too hungry for power. She rehashed the stories of the ritual to free the eye, over and over, in a bid to find some clue to its location. Tales that generations had ignored, my mother made sure to memorize. And her obsession meant that I knew them, too. She once told me that the eye was the key to ending all humans, as much as it was the humans’ key to ending all of us. I think of her charcoal bone trident and the beloved ruby that sits in the center, the true source of the Sea Queen’s magic. The eye is said to be its twin, stolen from my kind and hidden where no siren can follow.

My mother knows everything about the eye, except for how to find it. And so, after many years, she gave up on the hunt. But her failure to succeed where her predecessors failed has always irked her.

I pause, an idea sparking inside me.

The eye is hidden where no siren can follow, but thanks to my mother, that no longer applies to me. If Elian can lead me there, then I can use the eye to make the Sea Queen’s greatest fear come true. If she truly thinks I’m unworthy of ruling, I’ll prove just the opposite by using the Second Eye of Keto to overthrow her. To destroy her, the way she tried to destroy me.

I lick my lips.

If Elian is truly hunting the eye, then he’s doing so on the faith of stories. And if a man can hunt them, then he can hear them. All I need is to convince the prince that I’m useful, and he might just let me above deck and away from the shackles of my cage. If I can get close enough, I won’t need my nails to rip out his heart. I’ll do it with his own knife. Just as soon as he secures my place as the ruler of the ocean.

“The Sea Queen stole my family,” I tell Elian, layering my voice in the same melancholy I’ve heard in the calls of sailors as they watched their rulers die. “We were on a fishing boat and I was the only one to survive. I’ve studied them ever since I was a child, learning everything possible from books and stories.” I bite down on my lip. “As for the language, I don’t pretend to be fluent, but I know enough. It was easy to pick up with one of them as my prisoner. My father managed to cripple it before he died, and that meant I was able to keep it captive.”

Elian sighs, unimpressed. “If you’re going to lie,” he says, “do it better.”

“It’s not a lie.” I pretend to be wounded by the accusation. “One of them was injured during the attack on my family. We’re from Polemistés.”

At the mention of the warrior land, Elian takes a step forward. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small circular object. The same compass he palmed when we spoke above deck. A thin gold chain hangs delicately from the hilt, and when he flips it open, the ends chime together.

“Do you really expect me to believe that you’re from Polemistés?” Elian asks.

I try not to take offense at the question – right now I wouldn’t believe I was a warrior either – but I don’t argue my case. I don’t like the way Elian glances down at the compass, as though he’s relying on it to discern something. With every lie that crosses my thoughts, I can almost feel the object reaching out to crawl into the watery depths of my mind. Pluck out the lies like seaweed roots. It seems impossible, but I know how much humans like their trickery.

“My family are hunters,” I say carefully. “Just like you. The Sea Queen wanted revenge because she felt she was wronged.”

The space between us cloys with the compass’s phantom magic, and I conjure an image of Maeve’s face to prove to the strange object that this is not technically a lie.

“I tortured one of her sirens to get what I needed,” I say.

“What happened to the siren?”

“Dead,” I tell him.

Elian glances down at the compass and then frowns. “Did you kill it?”

“Do you think I’m not capable?”

He sighs at my evasive answer, but it’s difficult to miss the intrigue in his eyes as he toys with the possibility of believing me. “The siren,” he says. “Did she tell you about the crystal?”

“She told me a lot of things. Make me an offer worth my while, and perhaps I’ll tell you, too.”

“What kind of offer?”

“A place on your ship and this hunt.”

“You’re in no position to bargain,” Elian says.

“My family has studied sirens for generations. I guarantee that I know more about them than you ever could hope to. And you’ve already seen that I can speak their tongue,” I say. “This isn’t a bargain, it’s a deal.”

“I’m not in the business of striking deals with girls in cages.”

I twist my lips into a cruel smile. “Then by all means, let me out.”

Elian laughs, pulls a pistol out, and shakes his head once again.

“You know,” he says, approaching the cell, “I think I might like you. Thing is” – he taps his gun against my prison – “there’s a difference between liking someone and trusting them.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done either.”

“When we get to Eidýllio,” Elian says, “we can drink to that.”

The thought is enough to make me wince. Eidýllio is a land devoted to romance. They celebrate love as though it’s power, even though it has killed far more humans than I ever have. I would rather be surrounded by the blinding gold of Midas than be in a kingdom where emotion is currency.

“You trust me enough to buy me a drink?”

Elian pockets his pistol and heads back to the switch. “Who said I’d be the one buying?”

“You promised that you would set me free!” I shout to his retreating figure.

“I promised you more comfortable living arrangements.” Elian’s hand flickers over the switch. “I’ll get Kye to bring you a pillow.”

I catch one last look at his angled smirk before the lantern dims and the last speck of light is pulled from the room.