“I do not want to tell you about Farren. But I will, because my life only makes sense with him in it.

  That’s one of those things, you know? You try to convince yourself that you’ve overcome something, that you’ve grown so much and so strong that it no longer matters. But he matters. He forced me to change, forever altered the course of my life, and for that, I recognize him as a part of me.

  He is the reason I had to grow so strong, and I didn’t want to be strong. I wanted to live a peaceful, happy life.

  You will be called naive and stupid for failing to guard yourself from the dangers around you, but I say it is not a weakness to desire to stay soft and gentle. It is a good thing to strive for a life of joy and tranquility without the need of protective armor, and the world is so corrupt that it will try to make you believe otherwise.

  Those who’ve been taught to grow tough will shame you for not doing the same preemptively, and those with darkness in their hearts will try to convince you that all people carry cruelty around, that it is human nature to offload our poison onto the vulnerable and you’d be wise to know it.

  But I want you to ignore them, the hurtful and the hurt, and listen to me: You have a right to be defenseless. You should not be blamed for your lack of a shield.

  Only those carrying a weapon can bear blame, and that is the only reason I am still here.”

  Mantis arose at the first chirp of a bird and struggled to produce words to awaken the others. The day ahead of her started off unpleasantly, and the knowledge that it would only get exponentially worse before it could get better helped to solidify her grim temperament early on.

  They ate and drank and relieved themselves and packed and mounted and every instant was a burning torment for Mantis. They were so close now.

  She wanted her prey, wanted to see the light ebb away from their eyes and know them forever gone from her land. Take their minds. Look at who they were and be glad for what you are. No. She would not take them. But she would end them, and that was enough.

  They galloped for the last leg of the journey. Otto complained under her and Yilenn but proved, once again, to be the perfect mount for Mantis. He was stubborn, faithful, and capable. He would not fail her.

  At some point the children started falling behind, but Mantis could not find a thought to spare for them. Her objective was up ahead, so very near. Teela and Leroh would follow, and look after themselves. They would be fine. They would all be fine if she could just take her targets as swiftly as possible.

  No. Not take them. Kill them, and give them to Yilenn. She would give them to the siren.

  “Your God is compelling you to make these kills,” the red-haired woman observed, sitting uncomfortably in front of her on the saddle. She’d turned to look at Mantis over her tunic-clad shoulder. “Your God wants these souls,” she uselessly reiterated. When Mantis didn’t offer a reply, Yilenn insisted. “Mantis.”

  “Yes. She wants them for herself. They are bad men.”

  “But…how are you going to—”

  “Silence, mermaid.”

  They rode on, and arrived well before the Sea God’s two-day limit. In the mid-morning of that gray day, the first signs of a settlement started to show their heads in the distance, just as a light drizzle began to mist over the dreary little village.

  A lot of former Okedam residents had found their way there, Mantis knew. Those who’d made a living off the blue waters of the coast for generations would have been intelligent to relocate to a nearby traditionalist community with access to the shore. The threat of sirens and the Sea’s claim to the resources of his dominion were prohibitive to anyone seeking to profit from the food in his waters, but those who knew how to live off the land could manage to survive better than most Yriaans from regular and methodical attempts at fishing on a smaller scale at such close proximity to the coast.

  As they made their way through the uneven, winding streets of the small settlement, Mantis identified the signs of rapid growth in the differences between the older and better-built houses of limestone with the recognizable terracotta tiling that characterized Okedam, and the large majority of newer houses, which were built poorly and by untrained hands. New settlers had resorted to timber and thatching for their homes, and it was a sad sight to behold. The salty Winds of the ocean and decades of erosion had done much to deteriorate the dwellings of the desperate, which had undoubtedly been less than sound to begin with.

  There was a sense of gloom about the village, as was common of most areas populated entirely by free folk. Bleak-faced residents, old and young, sat idly at front porches in wary watchfulness. Others were at work in the few open-facing businesses for the bare and basic necessities of the community, but the light Rain that trickled down was forcing many to retreat indoors.

  The people Mantis saw out and walking the streets looked healthy enough, and that was as much as could be said for a compliment. Few children, that was one positive thing. At least, these people had autonomy over their own bodies and souls.

  Or most did. That thought conjured a shiver of rage in Mantis’s spine and her focus instantly sharpened.

  A middle aged woman wearing an apron produced a quick choking sound upon noticing Mantis and Yilenn. She was standing by the front door of a ramshackle hut with her hands suspended in the air before her, as if she’d been in the process of performing an action but had abruptly stopped. A moment passed and she continued to just watch them ride past with wide eyes and a pinched mouth. Mantis reached over to pull her hood over her head.

  Then, her senses all came to attention from one moment to the next. She saw them. Not with her eyes. Mantis could perceive her prey more accurately now that she’d gotten closer to them, and see that they were together. Those two bright auras of silver energy that she’d been craving for days were now in her immediate reach of awareness, pecking at her, calling to her soul.

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  She dismounted and started walking in their direction.

  “Mantis,” Yilenn said, forcing her to turn to face her. She was sitting awkwardly atop Otto, and for an instant Mantis felt a flicker of guilt for having forgotten about the helpless siren. She hastily went over and assisted her to dismount with both hands. “The children,” Yilenn pointed out, landing softly on the ground and extending a long finger to Teela and Leroh, almost at their heels, whose approach Mantis had not at all observed.

  Clover was exhausted, and Teela’s heart ached with his discomfort. Her friend was strong of will, and a very decent horse, but he was not without limits.

  Her family had only come to own Clover through a coincidental turn of luck, when a man Teela could now recognize as a Sea servant had stabled his horse at her mother’s tavern and never returned for him. He was a good mount, apt for long-distance traveling and healthy as could be, but Mantis was demanding too much of him, and of Teela, and of Leroh, whose injuries were still visibly troubling him. None of them could keep up with her frantic and concerning speed, but Mantis did not appear to care.

  They arrived at the nondescript street corner where the two God servants stood waiting for them, and clumsily got down onto the dusty street. A light rain had come on and begun to form dark speckles of wet earth on the ground under their feet. When they returned from wherever they were going, the streets would probably be all mud, Teela thought.

  “Stay here,” Mantis ordered and turned to leave as soon as they’d all gathered together. Her hood was pulled over her head and her posture was tense. She was suffering from a combination of unfathomable rage and something else Teela could not discern. Dread?

  It was plain to see that something was immensely wrong with Mantis. Something had been wrong with her for very long. And, against her will, Teela’s own feelings reflected it. Her stomach was churning and her skin prickled with the overwhelming emotions. She wanted to cry, to scream, to batter the darkness out of her skull and chest where it had come unbidden to take residence.

  Did Mantis feel that way?

  When the woman realized Teela had started walking after her, she turned and fixed her with a glare. “I said stay.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  They glowered at each other for several breaths. Then, Mantis simply looked away and continued her stalking stride, moving as swiftly and gracefully as a hunting cat and radiating red-hot tension from every pore. The shadow of putrid hate that encompassed her was almost a visible, tangible thing. Teela thought that if she went near enough, she might be able to feel that barrier like a physical block.

  They followed, Teela only a few steps behind Mantis, with Leroh rushing to join at her side, and the siren walking a little more slowly at their backs. They left the horses untended out in the middle of the street.

  Some people stared, most directing their indiscreet looks at Mantis, and Teela realized they knew her. They could recognize the Mantis from her appearance alone, and they feared—or despised—her. Teela wondered how justified that hatred might be, and resolved to acquire a conclusive answer before the day was out. If the woman truly was that heartless killer who saw nothing wrong with murdering a sailor for a harmless jest, that monster worthy of the terror Leroh had been trying to instill in Teela, she’d expose her true nature now, when so much was at stake. Mantis’s task was a grisly one regardless of how she chose to carry it out, but the execution of this God-given duty would tell a lot, much more than what Teela had already gathered on her own.

  The memory of their first encounter came to Teela’s mind. Mantis had chosen to sit in a corner of the tavern with her face mostly covered. Had people recognized her then, too? Leroh had. Those two men who’d given themselves to the Sea God had. They’d decided to risk everything in a spur-of-the-moment attempt on her life.

  Teela had thought them wicked, then, deserving of the end they’d met for attacking a woman alone. She’d believed it a justified act of self-defense when Mantis killed them, but now she could not be sure of it anymore. Perhaps the truth was that those men were doing something heroic when they lost their lives trying to eliminate a danger to their community.

  Had Teela been entirely mistaken in her initial appraisal of Mantis?

  Had she misjudged magic as a whole?

  If the other deities, the beings who commanded all magic, were as hungry as the Sea God, as lustful for human lives as Mantis’s Goddess, could Leroh and Mother have been right all along?

  The idea made her gut churn with excruciating sadness. Life was magic. Everything good and wonderful was coated in magical energy. Teela had always seen that beauty and thought it the best the world had to give. She’d made it her only goal in life to learn to coexist harmoniously with the magic of the land, and to understand her own place in it.

  Was everything marvelous a nefarious charade of the predatory Gods, as Mantis and Yilenn had turned out to be?

  Teela came to the realization that she might be nothing more than an ungrateful, foolish girl, just as everyone had always tried to explain to her. Maybe fate held nothing more than a few decades of mindless work and subsistence for her, and she’d wasted all her hopes dreaming that something better existed outside of Pirn, that she could someday belong to the larger web of secret wonders she’d so longed to discover.

  As Teela looked around at the miserable shoreside village of free men and women now, for the very first time, she thought that perhaps she hadn’t had it so bad at her mother’s home. Maybe that life was as good as it could get for someone like her, and she’d wasted invaluable years disdaining the concept as a whole.

  Would it really be so dreadful, so insufficient to continue to work as a tavern maid? How bad could it truly be to end up like her mother, married for convenience and caring for a child or two in her more distant future? That was good enough for most. Perhaps Teela could find joy in it, too, if she was clever enough to give up her ill-guided ambitions in time and redirect her enthusiasm toward a more realistic objective. She could try that. She resolved to, at least, try.

  At that moment, Mantis stopped in her tracks and froze into complete stillness. There was nothing around them but more of the same nondescript houses of aged timber that made up most of the village. No one was out, with the exception of an elderly couple watching them distrustfully from a porch. The rain had started to fall more steadily, and most people had found their way indoors. The only sound was a metallic clanging coming from a nearby smithy and the droplets of water crashing against the earth.

  Teela and Leroh shared a look, and even the siren seemed concerned by Mantis’s behavior. She was not moving a muscle, and it was unnerving to not know what she would do next. When Teela finally decided to say something and lowered her head to peer underneath the cowl of her raised hood, she glimpsed the woman’s terrifying and oddly familiar expression. Her face was stuck in a mix of deranged fury and intense focus, her eyes wide open and her pupils dilated disturbingly wide.

  “Leave,” Mantis blurted out in a strained whisper. When no one responded, she spoke louder and with fuming desperation. “Go now, Teela!”

  “No,” she replied quietly.

  Mantis’s eyes twitched and became glassy for a moment. Then she bared her teeth and produced a deep, guttural groan. She started trembling.

  “Do you need help?” Yilenn approached her and raised a hand to position it over Mantis’s shoulder, but then thought better about it and lowered it an instant later.

  “Teela. I think we’d better leave now.” Leroh reached over to grab her by the upper arm, but she shook him off.

  “No,” she repeated.