Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
The corner of her mouth twitches weakly. There are no good men, sister. But there are no good Syrens either. We are all just trying to survive.
Her gaze goes to the captain’s now, meeting his eyes. She gives him the slightest nod and I don’t know what it means.
Until I see him pull out his knife.
“What are you doing!?” I scream, trying to grab his arms.
But he moves to the other side of the tank and says, “I’m letting her go.”
Before I can stop him he takes the knife and plunges it right into my sister’s heart.
For the second time the room is filled with deafening roar of my scream, the sound so high and awful that cracks appear on the glass tank and Aerik and the captain have to cover their ears.
I love you, Asherah says to me as her eyes close and she chokes on her last breath. Be free.
“Why?!” I cry through a wailing sob, staring at the captain in blinding horror. “Why did you do that!?”
I reach into the tank and try to stop the bleeding but there’s barely any blood coming from the wound. I reach down for her hands, holding on tight, hoping this isn’t the end. But much like it was with Daphne, there’s nothing left in her to hold me back.
“She was at death’s door,” Ramsay says, straightening up. Through my blurry tears I see him wipe his knife on his shirt and stick it back in its holder. “I was putting her out of her misery.”
“You said you were going to let her go! You could have let her go into her home, into the sea!”
“Do you honestly think she would have just swam away? She could barely move, barely breathe. She’s been drained of all her blood.”
“You don’t know! You could have tried.”
“So she could be picked off by a shark? I know we have differing opinions on what constitutes cruelty, but that’s cruelty to me.”
“Captain!” someone yells from in the ship.
“Be right there!” he barks. He looks at my sister, then at me, and finally at Aerik. “I’ll be back. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I can’t tell who he’s talking to, but it doesn’t matter.
I watch as he walks off and then I attempt to climb into the tank, trying to move my gown and body next to Asherah, until I’m in the water and wrapping my arms around her.
“What the devil is wrong with you?” Aerik says derisively from his cell. “You’re mad. You’ve gone absolutely mad.”
I ignore him, the tears still flowing, the sobs shooting through my lungs until I feel they might shatter. I kiss the top of Asherah’s head, smelling the same sweet scent that she’s had since we were young, like the coral gardens we would play in, where she would teach me the names of the animals that lived nearby, and I feel like I might just die here on the spot. All I wanted was to be with my family again, and I was reunited with my sister only to have her taken away so brutally.
And she was here because of me. She came looking across the Pacific for me. This is my fault that she was captured and tortured, my fault that she’s in my arms dead. My fault that my father died. I have ruined everyone and everything.
“I’m so sorry,” I cry, the water sloshing from how much I’m shaking as I hold her tight. “I am so sorry I chose this life when I should have chosen what was right. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I love you. I love you and I wish you didn’t love me, because if you didn’t love me you never would have come here. I never would have lost you.”
I continue to cry, letting it all come out, my sorrow and grief swirling together with vengeance and rage, like a maelstrom forming inside my soul that’s growing deeper and wider and more destructive by the second.
“You really think you know this mermaid? Do you think you are one?” Aerik sneers, his hands on the bars and his ugly face pressed through. “Have you concocted all of this in your head to make up for all your shortcomings? The fact that you have come from no family, that you have no one that loves you, that the only thing you have going for yourself is a pretty face and a nice pair of tits and a tight cunt that I’m sure you’re doling out to the captain whenever he wants.” He pauses. “And so now you pretend to have feelings for this overgrown piece of rotting salmon.”
My rage goes white hot. It blinds me. Overcomes me.
Your rage will free you, my sister said.
Ramsay said something similar to me, too.
And now, now I’m letting it go free.