Chapter 13— What the Heart Takes

  The longer she stared at the glowing heart, the more a cold, hollow dread crept up her spine. The swirling blue energy was a vortex of liquid light that had swallowed Rowan whole, and with every pulsing beat of the core, the panic in her grew heavier. There was no sign of him. No silhouette of a man, no trailing limbs, no movement. There was only the rhythmic, heavy throb of the Abyssal Heart left. She didn’t know if it was knitting his cells back together or if it was simply finishing what the ocean had started, erasing him completely from this world.

  “Rowan?” She tried to reach out through the bond, pushing her consciousness toward the center of that blinding light. She met only a wall of static and the deep, vibrating hum of the temple. No reply. She hung suspended in the open water, her tail twitching with nervousness. Her hands felt empty. For the first time since they had crashed into the trench, she wasn't holding onto him, and the lack of his weight made her feel like she was drifting away into the dark.

  Around her, the sirens remained as still as stone. The only thing moving was the water, trembling with the deep, bass thrum of the Heart.

  A ripple in the pressure told her someone was moving.

  The siren with the blood-red fins drifted forward. It didn’t move with the hungry speed of a predator; it glided smoothly forward until it was only a few feet away. Up close, Celeste could see the scars on its shoulders, jagged marks that glowed with a faint, silver light.

  Suddenly, the water around them erupted in a series of high-pitched clicks and long, mournful whistles. It sounded like the language of dolphins or whales, a symphony of sound that vibrated through Celeste’s gills and resonated in her very bones. The language was slightly different from the siren she had fought before. Yet she understood the clicks and the melodic pulls perfectly, the meaning blooming in her mind as if she had been born speaking in whistles.

  “What was the wish?” the siren’s song hummed, a series of sharp whistles that felt like needles in her ears. “What was so precious that you would offer such a sacrifice to the pulse of the deep?”

  Celeste’s gills flared, her head snapping toward the creature. Her head was spinning, her mind already frayed by the guilt of the Life-Hitch.

  “What? What do you mean?” she demanded, her voice was a jagged vibration in the brine. “What sacrifice? I’m trying to save him!”

  The red-finned siren tilted its head, its silver eyes shimmering with a haunting intelligence. A burst of rapid, staccato clicks, a sound that translated as a mocking, liquid laugh, vibrated through the current.

  “The Heart does not give for free, Little Sister,” the song continued, shifting into a low, haunting melody that felt like a funeral dirge. “It is the law of the Abyssal Heart. We bring the surface-dwellers here when the tides grow thin and the magic wanes. We feed the humans to the core to buy prosperity for the nest or for a personal wish. A soul for the pulse. A life for a wish. To bring a human to this light is to offer him up as a tithe.”

  The world seemed to tilt. Celeste felt a coldness that had nothing to do with the water temperature. Once again, she was at a loss for what the System actually wanted from her. It had led her to the Archive, and they were nearly eaten. It had prompted the Life-Hitch, and she had destroyed Rowan’s lungs. Now, it had led her here.

  “What are you even saying? I didn’t sacrifice him!” she screamed back, the vibration of her words shaking the drifting silt around them. “The... the heart was supposed to save him! I didn't ask for a wish! I just want him alive!”

  Celeste bared her teeth, a snarl vibrating in her throat. She coiled her tail, the muscles bunching as she prepared to lunge, but the red-finned siren let out a series of sharp, commanding clicks that echoed through the entire chamber.

  The movement around her was immediate. Two sirens darted forward from the shadows of the pillars, their movements were blurred and aggressive. They were both female, their tails sleek and powerful, long hair drifting like silk. They flanked the red-finned siren, positioning themselves like a living shield.

  “How dare you bare your teeth to our elder!” one of them screeched, the whistle so high and piercing it made Celeste’s ears ring.

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  Elder? Celeste’s eyes drifted back to the red-finned siren. Now that she was looking she could see it. The creature was significantly larger than the others, its frame thick and imposing. Its scales were a deep, bruised crimson, but they lacked the bright, iridescent sheen of the younger sirens. They were dull, etched with the fine, white lines of countless scars and the pitted texture of age.

  Like she gave a damn who was older or younger in a moment like this.

  “I don’t care if she’s the queen of the abyss,” Celeste hissed. It was stupid standing against a group of sirens like this, and she knew it. Her muscles were screaming with exhaustion, and her tail was cramped from the long descent, but she couldn’t keep her sanity. “He isn't a sacrifice. If the Heart doesn't give him back, I’ll tear it out of the floor.”

  The two younger sirens hissed in unison, their webbing flaring out as they prepared to strike. The tension in the water was so thick it felt like it might snap, a static charge building between them that made the fine hairs on Celeste's arms stand up.

  “Blasphemy,” the second siren whistled, her tail lashing the water. “To speak of the Heart with such filth. You are a stray, a nameless thing from the dark, and you bring a land-walker to defile our core? You should be grateful we don't feed you to the Heart along with him.”

  The sirens began to drift closer, their movements a synchronized glide that felt like a closing trap.

  “And why would you think we would let you interfere?” the red finned siren hummed. The other sirens behind them began to drift closer, forming a tightening circle of shimmering tails and pale eyes. “We have waited for a tithe this pure for an age. No one—not even one of our own—must come between the nest and the sacrifice. To touch him now is to die with him.”

  Celeste felt her head spinning. No. No, no, no. The system would not do that to her. She had not served him up on a silver platter to a hungry god. Every help the System had given her couldn’t have been just another step toward this.

  She turned back toward the glowing core, her vision blurring with tears that were instantly lost to the salt. She was ready to dive in, to tear him out of the light with her bare claws even if it meant her own skin burned away, when a hand closed around her wrist and pulled her back.

  “Stupid child.” The elder siren said, “Are you really going to jump in? For an airbreather?”

  She sounded truly taken aback, her silver eyes widening as she held Celeste in place with a grip like iron. The concept of self-sacrifice for a land-walker was clearly an absurdity to her. Celeste stared at the gnarled, webbed hand on her wrist, her breath coming in ragged bursts of silt and salt. What would she think if she knew the truth? That she wasn't some stray siren who had lost her mind, but a human girl trapped in this slick, violet skin?

  They were the same. She and Rowan were both out of place, both victims of the system. It’s better if they disappear together.

  “Let go,” Celeste hissed, her voice vibrating with a sharp, dangerous edge.

  “To enter the Core while it feeds is to be unmade,” the elder replied, her song shifting into a stern, warning whistle. “You would not save him. You would only add your own marrow to the pulse—”

  Before she could complete her words, the Heart suddenly bucked.

  A massive shockwave of blue energy exploded outward, a wall of pressure that sent the surrounding sirens tumbling back into the dark. The light condensed, pulling inward with a violent, gravitational force until the center of the temple was blindingly bright.

  Then, a figure drifted out.

  It wasn't the broken, drowning man she had let go of. This body moved with a terrifying, effortless grace, catching the current as if it had been born to it. His skin was no longer the dull, bruised grey of a human; it had become a polished, iridescent white, glowing with a faint inner light. Along his ribs and the sides of his neck, three sets of elegant, shimmering gills pulsed with a steady rhythm.

  He looked like a statue carved from the moon, his form elongated and lean, his hands now trailed with thin, translucent webbing between the fingers.

  As he drifted into the dim light of the chamber, his head tilted back. His eyes snapped open. They weren't the warm, human eyes Celeste remembered. They were glowing, bioluminescent gold, piercing through the dark with a cold, sharp clarity that made the other sirens recoil.

  He looked at his hands, watching the way the water moved through his fingers. Panic coloured his face.

  He looked at Celeste.

  The bond roared back to life with the force of a tidal wave, flooded with a cold, hollow realization that made Celeste’s heart stop. He wasn't dead, but he wasn’t human either.

  His mental voice hit her mind like a shard of ice, devoid of warmth, filled only with a mounting, quiet horror.

  “What did you do to me?”