Azala Press

Chapter 1

Amaris

The sea was set aflame by the single strike of a match.

Quicker than lightning, my cove bolted, tearing through any obstacle between them and freedom from the ship. They clawed through the front lines of sailors, granting no mercy as their pleas rang out into the night.

The mermaids were captivating from the first chord that escaped their lips, and even among the burning sails, we sang. Meanwhile, the sailors persisted with sword and shield, stuffing their shirts into their ears as they fought to ward off the melody.

A futile attempt.

One of the men closest to me abandoned his weapon, the silver rapier hitting the deck with a loud clang. The sailor fell before a mermaid, sinking deeper into her web of seduction with every perfect note. Only when he fully surrendered did the temptress’ lips tilt upwards, toward the dark, moonless sky, her features painted with triumph.

In one, swift swipe, her long, pearlescent talons sliced through his neck, blood pouring from his wound in crimson waves.

There was death everywhere around me, and this sailor was no exception.

 Until tonight, I’d only heard tales of what my kind could do, passed down through the generations. My sisters had plenty of stories they often gloated over, so I was no stranger to the darkness. Still, I hadn’t the faintest idea that this was what they were capable of.

What I was capable of.

“Why aren’t you singing?” one of my sisters, Alto, asked. Her gaze raked over me like I had already failed tonight, my first hunt.

On a mermaid’s eighteenth birthday, we surfaced to take our first victim in what we called our Claiming Night. Tonight was mine. I had been eager to join my cove, eager to prove myself to my family and my kingdom. Now that I was here, though, the blood and brutality all around me …

I was hesitating, and Alto knew it.

“If I start singing, I will attract every man away from the rest of you.” I flashed her a cocky grin over my shoulder, hoping she would take the bait. Both my hands were shaking as I climbed onto the main deck. I wasn’t sure if I was thankful the sailors’ attention was already transfixed on other members of my cove, either fighting back or helplessly surrendering.

Alto’s eyes rolled so hard to the back of her skull that I thought they might’ve gotten stuck. “Always deflecting. Why would tonight be any different?”

Before I could respond, the smell of something harsh and acrid wafted through the air, accompanied by a bright orange light dancing among the sails.

“Someone set the ship on fire,” Alto swore. “Get out of here before you burn.” Then, she was slithering off just as easily as she had come, joining in on the melody. Seconds later, she pounced on a man attempting to jump overboard. The last thing I saw were her teeth sinking into his neck as they both fell over the ship’s edge and out of sight. His screams grew quieter and quieter the further they descended.

Chaos ensued as the heat of the flames threatened to melt my flesh, but something worse than the fear of burning held me to the spot. A cold chill ran down my scales despite the rising temperature.

I knew the consequences of my failure, heard the haunting stories from my cove. It was enough to push my scales forward, to will my lungs to operate. So why was I still hiding in this concealed corner of the deck?

Footsteps pounded toward me, disarming me of any plan I had to get off this ship. They were coming from the only realistic point of escape. Too late. I was too damn late. One way or another, I was going to face death tonight, whether it was my own or someone else’s. I would face a lot worse if I didn’t.

I needed to start singing. Now.

Flinging myself behind a barrel, I sucked in a deep breath, forbidding the smoke from choking me.

A mass of damp, brown curls emerged from the smoke, half falling out of a bun. Eyes stuck somewhere on the precipice of brown and green caught my attention, taking my breath away faster than the smog ever could have.

His shirt was soaked with blood and sweat, clinging to his broad shoulders and the deep lines of his abdomen. I would’ve lingered on that image longer if it wasn’t for the amount of green that covered him. At one time, the fabric of his shirt had been white. Now, it was stained with blotches of dark absinthe: mermaid’s blood.

His eyes raked over my scales with a gaze as sharp as the dagger he fisted.

All of the blood drained from my body as he reared back his arm and flung it straight at my head.

I snapped my eyes shut, waiting for the pain to follow, but it never did. There was only the raging of my heart, ringing in my ears.

No, it wasn’t ringing. It was screaming. He hadn’t hit me, but someone directly behind me.

I only managed to see damp black braids, and green blood spilling from the mermaid’s throat before she collapsed onto the deck. Thessa. From my cover, I reached all my power out toward her, parting my lips to mend her, but I was breathless with fear, and her eyes were lifeless before I even began the tune.

Anger, pure and unadulterated, coursed through me. Before I could turn around and sing, fight, claim, anything, he was already fighting off another, then another.

So much blood. Blood of my people.

Then, his eyes were on mine, cold and merciless. He reached for another dagger at his hip and came away empty. He was out of weapons.

“You aren’t singing,” he spoke in the common tongue, though his accent was something distinct I’d never heard before. His voice was rough, laced with hostility, a faint rasp like sand coated his vocal cords.

“You’re not the first to notice.” My voice sounded weaker and more panicked than I’d hoped it would. I held his gaze only because I was too fearful to peel my eyes away from him. He may be out of weapons, but he still had me trapped. He moved quicker than any of the other men I’d seen tonight. One wrong move, and I’d be the next mermaid bleeding out on this ship.

His eyes widened, as if surprised I spoke back, but in the next breath, his expression was gone. He dipped down to the dead mermaid underneath his feet and snatched the dagger away from where it was lodged in her throat. The bastard had the audacity to laugh.

“Just where I wanted it. Now, she’ll never sing again.” He ceremoniously wiped the blood off the blade, the act far too casual for this to be his first kill. He pinned me with his stare once more. I sucked in a breath and braced myself with the only weapon I wielded—my voice.

 We both knew I was outmatched. Mermaids were powerful, maybe unreasonably so, but I was not powerful in any sense of the word. This had been my first time to ever even surface, never mind hunt. I’d seen the way he’d just slaughtered at least ten mermaids without even getting winded. In a battle between mortal enemies, I knew my place.

Tonight, he was the predator. I was the prey.

Once again, I prepared for impact, the sharp tip of the knife as it snapped into my—

“Captain!” someone called. “Captain, one of the rowboats was destroyed!”

The enemy turned his attention away from me, and I felt my entire body decompress, soaking up its moment of freedom from the weight of his glare. He rose, sprinting toward the sailor without even a second glance in my direction.

I was alive. I’d come face to face with death and somehow escaped without even a scratch. I didn’t contemplate the miracle further as I crawled my way back to the edge of the ship and dove headfirst into the murky depths.

Screams tore from the throats of those all around me, tormented by fire and bloodshed. One moment, there was the boom of a cannon, and the next, a mermaid swimming beside me was crushed on impact.

“Watch out!” someone—one of my kin—screeched. A glimpse of silver propelled through the sky, straight toward me.

I plummeted into the water, putting as much distance between myself and the cannon as I could. Down, down, down, I swam.

Flesh and bone crunched, and a bone-chilling scream erupted from above me. Even though the water stifled the noise, it was still deafening to my sensitive ears.

The iron weapon had found its intended target in another member of my cove. What if it was one of my sisters?

My heart sank in my chest, my fins beating toward the surface, frantic at the thought of whatever horror awaited me. As I pushed through the froth, the tang of copper bombarded my senses. The foulness of the stench stung at my eyes.

I scanned the war zone, spotting my oldest sister. She was still on the ship, ignoring the scorching flames as she took down her opponents in a spray of crimson. To the sailors’ misfortune, her hypnosis weakened them enough to give her a clear advantage.

A flash of gold raced through the air, and my sister cried out in pain.

A dagger was lodged in her tail, pinning her to the deck. Heavy streams of absinthe spilled from her opal scales. With a wound that deep, Azaliah would likely bleed out in minutes if I couldn’t get to her in time to heal.

My sister gripped her tail in agony. “Fall back! Take your claim and fall back!” she ordered. The mermaids didn’t hesitate as they swiped their closest meal before diving back into the water.

I almost followed the other members of the pack to Mermaid’s Cove until I remembered that I didn’t have a claim. I’d been on this hunt with nothing to show for it. What would my father do to me if I came back empty-handed and I had failed to save his oldest daughter?

I didn’t savor the consequences as I assessed the ship, looking for a way I could safely get aboard without being engulfed or murdered.

Grabbing a rung of the nearest ladder, I climbed aboard, but when I raised myself onto the deck, the spot where my sister had been trapped now lay vacant. I sagged with relief.

Dark, messy curls whipped past me, and I ducked my head. The captain—the one I met earlier—didn’t notice me; instead, he sprinted into the heart of the fire. Blackened wood creaked beneath his feet, threatening to give way any second. I wasn’t sure if he was suicidal or delusional, but what he did next proved he was an equal mixture of both.

He bent down and scooped up a crewmate over his shoulders. The sailor’s legs had been completely severed, and the brutal man I met was helping him instead of leaving him to die.

Why would he do such a thing?

He moved to the other side of the deck, sailors scrambling to board the rowboat being lowered into the water.

A burly man with a long beard yelled exactly what I had been thinking. “He’ll bleed out, Ezra! He’ll never make it back in time!”

“Let the able-bodied men go first!” someone else screamed.

“He lost his legs!” the man I met—Ezra—yelled. “We go one, we go all. Hear me?”

“We’re all about to go, then! Don’t you see what they’ve done?”

 “Just because you’re the captain doesn’t mean you get to choose who lives and who dies!” the burly sailor spat. 

“You knew what you were getting yourself into when you decided to sail with us, Fletcher.”

“I didn’t think I would be trapping myself here to die. You said the fire would cause enough of a distraction without causing any of the boats to—”

“We’re not going to die!” Ezra roared.

A mermaid leapt from the water onto the railing, and the crew readied to attack. Palming one of his blades, Ezra flung it straight at her head. With perfect, fluid grace, the tip sunk between her eyes.

That could’ve easily been me earlier, and I wouldn’t have had time to leap out of the way of his wrath.

A crack sounded suddenly, and the gargantuan ship tilted headlong, sending me forfeiting my spot on a rope and diving back below, careful to avoid any fires that danced along the water. Other men weren’t as lucky as they jumped out to sea.

Inch by inch, the ship succumbed to the dark, churning sea. Even the ship acknowledged the more powerful entity, sinking to the mermaids’ will. The men were no match for us, because as long as we existed, the sea would fill with blood and the ships of the fallen.

I watched as Ezra, Fletcher, and the others tumbled to the floor of the deck. They clutched the air, only a few managing to catch themselves. Others fell to their promised deaths. Their tortured screams below were a warning for the others to survive.

But there were never any survivors.

Ezra found leverage, pulling himself up the ship’s edge. I realized I’d been holding my breath as he immediately began helping others hoist themselves upright. I didn’t understand him. He could’ve easily forced his way to the front of the line of that lowering boat. As the captain, he could’ve saved himself. Yet, here he was.

None of my sisters would ever do what Ezra did for his crewmate tonight, not even for our own blood. How many children did Ezra have at home whom he would never see again? What was the name of the moss maiden he left behind to raise their children alone? What else in his former life had he abandoned by choosing to die a noble’s death?

Maybe this was one of the reasons mermaids were superior. If not for self-preservation, we would’ve been extinct ages ago. Brutality was strength. Compassion was weakness.

But Ezra had just proven himself to be anything but weak, hadn’t he?

Black smoke inched closer and closer. Soon, the entire ship would be charred and burned, and they wouldn’t have a choice but to fall into the infested tides.

“Fletcher, we have to jump,” Ezra coughed.

Fletcher shook his head, holding the knife out. “No. Ezra, promise me when you make it back—”

“We’ll both—” he coughed, “—make it. We’ll swim back, but we need to jump.”

“Promise me you’ll tell my kids and Mary how much I loved them.”

It was over before Ezra had time to reach him. The knife in Fletcher’s hand sliced deep across his neck, a pool of blood already raining down into the sea.

Ezra crawled to him, helplessly pressing his hands against the man’s self-inflicted wound. No force could feed the blood back into his heart. Fletcher was dead.

An explosion sounded, and fiery debris flew through the air, painting the night sky in orange and yellow. Ezra shielded himself from the embers falling like snow, and as he clenched the dagger between his teeth, he leapt into a sea of blood and sapphire.