![]() It’s been an age since your last kill, Lira, she teases. When I was spying on him, it was like looking at an angel. I ache for the ice of the sea, so sharp with cold that it feels like glorious knives in the slits between my bones. Its heat presses against my neck and causes my hair to stick to my wet skin. The only vessel on which the Adékarosin prince ever sails. After all, it’s the only one in the fleet with the painted wood and tiger flag. Humans enjoy flaunting their treasures for the world, but it only makes them targets for creatures like Kahlia and me, who can easily spot a royal ship. It’s smaller than most and made from scarlet wood that represents the colors of their country. The ship plows idly along the calm waters of Adékaros, one of the many human kingdoms I’ve vowed to rid of a prince. Her scales are deep auburn and her blond hair barely reaches her breasts, which are covered by a braid of orange seaweed. She sits beside me on the rock and stares at the ship in the distance. Which will you take, cousin? Kahlia asks in Psáriin. It’s a wonder we even need our song to steal hearts. We have eyelashes born from iceberg shavings and lips painted with the blood of sailors. A magnificence forged in salt water and regality. It’s a well-known fact that sirens are beautiful, but the bloodline of Keto is royal and with that comes its own beauty. ![]() In that ocean lies the sea kingdom of Keto. A selection of each so it manages to be neither. For me, that’s the great sea of Diávolos, with waters of apple and sapphire. My hair snakes down my back, as red as my left eye-and only my left, of course, because the right eye of every siren is the color of the sea they were born into. It’s because they think that if they eat enough of them, they might become human themselves. And when they steal the hearts we keep, it isn’t for power. Sometimes they save the lives of sailors and take nothing but charms in return. They steal trinkets and follow ships in hopes that treasure will fall from the decks. They have the capacity to be deadly, like all monsters, but where sirens seduce and kill, mermaids remain fascinated by humans. Fish and human both, with the beauty of neither. Their deep-blue flesh is dotted with fins that spread up their arms and spines. Unlike sirens, mermaids have stretched blue husks and limbs in place of hair, with a jawlessness that lets their mouths stretch to the size of small boats and swallow sharks whole. Mermaids more fish than flesh, with an upper body to match the decadent scales of their fins. These are the women who take the human bounty of their kin. Left to suffer until their blood becomes salt and they dissolve to sea foam. I’ve heard things: tales of lost hearts and harpooned women stapled to the ocean bed as punishment for their treachery. Hearts are power, and if there’s one thing my kind craves more than the ocean, it’s power. I count each of them, so I can be sure none were stolen in the night. ![]() Every so often, I claw through the shingle, just to check they’re still there. There are seventeen hidden in the sand of my bedroom. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears.I HAVE A HEART for every year I’ve been alive. ![]() Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby-it’s his calling. The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Robbed of her song, Lira has until the winter solstice to deliver Prince Elian’s heart to the Sea Queen or remain a human forever. To punish her daughter, the Sea Queen transforms Lira into the one thing they loathe most-a human. Until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. ![]() With the hearts of seventeen princes in her collection, she is revered across the sea. Princess Lira is siren royalty and the most lethal of them all. It has since become an international bestseller and has been translated into over a dozen languages. It was published in March of 2019 and marked Alexandra's debut. To Kill a Kingdom or TKaK for short is a YA novel based on the book The Little Mermaid and is also the first book in the Hundred Kingdoms series. For those I love who never got the chance to see this happen. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |