“I remember the day that she finally got it out of me—that I was powerless, just like her—she laughed in my face. But she took me to their temple anyway and I made my offering to the little sunken pool inside it. I poured my blood into its water and said the prayer. I asked Eusia… I asked her to end the Sirens that had decimated my fleet. They’d cost me men, and money. My pride. They brought nothing but ruin, and I was determined to see them pay for it.”

A chill took me. The far-off cannon fire, the ship’s creaks, faded under the grip that Nemea’s story held me in.

“When Eusia’s head broke the surface of that pool, I screamed. She was so small. The size of a child. No hair. Flesh had grown over her eyes and down her cheeks, but she could see me—I knew she could see me. Her voice sounded strangled, but she had been eager to speak of her sister with me. Of Ligea. She spoke of how Ligea had been given everything and remained golden and hale and unmatched after so many centuries. And she had become a monster trying to best her. Our wants aligned. So I told her I’d help her.”

“Eusia is in Obelia?” I asked quickly.

Nemea shook his head. “She asked me to take her home. So she could perform the spell needed to end Ligea.”

“What did you say?” My entire body had filled with a terrible, crackling cold. A dread so deep that it ached. “She asked you to take her home?”

His eyes lit like I’d revealed a weakness. “You’re looking for her.”

“I am blood-bound to her,” I yelled. “Of course I’m Godsdamned looking for her.”

His thin lips tipped. “You’re very like her. Like Ligea,” he mused, through his annoyance. “It was absurd of me to think Captain Ianto would have been enough to keep you holed up in my fort indefinitely.” He shook his head. “You and her both—so damned stubborn, so arrogant, that you’ll see yourselves killed rather than fall in line.”

That struck me. Theodore had said something nearly identical. That Nemea might truly know me, my flaws and my strengths, turned my stomach. “Finish your story,” I said, voice thick.

He glared, made me wait. “I moved Eusia from Obelia. It was an undertaking. Making sure she had all that she needed for the journey. Before she left, the empress requested a final miracle. A large one. She made a final sacrifice—”

“Her husband,” I said, breathless. The realization cleaved me in two. “And the Nels. You didn’t kill them just for jewels. You killed them to feed Eusia while she was journeying on your ship, didn’t you?”

Nemea jerked. His eyes flared with confusion. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve been busy.” I lifted the sword once more.

Nemea cracked his jaw, a dangerous energy building through him. “Eusia wanted me to have a child with Ligea.” He said it so simply, as if he were remarking on the mundane. “There was a reason your mother never had children. She feared her sister, feared what she might do to them. Eusia wanted generations to feed on. Bodies kept her alive, but mortals did not give her Gods’ power. If she could capture her sister, and her sister’s children, she would be able to swallow their power and use her own magic. She would be endless.”

“And so you did.” I didn’t hide how despicable I thought it was. “How? Why would Ligea ever let you—”

“She bound herself to me.” He’d never spoken with such softness. Not even in my memories of him from when I was a girl, when he would greet me with a fleeting smile and a sweet in his palm, did I remember his voice sounding quite like that. “She was no fool, your mother, but binding herself to me was the most misguided thing she’d ever done—the beginning of her end.”

I took a step back. I needed space between us, I needed to remember his callousness and cruelty, for the look that swam in his eyes now set me too off-kilter. He was heartsick.

A gust cut across the deck and my balance swayed as the ship pitched over a set of high waves. The temperature was dropping as the sun fell behind a wall of dark, bulbous clouds. In the distance, a deep boom rolled over the water.

I searched the sea. The boom had been thunder—the cannon fire had ceased. The two Serafi ships that remained had retreated. Half of the Varian fleet had returned to port, and we had drifted far away.

“Looks like you lost,” I said.

“I had no intention of winning this battle, Imogen.” His eyes were depthless. Glittering with a terrifying sort of hunger. “Like I said, I came for you.” He slipped a hand through the ropes around him and tugged. They fell as readily as dead leaves. My arms shook with the weight of the sword, but I held it firmly between us and stepped backward across the deck. Nemea hardly noticed. He rose, unfurling his long limbs slowly, and then he adjusted his ill-fitting armor, the gesture easy and unafraid. He looked out toward the storm clouds at the horizon and asked, “What will you do?” He mocked me with the question. “I think only Ligea could have manned a crewless ship through a night storm. And you are so like her, yes… but you are also so much less.”

The air knocked from my chest. I watched him, quietly, waiting for him to take the dagger from his hip. He never did. He lowered himself onto a nearby crate instead.

“Did you love her?” The question slipped from me before I could stop it.

He huffed, rolling his shoulders before he answered. “I liked possessing her. That damn bond we shared was tricky, though. I wanted to hate her. I reminded myself that she was the root of my suffering, of my kingdom’s struggles, but the thoughts wouldn’t stick. That bond convinced me I loved her.”

I winced like his words had hit a bruise. “That’s not what the bond does.”

He froze. He’d been at ease, but now his body began to lock up with awareness. With a tilt of his head, he said, “You speak as if you know.”

“The bond compels you to protect.”

Disbelief, and the barest thread of amusement, curled his lips. “Dear Gods. That’s how you got that boy-king to help you, isn’t it? You stole him.” He scoffed. “Just like your mother.”

“I didn’t steal him. He agreed.”

“Oh, what benevolence! What sacrifice! And has he proclaimed his love? Has he sworn himself to you always?” He hit his knee with a fist. “He’ll be even more insufferable now, Panos’s grandson bound to Ligea’s daughter. As if the bastard wasn’t powerful enough already, he went and gathered up some more.”

The insinuation rocked something in me that had once felt unshakable. Theodore had first bound himself to me because of my power, because of who he’d thought I was. I suddenly couldn’t bat the thought away: Had Gods’ blood not flowed through my veins, would Theodore have left me in Nemea’s fort to wither and die?

Nemea stood quickly, his body coursing with familiar anger, and plucked the dagger from his belt. He rolled it in his fist and paced. “That bond…” He looked haunted and then locked our gazes. “Your mother learned of what I’d done. Of how I’d helped move Eusia. I was sailing back to Seraf through a narrow sea stack and there sat Ligea.” He pointed with his dagger, like he could see her before him. “Ligea, winged and speckled in salt water upon the rocks, looking like a glorious, brutal bird of prey. She dropped onto my deck and froze the entire crew without making a sound. I’d never seen anything like it. Power seeped from her, but she stared at me like I was a threat. She’d come to me like I was the one who possessed a vicious lure. She said, ‘I know you wish to harm me and my people. I shall see to it that you can’t.’ She sliced me open and bound us.”

My arms had begun to shake. The wind cut, covering my eyes in mist and stray hairs. I could sense our time running down and I still didn’t know where Eusia was. “How did you kill Ligea?

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me. Her wing hangs in your throne room, Nemea. How did the blood bond permit you to cut it from her?”