Lost at Sea

He had recognized her.

Eleanor supposed that was good news, but she’d not handled it as well as she should have. The pain in his eyes when she brought up her death was real and almost tangible. She’d gotten too upset to really push him on who he was-- who she was. Those were the questions that needed to be answered whether she liked the outcome or not.

As she pushed through the soft spot in the algae and covered it again, she felt a difference in the waters. Maybe there was more heat in the currents, or she’d heard something. Somehow she knew that she was not the only entity in the area.

She turned, expecting maybe a shark. Instead, she got something even more malicious. Lizbeth had tracked her to her secret cove, her eyes glowing purple.

Eleanor took a deep breath as she tried to sort out a believable alibi. Lizbeth was sure to murder the man before Eleanor was even able to get his name. A million possibilities raced through her mind, but she knew that she would never survive a fight with her self-proclaimed queen. That may have sounded wonderful a few days ago, but now she was so close to figuring out that question that had haunted her since she’d taken her first breath of sea water.

Without warning, her shoulders were slammed into the rock behind her with enough force to shake a few shards loose. They rained down on the sirens, pelting their distracted heads and falling into the depths beneath them.

“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked innocently, glancing down at the hands that restrained her. She struggled to appear calm while her thoughts and emotions were racing inside of her. Lizbeth’s eyes tightened.

“I suppose that would be a question better asked by myself,” she replied. Eleanor imagined with grim amusement that her rage was heating the water around them.

“I’m just having a look around, is all.”

“The hell you are,” she snapped, her lips tightening into a thin line. “You know these seas better than any of us.” Eleanor could not find the right words to smooth over her sister’s sense of betrayal. She could think of no way to keep her from entering the cove without a battle that would surely end in the demise of herself and the man from her past.

“I- I don’t understand,” she managed, realizing too late that she’d allowed herself to crack that careful facade she’d worked so hard to construct.

“What happened? You were there one minute and then I blinked and you were gone. The ship almost made it out alive and then your sisters would have starved until the next one. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Eleanor struggled to contain her sigh of relief. That was what she was angry at? “I’m sorry, Lizbeth. I don’t know what came over me. It was just so sudden.”

“What was?” She asked, but her voice was much gentler. Eleanor knew Lizbeth cared about her coven, even as twisted and abusive as she was.

“This feeling of fear,” Eleanor recounted, her voice drifting off. She fixed her eyes on a darker spot in the water and forced herself to continue. “I have never felt it that strong. I wasn’t scared for myself so much as someone else, but I have no idea who that could have been.” There. That much was true.

Lizbeth’s gaze finally softened completely. She placed a hand on Eleanor’s shoulder, sending disgusted chills down her spine. She grit her teeth and willed herself to hold still, because if she was correct, they were going to leave soon.

“Sometimes we get urges from our previous lives. That is nothing to be ashamed of, Eleanor.”

“Yes, sister,” she murmured distractedly, slowly moving around Lizbeth and away from the cove. The older siren followed into the depths, deep into the water where there is no light, just the currents against their skin. Their eyes glowed richly in the blackness, a subtle warning to the deep-dwellers that they were not food, but a predator. When the pressure increased enough to crush steel like paper, the water began to lighten again. The glow of civilization appeared beneath them, surrounded by the hot vents that filter down into the earth’s core.

The sirens were attracted to heat. Their blood was cold, so the chill water never bothered them, but there was something about the way it warmed their very bones. It made them feel almost human again, which was something even the most stubborn longed for. The vents around their small cave-like city in the tunnels kept the water at a boiling temperature, which kills everything except maybe a select few types of bacteria. They never worried about attacks or pests, because they were the only creature hardy enough to live there.

Eleanor hated that place with a fiery passion that never faltered. It only seemed to worsen every time she made that descent, where the girls snarled at each other argued over who was better at slaughtering men. Anger and resentment was ever-present in the atmosphere, suffocating and poisoning everyone and anyone who dared to near it. That was the reason she’d begging Lizbeth and the council to let her live at the cove, despite the dangers of being away from the coven.

The man’s beautiful face is what kept her there. She had to pretend that nothing was wrong. She had to keep suspicion from coming to Lizbeth. There would be no more room for error, because if her sisters realized what she was doing, it would only end in the demise of him, her past, and her future.