The Siren at the Museum (The Girl Who Sang #1)

Chapter 14

Luz squinted as the bright mass of flame exploded against the throne with a thundering crack. She quickly raised an arm to protect her eyes as jade shrapnel pelted the floor in every direction, pinging off the purple metal shell surrounding the girl placed on the dais. "Mierda," the brown-haired girl whispered as cracks appeared in the helmet, and all down the side of the metal plating that had faced the slab of green stone. A purple liquid began to bead along the fractures. The visible lower half of the pale girl's face was unmarred, at least. "Sorry, Amity!" Luz called, reaching out toward the other girl as the thick, dark smoke from the flames drifted away, revealing the blackened, shattered throne. The glistening purple chain still stretched from the base of the throne to the heavy band around the metal-wrapped captive's neck. The brown-eyed girl frowned and made a discouraged noise in her throat when a sarcastic golf clap sounded at her elbow. She turned her head in surprise and jumped back with a "Fuck!"

Odalia stood just beside and behind her, a perfect eyebrow raised in a perfectly disdainful expression, "That was most impressive," the green-haired woman's voice dripped with haughty contempt. Luz swung her staff, more startled than vicious, and the woman took a casual step forward as the wooden owl hissed through the air just behind her. "Oh, don't bother, Mildred," the green-haired woman rolled her eyes and motioned upwards with one perfectly manicured hand. The captive opened her mouth slightly and began to vocalize. Luz winced at the ascendant—majestic—sovereign aria commanding the room to reset itself to its original, pristine condition, the throne regrowing from the now-unblemished jade monolith. As the pale girl sang, the purpled metal of her mask cracked a little further, the similar fractures spreading down her body as small pieces of her metal shell began to crumble apart. A thick, viscous sludge spilled out of the gaps in the broken shell, a deep, dark purple like the metal.

"I said let her go," Luz snarled, swinging her staff with intent—missing again—then twirled another fireball into her hand. She launched it toward the green-haired woman staring smugly confident in her direction. Odalia yawned and patted at her mouth with her hand, and the slightest lean of her body as she reached up toward her face caused the flames to miss their target, splashing bright and hot against the far wall. The white marble blackened, and the glass window broke with a pop and shards rained across the floor.

Odalia clicked her tongue in disdain and motioned toward her daughter. After another few bars of audible notes, the damage from the flames had disappeared. A tinkling, pattering sound caught Luz's ear, and she glanced up at the pale girl wrapped in metal to see the bottom edge of the mask crumble away, knocking some fractured pieces loose in the shell around her body. The brown-haired girl grinned, and spun her staff again, letting loose a flurry of spells. Plants sprouted from the floor all around the dais; thick, creeping vines climbing and twisting about the throne's platform to crack the stone tiers, sending dust and small chunks of stone raining down as bright red and yellow flowers opened all along the vines to hiss and spit poison toward the Queen. A razor-thin sheet of ice spread across the marble floor from where Luz's boots touched the ground, and spikes of ice launched upward like spears. Odalia calmly walked away from her throne, toward the audience. The small streams of poison from the flowering vines crisscrossed through the air in her wake, the ice falling to water before it touched her skin.

"I told you not to bother, Mildred," Odalia sighed with perfect long-suffering patience, "But what can I expect from Amity's subconscious? That child is always throwing temper tantrums." The woman sighed and looked skyward, adopting a saintly pose, "She tried running away yesterday, and now her mind thinks it can do the same in my dominion? And a champion given face and form from her—" she laughed with a sneer, "—recent memories? Ugh."