Elegy

“Yeah. Penn is one of only two original sirens left,” Gemma said.

Diana nodded. “I always suspected that she would outlive the rest of them.”

“She’s going to live on, happily ever after, if we don’t do something.” Gemma leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and tried to convey more confidence than she actually felt.

Diana cocked her head. “How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Is that your human age, or how long you’ve been a siren?”

“Human,” Gemma said. “I’ve only been a siren for a few months.”

“Sixteen years is your entire life. It’s all of time to you, but it’s a blink of the eye to me. You can’t even fathom time as I do,” Diana said with a condescending tone that Gemma did not care for.

“I don’t understand what this has to do with punishing Penn,” Gemma said.

“Because time has everything to do with it,” Diana said. “I am very, very old. Not quite as old as the earth, but close. In the beginning, there was only us. No mortals. Just gods. But time kept moving, and we stayed the same. We squabbled and bickered among ourselves, but it soon became meaningless. It wasn’t until the humans came around that life truly began.

“I waited a very long time before I bore any children,” Diana went on. “I knew what life was like to be alone, to live forever, and when Persephone was born, that changed everything.

“When Penn and her sisters were supposed to be caring for my daughter, my beloved Persephone, they were out swimming and singing, trying to impress suitors. They were supposed to protect Persephone. Instead, they were having the time of their lives while someone raped and murdered Persephone,” Diana spat. Her lips were pulled back in an angry grimace, and her eyes blazed. “I found her bloody body discarded in a field, wrapped in the shawl that had been meant for her wedding.”

But then she took a deep breath, and her whole body slacked as the anger was replaced by sadness. “Persephone was the sun to my earth, and without her…”

She paused and stared out at the window. Tears welled up in her eyes, and other than the sound of Thallo purring next to Marcy, the room was silent as Diana composed herself.

“It’s been thousands of years since my daughter died,” Diana said at length. “And yet, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. Not a day when my heart doesn’t ache for her. This pain that I feel, the one that I endure every day, this is what I wanted to give to Penn and her sisters. Death is easy compared to this.”

“The siren curse sounds like a fair punishment, except that Penn has never and will never feel that kind of pain,” Gemma said. “She’s never loved anything enough to feel like that.”

“She hadn’t, no, not when I turned her into a siren. Which is why I did it.” Diana turned away from the window and looked back at Gemma. “She was a selfish girl who cared nothing for anyone, and her negligence killed my only child. How could I hurt her as badly as she’d hurt me when she’d never loved, when she wasn’t even capable of loving the way that I had?

“The curse itself—the swimming, the singing, the men—that’s only part of it,” Diana explained. “Those were the only things in her life that mattered to her, and her sisters, and I wanted her to do them again and again and again. Hell is repetition. I learned that in the years I walked the earth before humans, before Persephone. I wanted the only things in life that gave her pleasure to eventually mean nothing. Her only joys would eventually make her numb.

“The second part of the curse, the worst part, she didn’t even understand.” Diana smiled bitterly. “Not for centuries. In fact, it became so long, I thought it might never happen.”

“What happened?” Gemma asked.

“She fell in love,” Diana said simply.

THIRTY-THREE Anathema

“With who?” Harper asked, and by the tone of her voice, Gemma knew she feared that it was Daniel.

The truth was that Gemma herself wasn’t sure if Penn really loved him or what exactly she wanted with him. She knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good, but she didn’t think that was what Diana was referring to now.

“Bastian,” Gemma said, remembering the story that Thea had told her. Penn had apparently been deeply infatuated with him, and Gemma suspected that Thea had had feelings for him, too, though she denied it.

“Bastian was the name he was going by at the time, but Orpheus was his given name, the one I knew him by,” Diana said. “I sent him to her.”

“What? Why?” Harper asked.

“To break her heart, of course,” Diana said, and smiled like this delighted her. “He was immortal, immune to her song, and that novelty intrigued her. I’d known him for some time, and he was a very attractive man, renowned for making the ladies swoon. With a little flirtation on his part, I thought he might finally be the one to make Penn feel something.”

“And he did,” Gemma said.

“And then he left her. Just as I asked him to.” Her smile faded a bit as she thought. “Though I’m not sure what became of him since I’ve never heard from him again. Once he left, he disappeared, presumably going into hiding before Penn found him and wreaked her vengeance on him.”

“But Penn didn’t really love him,” Gemma reminded Diana. “She’s not even capable of it.”

“She’s not, at least not the way most living creatures are,” Diana admitted. “But what she felt for him was more than she’d felt before. He never loved her, it was just a trick. I’d sent him on the mission to fool the selfish girl. She would never feel his love in return, no matter what she did or how she lusted after him. And then he left, and she was devastated.”

“Why? If she didn’t really love him?” Marcy asked.

“This was as close to love as she could feel,” Diana clarified. “For her, this was everything. And she was a girl who’d gotten everything she wanted for so long. When she finally lost something, something that really mattered to her, she had no idea what to do.”

“So you’ve won then. She hurt the way you hurt,” Gemma said.

“No.” Diana was appalled by the idea. “It’s not enough to lose someone, to hurt. It’s the pain, day in and day out. It’s the constant reminder. This is why I gave her immortality. I wanted her to feel this way forever.”

“But she doesn’t seem that devastated anymore. She seems fine,” Harper said. “She even has her sights set on another guy.”

“Oh?” Diana raised an eyebrow but didn’t seem that ruffled. “Is he mortal?”

“Yes, he’s my boyfriend.” Harper shook her head and lowered her eyes. “Or ex-boyfriend, maybe.”

“Good,” Diana said. “He’ll be dead soon, and she’ll feel the pain anew.”

“No, not good.” Harper glared at her. “I don’t want him to be dead soon.”

“I don’t mean to say that she’ll kill him, or that I hope she does, although she probably will,” Diana expounded on her earlier statement without any hint of apology or sympathy for Harper’s pain. “Human life is very short compared to ours, and too soon, you’ll all be gone.”

“She’s happy. She’s with someone again,” Gemma persisted. “How do you even know she was devastated? Penn still gets everything she wants and does anything she pleases. It’s not a curse you’ve given her.”

“For centuries, the sirens lived rather quietly and inconspicuously among people,” Diana said. “Then, after her love left, she went on a mad rampage. Thousands of people were killed at the sirens’ hands, with Penn leading the wave, of course.”

“That’s your proof that she was devastated?” Marcy asked. “Penn strikes me as the kind of girl who enjoys killing people, so that sounds like it was a big, ol’, happy, fun-time party for her.”

“This was different,” Diana insisted. “And she killed her father.”

“She killed Achelous?” Gemma asked, but that didn’t come as much of a shock to her. She’d suspected he