The siren was naked. Or practically naked. A thin shift of what looked like waxed gauze of dark blue was the only layer of clothing on her body. It was held at her shoulders by two thin straps and only reached down to her upper thighs. Two horizontal vents at the level of her ribs revealed the layering of faint lines of her gills. So much of her ivory-colored skin was visible. The material of her undergarment was semi-transparent, and fit her form tightly.

  Leroh’s mouth fell open.

  He’d never seen a naked woman before. The only experience he had in that regard was a drawing he’d once seen. Kird had, years before, shared with Tem and him a lewd illustration in charcoal that he’d received as a tip from a friendly customer at his father’s cobblery. In the simple drawing, a nameless woman had lain on her back with her legs crossed, fully naked. Her breasts had been extremely large and round, with nipples pointed and prominent.

  Leroh could now see that that representation of the female form was largely inaccurate and the product of artistic exaggeration only, for the body of the woman before him resembled that vulgar sketch in no way.

  Yilenn’s curves were balanced. Nothing looked disproportionate or out of place. The rise and peak of her breasts suited her frame with perfect feminine symmetry, and her waist tapered delicately and widened at her hips, leading down to her majestic blue legs.

  Women’s legs differed from men’s, Leroh decided. The shape of them was indescribably female, with delicate bends and swells in places he wouldn’t have imagined. The circular scales covering the entirety of those long limbs like stockings reflected the Sun above their heads, giving the appearance of ripples on the surface of a calm Sea.

  She was a demigoddess, a superior being in every way. Perfect.

  “What are you doing?” Teela said with some outrage.

  “I was changing out of my dress to try to preserve it,” the blinding beauty replied.

  “But you…you can’t wear that. It’s not appropriate,” said his sister.

  “We wear these shifts in the water, because clothing makes it difficult to swim. Mantis lent me a change of her clothes for the remainder of the journey, so I was going to get dressed now.” The siren’s words rang like musical notes in Leroh’s ears. He felt himself smiling dumbly and knew, somewhere in the far back of his conscious mind, that he’d been charmed, but he could not peel his eyes from her glorious flawlessness for a single instant. He’d have been content to die with that image as his very last.

  “Leroh, stop ogling!” Teela shook his arm and then gave him a small push that succeeded at separating his intense stare from Yilenn’s body.

  In his mind, however, he could still see her. He’d never forget what she’d looked like, standing there in that forest.

  “Mantis!” His sister sounded angry, and he was jabbed by a small pang of curiosity. When he dragged his eyes to the Mantis, who stood a few feet away from the siren, Leroh saw something that confused him greatly. She was looking at Yilenn…like he’d been looking at Yilenn.

  Her strange orange eyes were wide and her expression uncharacteristically blank. Her posture was not rigid and tense like it usually was, and her red lips hung slightly ajar.

  “What…what…” he tried asking a question but none would come to him. What was he seeing?

  “There. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable. I forget, sometimes, that unsworn people have reactions to our appearances.” She’d donned a pair of black leggings and a matching tunic of common make. The contrast of the plain clothing with her earlier attire and the magnificence of her beauty was bizarre, almost jarring to observe.

  “Are you…did you do something just now? To them?” his sister accused her shamelessly.

  “No. It’s my God traits. Some people react to the sight alone. I’m not actively trying to charm anyone here. I promise I won’t try to hurt you again. In fact, I meant to apologize for that as well.” She gave Teela a sweet, and slightly sad, smile. “We do not have control over these things, us God servants. What my God commands, I must do, always. But I take no pleasure in my duty. So I am sorry for…earlier.”

  “I understand. I don’t resent you for that.” Teela sounded annoyed still. “We should keep moving. Mantis.”

  At that mention of her name, the woman finally broke out of her stupor and blinked a few times. Then, to Leroh’s shock, a light flush came over her cheeks and nose and she lowered her face to try to hide it. Yilenn seemed to catch that, too, for she smiled humorously and pursed her lips to try to suppress her amusement.

  “Yes,” the Mantis said, and it was the only word she uttered during that whole interaction.

  Too soon, they were moving again.

  The Mantis led the way, riding ahead of them astride her tall black stallion with the red-haired siren settled between her arms. The auburn-haired monster sat with her spine straight and her shoulders squared, blocking Leroh’s view of Yilenn, and it was an unfortunate thing, for the lack of the wonderful distraction finally opened the floodgates to his less pleasant thoughts.

  Leroh hurt all over, the bruising in his back sending jolts of pain throughout his whole body with Clover’s every step. His arms and legs were sore from the incessant riding, as was his flattened arse, and the knowledge that it would be several more days of travel before he could part ways with the smelly beast underneath him did much to worsen his mood. He was growing increasingly tired of sleeping on the uneven, hard ground, surrounded by buzzing and stinging insects. He missed the comforts of his home, and the privilege of basic amenities.

  But worse than any physical limitations he had to tolerate for the time being was the constant and debilitating fear of what might yet come, were the Mantis to fail in her task from the Sea God. The woman had even spelled it out for his sister the day before. If she did not fulfill his order in time, Leroh and Teela would pay the price as surely as she herself would. The Sea would hunt them all down, send as many servants as were necessary to end their lives, if the Mantis took too long to meet her end of the deal.

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  And it was all for Leroh.

  That sudden conclusion sent him into a new depth of unease. The Mantis had entered that bargain to buy his life back from the Sea. She’d exchanged two of her own kills for his survival.

  Two men would have to die so he could live.

  Rapists.

  But they did not deserve to die at all, least of all for him. And yet they would, and Leroh, like the coward that he was, felt grateful for it.

  His vision became blurry with tears and his heart started pounding rapidly in his pained chest. He did not know how to feel, or what to think of himself anymore.

  The first time Leroh had heard of the Mantis, he’d been too young to comprehend sexual intercourse, or the concept of rape. An older boy had taken it upon himself to spread the word among the younger ones, lest they fall victim to the monster inadvertently in their upcoming early years of adolescence. “Don’t go forcing any girls who don’t like you. If she looks unhappy or tells you to go away, you leave her alone, always. The Mantis’ll eat your brain right outta your skull if you’re ever forceful with a lady. Even once, even if she’s a whore or your own woman, my da said. So always stay away from the ones who don’t want you, the ones who frown or cry or say no to you. Don’t ever touch ‘em, never. You understand?”

  He hadn’t.

  Yet as the years passed and Leroh spent more time among the boys and men of Pirn, his understanding of the threat of the Mantis started to take shape. When he’d begun feeling sexual urges and paying more attention to the accessible town girls, his peers and elders had sternly reminded him of that earlier warning to never approach them, to never touch them, unless they were very explicitly willing to have him. Even a man married was at risk, if his wife’s mood was ever unfavorable toward him in their marital bed. Even a whore, a woman whose chosen profession was to be sexually intimate with men could turn one’s fate, if she so decided.

  The Mantis didn’t differentiate a cruel man from an honest one. She did not give one the benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to be judged fairly based on one’s good deeds in life. If a man ever crossed that line, so vague in nature, so pliable by the passive party’s potentially unclear emotions, he immediately forfeited his life to the Mantis’s ruthless punishment, and, in her eyes, that was an irrevocable, binding agreement with her.

  The small woman riding ahead of Leroh at that very moment had herself announced, with pride, that over the course of her long life she’d killed an almost insurmountable number of men.

  Leroh knew rape was a reprehensible act, but he believed in the power of justice. Similarly to how a governing body might choose to punish a thief or a murderer, so should it be trusted to discipline a confirmed rapist. And it would be so, and thousands of men would not have had to lose their lives, if it weren’t for the Mantis.

  She would not allow for fair penalty to be administered.

  And the reason, he’d heard, was that she harbored resentment for men in her rotten heart from her early days as a maiden. She’d not been willing to marry a good, honorable man who’d wanted to wed her, and taken offense in his well-intentioned advances. She’d then proceeded to murder him, and every other man she was able to find fault in ever since, for decades with no end in sight. She did not age.

  She’d found a God to support her ambitions, and devolved into vindictive, never-ending madness.

  And now, two more men whose transgressions did not merit a death sentence would die at her hands. If Leroh was lucky. The foundations of his core values trembled at that realization.

  He was happy to see them punished by the Mantis, if it meant he’d be allowed to live.

  But why had she rescued him in the first place?

  Leroh had always listened to the warnings. He’d been most careful to not cross any woman’s boundaries in the entirety of his young life. In truth, he’d never even dared to approach a female, for fear of what might occur to him. He’d never risked confessing attraction to a girl or pursuing her in any romantic way. What if she takes it the wrong way?, he’d thought. What if she’s offended or insulted by my attentions? What if that is enough for the Mantis to target me next?, he’d told himself in times of temptation. Could he be killed and eaten for speaking to a woman who did not enjoy his company? He’d never been willing to risk discovering the answer.

  And now she’d risked her own life to save him.

  The Mantis, the monster that terrorized the men of his kingdom, had seen enough innocence in him to deem him worthy of saving. She’d sacrificed her prey for her Goddess to keep him alive.

  Why?

  His emotions were conflicted. He was thankful, pathetically thankful, for her intervention. She could have easily let him die and been finished with the whole issue. It would have been the most efficient course of action for her, the logical thing to do.

  Never in his most deranged dreams could Leroh have foreseen that kindness from her, that…humanity.

  Or that display of power and bravery. She’d single-handedly challenged the Sea God’s will, and won.

  For him.

  They rode on and on, for what seemed an endless amount of time, and Leroh continued to ponder on the distressing realizations he’d found in himself. The clouds from the night before had dissipated, and then changed their minds in the late afternoon, coming back denser and darker with Rain.

  Leroh’s every bone and muscle protested at any movement from the horse, and yet rest was nowhere in sight for him. Teela sat behind him the whole time with her hands clenched on the sides of his filthy tunic, silent. Completely silent. That was an unusual and very welcome change from his sister, Leroh thought.

  The cloud cover granted them a minor break from the relentless elements they’d endured earlier in the day, and with it came an increased Wind that carried away some of the insufferable late spring’s heat. Soon, Leroh told himself, they’d stop and rest. Soon enough, the Sun would start coming down and the Mantis would allow them all to set up camp for the night.

  But that most longed for respite didn’t come for what felt like several days’ worth of travel. Clover was clearly exhausted under Leroh’s and Teela’s weight, and yet the Mantis pushed them further and faster with cruel disregard for all their needs, until the darkness of dusk forced her to an abrupt stop.

  “We’ll camp here and get moving at the first light tomorrow,” the woman announced. She dismounted her tired horse and assisted the siren to follow with the support of a pale, slender hand.

  “Here? By the path?” Leroh was too sore and tired to fear questioning her at that moment.

  She simply ignored him and began to set up the tent. “Gather firewood,” she ordered curtly to no one in particular.

  Teela and Leroh shared a look of acknowledgement. They’d go together.

  But it was an effort he didn’t have the physical endurance to perform, and Leroh was ashamed to let his sister do most of the heavy lifting as they walked the surrounding area for suitable kindling. They did not speak a word to each other, but an odd sense of union tied them together in a way that hadn’t been there before.

  They were both stuck in the undesired journey, now, Leroh realized. Teela longed to return home as badly as he did. She had grown to see the Mantis for what she really was, and wanted nothing more to do with her.

  That made them allies, for once.

  That night, Leroh and Teela ate blackberries and roasted rabbit meat inside their tent and, for the first time since they’d left Pirn, shared a companionable silence rather than a tense and hateful one.

  They settled down to rest for as long as the Mantis would allow.