Before Lira met Elian and the crew of the Saad, she had been raised to hate humans and thought of them as weak and pathetic, just as the Sea Queen did. She participated in hunting humans and took pride in collecting their hearts, understanding those behaviors to be the siren way. It took an adventure on the Saad and the punishment of becoming a human girl for Lira to learn that she wasn’t as different from the humans as she believed.

To Kill a Kingdom is a story in which characters from two different worlds come together and learn to put aside their differences. In the case of Elian and Lira, what’s at stake is larger than just the relationship between the two of them. The battle between the humans and the sirens, which has been ongoing for countless generations, is about to come to a potentially deadly end, and if either side were to win, it would mean disaster for the other. As young royals who represent their kind, their ability to find common ground means salvation for both sirens and humans. This is a common theme, especially among star-crossed lover tales like Romeo and Juliet.