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My brother needs me.

Tinder had arrived in The Heart of Centaurs with a message. Puck is safe, and Juniper is with him. But Cerulean remains caged by the humans, and I’m the only one who can free him.

Lark is healing, but the female’s hobbling would have slowed me down. The remedy I had prepared several days ago will take another chunk of hours to fully cure the fracture in her leg. Although not much of an additional lapse, every second Cerulean is trapped is one second too many. I could not wait for Lark, nor had she wanted me to.

A small residue of iron still lingers in Cypress and Foxglove from having combated against so many weapons. Although not significant any longer, they would have also delayed me. By the time Lark is restored, the iron should be leached from the remainder of our band.

As for Coral, I had manifested to her side on the way from the forest and given instructions. She must lead our allies in The Deep while I’m absent. I trust no one more than her to do this—apart from my lady.

An image of gentle, kindly irises floods my mind. “Bring him back,” Cove had whispered after pulling her lips from mine. “Bring him back to my sister. And come back to me.”

My pulse stalls as her voice rolls like a wave through my head. A second later, the memory leaks away like a tear.

I whip my arms and tail faster through the depths. Whatever she requests of me, she will receive. Cerulean and Puck have served their roles, whereas I have stood by.

It is my turn now.

I hear the river swelling around a particular shape that’s easy to identify. I spear upward, my body catapults over an underwater stalactite barnacled in moss, and I dive again.

The flux has a malleable shape, a powerful weight, and a glossy texture. But although I know each conduit and specimen that exists in this subterranean river, The Deep has been changing. It is no longer as predictable as it once was, no longer as effortless to navigate. More than ever, more than memory or routine, erratic sounds and current shifts in the water are my guides.

Be that as it may, the swiftest route to the mortal realm has not altered. My tail achieves a velocity that rivals manifesting, without expending precious energy.

A fever of stingrays flutters past me. They coast like blankets, their barbs carrying venom. I torpedo between them, and in a flash, all signs of the aquatic fleet are gone.

I shoot up an incline. The water’s temperature decreases to a chilled degree. Its consistency thins, the river condenses to a stream, and the depth becomes shallow.

I set my teeth, leave the underground river behind, and launch into the mortal world.

My submerged body punches through the water like a fist and follows the direction Tinder had provided from Juniper. The moment my senses inhale the reek of iron and Cerulean’s blood, I rage. For all the sharp edges that Cove has gentled in me, she has honed other edges—protective ones.

No one cages my kin. No one outlives those consequences.

How I want to blast into their realm, my arrival sending a tsunami gushing through that forsaken town. How I want to flood their haven, the same way their actions nine years ago resulted in flooding mine.

However, that would endanger their children and fauna. And it would get me into trouble with Cove.

I loop into a vertical climb and harpoon to the surface. Before emerging, I slacken my tail and arms. I slow my pace and slither toward the echo of fluid lapping at a bank. My head breaks through, oxygen replacing the liquid in my lungs.

I bob, materializing only enough for my eyes to float over the surface. Based on the stream’s babbling resonance, it will taper into a brook from this point. On instinct, my orbs stray, as if able to pierce the void enfolding around me, to see through the wall of black and scan the perimeter. It’s an impulse that has never left since I was a stripling.

Still, there are varied shades and shapes of darkness. Those disparities, my Fae eyes can at least distinguish.

This murk is blotchy, befitting a shrouded forest. Leaves shiver overhead, the environment vacant of humans. No footfalls. No faint breathing. That’s good, for I would be forced to snap a neck or blind an unwelcome visitor.

Lack of vision is not a defect. But I do wield it as a weapon, for it takes the recipient by surprise, the sudden trauma shocking and confusing them, which incapacitates their ability to fight back.

I cruise toward the bank and rise to my full height. As my body smashes through the surface, my tail splits into a pair of limbs like the blades of a scissor. I hear my frame chopping the stream into pieces, beads of water arcing and pelting the bank.

My feet stalk from the depth. Rivulets coarse down my skin as I grope the baldric fixed across my torso, the strap woven from mer scales. A breeze rushes across my naked limbs. I hadn’t given the slightest fuck about entering this land bare-assed, and Cove must have forgotten to insist I tether a spare pair of leggings to the harness. The thought of what she’d say at this moment lifts one corner of my mouth.

Recalling the strict instructions Tinder had passed on from Juniper, I prowl through the underbrush, picking around the snares the poachers had evidently installed. Several offshoots graze my shoulder as I pass. My soles crush a patch of mushrooms, imprinting them into the ground.

The scent of fungal toxicity reaches my nose.Poisonous.

But more potent are the stenches of crimson and iron, which ripen the closer I get. The latter odor seeps into my pores. My bones grow heavy, as if I’m swimming through saltwater.

A motley of images drowns my thoughts—a tank propped inside a well, iron bars above and below as I float within the tube like a specimen, my knuckles ramming into the glass but failing to shatter it, and the same heaviness draining my energy.