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Claira

F reaking sea wizard.

I slumped at my desk, exhausted from hours of pouring all my pent-up frustrations out onto the scraps of parchment in front of me. Since I couldn’t get the wizard out of my mind, I figured I might as well decode his damned riddle.

His damned, beautifully scribed riddle. Sigh . But even decoding the entire thing hadn’t made me feel any better.

Cyre brushed against my mind while I read through the lines I’d translated once more, reminding me he was still here with me in spirit. It hadn’t taken him long to pick up on the shift in my emotions after the sea wizard left me. My heart had all but shattered, and not only had Cyre felt it, he wanted to fix it.

Nothing could fix this ache in my chest.

But that hadn’t stopped anybody from trying. Since then, both Cyre and Aracos had been doing everything they could to lift my mood, showering me with attention and affection—and not at all helping me work through this damned letter.

Was it sad that I wanted to solve the sea wizard’s riddle just to have an excuse to see him again? Yes. Yes, it was.

“ Ugh .” What had that smooth-talking wizard turned me into? A desperate, thrall -sick idiot, that’s what. But he was the bigger idiot.

Why did he have to be so perfectly charming one second and completely frustrating the next?

“I didn’t take your master for a coward,” I muttered, strangling the pen in my grasp instead of using it to pick out and circle keywords in the riddle in front of me.

“Master is never a coward,” Aracos rasped softly in my mind. The eel’s silken skin tickled the back of my neck from where he’d snuggled with my hair to cheer me up. “Master is only cautious.”

I scoffed. “Cautious, my ass.” Apparently, all of Aracos’s warmth and affection hadn’t kept my wounded heart from freezing over in his master’s absence. “He ran from me, Aracos. That isn’t caution. That was him setting a new land speed record—err, water speed? Anyway, you get what I mean.”

The man was infuriating. Maddening. And despite that, a huge part of me still longed for him. Dammit . If he didn’t stop playing these games with me, I was going to lose my mind.

“Aracos has never seen Master run from anything.” His head slid, settling on the dip of my collarbone. “Aracos has never seen Master with legs at all.”

That got me. I snorted a laugh, but the humor was short-lived. “I just… I don’t get it, Aracos.” Leaning back, I pressed a hand to my throbbing temple. “Do you think he actually cares about me?”

A pang of embarrassment hit. Maybe I’d already lost my mind, asking an eel for relationship advice.

“Never mind,” I quickly added, trying to brush it off. “Forget I even said anything.”

“Master cares deeply,” he said, causing my heart to squeeze. “Master holds great concern for our princess’s well-being.”

Our princess’s ‘well-being.’

I threw my hands up, tossing my pen in the process. Well, that answered that. He cared for my well-being , not my feelings.

“But Master is afraid.”

“He’s afraid?” I frowned, catching my pen before it sank further. “And what’s he afraid of? Commitment? My grandmother? ” He had every right to be afraid of her. Heck, I was afraid of her, too.

“Master is afraid of many things.”

Wow, helpful. Sighing, I focused my attention back on the scroll in front of me when Aracos shifted.

His sinuous form coiled, hugging my shoulders as if seeking comfort, his quiet whisper slithering through my mind. “Aracos thinks that Master is afraid of his own hearts.”

Hearts, plural? Was Aracos counting his heart in this as well?

Afraid of his own heart. That was… surprisingly relatable.

“I guess that makes sense,” I said finally, my lower lip aching from how much I’d bit it while pondering over that thought. “Thanks for telling me, Aracos. Really.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Aracos’s insight had managed to ease some of the sting from the sea wizard’s rejection. “Think he’ll mind that you told me something so personal?”

Tail flicking, Aracos twisted in the tangle of my hair. “Aracos can say whatever he wants while Master is alone with his thoughts.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Oh, really?” The sea wizard wasn’t connected with his familiar’s mind right now? “Does that mean you’ll help me with this riddle?”

His mottled head lifted, giving me a deadly, needle-tipped grin—well, as much as an eel could grin. “Master told Aracos our princess must figure out the letter on her own.”

So, Aracos still had some loyalty. But just how deep did that loyalty run?

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but do you happen to know his name?” I casually threw out, trying to hide my eagerness.

His tail gave little enthusiastic flicks against my shoulder. “Aracos knows.”

My pulse quickened. “Yeah?” Oh gosh , he was really going to tell me, wasn’t he? My voice nearly caught as I leaned in. “What is it?”

“Master.”

Aracos wriggled in amusement as I groaned.

“You did that on purpose.”

His raspy voice was laced with mischief. “Aracos is merely following the crown’s order.”

The crown’s order? That was definitely one of the sea wizard’s lines. “You’re just as bad as he is,” I muttered. With a gentle push of my finger, I nudged his head off my shoulder. “Well, if you’re not going to be any help, then you’ll have to find a new spot to hide.”

Aracos really was excellent at following orders. He slithered down both my arm and the desk, burrowing underneath the useless frills at the end of my tail like it was a blanket.

Once settled, only his eyes remained visible, keeping a careful watch on the entryway to my chamber. If he weren’t so adorable, I might have asked him to move.

Instead, I shook my head and turned my attention back to the task at hand—solving the riddle.

Where whispers dance with darkness deep,

Where secrets slumber and restless spirits sleep.

In the boundless void where shadows enthrall,

What do you seek when you call, and call, and call?

A place where whispers danced and secrets slept? Those were some pretty flowery words, even for a riddle.

Hmm… I tapped my pen as I thought.

Ah-ha! The sea wizard thought he was so clever.

I was almost certain the answer was a glyph he’d taught me during our very first lesson. At the time, I’d thought the humor behind teaching me such a glyph had been dark, even for him, especially considering I was still coming to terms with being trapped in the Undersea. But now, it was coming full circle in the answer to this riddle.

Okay, maybe he was clever.

Even after practicing the symbol on scraps of parchment more than a dozen times, my hand still trembled as I carefully scrawled my answer in the empty space below his writing. It was the first mark I’d dared to make on his letter at all.

Finally, I leaned back to study my work. It didn’t look pretty—not like his writing did—but it didn’t look bad, either.

It was good enough for an excuse to go see him.

With one final glance, I rolled the scroll into a neat coil and searched for something to wrap around it other than what he’d originally used to tie it. The black ribbon was beautiful, and I wasn’t ready to part with it.

Aracos had already dealt with the mess of magical seaweed the sea wizard had left all over my chamber, so that was no longer an option.

“Hmm…” With a swift teleport over to my bed, I plucked a handful of long, silky strands of seagrass and reappeared at my desk. The thrill of teleportation was addictive—I could already feel myself becoming hooked.

Unfortunately, I knew this new freedom wouldn’t last. Once Hari returned, I’d have to go back to dragging myself around everywhere like before.

“You know, I bet he thought I wouldn’t figure it out,” I mumbled as I tied the seagrass around the scroll, securing it with a neat bow.

But then, a dark stain started to spread over the parchment from underneath the seagrass. “Oh, shit .”

My heart sank as I hurriedly untied the ribbon, frustration tightening my jaw. Dammit. Even as I tried to brush the stain away, it was no use. So much for keeping the wizard’s letter looking nice.

Aracos was already slipping back under my frills. “Master hoped our princess would solve it.”

“And is my answer correct?”

“Aracos couldn’t say.”

“Uh-huh.” With a sigh, I gathered up the scroll in my hands. It didn’t need to be tied, but I’d hoped to gloat a bit when I handed it back to him, maybe wave it triumphantly in his face a little. The effect would be totally lost with the parchment loosely flapping around in the water.

Maybe there was another way to fix this.

Setting the scroll aside, I reached for my seashell knife. The sea wizard had once mentioned collecting a lock of my hair for one of his deals, hadn’t he? I hadn’t trusted him enough to let him have it then, but things were different now.

He might have been afraid of his heart, but I wasn’t. I knew he’d never use anything I gave him to harm me.

With a steady hand, I sliced below my ear, severing a lock of hair.

“Princess?”

“It’s fine, Aracos. No need to go telling on me to your master while he’s alone with his thoughts.” Wrapping the strands around the scroll, I tied it securely in place, finishing it with a bow.

As I looked down at my handiwork, I couldn’t help but wince. “It’s too much, isn’t it?”

Aracos poked his neck out from under my tail. “Too much what?”

I let out a deep sigh. Right . Aracos might have been clever, but he was still an eel.

“Aracos thinks Master will be very pleased.”

“Yeah?” All right. If Aracos thought his master would be pleased, then I wouldn’t overthink it. I tucked the scroll neatly between the folds of my ocean silks, just like I used to store all my precious treasures back when I was a merfry.

Back then, I had no clue what pockets were. Now, I was certainly grateful that my chest offered ample room for a decent stash of items in the folds of the ocean silks around them.

Breast pockets , I thought to myself with a snort as I turned back to my chamber entrance.

“Time to go, Aracos,” I said, lifting my frills to reveal the rest of his slender body.

“Go?”

“Yep. We’re going to your master’s chambers.”

Aracos slid backward, burrowing further underneath my tail. “Master isn’t accepting visitors.”

What was he, his butler?

A huff escaped me. “Sure, and I also wasn’t accepting visitors when your master snatched me from the Indian Ocean’s casino, but that sure didn’t stop him, now did it?”

“Don’t ask Aracos. Aracos can’t go.” He coiled himself up and settled in, looking like a stubborn, grumpy cat.

A cat who didn’t have legs and whose tail could squeeze the life out of you, that is.

“You’re seriously not going to help me? Not even with teleporting?” I frowned at his grumpy face. “I thought you were against him leaving me in the first place.”

I considered teleporting there myself, but the thought of jumping to a place so far away, especially somewhere I couldn’t even see, made me uneasy. Plus, I’d never even seen the outside of the sea wizard’s chamber, and even if my magic could take me that far, I couldn’t just appear in the middle of his room without warning, could I? Besides, Hari hadn’t returned yet, which probably meant it was still the middle of the night.

“Aracos knows that Master wishes to be alone.”

“Well, I wished for your master to stay here with me, but look where that got us,” I said, trying and failing to keep my frustration in check. “Okay, I hear myself—I sound ridiculous. Sorry. I know it’s not your fault. It’s his.”

“Aracos understands.”

He was loyal to a fault, but I couldn’t blame him for following his master’s orders. Finally, I let out a resigned sigh.

“I guess I can drag myself,” I muttered, brainstorming different ways to reach the sea wizard’s chamber. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d dragged myself through the halls of an underwater kingdom. Oh . Maybe I could poof along the way.

Stretching my neck, I focused on the door. Snap. The seagrass tickled my arm as I parted it. I poked my head out, scanning both sides of the hall for signs of cecaelia. “Looks like it’s clear.”

When I looked back over my shoulder, Aracos was still coiled up where I’d left him. “You’re really not coming?”

He looked hesitant, maybe even confused, his dark pin-prick eyes scanning the room. “Master told Aracos to keep his eyes on our princess’s chamber.”

My stomach fluttered. At least the sea wizard had cared enough to do that for me. “Could you at least tell me how to get to his chamber?”

“Aracos doesn’t think Master would approve.”

Okay. Deep breaths, Claira. I teleported back to my desk with a snap , deciding that I would for sure need my seashell knife if I was going to go wandering around alone. I’d just… figure it out, one hall at a time.

How big could the bowels of the Undersea be? Though, come to think of it, bowels are notoriously long and complex.

Uh-oh . Was I currently in the large intestine or the small? Whichever it was, given how the sea wizard was treated, his chamber was bound to be in the other one.

As a princess, I’d be in the large, right? But the small intestine was where the majority of digestion occurred, so politically…

“Our princess is really leaving?” Aracos asked, snapping me away from the imagery of digestion hell.

“That’s the plan,” I muttered before teleporting back to the door. It wasn’t a good plan, but I wasn’t satisfied with the way the sea wizard had left things between us. He was running, even if it was only because he was afraid of his own heart.

I had to see him. When I did, I’d shove his letter in his face and impress him with my cleverness. Then we’d slip back into our usual rhythm of teasing and banter, and everything would be right in the bowels of the Undersea again.

You know, just keeping the gut happy.

“Don’t leave, princess. Master won’t like that our princess is leaving.” The poor guy seemed torn between his duty to his master and his concern for me.

I softened my voice, reminding him, “You could always come with me.”

“Aracos must watch our princess’s chamber.”

Yeah, he’d mentioned that.

“Aracos, let me explain something. There’s a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law,” I said, trying my best to channel some of Gram’s wisdom. “While your master did order you to watch my chamber, the order was really just to ensure my safety, wasn’t it? Now, let’s think about this. I’m going to leave my chamber, so don’t you think the spirit of your master’s order would want you to keep an eye on me instead? There’s no point in watching a chamber if it’s empty. You can’t keep me safe if I’m not here.”

Aracos’s coils unwound as he contemplated my words. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he swam up to me. “Aracos will follow our princess.”

“Fantastic.” I really owed Gram for that one. Grinning, I stuck my head out into the hallway again. “So, which way is it? Left or right?”

“Aracos prefers not to say.”

“Right it is,” I decided, focusing as far down the hall as I could see. That side of the hall was as good of a place to start as any, and I’d noticed that the chefs usually came from the right. Snap.

Behind me, Aracos darted down the hall to catch up. “Do you think you could hang on to me?” I whispered as soon as he reached me. “In case someone pops out of a crevice and sees me teleporting, I can say it was you.”

There was no reason to expose myself as a sea witch immediately after I’d learned to teleport.

Aracos wound around my arm, and between him and my magical seashell knife, I felt ready for anything.

Cyre rattled my mind with a low, mournful whine, apparently upset that he wasn’t the one accompanying me and offering his support. “Don’t worry,” I sent back, hoping to return some of the comfort he’d given me over the last few hours. “We’ll get you into the Undersea soon, and then I’ll be able to rely on you most of all.”

Warmth flooded into me. He seemed satisfied with that.

Snap.

Relieved that I’d managed to bring Aracos along with me, I lifted my arm and whispered, “How far down does this hall go?” My night vision was pretty sharp, but the corridor seemed to go on forever.

“The royal hall stretches longer than the neck of a nautilodon,” he whispered just as low, despite only speaking to my mind.

“A nautilodon?” The name was unfamiliar to me.

“The great eels of legend,” he uttered reverently. “Aracos has heard that their coils hold up the very foundation of our oceans.”

I shuddered at the thought of an eel that large lurking below us. “Let’s hope we don’t run into one of those, like, ever. Especially on the way to your master’s chamber.”

Aracos squeezed my arm hard enough for an ache to spread through my muscles. “Aracos would like to meet one someday. To say thank you.”

A chuckle escaped me. “Brave little thing, aren’t you?”

“Master says that only the foolish are brave. Better to be cautious, plan carefully.”

I burst into a full-on snort. “In that case, I guess we’re both a couple of fools.” Because this plan sure wasn’t careful. Snap .

Finally, we’d moved deep enough into the hall for the rocks to press in around us. We came to our first turn in the corridor, the path splitting into three directions, and Aracos’s head lifted off my wrist.

He looked kind of to the left, and I took it as a sign that we should head in that direction. Snap .

“… and I don’t give a damn what that barrel of blubber says. We need to move now! ”

Oh, shit.

It was the urgent bellow of a masculine voice coming from further down the direction I’d just chosen.

Without a word, I dragged myself to the closest stone wall, willing my magic to form a shield around us as I pressed my back against it. Invisible .

“I can’t believe our luck,” a second voice joined in, rough and deep. “Looks like the ocean’s smiling on us tonight.”

Were they guards? Knights? Pawns?

“Or maybe the ocean’s just screwing us over,” a third voice countered. “Has anyone actually passed through the gates and lived to report it?”

Then the voices started to clash, their arguments bouncing off one another.

“They say they only saw it long enough to come back to tell the tale, but I’m not buying it!”

“This reeks of merfolk trickery, and the queen would have us fall right into it. She’ll let them lure us to our doom.”

Heart pounding, I strained to hear their conversation, struggling to piece together what it could mean.

“ Pah! You’re damn right. They’ve had us chasing shadows for generations. No one just stumbles upon Malkeevo without some filthy plot behind it.”

Wait… Malkeevo? That was Barren’s kingdom.

White hot panic gripped me, alarming even Aracos, who was used to traversing these halls under the cover of an invisibility spell.

Queen Javalynn was supposed to be keeping its location concealed, but the cecaelia had somehow found it?

“That’s enough.” A new voice sliced through the water like a whip, plunging the corridor into suffocating silence. Aracos constricted my arm, the sudden tension in his tiny body spreading to me like wildfire.

Oh god. That was a voice that would forever haunt my nightmares. Just hearing him was enough. His presence was unmistakable—a cold, merciless force that seemed to seep into my bones, chilling me to my core.

The Rook.

He was speaking again, but my mind raced, desperately trying to devise a plan before the fear of him discovering me paralyzed me completely.

I could teleport back to my chamber and to the safety of my seagrass bed. But the sea wizard’s warning about fear clouding my intention held me back. My magic, once so responsive, now felt as wild and uncontrollable as the frantic pounding of my heart.

“Aracos, please,” I pleaded, forcing the whisper through clenched teeth. “Get us out of here—somewhere safe.”

“Master doesn’t want ? —”

“Forget about your master,” I cut him off, desperation cracking my voice. “Just take me anywhere but here. Preferably back to my?—”

Snap.

“—bed.” My head reeled, and when my surroundings came into focus, I found myself staring at a hollowed-out pair of eyes.

“Holy crap,” I whisper-shrieked, pushing myself away to find that my body was trapped, wedged between two horizontal walls of rock.

It was a skull. A skull was sitting right in front of me, not even three inches away from the tip of my nose. And there wasn’t just one skull, but an entire graveyard’s worth of them, shoved into every nook, every crevice.

Then it hit me—instead of taking me to the safety of my chamber, Aracos had taken me to the safety of his . However safe a macabre underwater sanctuary could be.

Aracos slid against my arm, a gentle nudge to draw my attention. “Aracos is committed to ensuring our princess’s safety.”

Well, hearing him put it like that…

“Aw. Thanks, buddy,” I forced out, giving a shaky sniff. I really was thankful to be away from the Rook. Wiggling my hips, I tried to create space between me and the line of skulls in front of me. No dice. “You really came through for me.”

If I didn’t look back, maybe I could pretend that the skulls behind me weren’t there. And what I couldn’t see couldn’t creep me the heck out, right?

Wrong.

“Um. Do you think you could take us back to my chamber?” I asked, unable to hold back the shivers skating through me. There was definitely something psychological to unpack here about Aracos and his collection, but I was not qualified to delve into that right now. Preferably ever.

“Does our princess like Aracos’s chamber?”

Every skull seemed to join in to stare at me in the silence that followed.

Quick, Claira. Think.

“Actually, this chamber’s quite cozy,” I replied, trying my best to sound upbeat. “Maybe in a morbid sort of way. But morbid can be nice, especially with magic. It goes well with your master and his—” I struggled to recall the creepiest thing in his collection but drew a blank “—shells. But my chamber has parchment in it, and I really need to write a letter right now. Can you please take me back?”

His long neck twisted. “A letter?”

“Yep, a letter. Like the one your master gave to me,” I confirmed, unsure whether to share the whole truth. “It’s really important.”

Would the sea wizard stop me if he knew I was writing to Barren? If the cecaelia had actually discovered the Indian Ocean’s underwater kingdom, then Barren needed to know. Sure, I’d have to figure out a way to get the letter to Cyre to take to him, but that was a problem for future me to solve.

“CYRE TAKE,” he chimed in, and I couldn’t hold back my smile. Yeah, we’d figure it out together.

To my relief, Aracos dipped his head in a nod. “Aracos will take our princess back.”

My voice was thick with gratitude. “Thank you.” But before we teleported, I remembered the letter I was already carrying.

How pointless it seemed now, waving that scroll in the sea wizard’s face while Barren’s kingdom was in danger. I was so out of touch down here, consumed with my own heartache, while so much more was happening up above me.

Yes , the sea wizard’s riddle would have to wait. For now, the only thing I needed to worry about was getting a message to Barren.