Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)
Page 28
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Claira
E yes followed me like tiny heat-seeking missiles during my entire walk back from the bathroom. Everywhere I looked, necks seemed to swivel away, only to settle right back on me as soon as I glanced away.
Nice try, but after last night, not even nosy mers could kill my mood.
Reaching Leander’s room, I returned the plastic dolphin’s static smile with a cheeky one of my own before throwing back the curtain. “I think maybe we should have been a little quieter last—” My eyes swept to the left, then to the right. Clothes and blankets littered the floor, Leander’s sorry excuse for a pillow looking cold and abandoned in the corner he’d been laying when I left to brave the line for the bathroom.
“You’re not in here,” I hummed, backing right back out of the room.
The plastic fell into place behind me as I started down the line of compartments, snuggling my jacket hood up over the top of my head to keep a low profile. Well, as low a profile as someone with a shock of blazing red hair could hope for anyway.
Pairs of eyes seemed to materialize behind each curtain I passed, but I swallowed down my unease. Let them look. I couldn’t have been the first in the warehouse to get laid, right? Surely others were doing it, considering how cramped everyone was here. Determined to ignore the observers, I continued my search.
There was only one mer I for sure didn’t want to run into—two if you counted King Eamon, but he rarely seemed to move without an entourage of captains at his heels—so I steered clear of the row Kai had taken me down the day before.
I was about to turn down a new row when a voice drifted around the corner. “This is perfect, Klester.” Leander’s voice . But why the conspiratorial tone? “I knew I could count on you to come up with something.”
I poked a head around the corner to find Leander halfway hunched in the entrance of a compartment, his back and shoulders cloaked in the frayed rags serving as its door. With his butt sticking out in the hallway as it was, how could I resist coming up behind him to make my presence known?
My fingertips sank into the firm, rounded muscles of his rear, and rags went flying as Leander jerked upright, his spine going straighter than a ship’s mast at sail. “Claira, fuck,” he gasped, drawing a hand through his hair after getting a good look at me. He looked exhausted—not that I found it surprising. Neither of us had gotten much sleep last night. “You startled me.”
A knowing smirk settled at the corners of his mouth as he looked me up and down, no doubt noticing how exhausted I looked as well. Last night was worth it, though, and I had to wonder if either of us would be getting a full night of sleep in the warehouse again. Who knew there were things more relaxing after a long day of chaos than sleep?
“I thought you might be one of the Turbula twins,” he murmured, a shudder moving through his spine.
I scoffed, feeling strangely possessive of his ass all of a sudden. Neither of them had actually touched it, had they? Maybe I shouldn’t have abandoned the knife in Aleena’s foot so quickly.
“Just payback for making me look for you.” My arms crossed in mock outrage, but his smirk only grew. Clearly, he was okay with this brand of payback.
“Sorry,” he chuckled. “Had to retrieve something for when we head out. Come here. Look.” He drew half the rags back so I could peek inside.
A mer sat cross-legged in the center of the room, his hand slowly stroking a long, wiry stretch of beard as he muttered over his wares. Scraps of metal and debris covered every available inch of the floor, and an assortment of tools and pipes of all lengths and sizes hung curiously from the walls. Was this feeble-looking merman some sort of tradesperson?
I knew the merfolk had all sorts of builders, thinkers, architects, even blacksmiths that worked in magma forges, making the spears and lances like the ones Papa used to collect. My heart fluttered at the thought of his prized collection, abandoned and useless underwater, a spread of barnacles fusing them to the walls.
Though even on land, he was still collecting, wasn’t he? Empty bottles, lost trinkets, discarded wardrobe from discarded offspring. Ugh . That thought was still messing with me.
A small part of me wished I’d run into him just so I could confront him. Question how it was he’d found the hairpin and why he’d thought to keep my ocean silks as well.
But mostly I just wished I didn’t care that he’d had them at all.
“Look at this,” Leander whispered, raising some sort of glass enclosure from the floor for me to inspect. He brought it to eye level and all I could do was blink. “I’ve been waiting days for Klester to finish it up.”
It was… something .
It looked kind of like Klester here had stolen the housing to a front porch light and made a couple of minor adjustments. The hole where the bulb would go was empty, but otherwise, definitely a porch light. I eyed the fingerprints covering the glass panes and the short silver chain affixed to the top of the housing like a handle. He’d been working on this for… days, Leander had said?
“As far as scavengers go, Klester here is a legend.”
Scavenger . That was my next guess.
The old mer tittered through his blackened teeth, his head shaking. “Yessir. Y’be remembering that when y’send payment, now. Don’t go forgettin’!”
“Of course, you will be compensated nicely for your service,” Leander announced in such an overly grand tone it made my nose scrunch. “And a little extra for your discretion.”
Hopefully Leander hadn’t agreed to pay too much for the… Okay, I really had no idea what a porch light was good for without the light bulb inside it. A weapon? A cage? A complete waste of our time?
The mer tittered away as Leander dropped the rags, leaving the scavenger to tend to the rest of his scraps. Clutching the apparatus close like he was trying to guard it, Leander lowered his voice as he ushered me down the hall. “Grab what you need, and then we’ll head to the water.”
The way he said water threw me. Now that he had his glass thingy, his shoulders shook with an excited energy, and there was even a very uncharacteristic bounce in his long strides. Was this leftover excitement from last night, or was he really this excited to go get his father’s trident back?
I frowned as I placed a hand over my stomach, feeling it grumble. “But what about breakfast?” Kai must have spoiled me with all the fancy meals, because the thought of a pouch of tuna made my belly protest even more.
A thought struck me, and I almost tripped over my own feet. It wasn’t actually Kai bringing me food, though, was it?
Barren was the one who’d been cooking for the three of us. Maybe for Laverne, too, though I hadn’t seen her eat. If he was feeding her, it was no wonder she liked him so much. I almost wouldn’t mind facing him again if he had one of those giant crescent roll breakfast sandwiches with him.
“I thought we could eat when we got in the water,” Leander practically squealed with eagerness. Whoa. Grinning like that, he looked like a merfry again. It was the same boyish look Dad always got before digging into a slice of Gram’s pie. Leander glanced over for my approval, and I forced a smile.
Breakfast in the water ? My stomach rioted even more. When was the last time I’d eaten a raw fish that wasn’t folded on top of some sticky rice?
“Can you even catch a fish, my prince?” I teased, remembering how the maids would bring feasts into the palace. Though if anyone could figure out how to catch fish on the fly, it would be Lee. He’d probably start by punching them in the face first and, when that didn’t work, switch to snatching them up with his bare hands.
Leander’s eyebrows shot up as he opened the shower curtain. “But you’ll be with me. I thought catching fish was supposed to be your thing?” He chuckled. “I still have nightmares about that poor marlin tail you showed me on your wall.”
“ Pfft .” I shouldered past him, scouring the floor for my bathing suit. “Yeah, with a net and a boat, sure. But I think walking to the storeroom for tuna might be a tad easier.”
I stuffed my bathing suit into the bottom of my backpack and zipped it, throwing it over my shoulder. Leander’s eyes scanned the floor, looking amused. “Didn’t I bring a net in here?”
“Even if I hadn’t tossed it,” I deadpanned, waving a hand through the air in dismissal, “it made a better skirt for you than it would ever make a net. There’s no way I’d take something so rotted and tangled into the ocean to get wrapped around some poor shark.”
His smile turned devious. “If it did, we could eat it.”
Ignoring the joke, I sighed and headed for the exit.
He really didn’t like sharks, did he? Or maybe he just had something against the Pacific mers, considering how he’d treated Kai from the beginning.
“You’d better come through for me, Lee. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and I’m gonna start complaining to management if I don’t get something in my belly soon.”
“Complaining to management?” he repeated, giving the impression he didn’t understand my meaning.
“It means you’re not taking good care of your hostage,” I grumbled, rubbing my poor empty stomach.
An arm slid around my waist as Leander came up beside me. He leaned in close enough that the heat from his breath tickled my cheek. “I thought I took pretty good care of you last night.”
The heat in his voice sent a little shiver sliding down my spine. He’d taken thorough care of me, but that wasn’t in question. “Yeah, well, that was fun and all, but a girl’s still gotta eat.”
“Let’s get in the water, then,” he said, pulling me over to the pier. When he got near the rail, he came to an abrupt stop. “Fuck. What happened here?”
A full yard of the wooden rail was cracked and falling apart. Even some of the flat boards in front of it looked like a heavy step from an oversized mer might cave them in.
“Sharks, probably,” I mumbled, and Leander lifted a brow.
My eyes fell on the dark stain where I’d had my fight with Aleena, and I gulped. How would he feel if I told him? Angry? Worried? Maybe even proud?
“Actually, I kind of got in a fight out here yesterday,” I said slowly, and Leander’s eyes went wide.
“ Fuck , are you hurt—?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine,” I interrupted, swatting a hand away as it cupped under my chin to study my face. “It was Aleena. She pushed me into the water, but I crawled back out—well, I started crawling out, but the shark we helped out of the net helped me back up and then…” I paused to look down at the broken boards. “It, uh, landed on the pier and tossed me a knife. The one I’d used to cut it free. Funny, right?” Leander’s eyebrows twitched, unamused, so I cleared my throat. “I managed to knife Aleena in the foot before it was over,” I added, gesturing to the dark stain on the pier.
Leander’s jaw unhinged. He stared at the pool of dried blood for at least a minute before he finally regained control of his mouth. “A shark isn’t smart enough to do all that.”
That’s the part he focused on? “Yeah, well, you say that, but…”
“Wait, you knifed her?” A flicker of admiration lit in his eyes. “I wish I could have seen that. Where was I during all this?”
I shrugged, feeling a blush rise over my cheeks. “Morning meeting with your father and the guards, I think?”
He looked back at the pier, then the blood stain, then to me like he couldn’t really believe he’d missed all of it. “Wow.”
Wow indeed. Looking at the aftermath now, it hardly seemed real.
“You don’t still have that knife on you, do you?” he asked, lifting his shirt. As soon as it was over his head, he tossed it to the pier. “Might be useful down there.”
“I’ve got another one in my backpack.” I glanced back at the warehouse, feeling the glare of a hundred eyes boring a hole in my back. “You’re really gonna start stripping right here, Lee? With the whole kingdom watching?”
“Why would they be watching?” His head tilted curiously, sending golden strands of hair falling over his sandy eyebrows. Mermen . Did he really not know how amazing he looked, or was he just oblivious to the looming eyes this morning?
“Come on. Let’s at least go to the boat or something,” I mumbled, starting down the pier. Hopefully he’d follow before shedding his pants.
“Hey, wait a second,” he said, jogging up beside me. “There’s, uh, something I need to talk to you about.”
The gravity in his voice stopped me from taking another step. “Oh?”
His smile turned sheepish as he ran a hand through his hair. “Not now, but after we get the trident back. After all the chaos dies down.” He paused long enough for his expression to turn grim. “About us.”
That… didn’t sound good.
“Not now, but later?” I asked, and he gave a stiff nod. The way his eyes hardened, his mouth going straight and rigid, had my stomach cramping more than hunger ever could. I laughed through my nerves, hoping that falling into our usual banter would be enough to snap him out of it. “What is this, like, a warning or something?”
His expression held, and my heart sank.
He fisted the hand in his hair and pulled at the strands, but the pain barely registered in the ice blue of his eyes. “Yeah.”
“Guess we better hurry,” I said stiffly, hastening my steps to the boat.
He wanted to talk to me about us? I had almost zero experience with human males or mermen, but I knew that couldn’t mean anything good.
“Claira, wait—”
I pursed my lips and stepped off the side of the pier, landing on the boat below with a thunk that dropped me straight to my knees. The boat quaked underneath me, but I sprung right to my feet. I was already digging through my backpack for my bathing suit when he touched down beside me.
The boat bobbed wildly, sending my knees locking to keep my balance, and I threw my shirt off without even sparing him a glance. “I’m sure King Eamon is tired of waiting, so let’s just get this over with.”
The sooner we returned with the trident, the sooner Leander could return a hero, basking in all the glory. And what would I do? Wait around for the excitement to die down so Leander could toss me aside like yesterday’s catch. Like mermen always did.
Talk about us? Pfft. Asshole.
A gruff snort was his only reply, and I shook my head as I knotted my bathing suit top. I knew better than to mess around with a merman, and yet…
I glared over my shoulder, and the sight of him almost took my breath away. He’d slid his pants off, leaving his bare skin to glisten in the early morning mist, a hand still running thoughtfully through his hair. He always seemed to do that whenever he was troubled, but what right did he have to look so tortured? So brooding? Was he worried about how to shake me off after getting everything he wanted from me?
A sheath of ice started forming over my heart as I kicked off my pants. By the time I had my wrap knotted around my waist, my chest had deadened, my emotions cold. Distant. I wedged a knife into the knot at my hip and straightened my spine, tossing a blanket of unruly hair over my shoulder. “I’m ready.”
A hand cupped under my chin, and I winced. Leander’s eyes flashed as he looked me up and down. “You look beautiful.”
That line might have melted me last night, but not now. I pressed my lips together, my teeth grinding. “Mmh.”
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, soft and soothing. The featherlight touch of his thumb brushed over my lips, making them tingle. “I won’t let anything hurt you down there.”
He leaned in, full lips ghosting over mine. “Never,” he breathed out. And then he kissed me.
The word “us” seared like a brand in my mind as his tongue parted my lips. Maybe there was still an us . Was it possible it wouldn’t be as bad as I feared and I wouldn’t have to forget these feelings? Maybe it was stupid undersea politics that he needed to talk to me about. Some law, some rule we could work through together. Maybe we could still—
Pop.
I wasn’t sure if his arms came around me before or after we hit the water, but the clunky porch light beat against me, rough and cold against my back as we breached the surface. My spine stiffened as my legs jerked—my skin thrashing, wrenching, weaving—until they settled into a fleshy tail.
The seal of our lips broke, and a rush of water forced into my throat. “That… wasn’t fair.”
Clouds of silt spread around us as Leander’s tail swept underneath me, scooping my fin up so he could take me into his arms. “Got you in the water without a fuss, didn’t it? Here.”
He nudged his precious glass contraption up by the chain, and I took it, holding it close to my chest. Honestly, it was a wonder it hadn’t shattered when we hit the water.
“Could you maybe, uh, adjust a bit?” The column of his body squirmed, and I looked down to see my knife’s blade pressing into the vulnerable flesh right above the scales on his hips.
“Sorry, sorry,” I gasped, jerking and twisting the knot to the other side of my hip. “You said you wanted me to bring a knife.”
He tucked my head under his chin with a chuckle. “And hopefully we won’t need it. Ready for some breakfast?”
Water spun around me as he dipped, his tail driving us to the murky bottom of the harbor. Our surroundings went dark, and magic slithered over my eyes just as Leander reached forward, letting my tail slip free from his arms.
He pressed down into the forest of seagrass until a neon green light flickered to life, blossoming like a flower under his palm, the sudden light chasing the magic from my eyes with a jolt of pain.
I swore and shook my head, blinking wildly as he peeled glowing strips of sea moss from the sand. “Open it for me?” he asked, bringing a fistful of moss to the porch light at my chest.
Open it? Like a door?
Water had already filled the middle, so I turned the object around until I noticed the tiny latch and hinges bordering one pane. Interesting. So the scavenger had made more modifications than just removing the light bulb after all.
I nudged the tiny door open, and Leander wasted no time stuffing the glowing wad of moss inside it. Then he went for more. A gentle warmth started radiating from the glass as he filled it, the light growing brighter with each handful.
So it was meant to be a lantern. Should have known.
I could still recall how merfolk loved their lanterns. They seemed to build one every few tail lengths and made a big ceremony of it whenever the time to reilluminate them came. Even at bedtime, the lanterns stayed lit.
Was it because it was easier that way? Better to keep them all perpetually lit than to have magic constantly flickering your sight back and forth?
“So, you waited days for a lantern,” I mumbled, watching more magic bloom under his palm. But it didn’t make sense. “Why not just use your night vision? We could have snuck out at night, and I wouldn’t have had to worry about swimming lessons.”
I didn’t regret the time I’d spent with Kai, but being in the ocean with Barren… Ugh .
It didn’t seem necessary to mention I’d only awakened my night vision the day before. But it wasn’t like I was an important part of this operation—other than my weird touch ability. If he was the hero, then I was the magical curse breaking amulet weighing heavy on his neck. Essentially useless.
“What do you mean by night vision? ”
I gestured vaguely to the open ocean. “You know, seeing through the darkness like you merfolk do.”
He looked surprised. Stunned, even. Then he must have figured I was telling some joke, because his chest started vibrating with laughter. “If only. It would be easier if we could see through this fucking murk without a light, wouldn’t it?”
The rest of them didn’t have night vision?
“Uh… Yeah.” I drank down a slow gulp as my grip tightened over the lantern. “Sure would.”
A school of silvery fish spread like a mist through the surrounding seagrass, their polished bodies reflecting the green light of the lantern like tiny slivers of mirrors.
Leander’s tail flicked through the school. The billowy end of his fin landed like a net over a section, pinning them to the seafloor. His hand slid underneath and emerged with a fistful of squirmy fish, their round eyes lighting green with amazement as they stared at the magic lantern I held.
“Look at that. Breakfast came to us,” he said smoothly, his lips cocking as he offered me the first handful.
My stomach rumbled, but the thought of their little bones cracking under my teeth made me want to turn green as well. I’d never minded as a merfry because I had known no other way to eat them, but now… “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
Surprise lifted his eyebrows. “I guess herring are a bit oily. What would you like to eat, then? I’ll catch it for you.” He shoved the whole handful of thrashing fish into his mouth, their tiny bones snapping as he thoroughly chewed.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
He moaned in appreciation as he swallowed them down. Then he went back under his tail for more. I lifted the lantern, scanning around for something more palpable as Leander stuffed more into his mouth.
“The brown seaweed over there looks decent,” I murmured, squinting in the distance. Leander’s tail whipped instantly, sending a spray of dazed herring floating every which way.
“You like laminaria?” he snorted. One beat of his tail was all it took to close the gap between us and billowing brown strands. “How very mermaid-like of you. How is vegetation going to fill you up?”
“Don’t forget I’m armed,” I warned, gesturing at my knife before poking him in the chest with a finger. Running a hand through the ribbons of seaweed, I broke off a few long strands. “I haven’t eaten raw fish in so long. I don’t know. It just seems gross to me now.”
“And laminaria doesn’t seem gross to you?” His face pinched as I brought the seaweed into my mouth. “It’s slimy.”
It was a bit slimy—and bland—but it would go down easier than a family of herring wiggling around in my mouth. Leander’s skeptical eyes watched as I swallowed it down and plucked up some more. “Well, it isn’t star grass, but I still think it’s good.”
Star grass had always been my favorite and was one of the things I missed most about my old life underwater. But it was also a rarity, so it would be a waste of time sending him on a hunt for some now. I doubted even royalty got to enjoy much of it.
“Star grass.” He hummed, looking out into the dark ocean ahead. He must have realized how unlikely it would be to find it growing in the stale waters of the harbor. “I’ll remember that.”
“See to it that you do,” I said with a joking air of royalty that got me a snort.
The only reason I’d even tasted something so above my status was because Papa had the keen eye of a collector and was always off on some mission or another. The best nights were when he came to get me from the palace with his sash wound into a bundle at the end of his spear.
That’s when I knew he’d found some, and later that night, after he’d carried me home, we would pluck the stars off one by one as we ate them and—
“Claira? What’s wrong?” The green glow of the lantern highlighted the sharp lines of worry forming over Leander’s face, drawing me back to the present.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I stuffed more of the bland brown ribbons into my mouth and chewed.
“Don’t tell me it was nothing. You were frowning.”
“Was I?” I broke off a bundle of seaweed and held it close. “If you’re full, you can start heading for your palace. I can just eat on the way since, well, what else am I going to do?”
The lines on his face melted into something soft. Sympathetic. “Hold the lantern. It’s a very important job,” he said gently, like he understood how much I hated feeling useless.
Dammit . I didn’t want his pity. For him to talk to me like I was a child. “Fine. I’ll hold the lantern,” I grumbled, and his arms locked around me.
Leander’s tail beat through the water with a strength that left me breathless. It was like the time he’d spent on land hadn’t mattered. Like it hadn’t disoriented his movements or withered his muscles at all.
Fields of seagrass passed us in a blur, the water rushing over my face and through my hair too fast to let me finish my breakfast. The darkness of the open ocean loomed like an ominous void in front of us, so I let the ribbons of seaweed slide from my fingers as I thrust the lantern forward to light Leander’s way. Pressure beat against my eardrums as we sank, the ocean floor falling deeper with every movement of his tail.
At this speed, how long would it take to reach the palace?
Wait . Did Leander even know how to get to the palace from here?
“Do you know where you’re going?” I asked when I noticed his tail had fallen into a simple rhythm. Three hard thrashes, then he let momentum carry us for a full three beats.
Laughter vibrated against my ear. “You don’t think I know the way to my kingdom?”
Holding the lantern steady, I tilted up to look at him, studying the way his eyes seemed to scour the seafloor. We passed a jagged rock speckled in moss, and his tail adjusted us in a new direction.
My eyes narrowed. “You’re following waymarks, aren’t you?”
Laughter soaked his voice like water rushing through a crack in a ship’s hull. “Possibly. But you weren’t supposed to notice that.”
He started pointing out each waymark we passed by. A patch of pink algae growing in the peculiar shape of a hook. The rotted mast of an unfortunate vessel that had apparently taken over two dozen mermen to orient in the appropriate direction.
Were these the sort of tasks Papa had traveled around for? Tending to landmarks that would make maps to guide wayward merfolk to the nearest kingdom?
It made sense. From what I knew about mermaids, they loved nothing more than to travel. A few landmarks might insure more would find their way back home if they ever decided to pass through.
A formation of rocks appeared in the distance, and I pointed at them with the lantern, curious if they were another marker. “And that over there?” I couldn’t imagine it taking less than a couple hundred mermen to erect stones that large.
“That…” Leander paused, chewing on his lip like he wasn’t sure if he should tell me, “… is a portal. It means we’re getting close to the palace gates.”
A portal?
“Wait, wait. What do you mean, a portal?” He had to mean a doorway, right? Not a magical gateway to some far-off world, like in a book or a fairy tale.
“To the other kingdoms. It isn’t really something that—”
“Can you take us over there?” I cut in, leaning over to get a better look. His tail beat even faster. We were about to pass it. “Come on, Lee! I want to see it.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. His tail swerved, knocking me back into his chest, but I didn’t complain. I was going to get to see a portal to other kingdoms. “Better now than after we have the trident. You have to understand, it isn’t a place meant for those who aren’t royalty. Only the magic from a trident can work the portals.”
I couldn’t keep my eyes from rolling. Leave it to Poseidon to bestow the trident-wielders with the power to create a magical portal system just for them.
We were close enough now to see the markings on the rocks, their steep sides jutting from the ocean floor like the fangs of an ancient sea beast. I counted six massive monoliths, each as blackened and ominous as the one sitting on either side of it.
We were close now, close enough that I could see into the center of the deep circle that the great rocks guarded. Then a slither of movement caught my eye, and terror coiled around my throat like a vise.
I didn’t know what creature it was, but instinct drove my body to clench as one long tendril rippled along the water, unraveling like a rolled-up swath of black velvet, the slash of agile flesh curving along the side of the nearest rock. Then another joined it.
And another.
Was it one or many? I didn’t know. But I did know that if it caught sight of the glowing beacon I carried, we were about to find out. “Stop, stop, stop,” I hissed, yanking on his shoulders until he looked down to see the panic on my face.
His tail stopped instantly. Or tried to, at least. It rubber-banded back, the recoil sending it into a little spin that had us spiraling downward. As soon as we touched the sand, I threw down the lantern, burrowing it into the seafloor in an effort to extinguish the glow.
“ The fuck ,” Leander’s voice was in my ear, but I kept digging. Kept covering. Kept raking sand. Why wasn’t he helping?
“You saw it, right? Saw them ?” I whispered, surprised by the panic in my voice. There was only a faint glow left. Maybe it hadn’t seen us.
“Saw what? Fuck, Claira, we need the lantern!”
I clapped a sandy hand over his giant, gaping mouth to quiet him, my eyes whipping back to the rocks. “ Shhhh , it’ll hear you. At least, if it has ears. I’m really not sure…”
Magic flickered over my eyes, and I gasped as the great monoliths seemed to come to life in the distance. Swirls and markings covered every inch of their surface, glowing a faint gray in my mind’s eye like an elaborate script or code had been scribed into them. And in the very center of the structure hovered one—no, two —creatures. Ones with sprawling tentacles that danced and curled around them like black cloaks of death.
My stomach burned as I squinted, willing my vision to sharpen, but not daring to ask Leander to get any closer.
They were eating. Feasting on something light and fleshy that sank into their middles— Wait .
“Leander,” I whispered, daring to crawl an arm’s length closer, but Leander held me tight. “Do you know of any merfolk that have human tops and octopus bottoms?”
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense at once. “No.”
Not that he knew of, at least. Because they were right there in monochrome, sixteen tentacles between the pair of them. I should have been happy they weren’t creatures feasting on human snacks, but the stark contrast of the ghostly white of their torsos next to the void of their appendages made me feel like these creatures were even more vicious than the merfolk I knew.
“No, not a mer,” he said, his calmness doing little to soothe my unease. “A cecaelia.”
Cecaelia ? Just the word struck a jolt of fear in me. But why?
“Poseidon help us. If they’re here, then they’ve already made it into the palace. We have to go,” he said suddenly, pulling me back. His arms were shaking, the twitch of his tail showing his reluctance to leave while knowing that other creatures might have infiltrated his kingdom. Was he torn between his duty as the Atlantic’s prince and the promise he’d made about not letting me get hurt? “Leave the lantern. I’ll swim blindly.”
He was going to swim blindly? We’d taken so many turns. How would he ever find his way back?
I spotted a waymark—the lone rudder of a ship sticking out of a bed of manatee grass—and grit my teeth. “To the left.”
Leander’s tail adjusted like he trusted my judgment, and I took a deep breath. Maybe he wouldn’t even question how I’d—
“You can see through the darkness?” he asked slowly. Hesitantly. Like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to learn my answer.
“… Possibly. But you weren’t supposed to notice that,” I said just as slowly, imitating the answer he’d given when I asked him about knowing the way to the palace.
His tail licked furiously through the water. I waited for him to speak until my heart couldn’t take his deafening silence a moment longer. “It isn’t normal, is it?”
He drew me close enough to nestle my forehead next to his neck and chuckled lightly. “Is anything about you normal?”
Well, he had a point there. I sighed softly, enjoying the feeling of his jaw pressing against me. “More to the left, and down a bit. There is a school of bass coming through.” Water tickled the insides of my nostrils as we dipped.
“We’ll talk to Barren when we get back,” he said when we straightened back out.
“ Barren? Why?” I didn’t even want to think about what he’d do if he learned of my night vision. If seeing in the dark wasn’t normal, then he’d for sure think I was some kind of witch.
“Most cecaelia hail from the Indian Ocean,” Leander said grimly. “Barren’s had a run-in or two that I know of, not that he’ll want to talk about it. But if there’s a way to get by them, he’ll know.”
I pictured the angry scars cutting into Barren’s shoulder. The grooves and gashes that had healed in such a way you could feel a sting of pain just looking at them. One of those cecaelia tentacles looked strong. Maybe even strong enough to tear off a limb.
Leander had said “get by them,” but what if he had to fight to get his father’s trident back from one of those creatures? It was almost too much to think about.
My hands shook, so I wrapped them around his neck to steady myself. Fear wasn’t helpful right now. First, we had to make it back. Then I’d worry about what came next. “Up a bit. There are some rocks coming up.”
He took in a deep breath of relief. “Thanks, Claira. I can’t see whaleshit right now.”
My pulse fluttered. Maybe, just this once, it would be okay if I allowed myself to feel a tiny bit useful underwater.
Just this once.