Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)
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Claira
T he palace gates were nothing like the proud barriers that lived in my memory. They stood porous and brittle above me, stripped bare of gems and coral coving. Even the tips of their once great palisades looked blunted and tide-beaten. We passed through them quickly, my head thumping against the fleshy prop winding around my shoulders while my tail swept freely against the stones below.
But bodily pain couldn’t shake me, not now. The bite of the rocks, the crushing weight on my shoulders—it was nothing compared to the cruel shards of loss working like splinters through my insides. This all-consuming worry, this emptiness in me, not knowing whether any of us would make it out of the ocean alive.
Well, I knew with complete certainty that at least one of us wouldn’t.
“Can you believe she slaughtered a knight? Bludgeoned him right here, right in the chest.” The voice came from the nightmare at the head of the group, brash and uncaring about who overheard him. “And not only that, but I heard the queen herself was eyeing him for some private work, eh? Always looking for a bit of something new in her bedchambers, you know.” He broke into a suggestive purr that told me he would gladly slide into those chambers. “Guess she’ll be looking for some new meat now. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for my fat cock to be the closest thing near to her when she hears the news!”
That got a shudder out of me.
Their queen must have been blind if she thought that thing we’d fought was a prize worth welcoming into her bed. Those void-black eyes, those twisted lips…
“I imagine Her Majesty will have her revenge once that shadow puppet of hers gets his hooks into this one,” the great brute who’d caught me cut in. He vented an overblown laugh as he glided down the thoroughfare, tossing me against the sandy cobbles like a child carelessly dragging a ragdoll behind him.
“Hope he lets us stick around to see it. I enjoy a good racking. Just think of the wonderful squeals this one would make.” That was a voice I hadn’t heard before, and she sounded just lovely.
I couldn’t decide which was more ominous: the hooks, the racking, or the face-off between me and a queen’s shadow puppet.
Quietly, I muttered a prayer to the water, letting the current carry it away. I’ll praise you until my dying breath, Poseidon . “Just please let them be safe…”
Unable to move my neck, I stared up at the lanterns as they passed, letting the firm suction of the appendages manipulate me at their will. Milky algae covered every sea glass pane, and for the first time in my memory, not a single lantern was lit.
It shouldn’t have been surprising that magic had left this place along with the merfolk, but here I was, oddly shaken by it. Disturbed. The mighty Atlantic kingdom had become as broken as I was. A bright, magnificent palace dragged down by a useless layer of scum and shadows. And all I could think was, what a terrible place to die.
Loose rubble scraped at my scales as we veered off the path, sending a note of danger ringing against my eardrums. Polished walls grew rougher, darker, and then somehow darker still as we ventured around the palace’s perimeter.
This wasn’t the way to King Eamon’s old throne.
My gut whirled as the main tentacle binding me whipped with a strength that forced me along with it, chafing against rocks, thumping against dwellings, taking me further from the path I’d known. Realization choked me tighter than the squeezing weight around my shoulders.
They were taking me to a place I didn’t know. A place Papa had never dared carry me. The dungeons below the palace.
“Looks like you’ve sapped all the fight out of her,” the one who enjoyed a good racking said, and she broke off from the rest of the group.
“Don’t strangle her to death just yet. The queen won’t be satisfied if her puppet doesn’t get to play.” Prizing eyes and a sly mouth teased a glance at me before she slid away, vanishing into a crack in the rock wall of the palace like her body had been made up of nothing more than oozy slime and cruelty.
I had little time to process what “play” could mean before the surrounding bands constricted—oh, they were definitely strangling—and they were suddenly pulling me down the great throat of a chasm, leaving the rest of the group scattering behind.
I’d heard Papa speak of the dungeons, sure, but I never once imagined its gaping entrance butting against the rear of the palace, nor how far down the ragged, narrow trench would plunge.
When we finally hit the bottom, my eyes scoured over every detail—the barnacles set over the rocks, the abandoned ribcage and stretch of tail bones spread next to a ring of pitted chains that draped down the walls. Every nook, every crevice led to more chains, more decay.
This… this was a horror that predated the cecaelia’s arrival.
That thought shocked through me, sickening me more than any cruelty I’d suffered at the hands of the merfolk had. This dungeon, this pit of bones, was a dark mechanism of the Atlantic kingdom’s creation.
How many merfolk had King Eamon sent down here unjustly, like he’d sent me into his makeshift brig? Had Papa had a hand in it? It wasn’t hard to imagine him down here, locking and chaining, leaving live bodies spread about for the needlefish to pick clean. Would he then slide back up to collect me from the luxury of the palace, wearing his proud sash and smile like he wasn’t secretly a horror himself?
The dungeon was black as pitch, and even if the kingdom still held magic, I saw no lanterns to light. No, they had left these prisoners to rot in complete darkness.
Metal vibrated against the cavernous ceiling, and the cecaelia lifted me high, tossing me into an empty cell with a sudden lash that had me bouncing off the slimy, barnacled back wall. The weight of my tail drew me down to the bottom of the prison, and when my eyes opened, the brute’s ghostly pale face and scarred nose were close enough to surge a vile stream of water over me with his next salty breath.
Tentacles prodded as dark, unfeeling eyes took me in.
“Bludgeoned a knight to death,” he scoffed, poking at my ribs and the dead weight of my tail. He swept my hair up into a cruel twist and pulled it back, bowing my neck.
A slim tendril curled under my chin, and he used it to draw me even closer. His gaze sat heavy on my eyes, but I stared right through him, easily pretending the ocean was as dark and empty as the gashes in my heart. “I know of your kind’s tricks,” he said finally, and a probing pressure slithered down my arm, snapping the leather pouch clean off my wrist as soon as it came to it.
A second touch crept up my side, winding around my ribs, where it stopped to tease at the edge of my bra.
“No,” I gasped, twisting away from the firm pressure, endeavoring to get away from the brute for the first time since he’d snatched me up. “ Please. ”
The cecaelia’s fat lips tightened. “Do not flatter yourself.” His tentacle yanked the knife from my bra and swung it high over his shoulder. “Your pretty hair reeks of fish and lies. There were two of you, yes? Or was it all an illusion? A vision of magic? Tell me, how did you take down one of my brothers alone?”
My mouth clamped shut. If we hadn’t been underwater, I’d have loved to pull a page from Laverne’s handbook and shoot a wad of spit between his eyes. Give him the Albert treatment.
A strike of metal rippled through the stale water, and every inch of him, every restless feeler, stilled. He waited for the next strike to waft out a putrid breath.
“Well,” he whispered, drawing away. “It seems you’ll soon learn that not all magic is tricks and illusions.”
The prison gate drew shut behind him, but he didn’t bother securing it. Why hadn’t he locked it?
He threw the pouch of pearls down next to my knife as he retreated and let out a low, rumbling laugh. Silently, I stared at them. The knife, the pearls. They were close enough I could reach them through the bars, but I didn’t dare crawl for them just yet. Not while I felt the weight of a new gaze hidden in the darkness.
“ Leave us ,” a new voice said. Two sharp words spoken with the authority of a king.
The brute didn’t need to be told twice. He slunk out of the dungeon with haste, but whoever had spoken the words drifted ever closer.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Dark shadows seemed to move into the prison along with him, sucking the oxygen from the water with his approach. Suddenly dizzy, my head buzzed, shooting prickles all the way down to my fingertips. What… what was he? The shadow puppet the others had spoken of?
I squinted, looking through the prison bars, the rocks, the long rows of chains, and barely made out the harsh angles of a dark weapon held high toward the ceiling. Wait . Three deadly sharp points.
A trident.
Magic billowed off it in thick streams, clouding my night vision in a dark mist that obstructed my view of its wielder.
Then my blood chilled as the mist spread without the need of the water’s current, splitting into dark lines that seeped underneath the prison bars like tiny armies of ants. I gasped, my arms scrambling to move me out of the path of the charging magical mist, but there was no place to go, no means to escape it. The lines connected, curling around my forearms, seizing me up by my arms.
“What is this magic?” I gasped, brought up high enough I was hanging helplessly in the water.
I’d never seen anything like this dark magic.
The mist was condensing now, tugging at the end of my tail, fixing it to the wall behind me. It cradled at my shoulders, spreading my arms until they were wide above my head. The bonds pulled taut, and I cried out as each strand tightened and forced my back flat against the filthy prison wall.
The magic was quickly solidifying into… ropes? I struggled to move my wrists, but the bindings had the strength of forged metal, their lengths fastening, knotting, and weaving together in a beautiful, terrible tapestry until finally moving up as one, anchoring to the ceiling of the cavern for support.
When the magic finally settled, blackened strands of seaweed restrained every curve, every limb, forcing me up against the rugged, scum-crusted wall in a net of artfully tangled knots I’d never be able to escape.
This was why the brute hadn’t bothered with locks. He knew exactly what would happen, who would come here, but at least he hadn’t used hooks. I eyed the trident again, but as soon as the clouds of magic started to dissipate, its wielder turned, vanishing into thin wisps of magic smoke.
And I was all alone.
“ Shit .” I struggled with my wrists, then my shoulders, but the seaweed held strong, its dark chords infused with strange, uncanny lines that shimmered like spider thread in my vision. Freaking magic .
I knew dying wouldn’t be fun, but I hadn’t expected being turned into a hanging rug, left to wither away on the wall of an undersea prison.
My head fell forward as I looked down at my tail, taking in how the seaweed had captured the length of it against the wall in an intricate series of knots that made certain it couldn’t slip free. A puff of bitter humor rattled my chest. What a waste of magical effort that had been.
My lips fell into a hard frown as I hung there, hopeless. Now that I was finally alone, all the feelings rushed back, the emotions bubbling up. Leander, Kai, Barren. Oh, what I wouldn’t do to go back to that morning that felt so long ago. I would have never gone out, never would have fished Leander up into my boat.
No, that wasn’t true.
The thought of not saving Leander, not fighting and pushing him away, not having his arms around me when we inevitably came crashing back together. Never knowing Kai’s bright, gentle smile, nor the comfort of Barren’s immovable strength. The thought of losing all of them made me shake in my bindings. It was too much to bear.
No, I didn’t regret it. I didn’t regret them. Never. My only regret was that I’d been too useless to help them. Too distracted to keep them safe.
Too worthless as a mermaid.
A faint tapping caught in my ear, and I flinched, wondering if the trident wielder was already returning with his hooks. Another tap sounded, and my eyes darted around.
It was too soft to be the striking of a trident, but what could it be?
My gaze landed on the leather pouch of pearls. I stared at it, too afraid to even breathe, until the middle moved ever so slightly. Something was alive, knocking around inside it.
My mouth fell open as a tiny nose poked its way out of the drawstring top, then an eye, followed by the delicately frilled body of a fish.
No… no. It wasn’t right. I’d tried to save him. He… he shouldn’t be here, not in this prison, not with me.
“Leander,” I choked out, and the fish seemed to hear my call, its little eyes shifting in my direction.
I watched him swim closer, his tiny fins carrying him slowly, carefully, in the still water like even that was a struggle, and I couldn’t hold back.
No one can cry underwater, but I made a damn good effort as Leander’s fins fought to get closer, my sobs leading him back to me through the darkness.
Pop .
And then he was on me, his brilliant body up against mine, his throat venting a starved gasp for air like he hadn’t had a proper breath since the moment he’d turned into a betta. “ Claira .”
But he didn’t seem to care about breathing or conversation past that. Hands trembling from exhaustion found my face, and lips crashed against mine, his mouth drinking me down like I was his oxygen.
He was shaking all over. He needed actual oxygen . But he just kept tending, pressing, skimming my lips with his tongue like he couldn’t get enough. I turned my head away the moment his lips let up on mine. “Why did you—?”
But no, his stubborn mouth claimed mine again, too needy to listen to reason. My mind reeled—he wasn’t supposed to be here. He should have been working his way up to the surface, back to Barren and Kai and the rest of his kingdom. This… this infuriating idiot!
I bit at his lip, hoping the sting would finally drive him away, but he let out a hungry growl for more that stoked a fire deep in my belly.
“You cannot tell me you love me,” he rumbled, tongue slashing, teeth raking, “and expect me not to follow you.”