Page 4 of Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

4

Leander

A harsh light irritated the back of my eyelids. I would have shielded my eyes from the nagging glare, but I could barely feel my arms.

“Ugh,” I moaned, my stomach clenching. Everything ached. I fought to sit up, but something heavy was draped over my chest, pinning me down. “Shit , did I get fucking keelhauled or something?”

Grit scraped at my throat, my lungs grating like sandpaper. Where the hell was I? This didn’t feel like sand.

The last thing I remembered was diving in the ocean, and— oh shit, that’s right. I’d been swimming back to the palace— or attempting to , I thought with a grimace.

After a minute of combating my fetters, exhaustion won, and I slackened where I lay. Fuck . Vibrations rattled my bruised ribs as I groaned, the pain only adding to my frustration. Damn, I’m an idiot . Desperation had driven me toward the palace, but the journey had been a fucking fool’s errand from the very start.

A shadow shifted above me, the movement snapping my body to high alert. My muscles protested the activity, but it was a necessary precaution. Wherever I was, I wasn’t alone.

“So, you’re finally awake.” A feminine voice drifted over me like a spell. Melodious and smooth, each syllable bounded off her tongue like she had deliberately crafted it to draw me to her. My head turned on instinct, the sound of her voice apparently intriguing enough for my body to get its shit together without bothering to wait for my brain’s input.

So she was a mermaid, then—but not a voice I recognized. Fuck .

“Yeah, sure, I’m awake.” I shook my head back and forth, attempting to clear the haze her words had cast over me. And what in Poseidon’s Deep had she used to hold me down?

My voice dropped to a dangerous growl. “I hope for your sake you planned on letting me go.”

Something creaked from above, and my eyes focused just as my captor came into view.

“Release you?” Her head craned over me, the act sending flaming red strands flowing over the side of the four-poster bed where she lay. Playful gray eyes examined mine, their brows dipped in mischievous amusement. Her spine straightened as she swung her legs down next to me. “Well, that all depends on you, pretty boy.”

Pretty boy? I definitely didn’t know this mermaid. If she had known who I was, she wouldn’t have dared to address me so carelessly. Interesting .

“Pretty boy, huh?” I chuckled despite my aching ribcage, feeling my lips curl at their edges. “I kind of like the ring it has when you say it.”

An abrupt scoff let me know she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

Very interesting.

She rose to her feet, and I followed the fluid motion of her legs as she strode around me, the cords of my neck burning from the slight motion. Worth it, though. Her hand went to a shelf, and she veered back, dropping a safe distance next to me.

“What’s your name?” I flashed my teeth as I spoke. If she thought my face was pretty , then I’d be an idiot not to use it to my advantage. Hopefully it wasn’t as bruised and bloodied as the nagging pulse running through my head suggested.

Whatever she had done to me would take time to shake off, more time than I had to waste lying around. Dealing with a mermaid underwater was tricky, but a mermaid on land was fucking ruthless. There was no telling what she planned to do with me now that she had me.

She shoved a sheet of glass in front of my face, and the movement sent my eyes reeling. “Whoa, give me a second.”

While I honed my vision, one finger tapped insistently on a wooden frame surrounding the glass.

“You see this?” she said, her tone flat.

Under the glass, a girl with scarlet hair stood next to a marlin strung up on a rafter. It had to be at least twice her length, if not longer. “Uh, yeah. I see it.”

Her finger dragged over the glass, up and down the length of the unfortunate fish. “Over nine hundred pounds—fast as lightning—and I caught it.” Her voice dropped with every breath, malice weighing down her words. “And do you know what I did after I caught it?”

“You, uh, you strung it up on a rafter and—”

“ Wrong .” She leaned forward, dropping the frame from my eyes. Her probing gaze seized me, her gray eyes dark and unblinking.

“It was too big to stuff, so you know what I did?” she continued, but I knew better than to offer an answer this time.

“After my dad snapped this pretty little keepsake photo, I sliced it up. The head went first. Then I dragged my knife in, cutting along its belly, before raking my blade over each and every one of its bony scales, prying them off one by one. I didn’t stop until the entire carcass was smoother than a clam. Let me ask you, have you ever tasted marlin?”

I let my jaw open a fraction, but her words kept coming.

“Delicious devils, but a pain to catch and reel in. I carved out steak after steak, enough marlin to fill up an entire deep freezer and then the neighbor’s after. I didn’t stop until the only thing left was the very tip of its tail, and then that , I stuffed.”

She illustrated her story by pointing to a trophy mounted on the wall beside us, my eyes following the gesture of her hand. The fin spanned nearly half the wall. Pretty impressive for one mermaid to catch.

As she took in a deep breath, her chest puffed in triumph.

My jaw tensed as I weighed the significance of her tale. One wrong move, and she wouldn’t hesitate to dismantle me limb from limb. Then maybe, if I was lucky, my tail would keep the marlin’s company on her wall.

I fought back a chuckle. She expected me to feel threatened, but I couldn’t help my amusement. It would take more than one crazed mermaid to sunder me from my tail.

Mermaids truly were ruthless, but how long had this one been living on land? She looked younger under the glass, her red hair chopped much shorter than it was now.

My eyes trailed down the long waves resting against her shoulders, and I let myself admire how the light deepened some parts and gave others the impression of being made of molten liquid.

I had known a mermaid with hair a similar color once, though time and the pain of loss had muddled my memories. I cast the nagging prickle of remembrance from my mind as I glanced back at the marlin’s tail.

“So you plan on mounting me, eh?” I flashed another grin. “I’m flattered.”

She stifled a snort. Getting to her feet, she returned the glass to the shelf, and my eyes snapped back in time to watch her movement.

“I just wanted you to know what I can do with a knife if it came to it.”

“Mm… Consider it noted.”

Legs looked good on her. Long and shapely, the blue denim fabric of her shorts clung to the ample swell of her hips. I swallowed hard against the sting of sand in my throat. My mouth suddenly felt drier than ever.

Mermaids . There was no doubt they were built to mess with my head. I knew better than to trust their honeyed voices, the tantalizing sway of their curves, or the playful way their hair flared around them with careless abandon. Every bit was fake and calculated, and I was rarely fuck-strated enough to deal with the whaleshit that came after they got what they wanted from me.

I’d let their delicate grace enchant me once—just once. Long ago, but not again. Not ever again.

I forced my eyes to rip away from her thighs long enough to focus down on my bindings. “Well, I’ll be sure to duck out if I see you pull a knife. What is this on top of me, by the way? It’s like I’m being keelhauled.”

“Oh, right.” Her threatening aura all but crumbled as she hurried to seize the end of whatever was crushing my shoulders. Closer to me now than she had ever been before, it was impossible not to notice the way she sucked in her lower lip as she went to work hauling the mass from my chest.

As the layer peeled away, I gasped in a deep breath, my lungs feeling practically weightless in an instant. My chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm while I greedily took in breath after breath.

“It’s a weighted blanket,” she panted, dropping it in a heap beside her. “You were freezing when I found you, so I brought you in and turned the heater on, but your teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, so…”

Her voice trailed. She stood up beside me, but her eyes no longer met mine, and silence drifted about the room.

Taking in one more deep breath, I fought up on my elbows. Thinner coverings fell around me as I folded forward, and heat bombarded my bare chest. I turned toward the source, deciding that the square box next to me must have been the heater she spoke of.

“I see. Thanks, uh—” I hesitated, suddenly wondering if I owed her some sort of life debt. “Shouldn’t I know the name of my captor? I’m Leander.”

Her eyes darted to mine but diverted away in a blink. She didn’t respond.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think we’ve met before. I never forget a mermaid—”

All the color drained from her face in an instant. Her body jerked, a gasp breaking over my words.

“I-I’m not a mermaid,” she bleated, her words far too forceful to be convincing.

“You… aren’t?” My chin slanted, sending matted pieces of hair tickling my eyelashes. Scanning from her huge, deep-set eyes to the innate pouting of her rosy lips, my eyes narrowed in suspicion. Even her flaming hair had an otherworldly glimmer to it, and I let myself imagine what it might look like fanned out and weightless underneath the waves.

“Wait.” I snapped forward. More coverings fell around me as I scrutinized her features further.

Playful gray eyes that tempted me to them. The soft curves of her heart-shaped face.

“ Nerida? ” I let the name loose from my tongue before I even knew my brain had conjured it up from long locked away memories.

Instead of answering, she dove forward, clapping a hand over my mouth.

“ Careful, ” she snapped, the simple word striking like a dagger. “My name is Claira , and I am not a mermaid . ”

But her rancor had already given away the truth. Her palm lingered over my lips, but I barely felt it. My senses had dulled, my mind leagues under the sea, dreaming up the vision of a young mermaid that was once brought to the palace daily. Until one day, for the first time I could ever remember, her father had arrived at his post alone.

Nerida . She was alive.