Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

8

Claira

A burlap sack was over my head. A freaking sack .

My steel-toes pummeled every angle, but my boots were met with walls in every direction. An engine revved, and my stomach lurched. A trunk. They’d locked me in a trunk!

I thrashed wildly, trying to shake off the sack, but it wouldn’t budge—those harpies from the bait shop must have tied it . Scratchy weave sucked into my mouth as I seethed, ravenous for air and freedom.

Who in Poseidon’s Deep hated me enough to do something like this? Oh, I had some idea. A certain pretty boy prince. I wanted to scream out his name, but I knew I’d have an aneurism if I let it slip from my lips.

But plotting how I was going to carve out his tail would have to wait. The most important thing was figuring out how to get away. Think, Claira .

I needed air, and having a fit was only going to exhaust what little I had faster. I jiggled my head once more, praying the bag would miraculously slip loose, but it held in place. Go figure.

My body stilled from fear, and I concentrated on slow, steady breaths. The car was speeding up, which meant they’d either just put me in the trunk, or they’d stopped somewhere and were continuing their journey again.

Crap . There was no telling where I’d end up. How the heck was I supposed to get back home?

Sweat plastered my hair to my face, the long strands working their way into my mouth with every desperate gasp I made for air. My hands were bound and positioned behind my back. Those two certainly had thought of everything.

The car swerved, and the tires landed on rumble strips, the rattling making me queasy. Whoever was at the wheel sure had no freaking clue how to drive. Another jerk, and the vibrations kept coming to the point where I had to wonder if they were using the strips as a guide to stay on the road.

By the time the car screeched to a halt, I was seasick for the very first time. If I hadn’t felt so damn miserable, I might have been impressed. I didn’t think it was possible for a mermaid to even get motion sickness.

Car doors opened and shut with a thunk , and my pulse came to life. If the trunk popped open, that was it. It would be my best chance to escape. My feet weren’t tied. I could do it. Judging by the driver’s ineptitude, the two women could have very well been mermaids themselves, which meant I’d have an advantage on foot.

I was a freaking cheetah when it came to running. I’d practiced daily those first few years and even did track in high school. I could do it. I could get away from them.

The trunk popped, and I froze in the fetal position.

You’ve got this, Claira.

Hands came for me, and I let them.

“You think she passed out again? It’s been quiet back here for a while,” a feminine voice asked in a whisper. So it really had been those two.

“Hmm. You think?” Fingers gripped my neck and squeezed. Sharp nails bit into my skin through the sack, and I shrieked as the steely grip tensed, the fingers crushing my windpipe. “Oh, I think she’s awake.”

That same hand yanked me up by the throat, and I sputtered into the burlap.

“Aleena, don’t! You don’t want to make him angry,” the other voice whimpered.

The grip loosened around my neck, and I slumped forward. Another pair of hands pulled me out of the trunk, but I found it hard to focus on my plan.

“Him,” she’d said . Him.

Leander, that betta fish bastard!

They dragged me forward, causing my feet to fall behind me. That’s right—I needed to run! I ground my steel-toes into the asphalt, but arms clamped around my legs and lifted them, stringing me in the air between the two of them like a telephone wire.

Oh, heck no!

I started to thrash about, but needle-tipped nails dug into my ankles.

“No you don’t.” The woman in front of me laughed, and I flailed with a greater purpose. I wanted to whack her so hard that I slapped the lipstick right off her face.

Crafty, bowed fingers slid from my arms to my throat, and I hesitated. “There, that’s a good little mermaid. Any more of that, and I’ll drag you there by your neck.”

My body locked up, and the woman cackled again. I huffed into the burlap sack, letting them carry me off.

Something clinked in front of us, and I listened as a latch clicked loose. Metal ground against metal, the noise loud and continuous, like they had rolled a shed or a garage door up on its tracks. Fear shot through me, and my clenched fists trembled where they were tied behind my back.

Would they shove me somewhere and leave me bound and covered like this? My lungs couldn’t take much more. Every hard-won breath through the sack was torture already.

Two sets of heels clacked, the sound echoing as they carried me into the unknown structure. The blood drained from my head as bile slid up my throat. Fingernails retreated, and the surrounding hands departed, sending my body slamming onto cold concrete. The impact forced what little air I had left in my lungs out, and Gram’s clam chowder simmered in my belly, threatening to coat the inside of the burlap sack.

“We brought you a gift, Your Majesty,” the voice of the woman with dark lips purred, her words sugary enough to give me a toothache on top of everything else. Pressure fell away from under my chin, and the sack was ripped from my head. Oh, thank Poseidon.

Air flooded my lungs. I gasped for breath like a fished-up trout, my body crumpled in a heap on the floor. Ravenous for more, I pressed my cheek against the cool concrete and sucked down breath after breath of fresh air.

“Very well, we accept your offering. Bring her closer. We wish to examine her.”

Oh no.

There was no mistaking whom they had delivered me to. Even above water, King Eamon sounded like a foghorn, his gravelly voice possessing the authoritative tone of a natural-born ruler. His every command was absolute, and I could still remember how his light blue eyes had pierced through me, his gaze more pointed than the deadly tips of the magic-infused trident he wielded.

My chin lifted as I strained to see him, but my newfound friends yanked me to my feet before I could focus. Freaking harpies .

The thought of them being cursed delighted me. They deserved a curse and so, so much more. Poseidon help them if I ever caught one of them near salt water. One good kick of my boot, and bye-bye betta.

King Eamon sat before me on top of a foldable beach chair with all the dignity and poise of a leader. His legs were splayed, resting over the pink-and-yellow-striped seat, his posture as straight as it had been when he had sat atop his coral-laced throne.

I gulped. Even a mound of trash could be a throne when a king as imposing as him sat on it.

Cold sweat dripped from my hair as my eyes darted, taking in my surroundings. Corrugated steel walls surrounded the open space, and metal poles spanned the ceiling like a grid, the harsh overhead lighting reminding me of a warehouse.

The merfolk had fabricated structures all around the wooden platform where the king’s beach chair sat. The various hues and patterns of the cloth clashed against one-another, reminding me of a brightly colored coral reef. Someone had strung long swaths of mismatched fabric up on poles, partitioning off sections of the building and making it look like some sort of intricate vagrant village.

Hollow, expressionless faces peeked at me from the shadows of the dwellings, looking just as cast out as the trash they were now forced to call home. The cloth constructing the nearest hut wrinkled and swayed as two merfolk looked out, both watching me and the king’s platform in curious silence.

The rubber on the soles of my boots squealed as the women brought me up to the throne’s edge. King Eamon leaned forward, bracing a hand on his knee. Bright blue irises speared through me.

“Nerida, is it?” he asked—as if he hadn’t watched me grow up alongside his son during the entire nine years I’d spent under the waves.

Perhaps kings were too important to remember the names and faces of those they had written off as dead.

“King Eamon,” I forced out through gritted teeth. My hair was a tangled mess, the strands matted, pulling at my cheeks as I spoke. As if his penetrating gaze hadn’t already made me feel small enough.

Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass pierced my eardrums, and even the harpies on either side of me flinched at the sudden disturbance.

A body swayed out from behind two bright orange curtains. The man it belonged to was muttering loudly to himself, disrupting the entire scene. Guess he hadn’t gotten the memo about the hostage situation.

Although clearly drunk, he was still a giant. The unbelievable broadness of his chest suggested he’d once spent countless hours training underwater with a spear. Arms flew out, and the man swung half of a broken bottle through the air, stumbling two steps closer to me. My breath caught.

Gray irises veered about the room as his head rolled back, his eyes possibly searching for mine but seemingly unable to settle on which direction to look.

The man toed forward again, his gait wobblier and more uncertain than a newborn deer’s, until one of his muscled shoulders caught a pole, stopping him mid-step. Wrapping around it, he tripped over his own feet and crumbled forward, taking an orange blanket down with him. Even on rickety mortal legs, it was impossible not to recognize him.

Papa .

Bitter laughter filled the warehouse after Papa landed. The vicious sound had escaped my throat before I’d even realized it.

Oh, the hours I’d wasted thinking about this very moment.

What would I do—how would I feel —if I ever saw my birth father again?

Well, now I knew.

It seemed eleven years was far too long to wait around for him to reclaim me. Too long to spend dreaming of his comfort and craving his affection. It was too late. Now I was as twisted and soulless as the harpies clawing at my sides.

Looking upon him now, I was empty. Looking upon him now, my heart felt nothing.

The king cleared his throat, and the deep rumble was so gripping that it drew my eyes away from the pitiful drunkard who had once been my father.

“Nerida,” he continued, “we welcome you back to the Kingdom of the Atlantic, where you are once again under our protection and jurisdiction. As such, we henceforth charge you with treason against the Kingdom of the Atlantic’s Throne.”

Um, what?

“ Aleena, Arina, please see Nerida to the brig.”

“Treason?” I choked out. “But I didn’t do anything! I was thrown out of the Atlantic against my will in the first place. I’m hardly even a mermai—”

Aleena’s fingers clamped over my mouth, and I didn’t even hesitate. I bit the shit out of them. She drew back, wailing and whipping her hand through the air. Her face suddenly hardened, and she slapped her bloody palm across my face.

Oh, that bitch .

As I reared my neck back to headbutt her, a shower curtain with a cheerful dolphin printed on the side of it slid open from behind the king’s throne. A familiar asshole caught my eye.

My cheek was already throbbing, but I barely felt it through my rage.

“Leander!” I called from across the platform, a raw fury vibrating my entire being.

He leaned against a partition pole, casually folding his arms over his chest, and watched me in silence.

That freaking bastard was behind all of this, and oh, he was going to pay.

“LEANDER, you BAST—” A knee went into my gut, forcing the breath out of my lungs before I could finish relaying my sentiments in front of the entire kingdom.

The women ripped me away from the platform in unison, and I writhed against their arms just to see that bastard’s face again. Sliding the shower curtain closed, Leander walked back into the makeshift building like none of this had anything to do with him at all.

Oh, it had everything to do with him.

Quilts and patterned blankets passed my peripherals, and I let my body go slack.

Aleena hissed out a curse and slung her hand in the air, letting the other woman do the bulk of the work dragging me to the back of the warehouse. “You’re going to pay for that when I’m crowned queen, you little bitch.”

“You sure you’re queen material?” I snorted out as they dragged me between them. Her nasty attitude might actually pair well with Leander’s. “’Cause an angler knows a couple of bottom feeders when she sees them.”

She let out a little huff that quickly shifted into dry laughter when she threw back a curtain.

This was the brig?

Isolated in the very back of the warehouse, a small cage sat against the back wall. From a glance, it appeared to be crafted out of old wooden pallets—the entire structure no bigger than a kennel for a medium-sized dog.

Aleena dropped my arm to swing the wooden door open, still cackling as she went.

“One last thing,” she sneered. Her hands roughly patted down every inch of my body. She ran over every pocket, in every fold, and even into my boots. Oh, if Arina hadn’t been holding my ankles, I would have relished steel-toeing her in the face.

When Aleena was finally satisfied, she yanked me away from Arina’s grip and pushed me headfirst into the tiny makeshift brig. My face hit the wood, and I didn’t even have time to draw my legs the rest of the way into the cage before they were kicking at the back of my knees.

“Freaking harpies,” I hissed, pulling my heavy boots over the threshold until I could fold my legs beside me.

The splintered wooden door slammed shut, and Aleena clicked the latch with a grin, taking the key out and waving it in front of my face.

“Why do you hate me so much?” I asked, actually curious. Aleena, Arina. Neither of their names seemed familiar to me from the time I’d spent in the ocean. As far as I knew, the three of us were complete strangers.

Aleena’s lips tightened into a hard line, but she didn’t say a word. How strange . I’d expected her to be more than willing to tell me what it was about me she disliked so much.

Tucking the key into her pocket, she glanced at me with one final scoff and turned, walking over to where Arina was waiting at the edge of the curtain.

Now that I had been dealt with, the warehouse had come alive with commotion. Voices and laughter reverberated off the walls, their cloth-based structures doing little to contain the joyful noise of boisterous merfolk. Maybe they weren’t so downtrodden after all.

I groaned and took a quick glance around the cage. There wasn’t really much to see. My bunched-up legs almost pressed against my chest, and my head was only a few inches under the wooden top. My ass hurt, and splinters from the rough planks pierced through my jeans.

Ugh. When I did finally get out of here, I’d be pulling slivers out of my rear for a week.

“Thank you, Aleena, Arina. You may go back to your family,” a deep voice drifted from the other side of the curtain. A muscled arm pulled the fabric back, and Aleena glanced at me, a worried look on her face. Turning back, she blew Leander a kiss—a sentiment he seemed to ignore—and strode through the curtain, Arina following closely at her heels.

Leander stepped into the back room of the brig, letting the fabric fall back behind him.

“You know, I never thought much of you, Leander. But abduction? That’s a new low.” My eyes narrowed as he drew closer to my cage.

It’d been over a month since the last time I’d seen him. What an idiot I’d been, thinking it was going to be the last.

After our reunion, he had apparently taken time to clean himself up. His sleek hair shone like spun gold, the loose waves teasing over his brow line.

Crouching down at the cage’s door, Leander ran a hand through that otherworldly hair of his, the ruffled strands falling right back into place the moment his fingers passed through. I stared at him through the wooden slats, but his eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

“I’m sorry, Claira. I didn’t know he was going to lock you up like this. You know how my father can be.” His voice was low and drawn out, as if he was carefully considering each word before he spoke it.

“Do I know?” I asked, my tone laced with venom. “Because honestly, I was just a child when I knew him, and forgive me, my prince , but I haven’t really been keeping up with undersea politics these last few years.”

White fabric pulled tight over the expanse of Leander’s chest as he took in a deep breath. “I didn’t mean for him to find out, but you don’t understand what it’s like for us here. You saw them out there. And not just them. Thousands of lives are at stake. All the merfolk in the entire ocean,” he said, his knuckles twining and pulling at his hair again. “I had to reach out to the other kingdoms just to see if there was anyone else—anyone else like you that still had their tail. I didn’t mean for this. I—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a prince?” I growled, and Leander’s gaze shot up from under the canopy of his fringe. “Stop giving me all these excuses. Merman up. Look me in the eyes and admit that you’re the reason they shoved me in this cage, Leander!”

A red tint rose over Leander’s cheeks, but he squared his jaw. Eyes focusing, his gaze penetrated me much like his father’s eyes just had. A trail of ice skated up my spine.

“I’m the reason you’re in this cage.”

Satisfied, I nodded. “So what comes next? Am I bound for the gallows? Keelhauled? Executed, maybe, for daring to be abandoned by my own father?”

He let out a heavy sigh and held his palm up to the lock. “No, Claira. The king only put you in here because he’s scared.”

“Scared?” I laughed bitterly. “I don’t think there is anything King Eamon is afraid of.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, the words a breathy whisper. “There’s a lot to fear when a king has lost his kingdom. He technically isn’t even the king if you go by the Law of the Ocean.”

I paused, thinking back to how he had been sitting on the throne. “His trident.”

“That’s right.” Leander nodded, then clenched his fist, dragging his knuckles against the wooden cage. “It’s still underwater. That’s why I went and… well, that’s the reason I ended up in your net. And that’s also why we need you to get it back before someone or something else finds it.”

“There’s just one gaping hole in your plan,” I said plainly. His head cocked, one of his eyebrows rising in interest. “Several, really. But the main problem is I hate you. You think you can have me beat up, tied up, trunked up, half suffocated, freaking dragged all over, thrown in a pit of splinters, and then order me to help you?”

I took in a quick breath just so I could continue. “No, just—no. Only a few weeks ago, you were arrogant enough to say that you had thought we’d been friends this entire time, but look at us! Look at where you are, and look at where I am. Is this how you treat your friends, Leander? Selling them out, binding them up, and throwing them into cages when they won’t go along with your every command?”

Unable to contain my rage any longer, I reared back and body-slammed the front of the cage like a rabid animal. “You are nothing! Not a friend, hardly a prince, no better than a worthless, scummy bottom feeder!”

Leander jerked away from the rocking cage and straightened up on his feet. For a moment, he watched me, but when it was painfully clear there was nothing more to be said between us, he finally slipped back through the curtain. That’s what I thought.

Spit frothed in my mouth, adrenaline making my pulse come alive. If I’d been able to run in circles, I would have—anything to work off the burst of energy that was suddenly surging through my veins.

My eyes darted over every inch of the cage, taking in every splintered piece of wood some na?ve mer had crudely nailed together. Whoever had done it sure knew little about making effective cages—they had used repurposed wood from old pallets and driven all the nails in from the outside.

Those idiot harpies might have patted me down, but they’d left me with the greatest weapon I could have hoped for: my steel-toed boots.

Now that I was alone, this was my chance. I pulled back my knee, lining my boot up with the side of one of the wooden slats, but fabric rustled, and Leander came back through the curtain before I could give it a good kick, holding a thick, woolen blanket in his arms.

He set it down next to the cage where I could easily reach it. That is, if my hands weren’t bound behind my back. What did he expect me to do? Grab it with my teeth?

“I don’t need your damn pity,” I spat out, and I meant it. I would have preferred freezing to death over using a blanket he’d given me.

“You’ll be glad you have it.” His velvety tone wrapped around my ears. “The furnace is on a timer, and well, it gets fucking cold at night.”

“If you really want to help me, you’ll keep those two mermaids—the creepy, quiet one and that bitch girlfriend of yours—far, far away from me,” I said, my eyes focusing on a particularly weak-looking spot of wood. “I might be bound, caged, and kidnapped, but I don’t need babysitters.”

Looking surprised, he rubbed a hand over the hard line of his jaw as if he were deep in thought.

“All right, but I need you to hear me out. Tomorrow, my father is going to offer you an arrangement in exchange for your freedom. I know you hate being here, but I’m going to need you to take him up on it.”

“An arrangement, huh?” I huffed. “So he’s going to tell me to get his trident or he’ll kill me, right? Sorry, but no deal. I’d rather die.”

Even if I agreed and went into the water, I’d surely die anyway.

Leander’s shoulders straightened, and his eyes darted back toward the curtain. “No, not your life. Your father’s life.”

“What?” The image of Dad and Gram sitting and laughing with me at the dinner table appeared in my mind. “He couldn’t. ”

“But he can. You know he can. He’s the king, Claira, and your father is one of his captains.”

“Wait, I—I wasn’t even thinking about that father.”

Papa. How was I supposed to feel about practically sentencing him to death? My eyes glazed over, an onslaught of conflicting emotions dulling my other senses.

“But after you accept, you’ll be compensated for your service to the kingdom.”

What was he going on about? I was barely even listening.

“Claira,” Leander said, and my eyes snapped up to where he stood. “If you help us return the trident to my father, we will release you, and any time you cast a net in the ocean, we will fill it with more fish than your boat can carry. Every. Single. Time. For as long as you and your family live on the Atlantic. Your land family, of course.”

Now that sounded tempting. So much fish that Dad wouldn’t have to work out on the boat until his hands were numb and his fingers bled. The leaks in the roof could get fixed, and Gram wouldn’t have to wake up early every weekend to make pies to sell on the strip. With that much fish, we could—

But what did it even matter? My tail was useless.

“You know my tail doesn’t work, Leander,” I said weakly, grasping for the words and feeling more desperate than ever. It wasn’t a matter of accepting arrangements. Even if I wanted to give my family enough fish to live comfortably together forever, I still couldn’t.

“I’ll teach you.”

I heard the words, but I just shook my head. There was no point in trying. I’d already spent nine years obsessed with getting my fin to work.

“Think about it tonight, and give your answer in the morning. Like I said, I need you to accept the arrangement.”

He slipped back through the curtain, leaving me in a stupor. It didn’t really feel like I had much of a choice at all.

Drinking glasses clinked in some far-off corner of the warehouse, inciting a round of laughter. My eyes kept watch on the curtain as it swayed lazily, and I prayed Leander remembered he’d agreed to keep the harpies away.

As the swell of voices grew louder, I drew my boot back and beat down the side of the most rotten-looking pallet slat with the weight of my heel. Wood splintered and cracked, and my pulse quickened. Another stomp, and the wood pried away from the nails. I could practically taste my freedom already.

One last push, and the other side wrenched loose. My lips curled up into a devilish grin.

“Bingo.”