Page 52 of Heir of Broken Souls (HOBF #3)

Chapter 52

Delilah

E nergy flows along my skin, beckoning me to the lower deck of the ship.

Sneaking away is easy when everyone is preparing for the unknown, everyone doing whatever they can to feel useful when our enemy is basically breathing down our necks.

I push open the window, shocked to see the extremely calm water. There’s no ripple in sight. But there’s also no one waiting for me. I balance on the balls of my feet and pop my head out, scanning the water.

I frown. There was something calling me, right?

Sudden movement ceases my thoughts.

Naia rises from the water, her pod close behind, the missing mermaid evident. My eyes catch on the pink mermaid, missing her counterpart, and the pain in her eyes crushes something in my heart.

Axel’s words come back to me, the utter agony that he spoke of. It takes everything in me to quelch the tears that want to rise and another strong tug to rip my gaze away, as if my body wants to punish me further, taunting me with another death that hangs above my head.

No matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop those around me from dying.

“I’m beginning to question if we should move forward.”

Naia’s cold words rip my attention away from my sorrows.

“What?” I blurt.

“Danger lurks ahead, one we’re not sure we should face.”

“We’ve come all this way!” I argue. “You knew of the risks?—”

“Not like this, the water…it’s been tainted.”

My head cocks to the side with a frown. “Tainted?” I ask.

Before she can say more, I quickly send a message down the bridge to Knox, along with a swift tug on our bond. Knox teleports beside me, arriving no more than a second after I summoned him.

“What’s your concern?” he asks softly, noting the heaviness within the pod. The grief that hangs over their tails.

“Nothing living dwells beyond this point.”

Our heads rear back in shock.

“Nothing living?” I ask.

Knox sounds perplexed. “Surely there is a fish or two?—”

“Nothing,” Amelia cuts in sharply.

Naia raises her hand, halting her second before she lays those glowing red eyes upon me. “We speared our power out. There is not an inch of life to be found. No coral, no fish…there aren’t even any currents. It’s as if nothing wishes to be near it.”

“We should take the advice of the ocean,” Amelia chimes in.

Knox’s brows furrow. “Not even a current?”

That explains the calmness of the ocean.

Naia lowers her voice as if afraid the ocean will retaliate against her words. “We fear that dark magic is present.”

“That’s even more of a reason to continue on,” I find myself saying.

Naia swims forward, leaving her pod behind. “We have already lost so much,” she whispers. “We fear we will lose more if we continue.”

Knox nods solemnly. He understands. We all understand. “I can’t ask you to go on if you don’t wish to, but we will. With or without your assistance.”

“I’ll send the griffins to scout the area, see if they can find anything from above,” I offer, and Naia gazes at us with such a withering stare I remember the days when I was afraid of them—and for good reason.

“Do you truly think that is wise?” she asks coldly.

I open my bond to Knox, allowing him to feel my determination.

We must go on, otherwise this was all for nothing.

Knox slides his hands into his pockets. “I trust the prophecy, and I trust that the end is near if we seek the answers it offers us.”

Naia stares me down before dipping her chin. “Fine, we will continue to escort you despite advising against it.”

“Are you sure?” Knox asks, his gaze flitting to the lone pink mermaid.

Naia’s chin lifts. “We will not watch you travel ahead while we cower in the ocean’s shadows. We are not cowardly creatures.”

“No, you certainly aren’t.” Knox’s lips twitch, a smile threatening to rise. “If you wish, once we find whatever we’re looking for, you can return to the ship.”

She openly frowns. “You’re not taking the ship with you? How are you traveling?”

“We’re taking the emergency rowboats. If Delilah truly has to raise a sunken island, we don’t know how far it will stretch, and we don’t want to chance losing our only way home.”

She clicks her tongue. “Wise choice.”

I bite down on my own smile. It sounds like she has to spit the compliment out. Knox catches on to my amusement, but he has no qualms about the small grin he finally lets out.

“Very gracious of you.”

She tsks, waving her scaled hand in the air. “Hurry your griffins. We wish to get this over with.”

“We’re here?” Knox leans out of the ship’s window.

“If you don’t want your ship to be wrecked, I wouldn’t travel any farther.”

Knox presses a quick kiss to my temple before dashing off. “I’ll get the men to ready the boats.” Before we can respond he’s out the door, calling for Axel and Lenox.

Turning to Naia again, I find her gaze upon me, assessing. “What occurred is not your fault.”

I bristle. “Who told you?”

“Who else?” She trails her fingers over the calm water. “The sea.”

I don’t dare touch on that. Even if I begged, she wouldn’t tell me.

“Well, it’s wrong. It’s very much my fault,” I say stiffly.

Every time I think about what I did my entire body locks up, repulsing the very notion of how I allowed Hazel to slip through my fingers.

“Don’t chase after them. Play them by their own game.”

And with those words she parts, submerging below the water and leaving me to stew on her words. If I didn’t know any better, I would think it was a riddle to a vision she received, but surely we’ve passed the stage of her not telling me things… right ?

After all, I saved her life.

“Play them by their own game,” I murmur to myself.

The words continue to loop in my mind as I climb the stairs to the top deck. Knox is already there, calling out orders over the railing. Stepping beside him, my back tingles as his calloused palm slides down my skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps. Below, Axel and Lenox work to lower the rowboats. At least Axel is sober again, though his eyes are heavy with purple bags.

“Are we sure this is wise?” I whisper.

“If anything, I believe Peter has placed dark magic around the area to ward us off.”

My brow arches. “Yes, he certainly does like his games…”

“Anything you want to tell me?”

I turn to him, whispering, “Naia relayed something interesting to me, and for some reason, I can’t get it out of my mind.”

The moment the rowboats hit the water and Axel and Lenox jump into their respective boats, he turns to me, wrapping his hands around my waist.

“Care to share?” he asks, grinning.

Rolling my eyes at the mischief in his gaze despite the situation, I open my gilded mind to him.

Once his eyes unglaze, he looks down at me. “Play their own game. Hmm.” He straightens, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “We’ve certainly been trying, and failing, but perhaps she knows something we don’t.” A muscle in his jaw ticks. “And I’m certainly tired of defending.”

Before I can respond a low roar sounds in the sky. Tipping my head back, I track Aurora and Zephlyn’s movements as they come to land atop the deck. Aurora looks at me, then dips her lion head toward Knox.

“All is clear,” he announces. “Are you ready?”

My magic hums in answer, rising to the occasion of something I’m entirely unaware of.

“As I’ll ever be.”

* * *

Lenox sits behind Knox and me in the small rowboat, his posture as stiff and surly as ever before as his eyes seem to search every inch he can see.

Glancing behind me to the boat that Harlow, Elysia, and Axel sit in, I find Axel finally sober. Although he too is as stiff as Lenox, his gaze roving, his eyes are heavy with dark purple circles beneath them.

The griffins fly above us, circling the area. They’re on the lookout for Hazel’s return, along with any demonic beasts Peter tries to send our way again.

The mermaids were right, we can feel the wrongness of the ocean and we’re not even touching it. I can’t imagine how they feel swimming through it. We haven’t encountered a single fish or ripple of water that wasn’t caused by us or the pod swimming below.

Do you know how odd it is to be out in the middle of the sea and not see the water move? To stick your hand in the water that’s supposed to be warm, only to be met with an icy coldness?

Odd doesn’t begin to describe the sensation. Impending doom, however—that’s close to what my heart is feeling.

“How much farther do you think?” Lenox asks suddenly, his eyes still glued on the horizon.

Knox shrugs. “No idea. Until they find something, I suppose.”

“What if we don’t find anything?”

“Oh, we’ll find something. There’s too much dark magic to not be something here.”

Knox continues to paddle and the farther we go the more alert we become. My body is coiled tight, tension leaking into every inch as a thousand bees take flight in my chest, humming and buzzing incessantly. No matter how many deep breaths I take, I can’t seem to stop their flight.

Until my lungs cease to exist as the pod suddenly rises before us.

“We’ve found something.”

My magic comes alive at the words, golden tendrils leaking out of my palm without my permission. They move toward the water, hovering over the motionless sea, before quickly withdrawing.

I have nothing to say at the odd sight. I don’t doubt shock is plastered across my face, especially as my magic sings to my soul, one word, over and over and over.

Answers.