Page 27 of I Dream of Dragons

Alys grins at me, all sharp teeth. “Did you fulfill your mission?”

“Not yet,” I grind out, forced to admit to my failure. “Release me.”

“Queen Amphitrite won’t be pleased.”

“Well, isn’t that tragic,” I mutter, because dammit, I’m annoyed. “My magic is gone! I can’t access it. I don’t have the advantage anymore.” Looking past her, I try to locate Jai and I think I see a body tumbling into the deep. “I’m trying to make do without.”

She frowns—as much as you can frown without eyebrows. “But you can breathe underwater. And talk.”

“Yeah, about that… No idea what happened,” I lie, oralmostlie because I thought it was thanks to Jai’s kiss, Jai’s touch, but he denied it. “Let me go, Alys.”

“You can’t even make me, can you?” She laughs, a trill and a chime like tiny bells. “You can’t command me. Oh, this is lovely.”

So I bend my knees, crouching, and kick her in the face with my free leg. “Take that for a command.”

She hisses, drawing back instinctively, and her hold slackens.

Free, at last.

The other mermaids reach for me as I catapult myself away, but I scream at them and they scatter, startled, even though my scream holds no magic, only pure frustration and fury.

I dive after the body I saw falling. Is it Jai? Is it too late? So many predators are waiting to take a bite out of any living or dead body down here. Let’s face it: most creatures would take a bite out of just about anything, just to see if it’s edible.

Don’t bite Jai!

But thinking it, or even saying it, won’t matter one whit now.

Aware of the mermaids nipping at my bare heels, I keep swimming downward, past waving forests of seagrass, stationary groups of enormous groupers, and clouds of tiny phosphorescent ray fish.

Where is the body, where…?

Ah. There.A man’s body, that’s my fleeting impression, the one that drew me down. A man’s tall body… and a giant squid is already enveloping him in yards-long tentacles.

Shit.

“Back off!” I yell, bubbles bursting out of my mouth as I shoot toward the tangle of tentacles. “Don’t you dare sting him!”

Yellow deep-sea squids have poisonous barbs on their tentacles. Like undersea spiders, they paralyze their prey, then use smaller inner tentacles to drag their stunned prey to their toothed beaks where they tear it apart and eat it.

I swim faster. My muscles burn. My shoulder feels like it’s on fire. My injured leg is cramping so badly I want to scream again.

So I do. My scream tears through the water. I grab a passing, grazing shark who jerks, startled. I latch onto the dorsal finand ride him down deeper, then release him and throw myself toward the writhing tentacles.

Almost there.

I dive among the tentacles, barely caring about the barbs, and wrap an arm around the body floating in the cage they form.

It’s him. Jai.

The relief makes me light-headed. I’d counted on my first impression of him, that brief glimpse of broad shoulders and dark hair, but up until now I hadn’t been sure.

He’s in full armor, for some reason, his twin swords strapped at his back. Perhaps he triggered the shadows as he fell from the drak, before hitting the water.

His lips are turning blue.

Bad sign.

I grab his face, put my mouth on his and blow air into him. Again and again. He’s still unresponsive.