Page 37 of Sea of Evil and Desire (The Deep Saga #1)

35

Morgana

I was sitting against the attic wall, under the only window, using the shards of light it relinquished to peruse the rest of my grandmother’s diary.

November 30, 1982

I often think about the day I followed Abalone to Taranis’s chambers.

Queen Abalone and King Merrik had been married for some time and had a son—Prince Aigéan. Abalone had done her duty to the realm. Taranis hadn’t attended the wedding. He’d disappeared from the Neptūnus Kingdom that day, and many years had passed before he returned.

I should not have trailed Abalone, but I sensed something terrible might happen. I could see her and Taranis arguing through the strands of beaded seaweed that shrouded the door to the bedroom within his chamber.

“Please, Abalone, meet me in the garden tonight like we used to,” he begged her. His shaky voice reminded me of the Taranis I had once known.

Abalone let out a choked cry, and I swam further into Taranis’s chambers. They were hewn of dark sand, and there was clutter everywhere. Contraptions, papers, and maps were strewn all around—things he must have gathered on his travels.

I parted the seaweed strands with my flipper.

“You know this is what my family wants . . . and I have my son now.” Abalone was looking into his red-rimmed eyes.

Taranis’s face was gentle for a moment, then it was as though a shadow passed across it, and his eyes glimmered. “I can give you a kingdom, if that’s what you want.”

“This is not you. You can fight it,” she whispered pleadingly.

It was then that a piece of parchment caught my eye. It was tacked to the rock wall, scribbled in the Runes of the Ocean.

“Only with blood that need not be taken is the curse shaken.”

The words made my heart beat faster, and then I read the scrawled text above it: “The Prophecy of Cerulean Templum.”

All Selkies knew of the prophecy and the story of the Drowned and Mer’s feud, which started with a Selkie, Siana Selich, my great ancestor.

Could Taranis have found part of the second half of the prophecy? The part that was lost . . .

I was overcome with a terrifying sense of dread as a vision washed over me. I would die at the hands of a merman.

Abalone’s sob from the next room brought my body back to life. I scooted from the chambers and ducked behind a cluster of seaweed just in time to see her racing from the place.

Taranis appeared in the doorway of his cavern. He whispered, “Amor perdot nos,” after the disappearing tail of the mermaid he’d once loved.

As I swam through the courts, I wondered if anyone else had seen the parchment. I glanced at the Mer guards. They were holding spears, their torsos rippled and eyes fierce. The legends blamed all Mer misfortune on this “prophecy.” Which one would do the deed? My visions were barely ever wrong.

Fearing for my safety, I sped to the surface and presented myself to Robbie for a third time. As I expected, he stole my skin. We rowed across the dark waters back to Ruadán’s Port, his home, which would now be mine.

The seals I swam with watched us from the waves. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked into their beautiful, dark eyes. I would never swim with them again. The Mer would find me eventually, but this would buy me time. I vowed to spend my time on land searching for the rest of the prophecy. I suspected what Taranis had found on that parchment could not be the whole story. I would travel to all the museums and ancient sites until I found what had been lost in ā? tlanticus.

January 1, 1984

Robbie never complains when I book yet another ticket to a foreign country. It eases his guilt. Sometimes, I take my only friend in this town, Louisa Williamson, with me. She is a young historian passionate about ancient civilizations.

I am with child, and some days, I feel so exhausted that I sleep all day. When I sleep, I dream of the sea; it’s always been the sea. The child means I have had to stop my travels for a while. Sadness has taken hold of me.

July 24, 1988

My daughter, Anna, is four now. My heart worries, knowing that she, too, will be a descendant of Siana. Would they come for her? I let Robbie name her. Anna means “favored by God,” he says. I hope the gods will favor her.

December 12, 1988

We found something: a stone tablet in the Mediterranean with a poem about the prophecy. It was partially destroyed, but we could translate more of the text. I am not the one of whom the prophecy speaks. I cannot write more here in case it falls into the wrong hands. Some things might be better lost . . .

I barely noticed my trembling body or fractured breaths as I let the diary fall to the dusty floor. Had the attic grown colder? I folded my arms around myself and leaned my head against the wall.

Siana Selich. I was a relative of Siana Selich.

The blood was pounding in my ears in unison with my heart . The prophecy—after trying and failing to find any books on the subject under the sea in the Taberna, I couldn’t believe I had read these words on land and in my grandmother’s diary. Had my grandmother’s death been a murder?