Page 51 of Sea of Evil and Desire (The Deep Saga #1)

49

Finn

T he heart of the graveyard was the Hall of Kings and Queens. The dead eyes of stone statues of long-forgotten rulers peered at me as I made my way between the sarcophagi of those who had gone before me, some half-submerged in sand, others decorated with sea life.

I ran my hand over my mother’s coffin, and it came away coated in slime. A stone likeness of her face was chiseled at its center. Her expression was serene, eyes closed in eternal rest and lips barely parted, as if stuck between the last breath of life and the first sight of the afterworld.

I placed my scarred hand on her forehead and whispered the apology I made every time I came to see her. “I’m sorry I let this happen to you and didn’t protect you from him.”

If what Morgana had read in Iona’s diary was true, Taranis had loved my mother. It didn’t make sense. How could you kill something that you loved? I would kill for Morgana, but I would sooner take a blade to my own throat than to hers.

The graveyard was bathed in the ocean’s perpetual twilight, and the current whispered through the ancient ruins. Here and there, the glow of bioluminescent flowers penetrated the deep blue, enveloping the tombs of those who had someone alive who still loved them in an ethereal light.

“I’ve met a girl. You told me that love destroys us and that I should do my duty, but I wonder if you were wrong.” My voice was thick as I looked at my mother’s lifeless stone eyes.

It was said that on the night of the full moon, the spirits of our lost royalty stirred, their whispers carried by the currents. Few dared enter on such nights, but I always visited then, because my mother had died on a blood moon fifty-six years earlier.

I sensed a presence behind me and spun around.

My father. His dark hair was floating around his shoulders, and he wore his blood moon crown. The sight of it inflamed my anger.

“How can you still celebrate this night?” I clenched my webbed fingers into a fist.

“When you become a man and stop behaving like a boy, you’ll learn that emotions cannot get in the way of running a kingdom.” His face was impassive.

“You never deserved her,” I spat, pushing past him.

“That, my son, I know.”

I stopped, shoulders hunched, and turned to see my father’s gaze on me. The stern expression he usually wore and the madness that always gleamed in his eyes was gone, and his face only showed sadness.