Page 40 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter thirty-seven

Jasper

I t’s the serpent.

“Now is the time,” Vek’ihr says as he wiggles out of my grasp.

He rallies the remaining ga’hanoi and begins his communication dance as he speaks.

“It is feasting and will be distracted. We will harvest scales, fins, bile, and more.”

The group flashes in pink and yellow, then half of them disperse.

“Where are they going?” Reina asks the questions I cannot.

“Tools. Many tools,” Vek’ihr says in a hurry, his words garbled in his haste. “You must prepare your tools.”

“I have them,” Reina says, reaching into the pouch strapped to her waist. It’s enchanted with the same runic inscription as Alyse’s infinity bag, though it is much smaller inside due to its size limitation.

Reina produces a wide-gauge needle as long as her arm.

It’s attached to a rubbery ball the size of her fist that has a puckered opening at the back.

“This…under the front, the throat,” she says in halting phrases.

She’s scared.

I should be, too, but something about everything feels right .

Yes, I did just commit quite a large number of murders, but it was the only good path ahead of us. The delegates needed to be replaced. The old ways were not going to serve us, or them. The old ways kept them alive down here but trapped.

I have a feeling it was Vek’ihr who was responsible for the selkie alliances that brought him to the shallows that day. I have a feeling he’s a lot smarter than I previously gave him credit for, and everything he’s done since the moment we parted ways weeks ago was to plan for this event.

Or maybe I’m reaching, but this ga’hanoi seemed to take charge of his people far too quickly and easily than the stunned, submissive creature he was moments before the massacre.

The other ga’hanoi return with their tools: rods with thick hooks, sharp saws, and crystal containers. There’s no time left to ponder Vek’ihr’s plotting because he has his people on the move.

“Stay away from the tail. Avoid its line of sight. And do not ever get near its mouths,” Vek’ihr commands. “Keep your body limp and let the water take you.”

He moves through the current and disappears into the hole that leads out of the crater.

“Mouths? Plural?” Reina shouts after him, but it’s too late.

He’s gone.

The others follow him one by one, tumbling into the hole used for their waste and executions. This must be what he meant when we inquired about the serpent being controlled. In a way, it is. They feed it and it shows up. While it’s busy feasting, they take what they need.

“Jasper, I’m scared,” Reina admits to me as our time draws near to join the ga’hanoi .

I can’t comfort her with words in this form, but I pull her up to the space between my eyes and rub her against my skin. Her heat seeps into me and warms my hearts.

“I’m still upset with you for what you’ve done,” she says.

Her body doesn’t speak of being upset though. She caresses my skin with soft designs as I hold her close.

“I can’t believe you murdered them…”

I wish I could laugh. I move my body in a way that suggests laughter. She peels back and scowls at me.

“Are you laughing ?”

Why shouldn’t I? I shrug two limbs.

“You killed them . You killed the whole government! You radically altered their society.”

I have no remorse. Not even an inkling of it.

She arches a brow. “You’re ruthless.”

I blob my body like a nod.

She scoffs. “Bastard.”

There’s my hellion. I squeeze her thighs just below her round ass. She yelps and tries to escape.

“Jasper, they can see us,” she whispers. “And I’m still angry with you.”

She’ll get over it when she sees that I’ve done everyone a favor.

Not all the ga’hanoi are going out to collect from the serpent, and the end of the procession is near. I wrap Reina closer and turn myself into a long, arrow-like shape. The water parts around us and we enter the waste passage.

It’s just as foul as I was expecting. Detritus of all organic kinds clings to the sharp bits of the rock, and I vow that not a single inch of this passage will touch my love.

It’s too narrow for me to avoid touching it, but with my power to affect the water’s flow, I manage to get out mostly unscathed.

We tumble into the abyssal dark of the Deep.

There’s a sharp drop-off just beyond the light of the domed crater, and the serpent is doing its very best to get back into that black nothingness.

The ga’hanoi sink their hooks under the creature’s scales and then shoot hidden harpoons from the other end that anchor to the wall.

Hundreds of such holes exist along the crumbling shelf.

It twists its upper half, and its face swings overhead. I dart down between the wires and come about, getting a better look at the head. It has two mouths, one that’s long and full of teeth above one that gapes and sucks. A ga’hanoi is unfortunate enough to get near the lower and gets pulled in.

The creature regurgitates it into its upper mouth and chomps down, ending the ga’hanoi quickly before letting its corpse drop once again to the lower mouth. What a strange design…

“Fuck,” Reina murmurs. “Get me under its belly!”

I swim through the others going about various collection tasks and get right between the two front fins.

Its scales are iridescent this close to the lighted dome.

Color ripples under them, revealing that the scales themselves are translucent, and the serpent underneath glows just like the ga’hanoi do.

Reina lines up her needle. The serpent thrashes hard, and its flat tail smashes through three ga’hanoi, inking them into nothingness. The movement has set the creature off alignment with us. I move again and risk grabbing hold of it with my tentacles.

That.

Was.

Stupid .

The creature bucks, curling in on itself until its lower mouth is right in front of my face. The ga’hanoi are flashing brilliantly and gesticulating, but there’s no time for a translation from Vek’ihr.

I pull Reina out of the way and scramble up the side of the serpent to its spiny dorsal fins. They almost look like the shoulder joints of where a dragon’s wings would’ve once been.

The fucker arcs in the other direction, presenting me with a long, snapping maw of razor-sharp fangs. I dodge again, but there’s only so much I can do in this form. The cunt is really coming for us.

Another snap forces me to use my magic and throw us leeward against the shelf.

Reina yelps as she fumbles the needle. The heavy metal spears toward the darkness and she screams. A ga’hanoi dives faster than I can, though I do move to give chase—only to be blocked by a stream of yellow liquid that singes my tentacles.

It seems the serpent has eyes for us and only us now, and it can spit acid.

The bile. We can get it to spit its bile.

But how will we capture it?

I dodge another sharp clack of its teeth and pull Reina away from the acid cloud.

I launch off the wall with a quick thrust of all my limbs.

We drop into the depths, and the serpent tries to follow, but the ga’hanoi’s anchors hold steady.

It thrashes wildly and another stream of yellow shoots after us from its lower mouth.

“That’s the bile!” Reina yells. “I think Adrik can isolate it if we get some without too much seawater, but—ah!”

How to get it? My thoughts, too, my love.

I dodge another spray of painful yellow muck.

The ga’hanoi that went after the needle returns with it. It’s Vek’ihr.

Reina takes it and squeezes the rubber end firmly. “Back to Plan A.”

She pulls a vial from her pouch and attaches it to the puckered opening of the rubber stopper.

“We need to get it belly-up and disoriented,” she says.

Vek’ihr bobs his head. “We will try.”

I don’t have the kind of fluid dexterity I would like in this form. I need something faster and bigger. Meaner. Something that can take that monster teeth on teeth.

I need the sha’kara.

I’m not as well-fed as I’d like, but I know I can manage it.

I focus on the power of my magic and allow the shift to overtake me.

My tentacles roll into me and my body elongates.

The beak hidden between my limbs transforms into a mouth full of teeth.

A tail sprouts from my backside, and fins poke out of my sides.

Reina wraps her arm around my dorsal fin and squeezes her thighs against my sides. With two powerful swipes of my tail, we jet forward. I twist my fins instinctively and turn us about until we’re facing down the serpent.

It doesn’t seem to know what to make of this change. Its thrashing has slowed. It’s assessing the situation.

The ga’hanoi take advantage of its stillness and resume their harvesting. The serpent opens its lower mouth wide, sucking in a massive gulp of water. I dart to the left and come about, flanking it. The serpent can’t keep up.

It spits a stream of bile where we once were. The liquid quickly spreads out, drifting down to cover several of the wires that are holding the serpent back. I hope they’re made of something strong enough to withstand the acid .

I make another quick dart over the creature and shimmy my body side to side, shaking Reina off me. She’s got this. She’ll know what I’m doing.

With her free, I swim back over the serpent’s side and then under it.

I start my attack, taking a bite out of its fin.

Hidden spines deploy into my mouth. I open my jaw wide from the pain.

Screaming is such a lovely outlet for this kind of thing.

Instead, I have to let the agony live with me silently as I take another bite and push.

The ga’hanoi see what I’m doing and start removing their hooks from the right side of the beast. The serpent writhes and twists, but the angle I’m at is like a blind spot for its mouth.

I took careful note of how the fucker twisted.

Up, down, and side to side, no problem. But slightly down or up and to the side, not on its life.