Page 18 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

“ B ring the girl back?” Lizza stared at me, aghast.

I paced in the small sitting room where I’d first met the mayor, the curtains on the walls swaying as my wings fluttered back and forth in distress and sent water rippling outward.

A soft, puffy white dress with a skirt that resembled a cloud and a band of multiple colors stretching like a rainbow across my hair made me look like the sky on a happy day when I was anything but.

Since the tournament wasn’t scheduled to begin until tomorrow, the mayor had kindly given us the room for the morning, and I’d summoned my mage the second Gita had finished getting me ready.

Hair hanging down my back because I’d been too impatient for a braid, I stalked back and forth, feeling as trapped as a fish in a net.

My thumb kneaded into the opposite palm in sharp jabs, and I chewed on my lip, a jumble of frayed nerves.

“If I was able to get more information from her or get her to testify that I wasn’t the one who killed her?—”

My castle mage cut me off, both verbally and physically.

She stepped right into my path and said, “First off, I’m no Donaloo.

I can’t do that. Raise her from peace. Even if I had that power, I wouldn’t.

Eternity should be a choice.” She gestured up and down at her own rotting body.

“This life isn’t as glamorous as it looks.

” The bit of skull peeking through the skin of her forehead reinforced her statement.

My hands went to my hair in frustration. “I know! I just—I need people to know it wasn’t me, Lizza. Down in my bones, I know they think it’s me.”

Sahar set down the tea she’d been pouring for herself and straightened, her hands smoothing over her skirts as though she might physically straighten this entire sarding mess out.

But she couldn’t. No one could. Watkins, whether he’d intended to or not, had bored a hole in my confidence and now everything felt so damned impossible. I wasn’t sure if I appreciated his words right now or hated him a little for them.

Staring up at my adviser, I lifted my shoulders in askance.

“We’ll convince them. It’s impossible to know you and not know you have good intentions.”

Closing my eyes, I struggled to keep my face neutral as I recalled what Knight Lewart always used to say. Good intentions are a fool’s excuse. Actions are what matters.

But what options were there? If we couldn’t rouse this siren from the dead, how could I prove I didn’t kill her?

“Did you determine her cause of death yet?” I turned to Lizza.

My mage shot a look at Sahar.

“What. Is. It?” I repeated through gritted teeth.

Lizza clacked her tongue but finally spit out the truth. “The girl drowned.”

My hands went to yank out my hair, to rip it right from my scalp because that fact was certain to fuel all the horrible accusations that I’d stolen water—“Wait. Drowned?” The word finally registered—and it wasn’t suffocated. “How does a siren drown?”

“When a siren is no longer a siren.” Lizza contorted her face in a manner that told me I should understand her cryptic statement. But all it did was make me want to shake the woman.

“And that means?”

Sahar took over, clearing her throat and again running her hands down her skirt. “It means she was turned human.”

Fainting was an unexpected reaction on my part and when I came to, it was with more than a little embarrassment.

At least in Okeanos, I didn’t fall and immediately smash my head on the floor, I sort of drifted down instead.

The difference between air and the water current was enough to prevent adding injury to insult.

Cheeks burning, blinking at Sahar, who’d dragged me over to a couch and held my lolling body as upright as Lizza rustled through her black bag of horrors, I tried to process what the word human meant and failed.

“How?” Still stunned, that was the only word I uttered.

“Not sure. We can look through my scrolls and grimoires in a minute,” Lizza grunted as her potions ominously clinked together.

“Who around here has that level of magic?”

“I said I wasn’t sure. Do I need to get some extra worms to eat through your earwax, child?” my mage scoffed as she headed toward me with a rosy potion that looked like liquefied fire.

“What is that?” I asked, ignoring her pointed jab and wishing my skirt was black—that way, the contents of that vial spilling onto it would go unnoticed.

“Will help with your constitution,” she replied. “Stop this fainting nonsense.”

Struggling to sit upright despite the fact that my temples were pounding like a set of stairs under soldier’s boots, I argued, “I’ve fainted once.”

“Twice. You fainted when we were practicing your magic.”

Hand to my throbbing forehead, I glared at her. “You burnt me alive! That can hardly count.”

Lizza shoved the bottle my way with a glare that said I wasn’t getting a peek at her grimoire if I didn’t comply.

Reluctantly, I uncorked the thing with pop and gave it a swirl.

An unfortunate scent drifted up to me. One akin to dead leaves.

Rather than dwelling on it, I gulped the contents, trying to swallow them before they hit my tongue.

I was unsuccessful.

Sahar handed me her teacup, which I took and gratefully used the hot liquid to burn away any remaining taste buds. Tasting things was overrated anyway, particularly when Lizza was nearby.

Once I’d emptied the cup and replaced it on the table, Lizza plopped a giant spell book onto my lap, one that was as heavy as a boulder.

“We can check?—”

“Wait,” Sahar interrupted. “Didn’t that siren say a djinni was chasing her?”

In the chaos of witnessing that girl’s writhing death, in the absolutely soul-wrenching panic of being unable to stop it, I’d somehow forgotten. Balancing the heavy gook on my thighs, I twisted in my seat to stare at my adviser. “Yes. She was.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Sahar said, “Okay then. Let’s review what we know. I spoke to Ugo about everything this morning in order to get his perspective. He said the girl spoke about three wishes. A castle. Hair or something? And gold.”

“Yes,” I nodded, her words jogging my memory.

“But half-djinn only have three wishes,” Lizza piped in as she yanked a scroll from her bag, the end clutched in her hand as the rest of it unspooled across the floor. “He’d have been magically impotent at that point.”

“Wishes cost a nightmare…could the pursuit have had to do with a nightmare?”

“All this assumes that girl was speaking truth,” Lizza grumbled before glancing over the spelled parchment in her hand. “She might have been a liar. Or…maybe the fellow used a disguise spell and pretended to be a djinni.”

“My sister used to use those,” I commented vaguely as I stared at the curtains, trying to make sense of what was true and ignore how my throat still burned from the remnants of the potion.

“Common tactic for criminals, ‘specially those who rob carriages on land,” Lizza mused.

“That doesn’t explain the castle,” Sahar stated.

“Illusion spell?” My mage instantly offered another option. “Those are easy enough, especially if the person you’re showing is an empty nut.” She rapped on the side of her skull to illustrate her point.

“But Keelan and Avia saw a strange castle recently, didn’t you?” Sahar turned a thoughtful gaze toward me, creases near her eyes deepening as she tried to work through what might be real and unreal.

The haunted castle appeared in my mind instantly, its unnaturally perfect form.

The box of abandoned sand dollars was nearby.

The ominous feeling cast over the entire place.

A shiver scratched at the base of my spine, and I tried to suppress it.

Keelan must have mentioned it to his mother.

“But that’s so far south it’s near Nowhere.

By the Umra Desert.” That woman, Laranda, couldn’t have come that far…

Except, she hadn’t said how long she’d been hiding.

That was a long way to flee from a bandit. Or an impotent half djinni.

My lungs compressed, breath tight and expectant, because it definitely seemed like djinn magic.

If the castle had been built and not magicked, it would never have been so perfect.

And someone surely would have heard about it.

Known about the construction. Word would have traveled, and people would have gone to that shell palace seeking work. None of that had happened.

I played with the ends of my hair as I thought, staring down at the open book on my lap and not seeing a single word.

“Sard!” I stood, and the heavy grimoire smashed into the tops of my feet, sending pain shooting up my body.

But I hardly noticed the throbbing ache because my shock was much more potent, as harsh as a fist to the face.

Lizza and Sahar both stared at me like I’d gone mad.

“Her hair. She mentioned a fourth wish. I guess her hair hadn’t changed colors like a normal siren. She wished for that.”

Their mute shock was a deafening roar in my head as my pulse pounded in my ears.

Four wishes.

Four.

Not three.

That meant we weren’t dealing with a half djinni.

We were dealing with a full-blooded one who had unlimited wishes and paid no price for magic.

“Why would he chase down and kill that girl?” Sahar’s voice finally cracked the shell of our silence. “She had nothing of value on her. And when I examined her body…I don’t recall a ring.”

“If she’d had his ring, he couldn’t have turned her human yesterday,” I responded slowly, thinking aloud, as if speaking slowly might help me detect the motive for the murder of a woman I’d met for less than five minutes.

Kicking aside the book on my feet, I started to pace. “He had to have his own ring.”

“Djinn magic can’t wish for death,” Sahar pointed out.

“He didn’t. He wished to turn her human.

She happened to be underwater,” Lizza’s snark was too harsh for the situation, but her ability to meter her responses seemed to have shriveled along with her skin.

The undead woman sighed, hunching her shoulders and bringing her hand up to her mouth as she went to chew on a fingernail.

But the entire nail detached, and I looked quickly away, not wanting to see what her finger looked like or what she was going to do with that nail.

A crunching sound generated the answer I’d tried to avoid.

Back and forth, back and forth I paced on feet that felt as flattened as halibut. I fought the urge to wring my hands but failed, twisting my fingers together. “She saw him commit murder. He must have wanted to get rid of witnesses.”

“By subtly murdering her in cold blood in the middle of a public festival? He sounds like a genius,” Lizza jibed.

My own worry was far darker, and her sarcasm was beginning to grate on me. This was a serious matter. And yes, it seemed foolish to kill her in public in such a drastic way. He must have been desperate.

My intuition tingled.

“She was talking to me.”

“Yes, we know.” Lizza sank into a chair.

“No. She was talking to me . He must not have wanted her to tell me who he was.” The desperate urge to beg Lizza to bring the girl back came over me again, even though I knew she couldn’t.

There was only one djinni I knew of who wouldn’t want me to know he was here, in my kingdom. One who could kill without a second thought. One who knew me.

Sahar and I spoke at the exact same moment, our faces mirrored expressions of horror. “Raj.”