Page 35 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

T he seahorse-drawn carriage dipped to avoid a cross-current and my hand flew to the door handle, clenching tight as I tilted forward on the bench seat. My lime skirt swelled into a bell as I braced my feet to keep from pitching over.

“Are you alright?” Mateo asked, leaning closer and putting a hand on my knee, partially to help brace me, partially because we’d been riding in silence for the past two hours.

After we leveled out and I was sitting normally again, I shrugged within my polar bear fur shawl, not meeting his eyes but glancing over at Felipe, who sat beside me.

My guard sat stiffly in the dark blue velvet cloak he’d been forced into by one of Gita’s friends, told he needed to look grandiose for our return to the capital.

His expression was flat, though his eyes did dart over to me at Mateo’s question, wondering about my answer.

I didn’t want to lie to them, but I was far from alright. As far as one could be.

The tournament was canceled. Officially and finally.

I’d sent out messengers before bodies had even been placed upon the glacier in Kremos or returned home to their families—depending on their origin.

Felipe tried to reassure me. “There are no more public events right now. No more chances to attack.”

“I don’t know…” I hedged, uncertain, particularly since I suspected Raj was involved.

The whirlpool was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his magical machinations—because witnesses had spotted rebels and a witch nearby watching the entire disaster. Watching and untouched… meaning that the whole thing was an unnatural creation.

It might have been a witch’s doing.

But I didn’t think so.

The start of the whirlpool was so sudden and unexpected.

I was certain it was wish magic.

It had to be.

“That witch has fled. I’m sure she has,” Mateo added, knowing what I was about to say since he knew me as well as the back of his own hand at this point. Or at least, the better parts of me.

I chewed on my lip and glanced at Felipe.

My former guard simply stared back, his scarred eyebrow lowering as he frowned.

He didn’t offer me false hope—Mateo might have needed to believe nothing bad was chasing us.

Felipe had been trained to fight back…but also to expect a threat.

I couldn’t help but think his silence meant agreement.

“I can’t brush away the feeling that there’s something more going on.” I stated as I dug at one of my cuticles.

People claimed the witch had turned on her companions in a fit of savagery, which again fit everything I knew of the sultan. He used others and discarded them.

Mateo said, “The rebels are dead, and the witch disappeared into the ether.”

“Along with Taft and Stavros,” Felipe added gruffly, eyes narrowing, sending us all into silence.

“I’d bet a thousand sand dollars that Raj had disguised himself as that witch.” I muttered.

“Possible,” Mateo responded.

That he’d been lurking nearby all along, stirring up magical attacks and rebels as he went.

Stirring up betrayal.

“Could it all just be a series of coincidences? Bad timing?” Mateo wanted to retain a bit of hope.

Together, Felipe and I stared him down until he cleared his throat and looked out the window.

“But why those two?” I asked one of the niggling mysteries aloud. It was a question that gnawed tiny holes into my sanity.

Why had Taft and Stavros disappeared?

“Were they involved somehow? Connected to Raj? And why didn’t I see it?” Hushed words dripped from my lips as prickles of disappointed self-loathing trailed across my shoulders. Instinct told me that the disappearances were somehow connected.

“I swear, even if Stavros did, I don’t think Taft had anything to do with it,” Mateo piped up, eyes looking so wide and innocent that it made me feel old and jaded in comparison.

After everything that had happened, he still had faith in his friend.

“He was injured. Badly. I don’t think there’s any way Taft left of his own volition. ”

Felipe stiffened but stayed silent beside me. The two of them had gone rounds yesterday over whether the nixe was trustworthy.

The guard’s argument had been brief, as were most of his statements. “Former thief. That says it all.”

Of course, Mateo believed in redemption.

Sahar had, of course, tried to tell me that it was impossible to know what any of the competitors had been thinking, but that she’d have her contacts report back if any of the contestants were spotted—particularly together.

I didn’t think it mattered.

Their betrayal was far less significant to me than the fact that I didn’t think I trusted myself. My judgment of them had been faulty.

I hadn’t suspected a thing—not from them. Watkins had occupied far more of my thoughts. Even my suspicion of the pirate Valdez had been minimal…and he’d also fled. But earlier and on his own.

Maybe.

Or were all three linked?

Had it been a giant con?

The flames of repudiation slowly and steadily roasted the inside of my chest, the heat clogging my throat.

Fool. Idiot. Naive and stupid girl, thinking all these men might have wanted anything more than power. Might have wanted you. Arrogant. Pathetic.

I turned to stare out the window, at a loss.

In the distance, I spotted Keelan and his mother riding side by side on two seahorses, conversing.

She had to keep batting away Mr. Whelk, and the scene of the two of them riding together was the closest thing to normalcy that I’d seen in days.

I was glad she’d requested that Keelan spend the day with her.

It gave them both a break from the swirl of chaos that seemed to follow me like a school of flesh-eating fish. Keelan had been more injured than he’d let on to the others after the last attack, and only Lizza’s intervention had saved him.

Yet another debt I owed the undead witch. I doubted I’d ever let her return to Bloss’s castle. Her skills were far too valuable.

My lips pressed tightly together, and the image of mother and son blurred for a moment. I turned away before the emotions became overwhelming—the pinch of regret, the guilt, the sick stomach-dropping possibility that Keelan might not have survived.

He noticed me watching through the glass and spurred his seahorse into dashing closer, the beast bucking through the waves, Sahar’s lips thinning as she spurred her own mount closer.

I forced a smile for him, but my eyes stayed on her, on the stressed clench that seemed to have become constant in her lower jaw. The dull stare in her eyes. This last attack had snuffed something out in her…and we’d been so busy that I hadn’t had time to find out what.

The past few days had been full of numb motion for Sahar and me—there was constant political maneuvering as we both attempted to avoid the pain of loss but also failure.

The marriage tournament she’d so painstakingly planned had collapsed.

Tradition had been undermined. And my rein was a laughingstock to those who sided with the rebels and a disaster to those who didn’t.

Keelan slapped his good hand against our window playfully and Mr. Whelk followed suit. It was disturbing to see the scarred patches of skin along his working arm.

“Look at that, Mr. Whelk. We match!” Keelan played off the injury with a laugh as his mother pulled her white seahorse up beside him.

She didn’t laugh at his observation.

I didn’t either.

I tried not to let myself feel at all because I was well aware it might devolve into crying.

It was better to just stifle emotion and do what needed to be done: conduct funerary rites, send apologies to grieving families, make promises to rebuild damaged structures.

All of those activities had been peppered with foreign messengers and positive correspondence from the land kingdoms. But even the good news that trade ships were en route to Palati couldn’t lift my spirits.

“Queenie! Watch!” Keelan pulled at his seahorse’s reins and sped off a little—still in view of the window—before doing a loop de loop.

I could only muster up the empty shadow of a smile for him as his mother hurried back over, her gestures scolding even though I couldn’t hear her words.

I sank back into the dank darkness of my own thoughts about Raj. I was facing attacks from a man with the power to wish himself invisible. How was I supposed to fight someone like that?

Last night, I’d asked the bleak question to Sahar, and she hadn’t had a firm answer. Only hope. No matter how she’d rubbed my back, no matter how many times she’d reassured me, “It will all be over soon,” I couldn’t believe her.

Because in order for this nightmare to end, I had to find him, and I had no clue where to start.

I stared out into the blue ocean, as blank and empty as the water that appeared to stretch out endlessly before me.

If only giving up was an option.

But then I’d be handing over thousands of innocent sea people to the mad djinn.

I had to fight.

How can I trap Raj?

Bloss had defeated him. He wasn’t indestructible. But he was so much more powerful than I was. My magic hardly stood a chance.

I chewed the inside of my lower lip as I pondered. It seemed as if Raj and his little company of criminals were following me from town to town and attacking all around me, trying to stir up hatred and dismay. That meant I probably wouldn’t have to wait long until they struck again.

But could I weave a web and trap them instead?

Turning from the window, my voice was low and harsh as I looked at Felipe. The mer stared steadily back at me, his navy eyes piercing as he took in the urgency of my posture.

“I need Lizza.”

He gave a sharp nod before throwing open the door on his side of the carriage. Without asking our driver to stop, he darted from the moving vehicle and slammed the door shut behind him.

“What are you going to do?” Mateo asked, head tilting, expression worried, as if he feared I was about to be reckless.

I opened my mouth to answer him but didn’t get a word out—an unholy, inhuman roar agitated the water, rattled the carriage, and jounced our bones.

Mateo and I shared a quick look of dismay before glancing out the window together.

My stomach dropped, pitching uncomfortably as all my hopes for planning my next move were dashed in a single instant.

Swirling through the sea, with scales black as pitch, was a hundred-foot-long water dragon.