Page 43 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Raj

B lood feathered the water around me as I stared down at the pimpled stable hand who clutched his broken nose. The desire to do worse rumbled through me and I gritted my teeth against it.

“What is going on?” An obnoxious voice made me turn away from the towering royal stables toward the path that led to the palace.

Avia’s favorite little guard, a mer with more muscles than sense, glared at me.

“He refused my help,” I shrugged nonchalantly, gesturing at the blubbering fool.

“You can’t attack everyone who refuses you.” The mer rubbed at his scarred eyebrow in consternation as his name came to me: Felipe.

“Why not? I have a quota. As soon as word gets around, no one will refuse. Then, they get help, and I get what I want. Win-win.” The twist of smoke at my lower half danced in the current and emphasized my point.

Felipe took a deep breath in then, closing his eyes, jaw ticking. When he opened them, he simply shook his head at me before reaching for the servant. Wrapping the siren’s arm around his shoulder, he swam off with the stable hand in tow.

I turned around to the bright yellow seahorse the boy had been tending and gritted my teeth. The animal stared blankly at me. “Well, now. How the hell am I supposed to take care of you?”

The stupid thing shat out a pellet.

After I’d locked the seahorse in its cell and poured enough food in there to block the door so that no one would have to deal with it until they needed it, I swam off to find another completely selfless deed to report to Avia.

Of course, I didn’t anticipate the other servants swimming in the other direction the second they saw me, but they did scatter like schools of fish before a predator.

On the one hand, they knew their place. On the other hand, they were making things infinitely harder for me.

I debated taking over one of their abandoned tasks…but window washing was boring. And I had no idea what counted as a weed or a wanted plant underneath the sea, so tending the gardens was unlikely to help me curry favor with my queen.

That’s how I ended up swimming through the garden in frustration and finding Keelan and his stupid turtle perched on a bench near the outskirts, staring morosely at the Kelp Forest. His golden chin rested on his golden hand, and he didn’t even move when I approached.

“Pathetic,” I called out. His head slowly turned, though I didn’t think he registered it was me for another second or two, his expression vacant.

“You’re sitting out here feeling sorry for yourself. I would have had my sons beaten for that,” I growled as I swam closer.

Keelan’s nostrils flared, but the siren didn’t even bother to stand when I reached him, his sense of self-preservation that far gone. “Yeah, heard you’re parent of the year.”

He was definitely suicidal.

“Competing with your mother for that one,” I goaded.

That did the trick. He rose to his feet, fist smashing into my jaw.

The blow merely made me grin because that meant I was free to retaliate. Avia had wished I wouldn’t attack her husbands. But she hadn’t said I couldn’t defend myself. I was good at finding loopholes when I wanted to.

Rearing my hand back, I socked him right in the jaw—which made my hand ache because I’d already been forced to hit that stable boy earlier.

I shook out my knuckles and waved away the annoying snapping of his indignant pet as Keelan finally rose to his feet.

Anger flickered through his amber gaze, and he took up a fighting stance on the pebbled path.

I grinned and manifested some legs that made me a few inches taller than he was. “Still crying over that dead bitch?” I taunted.

His lips twisted in outrage and his first swing was sloppy and easy to dodge, but I wasn’t used to physical brawls beneath the water and the heaviness of the current made me slower than usual, which was the only reason that bastard landed his second punch. Right in the solar plexus.

Pain blasted through my gut, and I gasped.

That little twat deserved what I did next. Staying bent, I ran right at his middle and then launched him over my shoulder.

He flipped through the water just like it was air, and I turned around to watch him thump against the ground. Only he didn’t. The asshole was so flexible he landed on his feet.

My lip twitched in annoyed mirth that he was a decent opponent.

“What’s that look? Having a stroke, old man?”

“Just amused that someone barely off the tit can fight decently, is all,” I retorted. “You were off the tit, weren’t you? Or is that why you were out here crying?”

With an outraged yell, Keelan threw a right hook.

My jaw exploded with pain as my hands came up and blocked his upper cut.

He threw hits so quickly that all I could do was defend myself for the next several minutes, stepping back every now and again to duck and dodge.

His fists smashed like hammers, like anvils, heavy and sure and so full of forge-hot rage.

All the while, his turtle circled, snapping near my head to throw me off balance, tempting me to wring its neck.

Avia hadn’t wished to protect pets, after all.

But I couldn’t even reach for the turtle. The siren was like a windmill—arms whirling at me repeatedly. Either wrath or sorrow was blowing through him with hurricane-force wind, and I was caught in the storm. I let him rage. Let his anger douse me, blows raining down.

Until, finally, it ended.

The boy wore himself out.

Breathing hard, sweat trickling from his neck and arms, he stopped, staring at me as I lowered my arms. “What the hell is this?” His eyes flickered up and down my body, suspicion making him keep his guard up, bracing for my attack.

I paused, unsure for a moment what to say—until inspiration struck. “Did you know I wrote a book?”

His brow furrowed and he shook his head as if he couldn’t follow the train of my thought. Perhaps he was more feeble-minded than I’d suspected.

“A clouded mind can’t see the sun,” I coached, trying to jog his memory, though by his blank expression, I began to wonder if he was really literate at all.

“You were a soldier. It’s one of the most famous treatises on war to ever exist.”

Still, he stared blankly.

“Did your commander at least know how to read if you don’t? Didn’t he quote it to you dumb sword grippers?”

That earned me a few more minutes of ducking and punching and a giant wallop to the ribs.

“You arrogant piece of shite! Royal asshole! What do you know about anything?” he roared as his fist soared toward my jaw.

I ducked the punch and then lashed out, one hand wrapping around his closed fist. My other grabbed his free wrist, and I held the tantruming siren until he stilled.

With deathly warning in my tone, I whispered, “I happen to know a lot of things. I know what it feels like to be sold by your father at the age of eight. I know the burn of shackles on your ankles in the hot summer sun. I also know that rage, when it’s not directed properly, can do a lot of useless damage.

When it is directed properly…it can conquer an entire kingdom. ”

He stared at me, every breath heaving in and out of his lungs as loud as a blacksmith’s bellows.

Once he averted his gaze in an unconscious act of submission, I let him go. His turtle quickly flew to his side and nuzzled him, as if checking for damage.

It was difficult to refrain from rolling my eyes as I made my point. “If you’re distracted by your own grief, how are you going to help Avia? Protect her? What good are you?”

He didn’t respond.

I stared at him through eyes that were on the cusp of swelling shut from his blows. “Your mother was a traitor.”

He seethed, but I shrugged. “That’s the truth. Get over it. What you need to decide now is, are you going to be good for Avia or not? Figure it out. ”

His jaw dropped, though I wasn’t certain it was because he understood.

It didn’t matter. I was still counting this.

Two good deeds down.

Nine-hundred ninety-eight to go.