Page 13

Three Years Later

Time didn't stop in Saltgrave prison, even if the life I thought I was living had.

The seaweed gurgled in my bowl. I stared at it—my sworn enemy—and rubbed the sting in my wrists. The guards had secured the chains too tightly on my last trip to the mines, leaving the skin raw and burning.

My nails were chipped and ragged, my palms scarred. But other scars ran deeper. I tried not to think about those.

“Today’s meal is especially foul, isn’t it?”

In the cell opposite mine, Sirena stuck her pert nose between the bars and wrinkled it with displeasure. Her melodic siren’s voice carried the faintest thread of longing.

“Didn’t you say you used to drizzle honey on your breakfast before this place? What does honey taste like? We’ll all be dead soon. I want to imagine it before I salt the earth.”

I ran my tongue over my lips.

Before this place.

The memory hit harder than I expected.

I forced myself to swallow a bite of the seaweed. The slimy texture always made me gag, and it tasted sour, like spoiled milk, curdled into thick, gummy strings. I wasn’t sure honey could’ve made it better, but it was worth imagining .

Swishing my tail through the sand, I brought myself closer to the bars. The passage was free of guards, but they’d be here soon to take us to the mines.

“You would love, honey,” I murmured, keeping my voice low enough not to draw attention. “It’s achingly sweet, but in the best way. It has a rich amber color that’s thick and sticky. A silken syrup you can savor on your tongue. And the taste lingers. The sweetness is like… a golden memory.”

“That sounds delicious,” Sirena said, her eyes closing with a dreamy smile. “I wish I could taste some.”

Me too.

Sweetness didn’t exist in Saltgrave.

Every day, we harvested glowing minerals deep inside a twisted labyrinth of jagged tunnels. Our chisels hacked at the rock, barely making a dent while each strike inflamed the cuts on our hands that never had enough time to heal.

My bones throbbed. My muscles cramped. And at night, my mind echoed with the screams of inmates buried alive beneath collapsing tunnels. The only thing more devastating than their cries was the unnerving silence when they stopped.

The daily scratches I’d etched into my cell wall had grown in number, a defiant shrine to the length of my captivity.

Three whole years.

I should stop counting. I had no chance of a pardon. But I liked the control, as if time might stop if I did. And I couldn’t let it.

After the first year, when the terms of my father’s agreement expired without the debt paid in full, I lost the last stirrings of hope for anything outside of this prison.

My family’s home was gone forever. The promise I’d made was broken. And while my heart and soul withered in an underwater cage, my mind raged. I relived those last days over and over; my bitterness was like a fever that wouldn’t break.

I hated what I’d become. Losing my freedom, and knowing those who’d chained me still roamed free, was almost too much to bear. However, time scarred the wounds. I didn’t believe I’d ever leave Saltgrave. But I was learning how to live inside it.

And thankfully, I had Sirena.

A few inmates had come and gone from my wing of the prison, but she’d been my longest companion.

She’d arrived thrashing, her siren song thrumming with the tale of her innocence.

The lyrical sound echoed off the walls, pulling me toward the bars with a mesmerizing force.

But the guards were unaffected. The glowing discs at their belts flared brighter, absorbing her lure as they shoved her into the cell and jabbed her with a shockwave stick.

I’d curled into myself then, her song falling silent as I remembered the agony that had once pulsed through my hand from the same weapon.

She was so quiet after that. I thought she’d died, and the guards would return to collect her body. But then she moaned a vow of vengeance that spoke to my soul. And we became fast allies.

Sirena had made the fatal error of singing for one man while another watched. A man who wanted to own her and twist her lure into something vile. Someone rich, well-connected, and used to getting what he wanted. When she denied him, he accused her of a crime. Saltgrave gave her a cell.

Both of us were locked away for wrongs we didn’t commit. Both bottling enough anger to boil the sea.

Sirena pressed herself closer to the bars as the guards approached our cells.

Her auburn hair drifted around her shoulders and skimmed the top of her prison-issued kelp wrap.

A circlet of inked thorns ringed the base of her throat, and in its center, the essence of her siren song glowed like a gold coin beneath her skin.

Her indigo scales mirrored the color of her eyes as she met my gaze across the passage.

Another day in the mines.

The guards slipped the shackles over our bruised wrists and herded us through the shadowed tunnels until we joined the line of inmates entering the frozen catacombs.

Saltgrave loomed at our backs like a barnacle-encrusted monster. Black sand shifted beneath our tails, littered with broken shells and the bones of those who’d fallen on the barren swim from the monster’s mouth to the mines.

I stared at one of the bones, half-submerged in the sand, my gaze unfocused as the line slithered forward. The current was colder today, numbing my fingers. I rubbed them together as a guard swam down the queue of prisoners.

Beyond this prison, a war raged, threatening to bring the merfolk kingdom to its knees.

The sea witch, Tivara, had harnessed the magic I’d unleashed in the comb and used it against the Sea Queen’s defenses.

So far, she hadn’t succeeded in draining the kingdom’s magic or seizing full control, but the queen was losing the fight.

Ancient enchantments had once shielded the kingdom, netted into the coral spires of the palace reef. But the wards were failing.

Expansive grottos of lush flora and sunken temples had already been overrun. There were whispers of mass evacuation, and some had already fled the heart of the realm, now traveling the currents in search of safer sea.

Whenever I thought about what the witch had done, guilt and anger tightened like a vise inside my chest. Not only had I failed to save my home, but I’d also helped to start a war.

I might’ve saved my friends and the crew aboard the ship, but every day I endured the burden of knowing others were now at risk because of me.

And that burden would only get heavier. When the last of the kingdom’s enchantments faded, Sirena’s teasing prophecy would come true.

We’ll all be dead soon. Or worse, enslaved to an evil sea witch.

I’d rather perish in a mine collapse.

I spent the day assigned to a newly excavated tunnel, deeper inside the twisted rock than I’d ever traveled. Such was the fate of the traitor who’d aided Tivara. The guards took pleasure in giving me the hardest tasks, pairing me with murderers and brutal criminals in the darkest tunnels.

There was no one to watch my back, and I had a few scars to show for it. But I’d given a few too.

Today, though, my fingers were useless from the cold. My arms were sore, and the glacial current made my chest ache as if icicles had frozen around my ribcage. When you were this deep in the mines, even the depraved kept to themselves.

Crystals pulsed with a faint glow, embedded in the coarse stone walls. Their light did little to push back the crushing darkness. And the cavity was tight, forcing me to fight the constant, frantic need to claw my way toward open water.

There was barely room to wield my chisel. The sharp rock scraped my back and bit into my tail. Blood leaked from the cuts on my hands and unprotected scales, staining the water a cloudy red.

A searing pain slashed through my shoulder as I wedged the chisel under a crystal, working it loose. It popped free, sank to the rocky floor, and then tumbled a few feet away with the current.

I stared at it, unblinking. And suddenly, I saw a worn leather boot slide over the mineral, hiding it from view. Green eyes flashed with challenge. A slanted, seductive smile tugged at his mouth. The one that always made my heart trip.

I swallowed hard.

Even now, at the bottom of the sea, with hate and blood welling from my veins, I missed him. I wanted those days back when I lived in blissful ignorance, before I knew I was a pawn in a wretched game. And for a fleeting moment, I let myself imagine he missed me, too.

Had he found his family? Was he happy?

I am such a fool.

Pressing the back of my hand against my trembling lips, I forced myself to remember each line I’d etched into my cell wall. A thousand cuts had already been carved into my heart. How many more before it stopped beating?

“Get back to work, traitor,” a guard growled, swimming past the tunnel’s mouth. He pointed his weapon at me and smirked. “Or tomorrow, we’ll send you in deeper—with the inmates from solitary.”

I tightened my grip on my chisel, my jaw clenched tight. Any sound he’d take as a retort, and solitary inmates weren’t just dangerous, they enjoyed the dark… hunted in it.

I turned back to the rock. But before I could wield the tool, an agonizing shriek tore through the tunnels.

My muscles locked on instinct.

The walls shuddered with a thunderous crack, and the ground tremored. Loose rocks dropped from the ceiling, the water filling with choking silt. The guard vanished in the murk, leaving me in the shaft.

“Wait! Don’t leave me here!” My cry was swallowed by the swirling water.

A deep groan echoed through the shaft as the ceiling buckled. I covered my head, wedging myself tight against the jagged wall. My fingers clawed at the bare stone as if somehow, I could get even closer. Screams reverberated through the tunnel, cutting off, one by one.