Chapter 28 #2
My father managed to turn—to look at me with bloodshot eyes and attempt to speak. Even if I could help him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Not when I remembered what he came here to do. Not when I remembered shouting pleas at the stars from the dark pit of that cellar.
Pleas that became hoarse whispers when my voice had failed.
Before I had the chance to even consider his fate, Lovaila hissed, “Liar,” and the reeds dragged my father over the sand and back into the lagoon.
Bubbles floated to the surface as he vanished beneath the water. He wouldn’t die. But it would feel like he was.
Over and over.
Mildly sickened when those bubbles ceased appearing, I looked at Brey.
And screamed as reeds leaped from the lagoon over the sand to latch onto his legs. As they wound up them, I dropped to my knees beside him. Furiously, I pulled and plucked at the reeds. They were too thick—as unbreakable as chains. “Give me your knife.”
Brey didn’t move. “It’s no use, Ethel.”
“Lies are costly,” growled Lovaila. “But yours has given me a reason to keep you, feline king.”
Clawing at the reeds now, I snarled, “Give me your fucking knife.”
He didn’t. With far too much calm, he sheathed it and said, “Come here.”
I kept scraping at the reeds while Lovaila laughed from her perch in the middle of the lagoon. Brey bent down to grab me. Before he could, reeds twirled around his wrists. He lurched as his hands were pulled behind his back.
I stood and rounded him to free them.
Brey whispered, “I promise I won’t die. I’m much too charming for that.” When I continued scratching at the reeds, his tone firmed. “Ethel, stop. Listen. You must do whatever it takes to go home.” His voice lowered again. “She cannot leave. Get to the sea and swim until you find a boat.”
Home.
“If you think I’m going anywhere while you’re stuck in this rotting lagoon, you’re as stupid as you are pretty.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
Every inch of me froze. Even my panicked heart. Tears flooded my eyes.
When they met his, I was given a soft half smile. “Stubborn woman.” He pressed his forehead to mine and murmured, “Get back on the grass, and no matter what happens, do not lose your temper or let her too close to y—”
Reeds slithered around his mouth, silencing him. Then his ankles.
They tugged. I reached for him—grabbed his tunic with such force that I was dragged into the cool water with him.
A warning chime, Lovaila’s laughter rose.
Get back on the grass. Away from the reed’s reach.
I let go.
I let him go and stumbled out of the water with fistfuls of his tunic in my shaking hands. Walking backward over the sand, I stared at the blood on my fingers. Brey’s and mine.
Then I glared at the miserable excuse for a mermaid. “You will give him back.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you are incredibly rude?”
Do not lose your temper.
Impossible. Yet I pushed between my clenched teeth, “Not to my face.”
Lovaila smiled. “I do like being first at things.”
“You don’t like lies,” I said. “But you lied to us.”
Intrigue warmed her sweet tone. “How so?”
“You said we could do as we wish,” I reminded her. “That we could leave.”
“But I did not say who.” Sighing, Lovaila swept her claws across the lagoon’s rippling surface. “What is it like?” Looking at me when I failed to respond, she said, “Being in love.”
Rather than enrage her by lying and saying I didn’t know, I said, “Give. Him. Back.”
“Tell me what it feels like, and I’ll consider it.”
“If I tell you, then you will give him back.”
“I said,” she seethed, “that I will consider it.”
I didn’t exactly have many other options—a plan to rescue Brey. Still, I hesitated. My fingers ached as they slowly ceased clenching the scraps of his tunic.
“Love is war,” I said before I could truly think about it. “Without victory or surrender.”
Lovaila sat up on the sand, tail falling into the lagoon with a heavy splash.
Though I shouldn’t have taken them off the monster, my eyes dropped to the black material in my hands, then roamed to the water endlessly drowning my husband. “It’s the highest form of happiness there is, and the type of sorrow you cannot imagine surviving.”
Agonized wails and shouts filled the silence that followed, as the sun crested the mangroves and the made vampires began to burn in earnest.
Lovaila didn’t spare them a glance. She watched me as if I’d told her a riddle and she was close to finding the answer.
“I smell it on you,” she eventually said.
“The bond?”
Her head shook. “Love. It is why I wanted to meet you two.”
“So you’ve scented it before.”
“Once,” she said. “A great many centuries ago.” Her dark gaze skimmed the water as she appeared to remember it. “I told that particular king and queen that they could feed their precious ward without any interference from me, on one condition.”
It took effort to keep still with pained noises and pleas and burning flesh staining the air. Knowing that Brey was trapped at the bottom of the lagoon.
“They had to tell me what it was.” Lovaila’s voice drifted easily over the growing sounds. “The foreign yet deliciously ethereal scent that clung to them both.”
“Love,” I said.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Love. Wanting them to visit me again, to tell me more about this love, I stayed true to my promise.” A quick growl gnashed her teeth. “But a century later, a different king and queen crept around my home. I was most displeased.”
“You tried to keep them?”
“Keep,” she said, as if that was laughable, although she seemed inclined to keep my husband and father. “Kill, more like. Alas, they were prepared. A strange material tangled me up like an insect in a web.”
I frowned. “A fishing net.”
“Fishing net,” she repeated.
“No one is supposed to help their successors feed the wards.”
“Oh?” She snickered. “Well, many have. Your king’s sire must not have had love for him.”
“The late king never fed the wards.” Not willing to explain it all, I only said, “He and his wife perished not long ago.”
A wave of her hand. “Then his sire had no love for him.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” I lifted a shoulder. “But now that I’ve told you about love, can you please give my husband back and let us tend to this ward?” I crinkled my nose. “I would really like to cleanse the scent of burning vampire from my hair.”
“How polite you are when you want something.”
I just smiled.
Lovaila harrumphed. “Well, I want something too.”
“You cannot keep him,” I said far too quick and harshly.
“Which one?” She grinned and flicked her tail. Water splashed like thrown crystals beneath the sun. “I have more than one him.”
Gulls circled above, drawn to the scent of burning flesh.
“And I will not forfeit them both.” Between her dark teeth, she ordered, “Choose.”
There was no decision to make. My mother was the only reason I hesitated. If my father died, then so would she. But if Lovaila wanted some longer-lasting entertainment, perhaps the price could be assurance.
“Fine. I’ll choose,” I said. “Before I do…”
“Yes?” she asked in a tone that told me she knew what I wanted.
“I need you to promise me something.”
“How about I just carve open your chest and squeeze your heart as you scream for mercy?”
I crossed my arms. Whatever expression I wore made Lovaila fall back onto her elbows and laugh as though I’d said something hilarious.
Then the water moved—rippled as someone was pulled beneath it toward her.
My hope was short-lived.
Aphylus Blueburn breached the surface once more, coughing and splattering. But rather than deposit him on the sand beside Lovaila, the reeds climbed high into the air.
And hung him upside down.
“Look at your sire.” Lovaila gestured to him with a long claw. “Look. See how he wriggles like a slippery fish?”
My father shook his head to rid the wet hair clinging to his face. His eyes bulged when they found me.
Slippery fish indeed.
It was becoming increasingly clear that this game would only end when Lovaila wanted it to. Which could be evenings, moons, or years from now. Possibly never. To get Brey and me home, I needed to cease playing.
And tempt her instead.
“Look, look.” Lovaila pushed my father, and he swung out in a dizzying circle. Her horrific smile wilted as she watched me. “You are not laughing.”
“I am internally.”
Not understanding, she said sullenly, “Maybe you wish to choose this one.”
Instead of denying that, I said, “Lovaila, if you keep the king and kill him, who is going to bring you a gift in one hundred years?”
She straightened. “A gift?”
“A gift,” I repeated. “You see, killing one of us would kill us both because of our pesky bond. It would also end the Saltblood line, as we have no heir. Which means the wards could go unfed forevermore, and your next lot of visitors might be weapon-wielding foreigners.”
“These bonds.” Her thin upper lip peeled back. “Such a grotesque curse.”
“Truly,” I drawled.
Her sly smile said she knew I’d meant it. “What will you bring me?”
“Do you know what a surprise is?”
She nodded eagerly, then flicked water at my father’s face when he groaned. “But I can have him?” Looking back at me, she nearly took my father’s eye out with a claw as she pointed at him. “If I give your king back and allow you to leave, you will not try to take him?”
“If you agree not to kill him, we will leave without him.”
She hummed. “Perhaps your king did not lie completely, and you do not care much for this one.”
“I don’t, but he’s bonded to my mother, and I do care about her.” I dared to walk closer to the lagoon. “So if my mother dies, I will know it was because you failed to keep your word, and when I return to this isle, it won’t be with a gift.”
Lovaila’s eyes narrowed to slits, and I wondered if she was trying to imagine what I could bring with me to destroy her.
Or if she was imagining killing me.
Just when I thought she’d snarl at me for threatening her, she asked, “What if you are bred in the next century, and you die before returning to this ward?”