Chapter 18 #2
“He wants me back in the water,” I rasped, fighting the inescapable pull of the vengeful god’s magic.
“He’s not getting you,” Kye gritted through his teeth.
Planting his heels into the floor, he leaned back and pulled on the cord. My fingers ached, trying to hold on to the smooth, slippery pearls on the other end of the cord.
“I...I can’t,” I tried to warn him that I wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.
The black pearls yanked my body backward. I dropped to my knees, the pink cord slipping from my fingers. Kye lunged to me, then looped the cord around my shoulders and under my arms.
“You. Are. Mine,” he growled low, pulling by both ends of the cord now.
Determination rolled off him in swells. It radiated from his mother’s pearls. The royal siren magic warmed my skin, finally melting the chill out of my bones.
Gently but firmly, Kye pulled and pulled, dragging me away from the great hall. I gripped the cord under my arms. The moment I felt a slack of the black pearls around my body, I climbed to my feet.
“To the tower. Now!” Not letting go of the cord, Kye guided me after him.
The farther away from the water we got, the weaker the god’s hold on me grew. We ran up the stairs with Kye half-hauling me up by the cord of pearls. Only the ones in the middle still remained pearls. Those on both ends had turned to plain glass beads by his hands.
We made it all the way to the room upstairs. My bed with one crumpled blanket was still here, but I couldn’t even think about sleep. My muscles trembled from exhaustion, but my mind reeled with adrenaline that was steadily pumped through my system by horror and fear.
“Sunrise will be here soon,” Kye assured me, glancing at the sky through the glass.
“Will all these creatures be gone for sure then?” I asked, afraid to hope that this night would ever be over. The monsters had always left in the morning before. But no night before had been like this.
Kye spun around to face me. His gaze lingered on me. What a sight I must be, panting for breath, my cheeks flushed, my hair wild, my naked body smeared in slime and wrapped in coils and coils of pearls.
A loud thud reverberated through the glass palace. The tower shook. I stumbled, grabbing onto a wall to keep my balance.
“Maren? Are you alright?” Kye reached for me, then stopped himself, moving his hands away.
I got no chance to reply. A crashing noise deafened me.
“What’s happening?” I muttered, afraid to hear the answer.
Splaying his hands on the glass, Kye peered down into the palace through the walls and the roof.
A dark, gigantic shape heaved its mass out of the water in the great hall, then shoved against one of the room’s three remaining walls. The glass cracked in the pattern of a giant spiderweb. The cracks expanded, spreading through the ceiling and whatever was left of the floor.
Showered with glass shards, the giant mass crashed back into water, raising high waves that reached all the way to the ceiling.
“What...is that?” I choked out in horror.
“A giant squid.” Kye frowned. “Not a creature of the Abyss.”
“What do we do now?” I was about to ask when the tower tipped sideways.
An entire army of monsters spread through the main floor of the palace, taking over Kye’s home. The walls tilted. The roof cracked. The base of our tower collapsed, and the entire structure broke into pieces.
I screamed, falling as the floor slipped sideways. Kye slid toward me, about to fall on top of me.
“Jump, Maren!” he yelled over the noise of the screeching, breaking glass. “Jump!”
He let go of one end of the pearl cord, letting me slip out of the only connection we had.
I pushed away from the wall that I’d tried to hold on to and jumped as the tower was about to crash over the outside terrace. My breath hitched at the height. My legs kicked in the air. I flailed my arms, trying to grip onto something to slow my fall.
Then I plunged into the dark water of the ocean outside the reef. Waves closed over my head. Panic chilled me more than the water did. I was in the water again. In the darkness. In the vile god’s domain.
Pieces of glass kept dropping into the waves above me. Smaller shards rippled the surface, making it look like it was raining. Glass chunks sank all around me. It was unsafe up there with sharp glass everywhere, but an even bigger danger lurked in the dark water below.
Should I swim to shore or out to sea? Down to avoid being cut by glass or up to keep away from the monsters?
“Maren?” Kye’s powerful voice called for me.
I saw his long, strong legs treading the water to my right, the cord of pearls and glass beads dangling next to him. He had released me from it but didn’t drop it. I swam underwater toward him.
“I’m here.” I surfaced, blinking the water out of my eyes, then ran a hand up my face to push my wet hair away.
“Thank gods, there you are.” His features momentarily relaxed with relief, before pinching into a worried expression once again. “Are you alright? Have you been hurt? Cut?”
Frankly, I couldn’t feel my body well enough to assess it for damage.
“I...I’m not sure,” I said. “Nothing hurts right now. But we need to get out of the water.”
He nodded.
“To the ship.” He pointed at the vessel that was ready to take us on our trip to Sarnala today. “Can you swim to it?”
“Yes.”
“Take this anyway. Just in case.” He lifted the cord out of the water, letting me take one end as he held on to the other. “Wrap it around your wrist securely. Make sure it doesn’t get loose."
He knew I might not be able to hold on to the beads in case of another tug-of-war between him and the god. I just hoped there was enough magic left in the few remaining pink pearls for the cord to withstand it too.
I drew in a shaky breath, looping my end of the cord around my wrist tightly, then twisting the glass beads around each other to tie it in place.
With Jearda’s choker around my neck, I couldn’t drown. But the weight of the cursed black pearls around my body made me sluggish. My feet were slow to kick. My arms felt heavy as I tried to move them in wide strokes.
I could almost feel Jahanam’s evil magic reaching for me from below, prickling my skin through the pearls.
For now, its pull wasn’t strong enough to stop me or drag me under.
Maybe because the god didn’t want to stop or drown me.
He used me as a puppet, keeping me where he wanted me to be, next to Kye.
Because the god knew that Kye would come for me, even if that meant putting himself in danger.
I was the lure.
Kye was the ultimate prize.
And we both played right into the god’s hands...or to be more precise, right into his tentacles.
The only way for me to protect Kye was to stay away from him.
“Kye...” I kicked harder, scooping the water with my hands faster to catch up to him. “We can’t stay together. The god...”
He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“No one will take you away from me,” he said resolutely. “Not the monsters. Not my fucking uncle. And not the damn god.”
Something brushed my leg, sending my heart racing with panic.
“They’re here again!” I squeaked, kicking my foot. “And they want you. Your blood... Or your magic. Your throne?”
I didn’t know exactly what Arnon and Dorelea’s goal was, but I knew now that they needed Kye for it. They made a deal with a real fucking god to capture the man who’d been made practically invincible by the very same curse that tormented him.
“We can’t stay together,” I tried to explain it all to Kye, while fighting the waves swimming. “He’ll find you through me.”
“Let him come,” Kye replied grimly but determinedly.
The wooden hull of the ship rose in front of us. Lifting his hand, Kye snapped his fingers. I glanced up to find the midnight-blue face of the ship’s captain looking at us over the ornate railing on the starboard side.
Someone jumped overboard and into the water next to us.
“Your Majesty,” the male siren greeted the king while gracefully gliding closer to us through the water.
He wasn’t swimming. He didn’t need to. The siren magic made the water move at his command without any visible effort on his part.
“We’ll need to board,” Kye said quickly. “We’ll be sailing off to Sarnala right now. Let the captain know.”
The siren nodded, then raised an arm. The water swelled around us, gently hugging me around my hips and torso. At the same time, a swirl of dark tentacles cut through it, making the water glow in its wake.
“They’re here!” I yanked on the beaded cord that connected me to Kye to get his attention.
“Lift her on deck,” Kye ordered the sailor, then dropped his end of the pearl cord.
“No! You have to be first,” I protested fervently, even as the wave built up, lifting me toward the main deck of the ship.
“I’ll be right behind you, my butterfly,” he assured me, then shot his arm out and grabbed a tentacle. It froze mid-wiggle and turned to glass in a loose loop around his wrist.
As soon as the water released me and my feet touched the warm deck boards, I ran to the ship’s captain.
“Get him out, please!” I gripped the man’s arm. “He isn’t invincible. They can trap him. They will take him.”
The god would wrap Kye in monsters’ tentacles to cocoon him. As Kye turned all the monster flesh around him to glass, he would entomb himself in a glass coffin of his own making. Then the god would drag him down to the bottomless Abyss to use him in any way he wished.
“Please bring the king up here!” I demanded, my voice raw with panic, my throat tight and sore.
The captain nodded to the sailor below. The water rose around Kye, lifting him too.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I chanted under my breath, gripping the railing so hard, my nails dug into the wood.
Dark tentacles rose after Kye, snaking over the surface and slithering through the waves. There were so many now, it looked like a sinister forest of undulating seaweed had suddenly sprouted from the waves.
A chill spiraled around my torso. The black pearls moved against each other with a wet noise from the slime between them as they jerked me against the railing.
“Oh, God, no! Not now.” I curled my fingers around the wood in a death grip.
“Maren? What’s happening?” Kye demanded as the water carried him over the railing toward the deck.
He snapped his fingers at the sleepy sailors who had gathered on the main deck. Two of them dragged the wooden platform from the other side of the deck where it’d been placed last night in anticipation of the king’s boarding in a more conventional way, from the shore, not from the ocean.
As the wave set Kye down onto the platform, the wood turned to glass.
The crew had no idea what was happening to me, but Kye had guessed.
“Hold her!” he ordered.
The ropes of black pearls tightened in the god’s magic effort to push me off the ship. I strained against them and croaked, “Do...not...jump in...after me.”
The fucking god had turned me into something akin to a dog toy, tossing me back into the water again and again. If only I could stop Kye from playing this dangerous fetch game with the dark divine. Whatever happened to me, he couldn’t come to my rescue this time.
A shove of the sinister magic sent me overboard. My nails scraped against the wood as I lost the grip on the railing. Once again, I was plunged into the ocean.
Tails, tentacles, and claws surrounded me without touching me. They moved, undulating and waiting... Waiting for Kye, their true target, to follow me in.
“Don’t jump,” rushed through my head. “Do not.”
The nightmarish creatures suddenly shifted away from me with a new purpose in their mass. They gathered under the ship, rocking it side to side.
Screams and shouts came from above. I looked up as the ship tilted. Its side came rushing toward me.
“Watch out!” someone yelled.
Then the foolish, stubborn, beautiful siren king dove from the deck to me.
His strong, lithe body arched through the air before entering the water at a perfect angle without a single splash.
I might’ve taught him how to swim, but he was born a siren, and not even a curse could change the grace with which he moved both in and out of water.
The ship never stopped tilting. Its masts swayed sideways, coming dangerously low over the water. I stared at them going down as the ship turned on its side. I tried to swim, but I was too slow to get away in time.
“Faster, Maren!” Kye swam to my side in a few long, powerful strokes.
He lifted his hands and caught one of the yards on the main mast. Even his inhuman strength wasn’t enough to stop the ship from upturning, but it gave me a few moments I needed to swim away.
“Kye no!” I screamed as the ship turned over and the mast shoved Kye under with it.
In the blink of an eye, the wood turned to glass.
A shimmering line swept through the entire hull.
Its dark color disappeared. The hull and all the decks turned transparent, exposing the cargo inside the ship’s holds.
The glass ropes snapped. The folded sails were smashed into shards as the masts snapped and broke in several places along their lengths.
I dove under, not to escape the devastation—there was no escaping the whirlwind of broken glass sinking into the ocean—but to find Kye.
“Please, please, don’t let it kill him.” The plea pounded in my mind as I swam through the shower of shards that had turned almost entirely invisible in water and nearly impossible to spot.
The glass scraped against the pearls covering my body. Some shards slid over my exposed skin too. But if they cut me, I didn’t feel it.
The elegant, radiant shapes of the sirens slipped under the upturned ship. The crew seemed to be working as a team to turn the ship upside up again.
The familiar tall and graceful figure of their king slipped around the remaining stump of the mast that had nearly crushed him. But he seemed unharmed.
Smoothly avoiding any contact with the other sirens, Kye slipped from under the hull of the ship, then kicked his feet to swim up to the surface. I followed him, gasping a breath the moment he did.
“Maren,” he grinned.
His hair was wet, but his face remained completely dry. The particles of water turned to fine glass dust at the contact with his skin. The next layer of water then carried the dust away, washing it off and leaving him dry.
Behind us, the sirens finally succeeded in turning the ship upright. A few remained in the ocean, holding onto its hull. The rest returned to the ship to drain its holds of water. With its masts broken and its sails gone, it looked gorgeous anyway, sparkling in the rising sun as if made of crystal.
Kye and I were still in the water, still in the monsters’ domain.
Panic jolted me into action.
“We need to get out of the water, Kye. Now.”