Chapter 7
Liam automatically took the captain’s chair again.
When I asked him if he was good to drive, he waved me off.
Apparently, getting his entire chest cavity ripped open and healed within minutes wasn’t that traumatizing.
He steered us back to the harbor, perfectly docking the boat.
We walked back to our little condo in silence, noting that Audrey was starting to shiver.
Perhaps the adrenaline of what just went down was finally starting to recede.
Liam automatically wrapped her in one of his massive arms, and her shivering started to die down as we finally made it into the condo.
“Are you okay?” I asked her as we set our things down. “Do you need to warm up in the shower?” Audrey nodded at my question as she wordlessly sauntered down the hall. Liam sighed and scraped both hands down his face.
“You’re staying, right?” I asked him as the door shut to Audrey’s suite.
He lifted his head at me with a curious look. “You want me to?”
I gave him a look of disbelief. “I think she would feel better if you did.”
Liam raised a blond eyebrow at me as he pressed, “Would you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t push it.”
Liam chuckled as I stomped down the hall to my room.
Audrey and Liam were still asleep when I left the next morning.
I wasn’t too surprised to see them in bed together.
It wasn’t like our thrifted couch was large enough for him, and our carpet was worn down enough that it probably needed to be replaced soon, so Liam sleeping in bed with Audrey made the most sense.
But even though she slept on a California King-sized mattress, his feet still hung off the edge from under her covers.
They weren’t cuddling or anything, which surprised me. Audrey was a cuddler.
When I arrived at work, I found myself stuck at the front door. Was I really about to just casually go to work after getting attacked by a monster the night before? Was that really how I was choosing to cope with that?
I started to mentally go down a rabbit hole on how Capitalism affected the American psyche when my employee waved his hand in front of my face.
“You good, Van?” Shane asked. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, too. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his dark hair looked a bit shaggier than normal. His cocoa-colored eyes also had dark circles under them.
“So good, Shane.” I grinned brightly at him, meeting him at eye level, and unlocked the door to let us in.
A couple of hours later, I noticed surfers strolling along the sidewalk outside the shop, their hair damp from the ocean. I was suddenly petrified. They had no idea how close they were to—
“Van,” Shane called, making me snap my head up and grin at him. His ever-present frown was on his face. “Did we get that shipment in?”
“Oh.” I lifted the divider in the countertop to let me out.
“Yes. It’s in my office. I’ll go grab it.
” I strode past him to walk down the hallway that led to both the restrooms and my office, a smaller room that barely fit a desk, storage shelves, and a thrifted loveseat.
I pulled my keys out to unlock it, only to find that the door was already unlocked.
I figured Shane must have used his keys already to go in there for something else, but when I opened the door and saw a woman standing in the far corner, gazing at all the random trinkets I had collected over the years, I froze.
“Um,” was all I managed to get out before she turned her head, revealing that the majority of her face was covered up.
She wore a scarf covering the bottom half of her head, exposing only the gold shimmer of her eyes.
The rest of her outfit had dark leather chest and leg pieces—much like the ones on the men who attacked me that horrifying night.
Like what the attractive but rude red-haired man on TV wore.
I immediately stepped back before her melodic voice chimed, “I’m a friend.”
My brain was scrambling; she was barely taller than me. She wore a large cloak with a hood over her wrapped head, shielding most of the shape of her body, and the dark clothing she had on underneath. She lifted a hand, her pale fingers the only thing poking out of her gloves, “You’re safe.”
“Sure.” I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Don’t make a scene, they don’t know I’m here.” Her golden eyes flicked over in the direction of the front of the shop, where Shane was. I glared at her, slowly stepping into my office and shutting the door behind me.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“Your friends call me Hush,” she replied. Then she crossed her arms and turned back toward my shelf to admire a picture of Audrey and me. We were on the beach, sunbathing. Except the flash from the camera practically made Audrey invisible on the sand, “I’m a friend. At least, I’m trying to be.”
“Why?” I asked. I grabbed the box that Shane needed and cautiously made my way to the door again.
“We want the same things,” Hush replied.
“Ah.” I nodded, not yet convinced.
Hush turned to watch me open the door to set the box Shane needed just outside of it, before closing the door and locking it.
“Our previous meeting spot in my realm has been compromised,” Hush explained. “I was told to meet here instead.”
“Who told you to meet here?”
Hush flitted her gaze to the door seconds before the doorknob jiggled and knuckles wrapped on the door, “Van, let us in.” Audrey said.
I glanced around my small space. Four people, one of them being the size of Liam, would be a tight fit.
But there would still be enough seating for everyone, thanks to the loveseat I squished against the far wall.
I flicked the lock open and let my two friends inside, giving Audrey a very obvious, pointed glare.
“I know, I know.” Audrey winced under my expression. “But we need to talk to Hush about what happened last night.”
“And we’re just gonna do that here?” I countered, relocking the door behind them.
The box was still there, so Shane hadn’t come looking for it, yet.
I looked up at Liam, surprised to see him slouching so much.
He wore a beanie on his head, concealing his pointed ears.
His swim trunks were back, and I recognized it as his human disguise.
“We must be quick,” Hush replied, finally turning away from my memorabilia shelf to watch Audrey and Liam plop themselves on the loveseat. “I can’t linger here.” I leaned back against my desk, mirroring our new friend by crossing my arms.
Well, a new friend to me.
I guess Liam and Audrey had known her beforehand.
“Well, spit it out.” I waved for them to get a move on. “I have employees here. I can’t have secret Hyvenmere stuff going on in my place of work.”
“I am no threat to your employees,” Hush said again, before turning that eerie golden gaze to my friends. “What was so urgent that you needed me to come so quickly?”
“Audrey killed a solvyrn last night,” Liam said, point-blank. He sat forward and clasped his fingers together. Even hunched, his massive frame still took up space.
“What?” Hush stiffened, her golden eyes widening. “Where? How?”
“Here, out in the ocean.” Audrey tipped her head in the direction of the ocean as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I had no choice—it was too wild and was a danger—”
“Of course, you had no choice—there was a solvyrn in your territory,” Hush whispered as she started pacing the small room. Her blonde brows pinched together as she processed this, “How did a solvyrn get through the gates?”
“That’s what we want to know.” Liam sighed, leaning back on the loveseat.
“This sucks.” Audrey groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “This fucking sucks.”
“Where is it?” Hush asked, ignoring Audrey’s agony.
“The bottom of the ocean,” Liam replied. Hush nodded, rubbing her brow with her fingertips.
“You’ll need to tell the Fae Queen about this; that way, the governments can coordinate to clean it up before humans discover it.”
“I informed my sister first thing this morning,” Liam nodded. “She was in the process of reaching out to the other governments when I came back.”
“How the hell did you travel there and back so fast?” I asked.
Liam lifted a massive shoulder. “I lyskifted.”
Teleported. He teleported there and back. Because of course he did. Jesus Christ.
Hush stopped her pacing and stared at Audrey intensely, a stare that Audrey immediately felt and addressed with a glare. Hush raised a blonde eyebrow in a clear, silent challenge. A challenge that Audrey groaned at, throwing her hands up in exasperation, before declaring, “I’m not—”
“You are,” Hush interrupted her. “You can’t possibly still be in denial of it.”
I picked up on what they were arguing about and inserted my own two cents, “Doesn’t the Siren King think he’s the Chosen One? Why would it be Audrey?”
“King Ilia was deemed the prophesied one fifty years ago, when he single-handedly defeated the first solvyrn to emerge from the oceans and touch Hyvenmere soil in hundreds of years,” Hush interrupted me with a withering glare in my direction.
I slid my gaze over to Audrey as I asked, “How many, uh, solvyrn’s have shown up since?”
“One.” The three of them replied.
Well, shit.
“Does the prophecy talk about killing solvyrn, specifically?”
“The language of the prophecy has been translated and rewritten dozens of times over thousands of years,” Liam explained.
“The original language and meaning are probably lost, leaving a lot of Hyvenmere to guess the interpretation. Two pieces of it have remained consistent, though. One piece is that the person will have several powerful gifts, whereas Hyvenmerians generally only have one, if any. Audrey has two. The second is the prediction that the prophesied hero will ‘slay an ancient beast’.”
I scrunched my nose. “Okay, but, like—” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why does it matter?”
Hush tilted her head at me, her eyes the only part of her face that allowed me to interpret her quizzical expression. “What do you mean?”