Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My breath punches out of me.
My chest caves in.
The water is crushing me.
I cough bubbles into the blue as I sink like a stone, deeper and deeper. Panic grips me, muddling my thoughts, stringing them on dark threads and tangling them into snags and knots.
Shit. The spell is still on me.
Stop. Calm down.
I force myself to stop moving, stop flapping my arms and legs, and speak to my queen, as I float suspended in the blue.
Your Majesty, Amphitrite. I’m here. Release me. Release me now.
I try to breathe underwater and choke. My body spasms, trying to expel the water from my lungs. What is going on?
Release me! I’m here. Can you hear me?
But nothing happens, and I sink further down.
By all the Sleeping Gods… This isn’t good. Yet it’s not like I can go back now, is it?
All right. Orientate yourself. Get moving.
Above me, the surface of the sea sparkles and cracks into a glowing checkerboard. Kicking my legs, using my arms to direct myself, I swim up toward it. My dress and the dagger are weighing me down. My chest feels crushed. My lungs are burning by the time I break through the water and suck in a huge breath.
And cough.
Still coughing, I kick my feet and turn in a circle until I see the palace and the platforms floating at the center of the arena. It’s a small makeshift island with structures on it, swaying gently with the waves.
Am I supposed to climb up there? There’s no arrow pointing to say, ‘This is the direction of your itinerary. Proceed with confidence.’
What if one just climbed out of the arena altogether?
But when I turn toward the walls connecting the small isles around the arena, I realize how high they are. The slopes of the isles themselves hang over the water, shiny and smooth.
Then I see two people trying to scale them. Bobbing in the sea, treading water, I watch them. They are doing a pretty decent job, obviously experienced in climbing, boosting each other up whenever they falter, finding somehow footholds and handholds and?—
A boom sounds, and they are blown up into the air, tumbling through it and splashing back into the water.
Enchanted barriers.
The water bubbles and fountains up where they’ve fallen. Then crimson spreads in clouds. Sharks?
With a shiver, I start swimming toward the platform island, sweeping the water away from me with my hands, propelling myself with my legs. Water gets into my nose, choking me, and I have to stop and cough it out. It burns my airways and my throat.
As I float, trying to get my breath back, something bumps into me from behind.
Startled, I let out a yelp. Then I hiss when I turn around to find it’s a body. A dead body, floating face-down, half-submerged in the water.
Another body is floating behind it.
Oh, Gods. This… isn’t good, because… Because where there are bodies, there are predators.
Instinctively, I start swimming away, even as I see what’s coming for them. Many things in the sea are carnivorous, and these bodies are a ready meal for them, like the knot of nokke that’s swimming toward the corpses, their equine heads held out of the water, their eyes crimson, and their teeth sharp.
At least these people are already dead, I think. Right?
Next time check , I tell myself. Check they are really dead before you swim away. You’ve spent too much time among finnfolk and their strange, self-absorbed ways.
As if it’s that easy, that simple to find yourself back in the air, back in the world you left behind, after living in the depths for so long.
As if human ways are better.
No human has ever managed what I’m about to attempt. Which is precisely why I’m here. Should I stick around, let the hungry sylphs, nokke, and sharks get me?
No. Can’t afford that. It’s each man and woman for themselves out here, I remind myself as I cut a line toward temporary salvation. Maybe, if I had the advantage I’d expected, but now… Now, I’m no better than them.
The humans seem to have also figured out that the platforms are the answer, and I see many heads bobbing over the gathering waves, going in the same direction.
But a woman screams as something thick and pale wraps around her neck and drags her down. A tentacle? A sea snake?
My heart is banging around inside my chest, echoing inside my head. I need to keep moving, find what it takes to win this game. How to get out of here.
Then a haunting melody rings out. Voices and flutes. A lyre. Sadness and nostalgia.
Mermaids.
There are five of them, their heads and shoulders out of the water, long blue and silver hair spilling around them. They make for an enchanting tableau, their powerful tails surely swishing underneath them, keeping them in place.
Two of them are singing, voices twining in perfect harmony, speaking about longing, love, and loss.
My heart thumps hard. The song speaks to me, to me specifically, digging into the old hurts, the scabbed-over wounds that never healed. Calling me, calling me…
Don’t listen.
Kicking my feet to move backward, I see a group of humans turning around and swimming toward them, faces rapt. Mesmerized.
Bespelled.
Anger sparks through me. Then fear follows as my situation sinks in for good. What happened? Why didn’t the spell break? How will I survive and get close to the king now?
No matter. I’ll do it. I’ll just have to survive this trial and get into the palace. The winners will be allowed near the king, but with the magic surrounding him and mine lacking…
Hells. Keep going. I need to make it to the platforms swaying in the middle of the arena. To my left, a line cuts through the water, and I see a long green tail splashing.
Tritons.
They get easily distracted by movement, because unlike their female counterparts of sorts, the mermaids, they are deaf and mute.
Mute like me.
No, the irony isn’t lost on me. But that means I have to stop swimming. No movement. No ripple. If I stay perfectly still, they may pass me by—as still as I can be while treading water, my head slipping under once in a while, my heart in my throat.
I wonder if they can smell my fear, like dragons can.
The salt going down my throat is scraping it raw, burning like the salt of sea magic, but it gives no jolt to my heart. It’s just water.
And I’m still just human.
It’s fine; they will swim by. It has to be a pod, at least five of the creatures. One of them breaks the surface, raising his head and blowing a conch—a deep, belligerent, and sorrowful sound.
Anything that gets in their way, they’ll tear apart. That pod of mermaids is nearby, and tritons are fiercely territorial of their sea wives. Possessive. Not the sort of males I like, and that’s even without counting the green skin, long fangs, and fishtails.
Stay still , I repeat to myself, empty your mind, let go of the fear, and just stay still.
Then a woman screams close by, somewhere off to my left.
Shit.
She’s splashing about like she’s drowning, arms flailing, and water flying in a spray. Her dark skin and hair are stark against the white froth and blue water, making her a perfect target.
On cue, the tritons stop their advance… and veer toward us.
Holy shit, no. My breath snags in my chest. What I need to do is swim away. She’s creating such a ruckus that all their attention is bound to be on her.
Leaving me free to get away.
Which is what I should do. Right now, in fact, before it’s too late. Start swimming.
Start swimming now! It’s each man and woman for themselves, remember? Each one of us fending for ourselves? Yes? Ring a bell?
So why am I not moving away? Why do I turn toward the splashing woman and start swimming in her direction? I’m clearly an idiot. She’s still screaming, and I can’t even tell her to shut up with no voice of my own.
The tritons are coming in fast, so damn fast.
A turbulence somewhere to my right catches my eye.
Good. I dive under, grab her long hair, and pull her away. She stops screaming, twisting about, panicking, and I have no plan. The one thing I know is that I may have no magic, but I have a slightly magical dagger.
I pull it out of its sodden sheath and scream, too, soundlessly, in rage.
Come and get us, ugly faces.
The dark-skinned woman is watching me with those pale eyes, as if she hopes I can actually save her.
I doubt it.
I should be heading for the platforms, not making a useless stand here with my stupid little dagger.
But I know the sea, I know how tritons hunt, and that turbulence may just save us.
The tritons are right in front of us now. They stop and surface, bare males from the waist up, humanoid but for the green tint of their skin and the jagged ears, the razor teeth, and those eyes… They are so close I can see the bright blue hue of their eyes, not like Arkin’s, but like inset gems of lapis lazuli.
“What are they waiting for?” the woman shrills, making a grab for me. I release her, then, not to let her drag me under. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
I glare at her, and thankfully she falls silent.
The monstrous mermen swim slightly closer, their eyes shifting, deep and layered like the sky at midday.
I know what they noticed. Not us, two small, thin women, barely enough meat on our bones. No, they prefer to hunt bigger prey.
By now we’re close to the turbulent water, and the yellow tint to the foam gives a hint of what’s underneath.
A herd of fanged hippocamps half-surface, half-horse and half-fish, looking for prey.
As I had hoped, the tritons turn toward the hippocamps, and one of them sounds the conch again, loudly and triumphantly.
The hunt is on.
With the human woman swimming now silently by my side, we watch the tritons dive deep into the water and make a beeline for the hippocamps.
“Oh, thank all the gods,” she breathes after a while, spitting out salt water. “Thank you, thank you, lady, would you?—?”
But I’m already swimming away from her. I was reckless, and I’m still not sure it wasn’t the most stupid thing I’ve ever done. I’ve wasted time, and the fewer humans left in the arena, the more chances of getting eaten, or so it seems to me.
I wonder where Athdara is? Has he been hauled to the deep, mauled by nokke and sylkies? Poisoned by giant jellyfish or bitten by poisonous sea snakes? Ripped apart by the mermaids?
So many options. And now is not the time to be thinking about him, his dark eyes and marked cheekbones, the windblown hair and powerful body?—
A cry. A man swimming ahead of me lets out that sharp sound and promptly goes under, vanishing in the deep.
A reminder to stop daydreaming and focus on getting out of the water.
Waves roll over the arena, rising higher. The platforms rock from side to side, connected loosely, moving independently. I see a few people on top already.
Climbing onto them doesn’t look easy. Their sides are steep and sleek, mirroring the islets, the walls, and the dark water, as if made of polished silver.
I have to crane my head to see the top of the nearest platform. I float before it, seeing myself on the polished surface—my eyes too wide in my white face, my body a ghost.
Almost there. But how to climb it? There has to be a way. Those people got up there somehow.
As I ponder this, I see someone swimming toward me with powerful strokes.
It’s a blond man. Not Athdara. And disappointment shouldn’t crush me now.
As he approaches, I decide I don’t like the look on his face and paddle backward, away from the platforms and the man, suspicious of his motives.
And I was right. His eyes are bleak, stark with determination as he keeps coming toward me. With a snarl, he grabs me, hauls me back toward the collection of platforms, and pushes me down. He plans to use me as a step to climb onto the platform, I realize, not caring if it kills me.
Despair whispers bad, wicked things in your ear, I know, but it also gives you extraordinary strength before it sucks it all out.
I struggle against him, but he’s stronger. He climbs on top of me, and I go under, fighting his hold, the water, the fish nipping at my bare heels.
Soon enough, bigger things will come for me, and time is running out together with the air in my lungs.
So the moment his feet land on my shoulders, I do the opposite of what he expects and sink deeper.
And deeper.
So deep I can see movement—watersprights slinking through the sea, fish chasing other fish, a triton chasing a mermaid, a jellyfish big like a boat wreck, bobbing, flashing purple signals.
I sink until I’m free of him, until his hands and feet are no longer pressing down on me.
Free.
The mermaid I saw comes back for me, though, and catches my arm as I try to swim away. Her huge aquamarine eyes observe me as I struggle, as I panic because my air is running out.
“By the boy you once loved,” she says, bubbles floating out of her mouth. Her powerful tail undulates in the water. “Come back to us. Your betrothed is worried.”
The boy I loved is gone , I try to say, thinking of grave gray eyes, flopping pale hair, and a smile like a sunrise. Gone. And the prince the sea queen wants to wed me to isn’t yet my betrothed, nor does he give a rat’s ass about me.
“Nothing is ever really gone,” she sings. “Nothing ever dies.”
I try to push her off, to push off the sorrow welling inside me at her words and the memories seeping to the surface of my mind.
The song stops, and she says, “I’m Alys. Find me when you next dive deep, and we’ll talk.”
Wait , I think, but she releases me suddenly, swimming away into the dark depths.
My eyes sting from the salt—it’s just salt, I tell myself, not tears—and my lungs burn as I rise to the surface. Gasping, I look around, making sure no sharks or sylphs are lurking.
Then I swim around the platforms, struggling and flailing as the waves pummel me, crashing against the metal mirrors.
Me. Flailing in the sea. Who would have thought?
I have to get up there while keeping an eye out for more humans desperate enough to drown me and use me as a step up to safety.
People will always look out for themselves. Selfish, self-centered. It doesn’t matter if there are exceptions out there.
Always consider the other contestants with suspicion. It could mean the difference between life and death.
I don’t see that many people in the water anymore. If they all die, the creatures of the deep will come for me, and I haven’t figured out the way up yet, unless…
Wait.
Creases in the gleaming surface catch my eye. Could they be used as handholds? Can I reach them?
A wave lifts me up, and I reach for the platform—right before the wall of water smashes me against that gleaming side.
I go under, choking on water. Then I surface again, spluttering. My arm, injured since the boat, screams agony up my shoulder. A scratch on my cheek burns, blood mixing with the salt water on my lips, turning the salty into sweet.
Like hells I’m giving up, though. If I use the next wave to reach the handholds, then I can scale the damn mirror and get up there, see what else is waiting for me.
Blinking the salt from my eyes, I draw a deep breath. All right, here it comes. I’ll get through this and get to the palace?—
“Girl!” The voice comes from above me. “Hurry up and get climbing! Go on!”
It’s the woman who had been praying earlier today. At least, I think it’s her. She’s lifted her hand and is pointing at something.
“Sharks!” she yells. “Sharks, hurry up!”
I see them now. A shiver of blue-frilled sharks is circling toward me, their turquoise-lace fins cutting through the water like blades.
So when the next wave starts lifting me, I let it.
It smashes me against the smooth wall, knocking out my breath, and I’m still too low, not high enough to reach any handhold. I scrabble against the silvery surface with my fingernails, seeking any protuberance, any hold, but there’s nothing, and shit, I start sliding back down?—
A hard hand seizes my forearm, and a spark of lightning goes through me, jerking me. I hang against the platform side like a fish on a hook.
At least it’s my hale arm in that crushing grip, or I’d have passed out already.
I don’t have any thought to spare as to who the owner of the hand is. I’m hauled up smoothly while I writhe and curse. Glancing up, I see a handsome face and familiar dark eyes under a crown of wild black hair.
Athdara is hanging over the glass-like side of the platform, one hand wedged in one of the handholds, the other wrapped around my arm.
Now, we’re both hanging over the crashing waves.
Great.