Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
While Angie slept, she was acutely aware that he awoke partway through the night. Kaden left her grasp for a moment, returning with a weighted blanket that felt to be of the same material as his hammock.
Her heart swelled at the mere thought of his name, and she became hyperaware of her body whenever he was near. A sensation of emptiness arose at the possibility of being without him, a feeling new to her.
She loved the way he molded with her, like they were two missing pieces of a puzzle. Kissing him made her head swim with pleasurable, delicious waves.
The crass sound of glass grinding on rock drifted into her ears. The blanket moved to cover her head, and muffled voices followed, sounding a mile away. Glass moved over rock again, and then it was quiet.
The sounds she heard sounded so clear before were now muffled. Why—
A cool, fuzzy sensation spread through her chest, turning into pressure. Angie jolted awake, one hand flying to her breastbone.
The pressure built, and her vision blurred. It became harder to breathe. She purposefully inhaled and exhaled slow, conserving oxygen, trying to make sense of what was happening.
The voices, the rock and glass noises, they weren’t a dream. Kaden was gone.
How long had it been since she’d fallen asleep? How long since he—
“Oh no. No, no, no.” She scrambled out of the hammock and grabbed her swimsuit, slipping it back on.
The mer magic was fading, and she needed to get out of here, fast. She thought quickly.
Oxygen. She also needed oxygen. Without it, she would never make it to the surface in time.
What was that that Kaden showed her the day before? Right, air bubbles.
Angie held her breath, and swam to the glass door. After a quick look around to ensure no one was outside, she tried to pull it open, but it was heavier than she thought. She couldn’t manage enough force while floating, and trying resulted in her legs floating out from behind her.
Angie wedged her feet against the roughshod edge by the door and put both hands on the handle. Kicking off with both feet and giving the handle a hard push, it opened. She swam out with a slow, cautious breaststroke and flutter kicks, listening for aberrant sounds.
Only the gentle rustling of water in her ears surrounded her. Angie thought back to the directions.
Turn left at the corner. Keep going against the wall, then make a right.
She followed the directions, or so she thought. When she made the last right, there was no glass pane with air bubbles. Only a solid wall greeted her.
Shit. Where was she? This place disoriented the crap out of her. The hallways all looked the same, reminding her of when she became vertically disoriented during a wreck dive in college, and couldn’t tell which way was up. She had a group to help her then.
She was alone now. Knowing up from down wouldn’t help here. The space enclosed her.
Her heart raced, and she breathed in, slow and controlled.
Stay calm.
She retraced her paddles, going back to Kaden’s room, and tried again, swimming slower and against the wall.
The soreness in her chest became a sharp pain. Her surroundings grew blurrier.
She was going to make it. She had to. This couldn’t be how she was going to die, not after having the night that she did.
This time, she found the room she searched for.
Angie reached the glass pane with the bubbles behind it and felt around the edges, her finger curling around a notch at the sides.
The door slid open easily, and she made for the first bubble she could find.
More water shot to the back of her throat when she tried to take a breath.
She put her lips around an air bubble and breathed it in, and then another, larger one.
Angie made a U-turn and made her way out of the cavern, back toward the palace.
The tip of a maroon fishtail appeared in her field of vision, and she let out a sigh of relief. About to ask Kaden just where in the Hells he had been, she looked up at him.
Fear seized her entire body.
The merman in front of her was decidedly not Kaden. The angles on his face were sharper, his whiskey-gold eyes hard and unblinking as they focused on her.
Her eyes trailed to the white-gold bracelet around his wrist.
It was Cyrus. Kaden’s older brother.
The look on his face twisted from utter confusion to positively murderous.
“Landwalker!” Cyrus’ voice sounded of thunder booming through open skies. “A spy?”
Tiān-fucking-damn-it to the eighteen levels of Hell!
Her heart all but stopped. She could still hear his words, though they remained dulled. Whatever mer magic remained in her and with her newfound oxygen, she had to take advantage.
He lunged for her, a venomous sea snake about to strike at its prey.
Angie scrambled for the nearest rock face, banging her knee against a large stalagmite-like sea erosion pillar below her.
Shooting pain burst at the area of impact, and she grimaced, her teeth clenched together so hard that her gums hurt.
She continued swimming, fluttering her legs as fast as she could, and clung to the corals with trembling hands, climbing them to the top.
She had no plan and didn’t know where she was going, only that she couldn’t let him reach her.
Angie didn’t stand a chance against Cyrus.
He was bigger, faster, and in his element, but she did have the advantage of a head start, and she intended to use it.
She would never outswim him, and had a better chance if she traversed the rock walls.
“How did you get in here?” He approached her quickly.
She didn’t answer, and kept crawling along the cave, gripping onto rock protrusions and ledges.
Where the walls were smooth, she latched onto sea stars, and after a brief hesitation, she used soft, smooth corals.
Angie didn’t want to damage the corals’ health, but she had no choice if she wanted to keep moving.
Her arms and legs were growing sore from her constant moving, and fighting the water’s resistance.
Stalactite-like erosion pillars hung above her, and her breath hitching, she grabbed for the closest one, burying herself in between a grouping of them.
His fingers grazed her ankle, and she drew her knee up to her chest, barely out of his grasp.
Angie’s breathing came out quick and shallow, and she curled herself into a ball in the gap between the rocky icicles. A pillar piece broke off when she pressed her feet against it, and she grabbed it, holding it in front of her like a makeshift weapon.
It wasn’t much, but she would take anything in a feeble attempt to defend herself. A miniscule chance of survival was better than none.
She didn’t know whether it was better to die by drowning, or die by Cyrus’ hand. Or tail, whichever he chose to end her with.
“Stop, please.” She hugged the stalactite in front of her, like a seahorse clinging to a stone for dear life. Her words still came out clear enough. “I’m not going to hurt anyone! I just want to leave and go back to the surface.”
Cyrus looked her in the eye, and shook his head with a look of contempt. “I don’t believe you. How are you able to speak?” His eyes narrowed. “You have our magic?”
“I–I–” Angie didn’t know what to say. Her mind raced in so many directions that she couldn’t keep track of her thoughts.
He swam underneath her feet, quick as a marlin, and grabbed them, pulling her out of safety.
“Cyrus!” She thrashed her feet, the force mitigated by the swirling waves, and she found herself losing control of her legs.
Cyrus’ hand closed around her neck. He darted forward, slamming her back into a rock wall. “How do you know my name? How long have you been spying on us, human?”
Angie winced as the rocky nodules drove into her spine, causing an explosion of agony. Sharp pain followed from her skin dragging upward against the roughshod wall as Cyrus forced her to meet him at eye level.
“I’m not a spy.” Her voice came out strangled as he tightened his grip. The muscles in his neck popped, the heat of his glare searing an Alaska-sized hole through her.
She kicked again, tried to pry his fingers off her neck, to no avail.
This was going to be the end of her.
Angie was going to haunt Kaden in her afterlife until she reincarnated for leaving her to die at Cyrus’ hands, and there would be no trench deep enough for him to escape from her.
Bright spots flashed into her vision, and her head pounded.
Cyrus released her, and she gasped, racing for another air bubble before figuring out why. She breathed in one some feet away from her, and turned her head, making herself as small as possible in the cavern’s corner.
Kaden had Cyrus’s shoulders gripped in his hands, and moving like a torpedo, pinned Cyrus onto a jagged piece of wall.
Starfish and large barnacles dislodged from the rock and drifted around them like floating debris, until they were swept away by the currents.
“Brother! What are you doing? She’s harmless! ”
“Landwalkers are far from harmless.” Cyrus retaliated by raising his tail and pushing it against Kaden, forcing Kaden to loosen his grasp. Cyrus then wrapped his arms around Kaden’s shoulders from behind, his tail rising to curl around his younger brother’s, placing him in a chokehold.
Angie had to help him somehow. She would deal with why he left her alone, later.
For now, she had to do something. She breathed in another air bubble, this one holding a handful of nori, and it scattered around her, floating out of her sight.
A quick scan around the space revealed two more air bubbles in her immediate vicinity.
One small and one larger the size of her closed fist. She made a mental note of them for when she would need air again.
After kicking off from the rock wall, she swam for Kaden and Cyrus.
Before she reached them, Kaden grabbed Cyrus’ elbows, giving a hard upward push. He escaped Cyrus’ chokehold.