Chapter 20 Dove
twenty
Dove
The fall knocks me through a loop. I want to scream for Rivern and Gideon, but only bubbles surface. My mind is in chaos. I don’t know how to find the strings of my bonds.
When I managed to push away the creature holding onto my hand, I resurfaced to find my fae prince, but with the pull on my leg and the lack of air, I was nothing but a toy being tugged in both directions.
The claws had grasped onto my ankle, tugging so hard the delicate bones in my hand had snapped under Rivern’s grasp, sinking me further in despair.
I have never been scared of water in the past. Even though I didn’t know how to swim, I always felt an odd peace being by the ocean, as if it was the one place that knew all my secrets and still accepted me.
It’s why I was so willing to succumb to its fate all those moons ago before my life flipped upside down.
The water was safe. It would take care of me.
Now, I’m not so sure.
I can barely see a foot beyond the bubbles careening past my form. I’m dragged downwards, my lungs turning into fire—not the good kind, either. The kind that means I’ve run out of air.
A whisper of “Dove” comes through my mind. I almost grasp it. Almost…
It’s lost to me like all my other senses. In my shock, I can’t even find Fury’s God power. Everything within me lies dormant, and I’m transported to the child I once was, imprisoned once again in a tomb of my own making.
There’s a bashing at the leaded door weighing my mind down, a rage of fire demanding to come in. I can’t find the key to unlock the door as I find myself falling.
My mouth gapes open. I gulp down air. I’m no longer falling through water. This time, I feel the cool breeze of space greet me. It’s a saviour to my dying lungs. I wheeze in and out before landing unceremoniously on my back in more water.
The slap of my body making contact with the surface is a jolt to the senses. I groan loudly, my body starfishing buoyantly atop the cold sea. What in the ever-loving fuck is going on?
I lay still in the water, every inch of my body aching, not just my wounded hand. A mix of salt and the metallic taste of blood lingers on my tongue. I stare at a strange sight above me. Ripples of water move overhead like the currents of the ocean, a haunting, deep blue.
Blinking rapidly, I notice a large object trailing through the unusual shimmering above, followed by a loud splash. Before I can understand what it is, the most beautiful face I have ever seen swims into my vision.
I blink a few times, sure of my concussion.
The creature smiles wickedly at me, showcasing pearlescent, razor-sharp teeth. Wet, pink hair falls over her face, her blue skin highlighting the fact that we are no longer in the Silver Sands. The female looks at me closely.
“I don’t understand the fuss.” Her sultry voice glides over my skin, her heavy, pink-lashed eyes moving over my face.
“Bland colours.” She trails a finger over my cheek.
“Blunt teeth and claws,” she adds, raising my lip and hand, dropping both when she has taken her measure of me.
“Though the eyes are pretty,” she muses.
I’m almost tempted to thank her for her odd statement. Her large, multicoloured eyes continue to sweep over me, making me feel small. My strength is no longer finding me in this moment, pain radiating from my hand. My lungs wheeze, my skin and muscles bruised and battered.
“Too small,” she huffs. Her hands sweep under my legs, pulling me out of the freezing pool.
“Who are you?” I squeak, my head and heart pounding. I don’t dare make myself known to her. The rage is long buried—same as the tethers that are tightly knit into my heart. Maybe if I’m quiet enough, she’ll leave me alone.
She stops at my words, my whisper enough to gain her attention. “You can understand me?” The sound of water rushing around us is all I hear for a moment, her full, pink lips quirking upwards. “Mmmm,” she ponders, looking at me closely. She doesn’t say another word.
I can barely see past the pink and blue features of the wondrous creature hauling me out of the water, my body being dragged along the sandy shoreline. A damp and dark atmosphere surrounds us.
My sore head is howling in agony at being pulled, my eyes closing in on themselves, unconsciousness claiming me.
“Dove.” The sound of my voice echoes around me, waking me from my painful sleep.
“Godsdammit,” I groan loudly. I bring my throbbing hand to my chest, my shivering body lying on a hard surface.
My hair is smoothed back from my head. I force my crusty eyes open. Bright blue irises find mine in a luminescent, scaled face. “Moyrie?”
“Yes. Can you sit?” she asks, opening her arms as if to catch me when I fall sideways. The gesture is endearing.
I push my battered body up, my legs and arms crying out, shooting pain travelling through my sternum and up my throat. “Goddess,” I exhale, my mouth so dry I can barely swallow.
Even though the Silver Sands princess is a few inches shorter than me, she still manages to bolster me up to sitting. Unprepared for what I find, I swivel my head around erratically, making myself nauseous in the process.
“Where are we?” I croak out. Moyrie stays next to me, a hand wrapped around my back, keeping me upright. My body sinks into hers on silent shivers, trying to find heat in our damp surroundings.
“I believe we have stumbled into the mers’ lair.”
I rub at my tired eyes, trying to focus on what I see in front of me, finding thick iron bars. My heart skips a few beats, worried about what this might mean. Moyrie said she thinks we are in the mers’ lair. Potentially trapped, too.
Unable to look around our bodies to see if we are fully encased, I ask Moyrie what I’m thinking. “Are we in a cage?”
“Well…” She contemplates before continuing. “From what I have been able to glean, yes, we are in some type of cage. There’s a door, but it is locked and has metal bars on all sides.”
Right, that answers that. Caged.
Gods, when will we catch a break?
Bright violet eyes chase my vision in whispers of pine. I gasp on a choking cough. “Where’s Rivern and…Gideon?”
Moyrie sits up straighter, bringing my body between her legs so I’m resting my head on her chest, my cough subsiding. The heat coming off her skin reminds me of my two protectors. I want to snuggle into her and forget that I’m in pain, the bond connections dulled once again.
“I do not know.”
Her answer is a stab in the heart. Rivern. Gideon. Gone?
Rivern said he wouldn’t leave me. I know he fell in after me. What happened in those movements after the beautiful blue creature took me?
My heart drops. The slightest ache fissures along the bond. Why can’t I feel them? It’s like there’s a wall barring my connection with the bond.
“Did you see her?”
Moyrie looks down at me. “Who?”
I cough. “The blue woman with the pink hair.”
Her thin lips open, a forked tongue darting out, hissing. “Mers.”
“She was a mer?” I question, looking upside down at Moyrie.
I find my stomach starting to quake, so I take my time sitting up.
She offers me her hand. My cloak—Moyrie’s cloak—that I borrowed is gone.
The thin strips of material covering my body are now see-through and waterlogged, clinging to my naked form, my nipples peaked from the chill in the air.
I hug my chest, grasping my broken hand with my good one, a wince crossing my features at the sharp stabs of pain.
Moyrie seems to have lost all of her clothing, unfazed by the turn of events.
“I have only heard stories, but from what you described, she is probably a mer. I have heard tales of them being multicoloured with sharp claws and teeth, with slits in their skin that help them breathe underwater.”
I never saw slits in the pink-haired woman’s skin, but I definitely saw and felt the sharp claws and teeth. “Why didn’t they just kill us?”
“Maybe they wish to interrogate us?” Her shoulders come up and down. “I don’t presume to know what goes through the minds of such savages.”
I almost want to laugh, considering I once thought the princess before me was a savage, with her scaled body and thin eyes. She is a kind of resplendent I would never have known if it wasn’t for my need to fight for my people.
My people.
The whole reason I’m here. How will I help my people if I’m stuck in a cage?
This is all happening because I needed Fury’s help.
Look where that has gotten me, caged and broken in a dark, damp underground lair.
Water trickles around us. It doesn’t stop the sudden ire that moves through my stomach, startling a groggy Argus awake.
When I lay eyes on that daemon God, I’m going to throttle him with my bare hands, broken bones be damned.
A wash of embers tears through my heart at the thought of the God who has put me here, reaching out and sizzling my limbs, finding a clear path down one half of my bond, raging towards him.
Argus perks up more, his nostrils flaring.
However, for the first time, I notice no fire spurts from my make-believe dragon.
No, this time, it grows from me, from the vestiges of my heart.
My dragon smiles, resting his head back down before his cave, a deep understanding in his eyes as I see my strength come back to life.
“Dove?” A relieved, pained, almost-cry works through me. Does he care?
“Of course I fucking care, Pet. You shut us out.” I didn’t know I could do that—shut him and Rivern out.
In my anguish, I once again locked the doors of my heart until the inferno of my soul had forced them wide open. Even my body feels stronger with this new fire in my veins.
“Don’t expect an apology because I barely had any idea what I was doing. I only just woke up.” If anything, he should be grovelling at my feet, not admonishing me for shutting him out when I was being taken captive.
A grumble comes down the line. “You’re hurt.” It’s a statement, so I don’t answer, which only makes him more agitated. “Now you have reopened the connection between us, I want you to focus on the bones in your hand knitting back together.”
“That’s it?” I question. Surely, just imagining my bones working their way back together won’t fix my broken hand.
“Just do what you’re told, Pet.” His tone is trite, like he’s dealing with an unruly child. My waterlogged boot itches to stamp down. Instead, I breathe through my anger, focusing on my painful hand.
Trying to forget the hole in my heart that is unmistakably shaped like a certain fae prince and dyre wolf shifter, I focus on the fine bones within my hand, imagining my fingers calcifying together.
At first, nothing happens, but after the drip, drip, drip of nearby water lulls me into a state of deep concentration, the pain in my hand suddenly grows worse.
“GODSDAMMIT, ORION.” I fall to my knees, screaming. Moyrie comes to my side, asking me what is wrong, but I ignore her, the pain all I can focus on.
Black eyes swim in my vision. “It’ll pass, Pet. Use the pain. Turn it into fire.”
I breathe deep, wanting to ignore Fury’s suggestions.
It’s hard. Too hard. My instinct is to push the fire that builds in my chest and coat my hand in one final anguished wash of rage, so I follow it, letting Fury’s power rush over me.
Squeezing my eyes tight, I release my hand. Stretching it slowly out, I find it fully mobile. The once broken wrist and finer bones are perfectly formed as if nothing was ever amiss. I sag forward.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Fury is joking. I know he is. I feel the tight beads of worry down the bond at my condition. His joke lands flat.
“I fucking hate you.” I don’t know where it comes from. I’ve never felt this type of rage where it spews into hate-filled speech. Fury brings it out in me.
“What sweet words of love you whisper to me, Pet,” his voice lingers over the oversensitized parts of my skin. I clench my teeth.
He is sick.
Fury is exactly what I imagined—a daemon.
And I fear he is taking me straight to hell with him.
My core is wet for a whole new reason now. A deep thunder comes down the bond, rousing a need I never want him to suspect… One I never want to admit.
“You can’t hide from me, Pet.”
Want to bet? It’s a thought I think to myself. I know he hears it. Heat rushes to my cheeks.
Ignoring the God inside my head, I turn to Moyrie, who is staring at me with wonder and concern in her eyes.
“We need to find a way out of here,” I tell her.