Chapter 22 Dove
twenty-two
Dove
It’s no use. We are surrounded by thick iron bars on all sides.
And I can’t reach Rivern—but that’s not completely true.
I feel him now. After I opened the bond to Fury, I slowly gained a connection with Rivern, too.
He’s just not answering me when I try to talk to him.
Every time I try to reach him along the bond, I feel a splitting agony move through the back of my skull.
I know how the bond works and what that means. He’s hurt. It’s making my skin crawl.
The ache through our bond is a visceral, heavy thudding in my limbs. I want to push past these bars. Race to him. Make sure he is okay.
I wish… I wish I could use Fury’s magic to blow the bars right out of the ground.
My boots were soaked, so I ditched them as soon as possible.
They now sit neatly positioned next to the bars, awaiting their escape—an escape that seems almost laughable, faced with the impossibility of an unbreakable barrier before us.
“What if we dig?” I suggest aloud. Moyrie raises her eyebrows at my idea.
I sigh heavily, sitting next to her on the hard floor, leaning against the bars. “This is not how I pictured this going.”
“How did you picture this?” Moyrie is not condescending when she could be. I have undertaken a task way out of my depth.
“More like how I met you. No snake pit.” A smile pulls back her glimmering skin.
“Silvers are not mers, Seraph.” Turning, she takes my hand in her surprisingly soft, scaled hand. Caught off guard, I let her take it, looking into her eyes—the colour of untouched blue skies.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
The apology startles me. “What?” The word pops out before I can think better of it.
She squeezes my hand. “For trying to bed your male and placing you in the snake pit. We often share bedmates in my home, and the snakes are handled for their venom daily.” The way the skin moves over her eyes and disappears under the place her eyebrows should be leaves me trapped, waiting for her to continue.
“We did not think how these situations would harm you. So, I wish to say sorry for our misunderstanding.”
Her words grip me. Once again, I’m reminded of how different we are, as if that isn’t evident enough by the build of our bodies.
“Thank you.” It’s barely audible. I’m a bit shocked by this turn of events. She didn’t strike me as someone who would apologise for the harm they cause others, her awareness more evident than I imagined.
Her widening smile at my thanks is somewhat infectious. I return it. Are we becoming friends? After all this is said and done, maybe Haven and the Silver Sands people can be allies. Perhaps all the Forgotten Lands people can band together.
Sitting silently, we fall into companionable silence.
Truthfully, I’ve come to like Moyrie more and more as rhythm has moved forward.
She’s more practical than I thought she was.
Perhaps I judged the Silver Sands people too quickly.
Which I feel is only fair considering they stuck me in their venomous snake pit, and because Moyrie was trying to claim Rivern as her own.
She stands, pacing the cage, turning over ideas in her mind. Sometimes, Moyrie will clue me in, and other times, she’ll scowl before even letting me in on her discovery. It’s captivating, in an animalistic way.
One thing I’m learning each step of this new adventure through the Forgotten Lands is that humans are just another animal.
We were stupid to think we were somehow better.
So far, every creature I have met along this journey has been far superior to my basic genetics. It’s humbling, my fragile mortality.
“I think you underestimate the depths of these bars,” she suddenly continues the conversation from earlier.
“They can’t be that deep.” I move over to the closest circles of thick iron—the ones nearest the lapping water. A hint of light moves through a far-off rocky outcrop, illuminating half of our jail and the water ahead.
“We are dealing with mers. They will always be two steps ahead,” she scoffs. Anytime she mentions the mers, her hackles rise. A feud has gone back centuries between her people and theirs.
I wonder, though, if society’s pressures have changed, given how long this feud has lasted. Maybe they can come to a truce. We are here for her people just as much as my own. She wanted to know what was happening to the jewels of their lake. The mers are supposed to have answers.
Lingering on the distant light, I wonder if Gideon and Rivern ended up falling through a different chamber, imprisoned in their own cage. Perhaps they are past the glowing light, over by the jagged rocks. I have to try every possible avenue to reach them. Moyrie will have to put this feud aside.
Kneeling down, I grasp a handful of gritty sand, more coarse than the sand above, and start digging. Moyrie doesn’t utter a word, but I can feel the way her scepticism works its way through my skull.
Taking both hands, I push the sand, creating a hole, digging straight down.
Thud.
My hand makes contact with something hard. “Moyrie, I’ve found something.” A glimmer of excitement comes from my lips. I should know by now it’s misplaced.
Together, we continue digging, unveiling more and more of a flat iron surface, much like the flat metal hovering above us, connecting the iron bars in place.
I sit back on my knees. “Looks like you were right.”
I’m sure Moyrie doesn’t wish she were. We now find ourselves locked away like two birds in a cage, iron caging us in from all sides.
“Fury, any ideas?” I mutter down the bond. It’s a tentative truce. I hate that he’s bonded us, but if I can’t get out of here, then he’s stuck, too. We need each other, whether I like it or not.
“You want my opinion?” I sense the sarcasm. I glower.
“Yesss,” I seethe.
“Wait for them to come to you. You are healed now. When the mers come back, you will be able to talk to them. Tell them if they help you and me, I will grant them any wish they desire. Give them an incentive to let you free, Pet. Give them anything.” His voice is gravelly as he says it.
“Anything?” In a way, I suppose he gave me the same option. I chose to save my people. What would the mers ask for?
“Yes, Pet, for your freedom and my own, I would give them all the power under the suns.” His words send a sharp ribbon of understanding through my heart, pulling our bond tighter together—something I choose to ignore.
Light and dark move differently when you are underground. The only glimpse of rhythm we have is by the light that moves through the rocky wall, gradually dimming as the suns move over the horizon, plunging us into complete darkness.
Well, plunging me into darkness—Moyrie informs me she is able to see just fine. Maybe I should’ve asked for better sight when I made my deal with the daemon.
To garner some heat, Moyrie and I huddle together, listening.
No one has come to grace us in our prison yet, just an unending chill in the air, and an eerie, heavy thumping from the water beside our cage.
It’s hard to tell how deep it is. However, by the sheer vastness of the underwater cave we are in, it could be extreme.
Especially if we fell to the bottom of the void where the ocean lies.
Yawning, my eyes instinctively start to close, my head moving to rest on Moyrie’s shoulder. Before I can close my eyes all the way, a shadow catches my attention.
Mers. Finally.
Moyrie and I quickly move to our feet, the newest presence in the barren cave walking silently towards us.
“Well, it has been a long rhythm since we’ve had fresh meat.” That same sultry voice that greeted me after my fall through the Silver Sands gets our attention. A loud thump comes from the water next to us, sending a ripple through the surface. I jump. What is that?
“Who are you?” I ask, ignoring the fresh meat comment and the ominous water.
“You speak our language?” the hypnotic voice asks. Being able to speak to any creature is definitely coming in handy.
“Yes. My name is Dove, and I’m here to talk to your leader.
I need your help. I am bonded to one of the original Gods who created this land.
If you release us, my God has granted you a wish—anything you desire in exchange for our freedom and your help.
” Seizing our opportunity, the words spill out of me.
The mer says nothing.
The sound of claws clicks along iron bars.
I really hope she chooses to help us.
“Unlucky for you, strange, beige creature, you brought us everything we desire already.”
“But we didn’t bring you anything?” I say it before I give myself the chance to think.
“Well, there are the two of you and the two males we captured,” she adds, a lilt to her voice.
My heart picks up its pace. Rivern. Gideon. That’s who she is referring to. What has she done to them? “Where are they?” My voice is high-pitched and shrill as the words cry out.
Keep it together, Dove.
A hand comes to grasp onto mine before I fling myself at the other side of the cage—Moyrie.
“They are well-fed and resting within our chambers. I can’t say the same for you both.” How?
“Can we see them? Please?” Besides her sharp teeth and claws, something about the mer is almost comforting in her serenity. Where rage would usually sit heavy in my stomach, I find the need to beg.
She laughs—a maniacal chuckle that puts me on edge.
“Please, as I said, my God will grant you any wish if you let us go.”
The mer goes quiet, the air stale around us. “We do not care for Gods in my grotto, little girl. The Gods bring nothing but trouble.”
With one last scrape along the metal bars, the mer walks away.
It’s barely a moment after her departure that a loud clang sounds by the rock walls, our jail cell suddenly jolted into motion.
“What the…” Moyrie grabs hold of me, the sandy ground trembling underneath us. Uncertain in our grounding, we both give a little shriek. I latch onto the closest bars.
“Enjoy your meal.” The mer’s voice comes from below us, and we are hoisted up and sideways, a violent tug on our cage making us fall to the ground, sand pouring through the sides of the bars.
What meal? Her voice is an echo around the underground chamber, the loud clanking of our metal cage the only other sound. The cage that now sits above a lake of water.
“What is happening?” Moyrie asks, the first hint of fear in her voice. I wondered when she would crack. No one is immune to their own mortality—even a Silver Sands princess who knows how to use a dagger.
Faced with the unknown, everyone breaks eventually.
Control—it’s a comfort. When one loses it, it’s like free-falling into an abyss. I’ve been free-falling since I left Haven.
The only thing I can do is surrender and pray this is not our end.