CHAPTER FIVE
Myra
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Finn asked as he swam up beside me, his inky black tentacles trailing in his wake.
“No,” I replied softly, a pang of guilt tugging at my heart, “but we’re out of options, and she needs our help.”
“She does… and you’re the only one that can do it, Myra.”
That truth rang through my mind on repeat as we made our way through the great hall, headed to the throne room to execute the plan we’d been concocting for weeks.
But with every stroke of my tail through the luminescent waters, uncertainty began to creep in.
“Do you think your plan will work?” I asked, unwilling to glance his way and see any potential doubt in his eyes.
His strong, reassuring hand fell on the small of my back, and a sense of relief washed over me as he whispered in my ear.
“Perfectly.” The shimmering veil that protected the entrance to the throne room came into view, and I knew the queen would be waiting on the other side alone, as she so often was.
We stopped before it, and I quickly recited the phrase that would allow us to enter.
The watery divide parted, revealing an unexpected sight.
The queen sat perched on the edge of her dais, her glittering, iridescent tail floating before her. Bejeweled trident clutched firmly in her hand, she looked out over the room packed full with creatures of the sea. Her loyal subjects. Her beloved wards.
And the moment I drifted into the room, everyone filling the space turned to stare at me, eyes filled with malice.
Before I could make my way toward her to use the Siren’s Song, I found myself pinned to the sea floor, tentacled arms tethering my own behind my back and familiar lips at my ear.
“I must thank you for this, Myra,” Finn said as he wrenched my head back.
“I couldn’t have done it without you.” He pulled away from me to address the queen in his most formal tone.
“Your Majesty, I have brought you the traitor.”
I slept in late the next morning; nearly drowning apparently took a lot out of a girl. So when I awoke with a start at noon, realizing that my shift had begun at eleven, I knew it was going to be a rough day.
I must have looked like death warmed over when I plowed through the back door into the kitchen like a hurricane of disheveled chaos in yesterday’s clothes, because no one—not even Ravi—uttered a word.
Not about my appearance. Not about how late I was.
Instead, they all just stared with a variety of expressions ranging from annoyed to amused while they filled their orders.
I took the reprieve without complaint and threw on an apron before heading out front.
The reaction I received there, however, was very different.
Laney and Sasha were behind the bar washing pints when I walked out.
They looked up from their task to see me attempting to wrangle my long black hair into a high ponytail, and the whispering and giggling began.
I knew I looked rugged, but I didn’t think it warranted a catty sidebar before they bothered to acknowledge me at all, even if I had been a dick to both of them the previous evening.
“Rough night?” Sasha called to me before she gently ribbed Laney, their laughter growing.
“You could say that,” I replied, smoothing my roots in a weak attempt to look a bit less unkempt.
“You look like you got worked over—hard.”
“I had a little run-in with the devil. It’s hard to walk away from that unscathed.”
“A ‘run-in’?” she asked as she sashayed over to me. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Yeah,” I snapped, “it is. Because that’s what it was.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a run-in with that particular devil,” she muttered under her breath before her eyes went wide. “Oh! Wait! Does that mean we get to call you Satan’s mistress now if we want to talk about it in code?”
The absolute mischief in her expression had me totally thrown. “What the fuck does that even mean, Sasha? And why would you say that?” I looked from her to Laney and back again. “What’s gotten into you two?”
Sasha rolled her eyes as she exhaled hard, like I’d knocked the wind right out of her enjoyment sail.
“You don’t need to play dumb, Myra. We already know what’s going on.
Yael told us last night.” A shard of ice scraped down my back at the thought.
“I told the others that’s why you ghosted us mid-shift; to go have a sexual rendezvous somewhere.
” Genuine shock plagued me, and I struggled to find the words to refute her ridiculous assessment of the situation.
“And judging by the look of you, it was worth every minute of lost tips.”
Though my mind raced with a series of unhinged rebuttals, all I managed to do was stare at her in horror because what in the actual fuck? “Sasha, no… we—”
“Listen, there’s no shame in it,” she said, cutting me off like she hadn’t just said the most unlikely, most infuriating thing ever.
“I mean, if he offered me a good time, I’d take him up on it too.
He’s beyond gorgeous, and if I’m being honest, the perfect amount of bad boy.
Laney and I are loving the whole enemies-to-lovers vibe it’s giving. Totally here for it.”
“There’s no lovers—just enemies. Period.”
“She says with lust burning deep within her pretty blue eyes at the mere mention of him.”
“Sasha,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off the raging headache her antics had spawned, “that’s not lust in my eyes. That’s my undying desire to murder him.”
“Between the sheets, maybe,” she said with a laugh. When my scowl didn’t falter, she groaned in frustration. “Ugggh, why won’t you just admit it? You know you’ve wanted to get him horizontal from the first day he strolled into this bar looking for a job.”
“I have wanted him to be horizontal… while six feet under.”
“Okay, Myra,” she replied in a childlike, mocking tone as she walked back to her fellow conspirator. “We totally believe you.”
“I feel like I woke up in an alternate universe,” I mumbled to myself as I headed into the dining area where people feared me more than the two giggling idiots behind the bar.
I survived the lunch shift without incident, but every time I crossed paths with Sasha or Laney, they couldn’t conceal their unbridled giddiness. I wouldn’t be able to weather that forever without snapping, and I knew it.
Then the source of my current problem strolled into The Riff Raff. I clutched the steak knife in my hand a little tighter and smiled as I walked past him to deliver it to a customer. Thankfully for them, I didn’t plunge it into his belly before I did.
“I need to talk to you for a minute,” he said as I walked by again. I ignored him entirely, which didn’t seem to faze him at all. Instead, he just fell in line behind me and followed me over to the bar. “We have a few things we need to discuss.”
“Oh, do we ever,” I replied as I grabbed my drink order off the bar and twirled right past him without skipping a beat.
“Judging by your tone, you already know about one of the matters I wanted to mention.”
“I sure do. Super glad I was the last to know about that one, by the way. Really enjoyed walking into that gossip shitstorm.” I slammed the drinks down on the four-top on the far side of the room and turned to head back for more—anything to avoid Yael and his bullshit.
But Yael and his bullshit weren’t interested in that plan, and instead, he waylaid me into a dark, vacant corner, leaving us standing toe to toe with everyone around us watching.
“I told Sasha that because I know how she is, and I figured it would be easier to use the story of us being together as a front for our little joint mission.”
“Right, except everyone knows I loathe you, Yael.”
“It doesn’t look like that has aroused suspicion,” he said, casting a glance at the duo behind the bar who were openly staring.
“Besides, hating and fucking aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.
” A broad grin stretched across his face.
“In fact, the former tends to make the latter even better under the right circumstances.”
“Which clearly don’t apply here,” I shot back at him.
“What a shame…” His fingertip grazed my upper arm, sending a warm, tingling sensation through my body. Echoes of Finn caressing me that same way assaulted my mind, and I recoiled from Yael in an instant as I rubbed the feeling away.
“You may not like the situation you’re in,” he continued, bending down to my ear so only I could hear him, “but you’re smart enough to realize that the better you play along, the sooner you’ll get what you want out of this.
So slap a smile on your face, act like you’re not currently plotting my death—”
“Which I am—”
“—and walk out the door with me so we can discuss the plan.”
I pulled away from him just enough to stare into his eyes like a lovestruck teen. “But killing you is my plan.”
“Would that you could, but we both know better, don’t we, little mermaid?
You lost the bulk of your power along with that precious tail of yours when you were cast out, and I worked alongside you long enough to know that your bark is far worse than your bite, so how about we skip the empty threats and get back to how you’re going to help me find my sister—which you’re now magically bound to do, in case that wasn’t clear last night.
Fae deals are wholly binding until fulfilled. ”
“Ravi!” I shouted back to the kitchen. “I’m taking my break.” Before any objections could start, I rushed out the front door of the bar with Yael hot on my heels. “You wanted to talk? Then start talking. You have fifteen minutes.”
“Not here,” he replied, looking down the street at the randoms nearby. “At your place.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “no way am I taking you there. Besides, I live ten minutes from here. We don’t have time to get there and back.”