Chapter 35
Hazel
Two hours earlier
Midnight creeps closer as the last few humans stumble off the beach, retreating from the cold.
Since Dean left, a pit has been sitting heavy in my stomach, nerves clawing at me at the thought of going back to where it all started. Back to the place that broke me.
The lamps lining the far edge of the beach flicker as we approach the entrance to Eldoris like they’re warning me to turn back.
Only a few beaches in the human realm have a gateway to Eldoris. They were made before Tiberius and his father’s time, and that’s the only reason they exist. That father-and-son duo wanted nothing to do with the surface world, and the second my feet hit the sand, I knew why.
This place is everything they hate.
The human realm represents freedom, equality, and individuality. A chance to be whatever you want in a world full of people different from you. Tiberius despises all of it because control can’t exist where people are free.
Khatri makes a small sound, drawing our attention to the two guards watching the gates. They are usually very lax because merfolk don’t come to the surface, and the few that do don’t stay for long, so their job is pretty boring.
They straighten as we approach, confusion marring their faces.
The bigger one steps forward, his bright purple eyes narrowing in suspicion. I see the black patch sewn on the shoulder pads of his armor, and stumble back.
“High ranking. Close to Tiberius.” I link the group.
The moment he sees me, everything changes. His head jerks back in shock, but it doesn’t take long for something dark to settle in his eyes as he takes my wrists bound by chains.
“You brought back the king’s favorite toy?” He laughs.
Nevaeh steps forward, probably to smash his face into the ground, but Khatri stops her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
I curse under my breath when her eyes flash gold, but before her Divine can unleash the monster inside, she forces it down, taking steady breaths to rein in her anger.
“And her?” He nods toward Nevaeh.
Of course, they wouldn’t buy that Nevaeh is a merwarrior.
Jackson slings an arm around her, winking at the guard. “She’s for me.”
The guard’s grin turns predatory, and disgust crawls up my throat.
I force myself to look down before I punch him in the throat.
Khatri clears his throat. “Orders are to take her straight to the king.”
The guard finally looks away, and the burn of his attention fades with it.
If someone told me one day, I’d willingly return to Eldoris with my wrists bound, I would’ve laughed in their face until I popped a vessel.
I fixate on the patterns drawn in sand as my breathing grows shallow, and it gets hard to take a full breath.
Humans see art in these patterns. They take pictures, admire them, completely unaware that they’re standing over the gateway to a realm deep underwater.
The guard scans the beach, then gestures for us to step into the center of the pattern before beginning the chant to bring the gates to life.
“Abyssus abyssum invocat.”
The sand twists into a rising spiral, and the pull of Eldoris wraps around me tight and suffocating. Like it remembers me. Owns me.
The guard taps my forehead twice, harder than the others before shoving me forward.
Sand burns my eyes, and when I blink it away, I’m there. Back in his kingdom.
I wish I could call what I’m feeling nostalgia, but it’s pure dread.
I try to breathe, but the scent of this place makes me gag, reminding me of every reason I hate this place. The traditions, the people, the walls that held me captive.
Anxo and the King of Hell want to give Eldoris a chance to fix their current stance in our world, but I don’t know if they deserve it. Sometimes it’s better to burn it all and start over than to let the rot fester.
And it’s not just him. Everyone here is corrupt and vile. His warriors, the residents who sacrifice their daughters and mates to him.
They can claim it’s survival until their dying breath, but I would die before I let a predator take my child from me.
The only reason Tiberius can do whatever he wants is because people here are spineless. They’d rather cower than take a dagger to the heart and die like a warrior fighting for what’s right.
“Hazel…” Nevaeh’s hand presses against my back, grounding me, pulling me out of the hate trying to swallow me.
I fight the chokehold this place has on me and start humming, my power spilling outward, wrapping around Nevaeh, Jackson, and Khatri to hide their scents.
“Everyone okay?” Khatri asks through the link as Jackson moves ahead to check if our path is clear.
No one answers. The link stays quiet, my stomach sinks.
Fuck. What if I sent them straight into a trap? What if they got caught?
I told Anxo my insight on this kingdom is wildly outdated, but he wouldn’t listen. What if I was wrong? I can’t even imagine what I’d do if something happened to them because of me.
Before I can spiral further, Anxo’s voice cuts in.
“We’re good. Hazel was right about the entry point. Two guards saw us, but we handled it. We’re slowly moving around the slave quarters now. Everything is good so far.”
A breath I didn’t realize I was holding finally escapes.
Relief ripples through us, and we move again, slipping through the maze behind the castle. When the path before us forks, Nevaeh and Khatri take the left, while Jackson and I follow the right. Whoever finds what we’re looking for will alert the others.
I peek around the next corner and duck when I find two guards.
There’s only one reason anyone comes here, and I know I’m right when I see the silhouette of a woman on the ground behind them. They stand over her broken body like she’s invisible, chatting away.
This is where the guards take the slaves to use them as they please, without Tiberius finding out. It’s not like he would miss one woman among dozens of slaves.
They toss her into a shallow pit and go back to laughing like nothing happened. I don’t expect them to give her a proper burial, but they could’ve at least laid her to rest somewhere other than the place they killed her.
Every time I wonder if my hatred for this place is biased because of my personal experience, every stone in this place reminds me what these people are really made of.
Products of a predator who loves to see his own shadow in his subjects.
I glance at Jackson and cut my hand around my neck in a slicing motion. He nods without hesitation, knowing what needs to be done.
Closing his eyes, he chants a spell, and guards drop with a thud. We quickly drag them into the shadows, shoving them under thorned bushes.
We’re about to move when Nevaeh’s voice snaps through the link. “Another dead end. I told you not to put me in charge of the directions!”
I hear Anxo smother his laugh on his end of the link.
We all know Nevaeh can’t keep track of the most basic directions. That woman wasn’t built to take orders.
Nevaeh hisses when she hears Anxo laugh. “You’re a dead man when this is over.”
“You can’t kill me without hurting yourself, sweetheart.” Anxo sounds far too smug for someone who was just threatened. Two hours with Dean and he’s already picked his reckless bravery.
“I could break his arm for you,” Dean offers.
“Hey!” Anxo cuts the link before my mate can encourage more shenanigans.
We move deeper into the maze when footsteps echo behind us.
When Khatri confirms it’s not them, Jackson and I quickly slip into the shadows as Jackson murmurs a cloaking spell.
It won’t hold for long, so if they linger, we’ll have to deal with them the same way we did the other two.
When I check the path we were going to take and realize it curves back to the castle. Wrong direction.
Once we deal with the newcomers, we’ll double back and find another route.
I’m mapping every turn in my head when a voice I haven’t heard in years stops me cold. Before I can think, I step out just enough to see the man I could never forget.
The one person makes me feel guilty for hating this place completely, because that would mean hating him, and I could never do that.
My breath stutters when I see his face after so long.
Zale.
He was the kindest among all of Tiberius’s processions. Like me, he was brought to serve Tiberius, but for some reason, he was treated better than the rest of us by the guards.
Sometimes I used to wonder whether his kindness was real or just a mask, but he never gave me a reason to doubt the hand that fed me when I could barely breathe.
Zale was older than me, so once Timor recruited him as a warrior, he never came back to the slave quarters. I never saw him again after that day, and I think it was for the best.
I know my growing affection for him would’ve ruined me, but something about him felt familiar…peaceful. In the cage, attachment was a liability. Caring for someone meant watching helplessly as the darkness around us slowly consumed their light.
I wouldn’t have survived watching him become something else.
That’s why I love August and Nevaeh’s relationship so much. She had the courage to do what I couldn’t.
Nevaeh was broken like me, but she still had the heart to love that boy so fiercely. If it weren’t for her love for August, they never would’ve made it out of that dungeon alive.
Suddenly, Zale’s head snaps in my direction, and I duck back before he can spot me.
He might’ve been kind to me when I was a kid, but he’s also been under Tiberius’s thumb for fifteen years.
I don’t know what a sentence so cruel turned him into. And I don’t want to find out. He was the only good thing this place ever gave me. I can’t lose that.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I spin, my dagger ready.
Nevaeh steps back, frowning at my reaction.
“What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, pulling her into cover. “Nothing. I just saw someone I used to know.”
Nevaeh stares at me for a long second before nudging me away from Zale and back in the direction we came from. “Come on, we need to finish our task and find the others.”
She right. We’re running out of time.
Anxo, Dean, and Seiji must’ve reached Tiberius by now, and we need to get out of here before they move on to the next step.