Chapter 15 #2
She scoffed and brushed Selah aside. “I’m sorry, have you met Yemaya?
See, if you had, you’d know I’d have had to kill her to keep her from going.
We saw the blessings. We get it. We were attacked on the way by people under her control.
But what you’re talking about is an issue for the faithful, and we know Yemi’s a gleeful heretic.
She’s not offering herself up to the witch.
I was there. She’s getting an army from the sea queen—her great-aunt.
” She wouldn’t tell them about Van. She wouldn’t treat her cousin like a point to be made.
Sensing a fight, Selah interjected again. “The faith has been weak for generations, Miles. The Obé’s been without a sizable portion of her power for a long time. If she’s installed this new queen in Ixia, that’s why. And she hasn’t been in place long enough to make a difference.”
“So then if it doesn’t work? If she fails, if you lose her, what then?”
“If you don’t think I know what I’m doing, then why aren’t you out there?
” Nova’s tone was bolder than she’d intended, the words tumbling and crisp behind the aggravated snapping of her teeth.
“That’s right, you retired. Which makes all of this barely any of your business.
It’s starting to feel like really bad opsec talking to you anyway, on top of being annoying as fu—”
“Enough,” Selah said quickly. Nova let the gleam in her eye finish the sentence for her.
“General, perhaps now isn’t the best time for a debrief?
We’ll pick it up from the beginning in the morning and disregard everything from tonight.
A backup plan might be useful, but we’re not going to hatch it now. ”
Cutter had more to say, but appeared to swallow it and let out a deep breath instead before backing out of the doorway and disappearing down the hall.
“Night,” Nova called after him. She was annoyed with herself now for allowing the creeping sense of guilt rising in her stomach to upend what was supposed to be the best sleep of her life.
Selah gave her a sympathetic look, but Nova was in no mood for mothering, either, and grabbed a red throw from the pile near her bed and pushed past her to head outside for fresh air.
It was colder here at night, the air drier, the wind louder as it ricocheted off the rocks.
She peered out at the city between a pair of cypress trees on the other side of a low cobblestone wall.
When Selah joined her, she braced for the lecture or parable to come, confident that once it was out of the old witch’s system, she’d be free to sleep.
“I had someone once, you know,” Selah started. “Awfully similar situation, though she was like you and I was like Yemaya, driving our destinies. Taking advantage of her devotion, in a way.”
Nova side-eyed her.
“I don’t mean that in a condescending way. Her dreams for us were… smaller. Quieter. Between the two of us, I sacrificed my dreams the least. We lived in a time of—on the cusp of great evil, and I was determined to fight it. And she was determined to see me happy.”
Silence then, but the witch didn’t leave her side. “So what happened?” Nova prompted.
“We fought, my friends and I, a bunch of rebels. Young and stupid. One night, a plan went badly, and I had to leave her. No time to even say goodbye.”
“You abandoned her.”
“No,” Selah said patiently. “I was exiled.”
“Exile is just the means of abandonment.”
“Perhaps.”
“So where is she now?”
Selah shook her head for a long time, her expression despondent.
“Where I left her. In what state? Who can know. I regret the failure of my mission, but only half as much as my failure to protect her. We were one another’s rescue from our own separate destinies.
Mine changed for the worse. I worry hers did, too. ”
Feeling in no way better, Nova asked, “Was this a pep talk?”
Selah laughed suddenly. “Why? Do you feel inspired?” She turned to Nova to hold her gaze. “Listen: You are right and she is right. But fate tosses us all like rag dolls anyway. I would rather be the person who would do anything for love rather than in spite of it.”
She gave Nova a meaningful look and squeezed her arm with something like kindness before heading back inside, her boots crunching on the gravel.
Nova drew a hand over her face and instinctively checked the glittering water beyond the city’s edge for signs that perhaps Yemi had appeared. Oddly, she did feel comforted.
“Huh,” she chuckled, surprisingly satisfied, and welcomed the droop in her eyelids that told her this day was finally over.
· YEMI ·
Yemi dreamed of a queen asleep in her mother’s bed, in a mask made to look like Ursla’s face framed by a mane of thick braids textured with scales.
The sleeping queen wore Nova’s uniform. Yemi approached at a glide, any footsteps inaudible in a world that may have been made of water.
She hovered over the bed and kissed the mask on its lips.
Then Nova’s eyes popped open just as a horrifying, delicious squelch and the dampened crunch of crushing bones filled Yemi’s ears. Nova’s hands fluttered in panic against Yemi’s arms, begging something of her with silent urgency.
As the first tendrils of blood snaked their way into Yemi’s nose and grinning mouth, she looked down to see her forearm sunk to the elbow in Nova’s chest, reaching up from beneath her ribs to close a fist around her still-beating heart.
The scent was divine, all fear and lovely blood.
She couldn’t breathe in enough of it. She felt ravenous.
Rapturous. Invincible. In fevered, frenzied love with Nova, her very cells screaming passionately about how they’d never been so close.
Her mouth watered as she plucked her heart from its gaping cavity, and she smiled as she put it to her lips—
She awoke in a coughing fit, heart racing, choking on the water around her. Her hands were clean and Nova was nowhere to be found.
Her skin still vibrated. Her head throbbed between her hands as she made her way to the window instinctively for fresh air.
The city was quiet and still, save for the luminous manta rays gliding overhead like shooting stars.
Her pulse wasn’t calming. Every intake of breath seemed to make the drunken feeling worse.
She squinted through the holes in the coral wall at a figure muttering to himself, shrouded in a murky haze.
Somewhere to the right and well off into the distance, shadows moved, and a foreign hum more akin to a chirp bounced between buildings.
The figure in front of her was a merman leaning against a coral stalk, peering nervously around it with a hand pressed to his side and a cloud of blood issuing violently from a chunk of his missing tail.
He was close enough for Yemi to smell it. Her stomach seized, and her gums itched as if her teeth were priming themselves. A violent hissing filled her head, all the words unintelligible but a rousing whisper of Flesh.
She tried to drown it out but couldn’t tear her eyes from the target.
Prey.
Despite herself, she tugged at the wall, hoping for a weakness. It was the only thing in her way. And what had Selah said about hunting? Could this have been what she meant? Selah had implied this was natural, this hunger, for descendants of the shark.
A smile crept across Yemi’s lips and she felt herself fall away, relinquishing control to something within her that she was too exhausted to fight. And the less she fought, the less the hiss persisted. It felt so good to give in.
“You there. Friend,” she heard herself saying. Her voice was distant, a seductive growl.
The merman turned toward her, but his face was lost in shadows. Yemi’s breath hitched in excitement and desperation.
“Come to me. You seem upset,” she said.
“Who’s there?” His voice trembled. “Help me.”
Meek. Lost. Befitting a meal.
“I will help you,” she purred, fingers stretching through the holes in the wall. “Come closer. Take my hand.”
He hesitated to come out of the shadows. His mind was elsewhere, on some other threat. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“Come here!” she roared in a voice unlike her own. She slammed a hand into the wall so hard, a fist-sized chunk of it fell away and she was able to reach through it.
A manta drifted by, illuminating the space between them. And in the instant the blue light moved across his horrified face, Yemi felt herself shocked back into control of her body, sober and in silence, the hissing abruptly ended.
“Commander Hurand?” she blinked.
Confused realization dawned on his face as he squinted at her. “My… My Light?”
The distant chirp turned into a thundering shriek as half a dozen of the Hollow darted out from between buildings and followed Hurand’s blood trail.
Without another word, Commander Hurand fled into the city below, the Hollow pursuing him closely.
“Wait!” Yemi shouted, but to no avail. “Fuck.”
She left the room and flew down the empty nighttime corridors of the palace toward the entrance where her spear was held.
What was Hurand doing here? If he was Mer now, chances were he had drowned and Ursla had saved him. But why would he have drowned? Had Dahlia’s people attacked him for disloyalty? Were there others? And why were the Hollow so far into Abyssa?
A guard who was not Horus but seemed similarly gruff and bored hovered about the entrance.
“You there. Soldier,” Yemi called as she came upon him.
“Excuse me?” He frowned, shifting uncomfortably at the sight of her.
“There is a man, injured and being chased through the city by Hollow.”
“What man?”
Yemi scoffed. “Does it matter? They took off northward and down. Fetch a security detail.”
“On whose orders?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She grabbed her spear despite his muttered protest and took off.