Chapter 13
VALANCE
Darkness burst in the water, a cloud of inky blackness smothering my face. I swiped at the water, trying to clear whatever this was, even trying to wipe my eyes clear. But the darkness prevailed, stinging.
“Kormac!” I cried. “Adrian! Gali!”
“Valance!” the human returned.
Adrian made no noise.
Coldness on my arms, around my new mer tail. Around my torso. Slimy and tight and… and what was that sensation of a thousand mouths sucking at my skin?
“Kormac!”
“Be quiet,” Adrian spoke into my left ear.
Fingers in my mouth, pulling my jaw wide. Something filled my mouth—a plant. Salt. Seaweed?
What on Faerie was going on?
The darkness faded, my eyes raw yet able to see Adrian floating before me, along with—
I screamed the human’s name, the sound muffled against the seaweed. The tentacles around me tightened. Pink tentacles, like the ones around me, coiled around Kormac. Attached to a huge squid, eyes as black as mine pulsing in its pointed head.
Danu!
Kormac had seaweed stuffed into his mouth, too. Gali loitered beside him as Adrian did me.
Squid ink. That explained the darkness.
“Now we wait for the signal,” Adrian said to me. There was no maliciousness in his tone. More like remorse. “They will be here soon.”
I tried to ask who.
He sighed. “I don’t take any pleasure in this, Your Highness. I really don’t. But I also value the lives of my kin more than I do yours. After all, we only have desire between us. Not love.” Another sigh. “I’m no fool. I don’t intend to lose everything to nothing.”
I tried to speak again.
No use.
“Powerful fae want you,” he continued. “Up there.” He gestured to the surface.
“We were threatened to not harbor you, to turn you over if we saw you and this human.” He shook his head.
“They have iron, Your Highness. They are taking power from you. There is nothing I can do. They said they would poison our waters if we did not comply. I cannot have that. We have always been free from your politics, and we intend to remain so.”
He’d betrayed me. This mer had betrayed me.
Rage bubbled.
I’d kill him. I’d kill them all.
Had she betrayed me? The old woman? Was this her plan all along?
No. That made no sense.
I hoped it made no sense. Because if this was her goal, then…
…then…
Oh, Danu. This could not be real.
The squid tightened its grip on me, on the precipice of cutting off my air supply.
I looked to Kormac, whose gaze bore into me. I felt his panic, his struggle. He most likely felt mine. Both of us were helpless. These squid were large and strong with metal-like grip.
More mer swam from the depths, coming up to join us in the moonlit water.
“Soon, you’ll be on the surface,” Adrian said. “You cannot go to Winter, Your Highness. And you shouldn’t suffer anymore by being on the road, running toward death. This isn’t you.”
Do not presume to know me! I screamed in my head.
My rage thrashed against the sides of my inner cauldron, my grip on myself loosening.
“It’s horrendous what has happened to you,” the mer scum continued. “Losing your power, being reduced to this. It is unfair, as is our forced shift in allegiance.” He looked around at his fellow aquatic creatures as a film of haziness spread across my vision.
“I am sorry,” he continued. “But we have to be smart in this changing world. Time is moving us on. We have to go with her.”
Blindness. A fury bursting through my seams. Nightmares. Tearing flesh in my hands, the violent thrashing in water. Wet and slimy, my hands buried deep. More ripping, more death. The tang of blood within the brine.
Screams.
Moving shadows in water.
Death and blood and slaying the nightmares. Kill them all.
All dead.
All.
But not that one.
Watch him. He is not a nightmare.
“Valance,” he whispered.
Close to him. Touchable. Not touch. Watch.
Watch him.
Watch him.
Darkness.
I came to in Kormac’s arms. A swimming Kormac.
With a groan, I blinked up at him. “What—”
“They’re coming!” he yelled. “I’m trying to—”
It came down over us, heavy and rattling. A net. I struggled out of his arms, in the grip of exhaustion, yet panicked. The net snared us, tightening so much our bodies were slammed awkwardly together, my head over his shoulder, my fingers clinging to metal.
A metal net floating in the water. Heavy yet light enough to fish. A clever contradiction created by the Gentry fae, so proficient in metalwork.
Kormac’s hands rested on my back, his stubble rubbing against my cheek.
“It’s okay, Valance,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay.”
I saw the pieces in the water. The bits of flesh, the blood, the carnage.
I’d slaughtered them all.
Adrian.
Gali.
The other mer.
Traitors to me and the seelie court.
“No more mer festivals,” I said weakly.
Kormac soothed my spine with his touch, the gentle wind of his breath brushing against my ear.
As the net rose, I smiled, happy to be in the human’s reassuring arms for this moment.
This moment of rising toward doom.