Chapter 5 Rae
CHAPTER FIVE
RAE
Plunging into the cold sea, I dive deep.
I dive into the dark, and the initial shock of the water, slicing like ice shards into my body, is soon replaced by relief as my gills open and I can breathe.
This. This is what it should have felt like last time.
At least regarding breathing. I still have these pesky human legs that kick uselessly instead of a sturdy tail to propel me.
Where’s Jai?
Shit. Why is this my first thought? Why am I still drawn to him when he’s possessed half the time by a malevolent alien being who is all too happy to help the king and do his bidding, who controls Jai?
Doomed, the king had said.
When he’s not only the king’s right hand, but also apparently the cause behind my family’s deaths and the man who rejected me.
“Rae, do you believe in fated mates?”
Do I? What had he been about to tell me earlier? But it doesn’t matter. I can’t be with him. There are too many reasons why I can’t.
I have to stop thinking like a human, like a woman who hopes to find her true mate and spend time in starry-eyed wonder, spend sweaty nights getting to know one another’s body, imagining that one day she’ll settle with her mate in a house together, have a family. Have a future.
That’s not me.
Not anymore.
Surfacing, I swim slowly away from the edge of the arena, gathering my wits. I mean… this is crazy thinking. Come on. I’m on a mission, I barely know Jai, and then there’s the king. My true love.
Besides, of the two of us, Jai is the one at a disadvantage, because he doesn’t know my true nature. He hasn’t seen my gills. Hasn’t realized what I truly am now. I’m pretty sure he isn’t hoping for a cozy cottage full of laughing children, either.
Ha, as if. Not if he crossed here from another world to stop the fae king. Not if Phaethon has anything to say about it, either. And all that assuming we both survive the second trial.
What a mess.
The humans are jumping into the sea around me, some screaming as they plunge in, some doing it in silence. The splashes and sprays of water mark their position—not just for me, but for the predators swimming in the arena.
I doubt the sea monsters and finnfolk were removed after the first trial. If anything, more monsters may have been added. The water level is higher than the last time, I wasn’t wrong in my assessment, and it’s time to get moving.
Kicking my legs, I look around, taking stock of the new, rearranged arena. No more platforms floating at the center. Nothing except for those strange towers bobbing in the water. I count ten of them.
Ten, like us.
Where is the air element in this? What are we supposed to do?
Just swim, I order myself, and don’t look back to check if Jai has surfaced.
I wasn’t going to!
Yeah, right.
I don’t give a damn about him!
The near painful throb going through my body at the thought of Jai is enough to tell me I’m deluding myself. But this is just lust. I can deal with that. It’s the piercing, burning ache in my chest when I think of his arms around me that destroys me.
You’re destroying me, Jai. Ruining me.
And I can’t afford that.
My legs are stronger this time around, less painful, or maybe I became accustomed to the pain and the weakness. It’s now a part of me.
Just like all this new information, all this confusion. Got to shed it like fishscale, like dead skin. Empty my mind.
The water froths to my left, and I change course. It’s a sign of sharks or nokke, or even water draks or serpents. Take your pick. Too many creatures going hungry, waiting for a tasty meal to come their way.
I’m not going to become that snack. Things may be complicated, but I’ll find the end of the thread somehow. I need to make it out alive to ask questions, now that I got my voice back.
Ahead, I see a man climbing a tower. Something flutters at its top. Is that a red flag? What is up there? Something we’re supposed to retrieve, obviously.
One for each contestant.
I swim faster, as fast as I can manage, toward one of the towers bobbing on the water.
They obviously aren’t rooted at the bottom.
They seem like buoys, only much larger. Their vertical surface shines, as smooth as the sides of the platforms had been in the first trial, and predictably, the man climbing loses his grip and slides down.
He falls into the sea, and after a moment, red froth bubbles up. A crimson stain spreads on the surface of the water.
Well, damn.
While I study the bobbing towers, a scream draws my attention somewhere behind me, but turning, I don’t see anyone. Not necessarily a good sign. Someone was just dragged underwater and will never be seen again.
Our numbers are rapidly dwindling, and I still don’t have a clue as to what the plan here is.
Don’t linger, Rae. Keep moving.
So I resume swimming, thinking I have to find a way to climb a tower. That’s all I have figured out so far, so I head toward the closest one.
Only someone else has made it there first. A young, dark-haired woman is struggling to scale it.
So I move on. My shoulder burns, the one that was almost wrenched out of its socket in the first trial, and other aches make themselves known as I keep going.
My calf where that snake had bitten me. The soles of my feet I cut up on the broken coral pieces.
There simply hasn’t been enough time to heal.
A shadow under the surface, down deep, catches my attention, and I dive underwater to see. My gills pulsate, and I choke for a moment before I stop trying to breathe in through my nose and mouth and let the water in.
It’s not a sea serpent as I’d feared but a group of mermaids.
They stop, beating their powerful, colorful tails, and turn to gaze up at me. They reach for me with pale, graceful arms. “Come with us,” they sing, the melody winding around my mind, “come join us.”
“I can’t,” I tell them, my voice echoing in the water.
“Alys is looking for you.”
“Later. Tell Alys I’ll find her later.”
But they won’t be deterred. They swim upward, reaching for me, their song rising and rising.
It’s showing me images from my childhood—fields covered in flowers, rocky hill slopes where wild goats roam, my town with the forest at its edge where the witches live and the lesser fairies roam, the slow-flowing river, the old palace, my beloved family, Mars…
Hey, stop. Stop! Now is not the time.
I may not have my magic right now, but I’m still one of the finnfolk, so I manage to resist just enough to swim away from them. I’m trying to circle around them when a hand closes around my ankle, yanking me down.
Shit, no. No time for this, and the last thing I want to do is talk politics with the Sea Queen’s maidens.
“I said later!” I kick with my other foot at the grabbing hand, and when it relaxes, I kick again and shoot to the surface.
Dammit.
“Rae!” The voice startles me and I splash, turning around, looking for its source. “You can talk to me, you know. Ask for my help.”
“Who is that? Where…?” The voice rings inside my head, echoes trailing, and then it clicks: the darakin. “Remi?”
“Look up.”
Of course. I look up, and there he is, circling, gray and white, a reptilian, winged form, the morning light turning his membranous wings into lace.
Not sure I’m allowed to ask any dragon for help, I send the thought out.
“You can’t, but who’s to know we can communicate? I’ll guide you. I have a good dragon’s-eye view from up here.”
Guide me where? What else is there apart from these towers?
“Ah, see how useful I can be?” I swear he’s laughing at me.
You’re not useful yet.
He gets the hint and circles higher, then lower again until he’s hovering over me.
I need to get out of the water. Big fat advantage my gills gave me in a trial of the air. It’s so ironic I huff a laugh and promptly inhale water, because now I’m back to breathing through my nose.
The joy.
Spluttering, the inside of my nose and my throat burning from the unplanned salty water drink, I set my sights on the next tower. Hands touch my feet again and I kick out, cursing inwardly. Water blurs my vision. The tower sways right and left. Something else latches onto my foot.
That’s not a hand, I think as sharp teeth sink into my flesh. Shit.
“Watch out!” Remi’s voice inside my head is the only warning I get as he dives down from the sky and into the water, dislodging whatever had gotten hold of my foot.
Ow.
Bleeding in the sea is the mother of all bad ideas, but there’s no remedy for that now. Hissing through my teeth, my breaths sawing in and out of my aching chest, I race for that tower.
Until another set of sharp teeth sinks into my calf, and I cry out, yanked under.
Honestly, today sucks.
Turning in the water, I try to see what got me and see a ridged, silvery back.
Holy shit. It’s a mirror eel, almost transparent. I struggle to unlock its maw from my leg, and then shoot back up, leaving strips of flesh between its teeth.
The tower. I’m almost there. Swimming under, I can now see the rounded underside, which is white and flat, pristine without barnacles. They really put these towers into the water for the purpose of this trial. I swim up again, toward the surface. Almost there, almost—
A hand grabs mine and heaves, pulling me bodily out of the water—and onto the base of the tower.
Shocked, gasping as my lungs take over, I cough and lie on my belly like a stranded fish, waiting for my heart to stop trying to break through my ribs.
Then I roll onto my side, and a bright smile beams down at me.
“Now we’re quits,” the woman says, and I snort.
Amaryll.
“Thanks,” I croak, then spit out some more salty water. “That’s kind.”
Though it leaves us both on the same tower with a single prize to retrieve. Could this be a mistake that will cost our lives?
“God, I love your voice,” she says, still smiling. “I heard you just got it back, which I’d love to hear about, but do you sing?”
“Nothing gets you down, does it?” I shake my head, sitting up. “Yes, I do sing sometimes, as a matter of fact.”
“Great. You should. I’ve always told my daughter she should never stop singing.”
A trickle of ice down my spine. Daughter? A little version of herself? Singing? Oh no… My heart thumps hard. If I was committed to saving Amaryll before, now I’m sworn to it.
Between her and Jai, I’m already defeated.
Jai who saved me many times over.
“He has saved my life many times,” Tru had said. Like it’s understood, obvious, like Jai is that kind of a man.
Then how does that fit with what the king implied about him? That he caused my family’s death. That he refuses to bring back the dead. Does that make him a bad guy?
Why is it so hard to convince myself to dislike him?
“I’ll push you up,” she says. “You climb up there and get whatever is at the top.”
Slowly I nod even as a shiver travels up my spine.
I don’t say, What about you? Neither of us knows what I’ll find at the top.
Maybe a poisoned spike is waiting to take my life.
Or a snake, waiting to bite. I doubt she’s offering out of the kindness of her heart.
She’s probably too scared to climb up there.
“Let’s do this,” I whisper.