Chapter 9 Rae
CHAPTER NINE
RAE
Out there, in the bright air and light of day, I struggled, suffocating. Too much noise, too much pressure.
Down here, underwater, it’s dark and quiet and my gills open instantly, letting me breathe.
In and out.
Evenly.
Peacefully.
I drift face-up, bubbles escaping my mouth. I’m mesmerized by the broken mirror of the surface above me, flashing with blinding lights like the falling stars in the sky.
What happened? Why—?
Jai!
Panic returns in a body-jolting blaze. Gathering my limbs, I flip and look down into the depths.
Only for a hand to grab my ankle and drag me deeper.
No! It’s mermaids, I realize as I struggle against that painful grip, a whole pod of them—and I recognize the one holding onto me.
“Alys!” I yell, writhing, trying to free myself. “Let go!”
“Didn’t I say you should come talk to me?” she singsongs, her huge eyes unblinking.
“Sorry, been busy.”
“Have you? Splashing around in the water like a crippled seal.” She gives a disdainful sniff. “We have important topics to discuss.”
I yank harder but her grip is like nightgold. Impossible to break. “I can’t talk right now. I need to find Jai. He’s drowning!”
“Who cares if a human drowns?” One of the mermaids titters, twirling a lock of golden hair around a finger. “They all die, one way or another.”
“Humans are our allies,” I seethe.
“You say that because you were human once.” The blond mermaid gives me a shrewd look. “Your alliance is still with them, isn’t it?”
She’s wrong, and yet… she’s right.
Alys grins at me, all sharp teeth. “Did you fulfill your mission?”
“Not yet,” I grind out, forced to admit to my failure. “Release me.”
“Queen Amphitrite won’t be pleased.”
“Well, isn’t that tragic,” I mutter, because dammit, I’m annoyed. “My magic is gone! I can’t access it. I don’t have the advantage anymore.” Looking past her, I try to locate Jai and I think I see a body tumbling into the deep. “I’m trying to make do without.”
She frowns—as much as you can frown without eyebrows. “But you can breathe underwater. And talk.”
“Yeah, about that… No idea what happened,” I lie, or almost lie because I thought it was thanks to Jai’s kiss, Jai’s touch, but he denied it. “Let me go, Alys.”
“You can’t even make me, can you?” She laughs, a trill and a chime like tiny bells. “You can’t command me. Oh, this is lovely.”
So I bend my knees, crouching, and kick her in the face with my free leg. “Take that for a command.”
She hisses, drawing back instinctively, and her hold slackens.
Free, at last.
The other mermaids reach for me as I catapult myself away, but I scream at them and they scatter, startled, even though my scream holds no magic, only pure frustration and fury.
I dive after the body I saw falling. Is it Jai? Is it too late? So many predators are waiting to take a bite out of any living or dead body down here. Let’s face it: most creatures would take a bite out of just about anything, just to see if it’s edible.
Don’t bite Jai!
But thinking it, or even saying it, won’t matter one whit now.
Aware of the mermaids nipping at my bare heels, I keep swimming downward, past waving forests of seagrass, stationary groups of enormous groupers, and clouds of tiny phosphorescent ray fish.
Where is the body, where…?
Ah. There. A man’s body, that’s my fleeting impression, the one that drew me down. A man’s tall body… and a giant squid is already enveloping him in yards-long tentacles.
Shit.
“Back off!” I yell, bubbles bursting out of my mouth as I shoot toward the tangle of tentacles. “Don’t you dare sting him!”
Yellow deep-sea squids have poisonous barbs on their tentacles. Like undersea spiders, they paralyze their prey, then use smaller inner tentacles to drag their stunned prey to their toothed beaks where they tear it apart and eat it.
I swim faster. My muscles burn. My shoulder feels like it’s on fire. My injured leg is cramping so badly I want to scream again.
So I do. My scream tears through the water. I grab a passing, grazing shark who jerks, startled. I latch onto the dorsal fin and ride him down deeper, then release him and throw myself toward the writhing tentacles.
Almost there.
I dive among the tentacles, barely caring about the barbs, and wrap an arm around the body floating in the cage they form.
It’s him. Jai.
The relief makes me light-headed. I’d counted on my first impression of him, that brief glimpse of broad shoulders and dark hair, but up until now I hadn’t been sure.
He’s in full armor, for some reason, his twin swords strapped at his back. Perhaps he triggered the shadows as he fell from the drak, before hitting the water.
His lips are turning blue.
Bad sign.
I grab his face, put my mouth on his and blow air into him. Again and again. He’s still unresponsive.
I have to free him, take him up to the surface.
So I draw back, pull one of the swords out of the scabbard on his back and swing it through the water.
It shouldn’t move so fast, the water resistance should have slowed it, but somehow its blade cuts through water like it cuts through the air—and strikes one of the giant yellow squid’s tentacles.
The tentacles retract a little, but the smaller ones reach for us, wrapping around my ankles, around Jai.
I swing the sword around again, but the tentacles close around my hands, around the hilt. Grunting, I fight them.
I need to give Jai more air.
I need to get him to the surface.
And I need to check if he’s been stung.
If he’s still alive.
The tentacles retract again, releasing us, and I grab Jai and haul him upward, toward the surface, before I see the reason for our good luck.
The mermaids. They are back. I hear their angry screeches as they charge through the sea, nothing like the mellow, hypnotizing songs they usually sing.
They’ve come to our defense.
I slow down and turn to see what they’re doing.
Alys swings a long coral scythe, white and encrusted with barnacles and shells, opening deep cuts into the tentacles. She shears one right off, and the squid thrashes, pulsing black and squirting out ink.
The mermaids slash and cut with their blades, screeching at the squid until it propels itself away and vanishes in a cloud of ink and darkening water.
“Thank you!” I call out to them. “I don’t know why you helped me, but thank you!”
“You are one of us,” one says. “You’re finnfolk.”
“And about to be betrothed to Lord Psamanth,” says another.
The matter of my supposed betrothed-to-be again?
“I choose my mate,” I say, torn between the urge to get Jai out of the water and address this issue. “Nobody tells me who to wed. Not even the Sea Queen.”
The mermaids watch me in silence for long moments, their fishtails thrashing, the only sign of agitation.
“Your magic will return,” Alys says, choosing to ignore my statement. “And we serve the sea.”
“Well, I owe you one,” I mutter, grabbing Jai under the armpits and starting to swim upward. “Help me take him to the surface and I’ll owe you more.”
They giggle as if they think I’m joking, but two of them grab Jai’s arms and launch us both toward the distant surface.
Then, leaving me with an unconscious Jai to float among the waves, they dive once more and vanish in the sea.