Chapter 27 Rae
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RAE
After choking down a piece of pie drizzled with honey, as well as two quail eggs cooked with herbs, I’m finally allowed to leave the royal apartments.
I feel sick. My stomach roils. I feel like I’m about to throw up all this lovely breakfast.
I hate him. I hate this handsome, heartless king who pretended to be Mars. If I hadn’t realized already that I was lied to, the impossibility of his behavior would have broken my mind.
But no time to ponder this now. Finally allowed to go, I need to find out what happened with the sea draks and the attack.
The king waved me out without setting any guards on me, so I distance myself from his apartments as fast as I can.
Fae nobles are standing in clusters, whispering among themselves. Servants hurry back and forth, a look of panic on their faces.
“Is the attack over?” I ask a fae male who is standing apart from the others, at a window. “Is it over? Can you see?”
He shakes his head, glances at his companions who are gathered around a high, round table, drinking wine from fluted glasses as if asking what the protocol is when a wild-eyed human approaches you.
“Not yet,” he finally says when nobody pays him any attention. “They are still fighting. The sea draks are persistent.”
“What about Athdara?”
“He called a drak down and was riding the beast, using its claws to pull the sea draks away, but I can’t see him anymore. I think—”
Damn.
I’m already running toward the stairs, needing to get to the lower levels of the palace. I don’t know how I can help but I need to be there.
Fuck sitting to have breakfast with the king.
How could I have been so wrong about him?
He knew things he shouldn’t. Caught you unawares. Put that mark on you. You knew that this is the fae who destroyed your world. You came here to kill him. It was only thinking he’s Mars that threw you off. He isn’t a good person and you knew it all along.
You know more than you admit to yourself. Because deep inside you’d guessed the truth already, hadn’t you?
Jai…
Tears blur my eyes as I climb lower and lower. They run down my face in cool rivers. That’s the only release I allow for my anger and sorrow, now that nobody is looking.
I quickly dry my cheeks as I step off the stairs and run down the corridor, looking for a door to the terrace.
I hear shouting and I turn that way.
A harried-looking maid stops as I run by. “Don’t go that way! It’s dangerous. We’re evacuating this floor in case the finnfolk find their way inside.”
Cursing, I put in an extra burst of speed, sprinting toward the noise, ignoring the ache in my legs and feet. More pale-faced servants cross my way and I swerve to avoid them. They call for me to turn back, to turn around and climb back up the stairs where it’s safer.
I keep running, crossing parlors and halls hung with paintings, decorated with busts of famous generals and artists—when a girl appears to my right, out of nowhere, and I stumble to a halt.
“Lynn? Is that you?”
The girl runs away, glancing over her shoulder. She clutches at the necklace she’s wearing, and it breaks. Pearls fall and bounce all over the floor.
Like before.
I know that necklace. It’s the pearl necklace I had in my pocket upon arrival, pilfered from a drowned corpse, the one that was stolen from me. She took it? I hadn’t seen that coming.
“Lynn!” I start after her, down another corridor, crossing through a bright hallway and ending in a… cava? I turn in a circle, taking in all the bottles stored in niches in the walls. “Lynn?
No answer.
Dammit, not now. I have to find Jai. Regrettably, I abandon my search for her, wondering how she got out of that cava, if she turned elsewhere before that. Why she didn’t wait for me.
No time for that now.
I have a dagger, the dagger Jai gave me. I will put it to good use. Maybe the sea draks will respond to my voice, despite the snuffing out of my power, recognizing me as their own.
I have to make sure he is safe—not because the king asked me to, but because the thought of losing Jai…
Unbearable.
Blinding.
Why does he feel like he’s a part of me?
You know why.
“You can’t die,” I mutter as I locate a promising set of doors and run that way, a stitch in my side. “You said we’d talk, Jai, you can’t die!”
I push the doors open into the daylight of a terrace, the shouting of guards and screeching of draks hitting me like a punch.
I stagger as a stab of pain blooms in my head, a pain that has nothing to do with the onslaught of noise.
Dizziness hits me.
I think I hear my name being whispered, the sound fluttering around me… inside me. Inside my head.
Somehow I know it’s him.
He’s in trouble.
I walk into a scene of chaos.
Men are lying in pools of blood, moaning or else very still and probably dead. My heart is crashing against my ribs, trying to escape the sight of death, the stench of it, and the fear that I’ll discover Jai lying among them, lifeless and gone.
“Athdara!” I yell. “Where is Athdara?”
Guards are hacking at the tentacles of a giganto-squid that slither about the terrace like snakes, shattering stone urns and benches, while others are using long spears to jab at a sea croc that’s snapping at them. How did the creatures crawl up to the terrace?
“Where are the sea draks?” I shout. “Where is Athdara?”
One of the guards vaguely points to the other side of the terrace and I set off that way. The stitch in my side is turning into a jabbing pain but I ignore it, forcing my legs to pump faster. My running steps echo in my bones, the sound lost in the din of battle.
Ahead, I make out a monstrous shape.
A sea drak. It’s an agate green with a black crest, white lines on its muzzle. Her muzzle, in fact. From the screech, I know it’s a female.
A winged Oriole drak is lying motionless on the terrace, one wing torn, a long gash down her orange body.
Two guards are trying to push the sea drak back with their swords and she snaps at them. One of them is Arkin. I wonder where Tru is. And Jai?
“Arkin!” I yell.
“Get back!” he roars, then as he recognizes me, “Rae?”
“Where is he?”
He understands without me having to clarify. “He fell off the Oriole drak, over there!” He points. “Go check on him.”
“Planning on it.” I’m running already, not sure what I will be running into, though I don’t see any other dragons where I’m heading.
Yet something is on the terrace, crawling through a broken part of the marble balustrade.
A mermaid.
Another is crawling toward her, I realize, and she has Jai.
Hells. She has an arm around his hips and is slowly dragging him backward, toward the balustrade. She lifts her head, and I start.
I know her.
“Alys! Let him go!” I pull the dagger out of my belt and point it at her. “Now!”
She jerks to a stop, glaring at me through huge aquamarine eyes. “I’m doing the queen’s bidding that you failed to do. Go away.”
“I can’t do that.” I run toward her. “I said, release him.”
“The sea wants him out of the way,” she says, not relinquishing her hold on him. “Him, and the king. This is your new mission.”
I stumble. “What? No. Why now?”
“He’s helping the king.”
“The king wants to open a gate and leave this world. If the king wants to leave, then good riddance.”
“You really think he won’t come back with an even bigger army and kill us all?”
I open my mouth to deny this but no words come out. She’s right, I don’t believe that. But I have to stop her.
“Athdara is learning to control Phaethon,” I say, trying to control my panic. “He won’t let the king open any gates.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know him,” I say.
“Nonsense,” Alys hisses. “You barely know him. He’s distracting you from your mission.”
“No, he’s not. I know him, Alys. Let him go!” My voice trills, echoes, and a flicker of my power blooms in my chest. “Release him!”
She releases him and jerks back, snarling. “Then what is it? What’s your reason for not killing the king, apart from thinking he will just return this world to its rightful owners?”
“I can’t tell you. And I can’t let you have Jai.” He’s so still lying beside her. My heart is seizing.
“Why not? You said he’s not distracting you. He can’t be that important to you.”
“He’s not… It’s different. Oh Gods. Please, don’t ask this of me.”
She drags herself toward me on powerful arms. “Then step out of the way and let us finish him off.”
I snarl right back. “I already said no.”
“You can’t just flout the queen’s commands. Beware, girl. The third trial is the trial of water, and he will be at our mercy anyway. Better grant him a mercy kill now so he won’t suffer.”
“No!” I inch closer, terrified that any moment now she will grab him again and jump into the sea with him in her clutches. “Tell Queen Amphitrite I said no.”
“You want to incur the wrath of the sea queen right before a trial in the sea? What is going on here? What is Athdara to you?”
“Nothing.”
The other mermaids are still as statues. And Jai still isn’t moving. I step toward him. I don’t trust Alys, and he’s vulnerable right now.
“You say you won’t kill him. If your betrothed finds out…”
“I am not betrothed to Lord Psamanth yet, and I don’t care about the queen’s political alliances. Things have changed.” I swallow hard. “She never lifted the spell off me. Tell her that I won’t forget this.”
“You go seeking trouble.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“No, my business is to end him.” And she lunges sideways, reaching for Jai once more.
I lunge, too, blocking her once more. “You don’t touch him. Not ever again.”
The other mermaid is slithering away. She dives into the sea. Several splashes tell me more mermaids have been climbing the rocks to reach us and are now returning to the water.
Alyss hisses. “I can’t promise you not to touch him. And the queen will not be happy to know you have formed an attachment to her detriment.”
“I have not!”
“Your protectiveness of him says otherwise.” She turns, dragging herself away, her long tail leaving a shimmering wet trail on the flagstones. “You love him.”
“No.”
“You’re willing to fight the queen of the sea on his behalf. You act as if you’ve loved him all your life.”
And casting me one last sour look, she slides through the gap in the balustrade and jumps into the sea.