15 Imogen #3
Rather than leave me where I stood, he came to stand beside me once more.
I clung to the rail, knuckles white, and he rested his hand right next to mine, so our small fingers touched.
I looked up at him as he stared out at the glossy black water.
He looked brutal, disheveled, his large body tense and his brows at a steep slant.
He looked… changed. The man—the king—I’d met on that parapet at the top of Fort Linum had been sure.
Immovable. His world had been black and white, and he’d known precisely where he’d fit within it.
At times, I still found myself expecting that old king’s ire, but Theodore offered me quiet support instead. With just a touch he told me all was well.
I see all the parts you hate and wish to hide, and I love you still.
“Queen Imogen.” The captain’s voice rang loud. She stood behind me, red cheeked and serious. “You and your proof brought us here. You’ll use your power to guide us safely into the lagoon now too.” She spun back toward the helm without waiting for my reply.
The crew was fast at work trimming the sagging sails, ensuring that the ship was worthy of the crossing, but I felt their fearful anticipation.
“Aye, Captain,” I said as I untied my tether and made for the bow of the ship. Theodore followed. Lachlan’s sword rang as he pulled it from its sheath.
“Fucking Gods, Lach,” I heard Theodore grumble.
At the bow, I stared out at the yellow haze that swirled around the outer reef’s towering stones. I squinted, searching the lagoon and Anthemoessa’s shoreline, but there was nothing to be seen save one gap in the rocks that was wide enough for the Eleuthios to pass through.
I blew out slowly, taking stock of myself. My stomach still twisted and knotted. My power roiled, waiting.
“Lachlan,” I said, “Take Theodore to the other side of the deck.”
Neither of them argued. I didn’t look over my shoulder to watch them go before I let my focus dive back down into that squirming pit in my middle.
The heat that burst through me was instant.
Suddenly, it was as if the ruined sea rushed through my own veins.
Eusia’s voice came again like a chant—like a song—warming my throat.
“Home. Home. Home.”
My intention was crystalline, and though my eyes were shut, I knew the ship floated serenely through the jagged rocks at my command.
A small, awed gasp sounded at my side. My head snapped toward the sound.
Halla stood there, Theodore’s guards at her back, staring gape-mouthed at the lagoon and the faint curve of shoreline on the other side of it.
She raised her hand to the middle of her chest, forcing herself to breathe. Then slowly, she turned to look at me.
When our eyes met, she jolted. I knew what she saw.
The startlingly white gaze of a Mage Seer.
My attention dragged back to Anthemoessa, and I slowed the ship once we were fully within the lagoon.
With gritted teeth, I let the wind go sluggish and stopped the mucky currents, then worked to close the connection between me and Eusia.
In this blighted place, it was like trying to shore up a torrent with a handful of loose mud, but finally I managed.
I called over my shoulder to the captain, who stood not too far behind me, brows raised in approval. “Prepare a launch.”
She adjusted her tricorn and nodded, just as the ship shuddered and a loud thud echoed through its hull.
“Something in the water!” one of the sailors called out. “Port side.”
Halla raced to where the sailor pointed. The captain rushed to the same spot, followed not far behind by Lachlan and Theodore.
Halla leaned out and gave a frustrated growl. “I cannot see anything at all.”
The sailor pointed to a spot straight down. “It was there. I only saw it when it surfaced. Don’t know what it is.”
My stomach gave another deep and terrible twist at the very same moment that something sliced through the surface.
It took its time, rolling sluggishly through the dense waves like it wanted to be seen.
The thing was pale, its skin reflective and thin, letting me make out the veins beneath.
Tentacles splayed wide before us, far longer than any I’d ever seen.
One arched from the water, ramming itself against the side of the hull.
The strike reverberated through the vessel like a drum.
Like Halla, I bent myself over the Eleuthios’s rail, trying to see the thing better. It surged just then, grotesque body floating on the surface, and as it twisted over itself, it mirrored the twist and roll of my own insides.
I was suddenly—awfully—certain…
Even with how the sea had transformed it—the glittering patches of scales, the haphazard razor-edged suckers dotting it, the pale barnacles clustered over its glossy skin—I could make out the pink curve of a stomach. The dark reddish-brown of a liver. The trailing, ropelike intestines.
I went cold. Rigid. “My Gods…”
“The sea monster Marshal Baros told us of,” Halla breathed.
A sea monster.
How very right—and very wrong—the marshal had been.