Chapter 2 #2
She heard the song? I turn to the ocean, taking a step towards it as the song restarts. Ronit, Reed, and Brio’s melodies winding together. That song is a summons, calling our mate to us. It’s a last-ditch effort, and we’ve been singing ourselves hoarse for months now.
“Right, I want to ask you about your world. What’s it like there?”
“Lirin?” she whispers hopefully.
I open my mouth, but Canto makes a slicing motion through the air with his hand. I snap my jaw shut, fold my arms over my chest, and ignore her soft call.
Even if it kills me. I will not answer her.
Mei cocks her head to the side and starts answering questions, slowly at first, and then with each hard-won compliment from Canto, with more enthusiasm. I don’t pay attention; my mind wanders in an effort to find a solution.
I hold out a pear to Canto, and he feeds her piece after piece. She doesn’t even protest. The creature trusts us.
Ridiculous.
The day creeps by and hours pass. Still, Canto is relentless. Mei is getting tired and grumpy. All her attempts to be cute have been met by a wall of Canto’s precision-like personality. I have tried several times to end this interrogation, but Canto won’t stop.
At last, he indicates he wants the fruit. I give him the unripened pear that will put anyone who eats it into a deep sleep. Ripened, the fruit is a glorious gold colour and safe to consume, but unripe fruit has a red skin and a sedative.
In silence, she eats. Holding his hand and licking his fingers. I grind my teeth and think of something else, anything else.
The song wobbles as something rips through the thin walls of the worlds and crashes into our world.
Screams rip through the air, terrified, vulnerable, human.
All three of us snap our heads in the direction of the cliffs.
And there, framed in the paradise light, surrounded by jungle foliage and tropical flowers, is a woman.
An intense and slightly off-putting scent of flowers catches on the breeze and rushes towards us. Swirling around us. It’s strong.
Omega. This is an omega and a Fae lady.
The Fae temptress walks down the path towards us, while I stare at her, almost wishing she would go away. She’s beautiful, with a pale face and long dark hair, wearing a satin gown that flows around her like water. Something about her feels wrong.
“Who are you?” Canto says in eerie calmness.
“Delia Arron, of the House of Snow. I felt a disturbance. Something unnatural crossed a boundary it shouldn’t have. They sent me to check.”
So, a sacrifice, or she’s lying. I bet she came because of our song, and if she did, that means she must be our mate. Ronit is convinced that finding a mate should be able to set us free. It’s the loophole our jailers would never have imagined needing to build.
It’s our way out of this ocean.
I don’t know that house name, but I know there is a House Frost, why wouldn’t there be a House of Snow?
Canto exhales in a hiss, but I can feel the triumph flaring to life inside him. It’s wrong. She is wrong. My unease grows.
“Hello?” Her voice is a soft melody. A trap, like most Fae’s voices. “I’m looking for whoever is in charge. Is that you?”
“Yes. My name is General Canto Rethvn,” Canto says formally, but the softness of his voice is a lure, and she is falling hook, line, and sinker.
It’s a game of politics and willpower now.
She blinks several times, lifting an elegant hand to her chest. She looks him over appreciatively, then glances at me and away.
I frown. There’s something off here.
“I know you,” she says and claps in excitement. “You are the lost Fae, aren’t you? Things have changed, you have been pardoned.”
I glance at Canto, trying to read how to play this. She knows of us; that is a good thing. I’m suddenly really glad we put Mei into another drug-induced sleep. And yet, my skin is prickling, and I feel foggy.
I wish Mei was awake.
“I’ve come to save you,” she says with a wide smile. “I’ll help you if you help me?”
That’s a leap. Canto’s expression doesn’t change, but I can sense something in him tightening. He’s like a coiled snake waiting for the right moment to strike.
Her eyes are cunning, and I wonder what exactly the cost of freedom will be. What does she want?
Mei tenses, but she doesn’t move. She just listens intently, her eyes slightly parted, three-quarters asleep and falling fast. I walk away from her, step by step, Canto joins me as we approach the omega. Mei struggles as if she can feel us leaving, but her movements are feeble and weak.
Ronit, Reed, and Brio appear from the path to the ocean, staring at this strange Fae temptation. She is profoundly beautiful, everything we ever dreamed of.
I’ll never trust her. I’ll never trust any of our kind again, but I want to go home.
A deep vibration in the air and the scent of blackberries seeps around us, so faint I almost miss it.
“Can you feel it?” I ask out loud to Canto. “What is it?”
“Our mate,” Canto whispers, but he says it like it’s a death sentence. He’s still staring at the Fae, refusing to look away. “She’s here. She really is our mate. We did it. We can go free.” His voice drips with disgust.
We all stare at this female temptation, unwilling to make a move that will scare her. All this time, all this waiting.
Freedom is ours.
“I can set you free, take you home,” Delia says gently and takes another step towards us. She holds out her hand. “You just need to reach out…”
“Mate?” Mei asks, interrupting. I curse myself because, for a second, I’d forgotten all about her.
I half-turn, torn now because I want to go to her. Mei needs me. That instinct is quick and blinding, messing me up when Brio snarls at me. What am I doing?
“Why is she alive?” Ronit growls.
“Oh, gods, what is that?” Delia shrieks and darts behind Brio. Too close, too quick. How did she get to him?
Reed reacts quickly, pulling Brio away from her, but ends up with Delia in his arms, clinging and screaming as she tries to get away from Mei.
Get off him, I shout in my mind, but I don’t say the confusing words.
Mei sits up, her face scrunched up in confusion. She quickly sketches a rune and is suddenly clear-headed and up before we can speak. I haven’t seen her move, so I’m surprised by how fast she is.
She’s between us, growling at the Fae who has somehow managed to get her hands back on Brio. Reed is off to the side, his expressions shifting from panic to rage.
“Let go,” Mei snarls in a voice so rigid with fury that it has all my brain cells vanishing. “Get your hands off him. How did you find me?” Mei snarls in deep venom.
The words don’t make sense, but the Fae smiles, just for a flicker of a second, just enough that I’m suddenly scared for Brio.
“Get rid of it!” Delia shouts. “Kill it before it hurts someone. She’s a monster. She shouldn’t be here.”
“It’s just a harmless animal; it can’t hurt you,” Canto soothes.
“Animal?” Mei says clearly, her voice full of hurt. “I am an animal? Is that how you see me?”
“Brio, drown her,” Ronit commands. “Come, Delia.”
Brio opens his mouth and sings, but to my utter consternation, she doesn’t move. She just stands there, her strange rat-like face twitching. Hurt pouring off her. I can feel it inside me. Like she’s part of me or like I’m now part of her.
“Drown me?” she whispers.
She rushes past us, darting down the path towards the beach.
“Kill her, and I’ll take you home,” Delia shouts. Why does her voice have an echo?
Now, there’s an offer we can’t ignore. The command snaps into the magic and the curse, and suddenly, I know that whatever chance Mei had, it’s gone.
We will hunt her dead, even if we fight our own natures the whole way. We have no choice.
We rush down to the beach where she evades us at every turn. She is too quick, too agile. She’s used to trying to survive. Her desperate, angry snarls get louder and more pissed off the more we try to trap her.
Ronit steps back into the water.
“No, don’t!” I shout at him. “Please. We don’t have to do this!”
“We do!” Ronit says calmly. “It’s who we are.”
“What do you want?” Mei screams.
Ronit starts to sing. Brio’s song gets quieter, which is just as threatening. Reed and Canto join in.
A spray of salty water hits her in the face, but she holds her ground, refusing to back down. This doesn’t feel right. This feels wrong. Why was she so hurt to be called an animal? Why doesn’t any of this make sense?
“What do you want?” she whispers again. I suddenly realise that she’s not speaking our language. Only I can understand her, and I don’t know how I can.
Come, he sings. Come to me.
“So you can drown me?” she barks a laugh. “No.”
He demands it louder, and we join him. I join in. Our voices in the ocean’s waves, in the spray, in the very air. I’m caught by one of the hundred foot waves and lifted high into the sky.
She stands on the beach, tiny, resisting us, fighting our call. Impossible.
“I want to live!” she screams, and the world gets hot and blistering.
I lift, flicking my tail, driving myself through the water, throwing myself back towards the beach as I see Delia racing towards Mei. She’s got a long knife in her hands. I don’t know which of them I’m trying to stop, only that I need to get to them.
My song shrieks a warning.
Mei doesn’t hear; she’s screaming. Like something is ripping her apart inside. I want to cry the tears that she can’t. I want to fix it.
What is happening to me?
Why does it hurt?
Why am I hurting?
She saved me.
Delia is our mate. She can save us.
No, I need to save Mei.
I watch as the Fae grabs Mei by the hair, yanking her head back. It’s too quick, too practiced. Wait, why is Delia flickering? What is that? A chalk-white face with a smile too large flickers, there and gone.
The knife slides into Mei, piercing through her body and coming out the other side. Not a knife, talons.
Or is it a knife?
The world stands still; the waves seem to freeze, and then everything ignites with a fiery blast that hits my face, burning my skin.
I scream as I’m thrown backwards into the water, watching from under the surface as fire ignites the very air itself.
From the waves, I see Delia fall, burned. She gets up and runs away as our island is destroyed. Mei crawls towards the water, leaving a trail of blood that bubbles behind her. The sand melts as the trees catch and burn to ash. Mei rolls into the water.
Delia screams, the sound echoing and turning both male and female, distorted under the waves, and then is abruptly cut off.
She destroyed everything, I think, staring up at the world in horror. Every piece of green, the fresh water. It’s all gone. Our chance of escaping is gone.
I can’t fathom it.
“Do you see now?” Ronit snarls.
He grabs Mei’s ankle and drags her deep down into the dark, his black and silver tail flashing with the dim reflections of the fire.
I flick my scaled tail, chasing after him in a moment.
Stripes glow on his skin, pulsing with his fury.
The poison-filled spines twitch and shift along his tail with every movement.
He looks alien now, his face more angular, more violent under the blue haze of the ocean.
“Ronit, wait!” I shout, but he’s not listening.
He’s too angry.
The blood trail is bad. Sharks start to gather, and then other predators, things that shouldn’t be woken. Tentacles, teeth, claws. Things that dwarf us and look like horrors from my worst nightmares.
“Stop!” I sing to him.
He whirls around, and I see the moment she wakes up, opens her mouth, and chokes on water. Her body convulses, but she touches her arm, draws a rune in the air, and suddenly starts to breathe.
“Strega,” Ronit hisses. “Cursed witch. Foul beast.”
“You don’t understand-” I protest again, even though I don’t understand.
“You’ve killed us!” Reed hisses.
“So, now we’ll kill you,” Canto snarls.
Ronit tosses her to the waiting and ravenous jaws of the Leviathan as he rises from the deep. He snatches her up in his jaws and turns, vanishing with his prize. The light bouncing off his endless teal, black, and silver scales before he’s gone.
“No!” I shout.
I stare down at them, willing her to come back up, needing to see her somehow defy logic and reason. Nothing happens for so long that the others relax, still I can’t help but know she’s alive.
I feel it.
I see her paddling upwards, a small shape in a place she should never be in.
She’s a terrible swimmer, but she struggles as the creatures of our dark world dart in, trying to take her. She’s quick and determined, beating the odds.
I want her to make it, but she’s got so far to go.
Ronit holds out his hand, and a massive trident appears in it. It gleams with black light.
“Strega! Die!” Ronit says.
She looks up, startled, seeing the trident coming straight towards her.
“Ronit, wait!” I shout, suddenly getting a glimmer of what I don’t understand. Her body changes shape, and she’s like us. Pale blond hair, no eyes, but completely and utterly human. Devastatingly beautiful.
Haunting.
I hold out my hand, turning the currents just enough so that the trident misses her.
I float in the water, looking down at her as she bobs there. No longer swimming, there’s something lost and broken about her.
That’s our mate.
I’m sure of it. For one split second, it all makes sense, but then the thought disintegrates, and there’s no way. Just no way.
“You just tried to kill me,” she whispers.
“You ruined our chance at ever leaving!” Brio hisses back. “We’ll die here now.”
“You just tried to kill me.” She sounds so broken. “So, this is what I am. Everything and everyone wants me dead?”
The ocean holds its breath. My heart breaks, except it’s not my pain, it’s hers, I’m sure of it. I can’t breathe through the crushing agony.
“Good luck trying,” she snarls in a voice that is pure malice, and then she sketches another rune, and she’s sucked out of the world, disappearing like she was never here, and leaving us to our watery grave that we will never leave.