Chapter Thirty-Eight Queen of the Deep
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
QUEEN OF THE DEEP
Sirens were creatures of dreams and nightmares.
They glistened like diamonds in the night-dark water, their too-thin humanoid bodies covered from breast to fin in scales of every color.
They crested the surface over and over, hair pooling in ripples behind them as they circled.
Where a woman’s ribs would be, there were openings in their silvery skin spitting water and air—gills.
The dim, torchlit chamber echoed with their song—a rising, spellbinding tune that pulled Reya closer and closer.
One of them leapt for Caelan and missed, tail arcing in a wave of shimmering blush. Another jumped, her blue tail slapping the surface with a smack. Caelan groaned, and the sound ripped Reya from her trance.
They’d bound him from head to toe in iron and Kellstone. But even that, it seemed, had not been enough to hold him. So they’d hung him somewhere he wouldn’t dare try to escape, lest he be eaten alive by starving Sirens.
This was what it had taken to subdue the general of the Shadow Legion.
Reya drew the pale gold sword, the emerald in the pommel glistening beneath the torches.
Light flared at her fingertips and flashed along the blade, catching the creatures’ attentions. Heads popped through the surface, turned in her direction, and hissed through lethal canines.
She sent up a prayer to whoever was listening and let that light flare a little brighter. “You will not touch him.”
A Siren swam to the edge of the lake, the others making way for her to pass. Up close, Reya took in her stunning violet irises, their color almost identical to the scales that cascaded over her deep brown skin.
“Can you understand me?” Reya asked.
The creature’s eyes were as mesmerizing as her song, and they bored into Reya’s own with a fierce intensity. She was gaunt as any human would be after weeks without food.
Slowly, the Siren nodded.
Reya looked around the chamber. An iron portcullis was blocking what appeared to be a subterranean river—a vein out of the mountain. Another escape route carved by the Etellinians when the castle was built, one that had been refashioned by the Rhiterrans into a cage.
She tracked the chains atop the opening, all the way to the mechanism at the cave base that allowed the gate to open and close. Caelan was attached to a similar pulley on the opposite side.
“I will set you free,” Reya said, inching as close to the lake’s edge as she dared. “If you allow me to take him unharmed.”
Those violet eyes were fixed on Reya’s glowing hands. Then the Sirens began hissing to one another in a language that sounded wrong above the water.
She’d sworn not to leave anyone behind in this prison.
That included the Sirens. But they were desperate and starving.
If she opened the portcullis now, there was no guarantee one of them wouldn’t stick around to make a meal of her and Caelan both.
There was no guarantee they wouldn’t do it before she opened it, either.
Reya ran the sword across her forearm. Blood swelled, and she tipped her arm down as she crouched, letting it drain onto the soaked floor that curved inward toward the lake.
If Reardon Voláni’s books were true, then the creatures of the abyss followed only the strongest among them—the King of the Deep.
Sirens could see a person’s past, present, and future in their blood.
The proof of what she’d done to the Kraken would be there in the drops.
And if she was right, she was their king now.
The legends had been true so far.
“I have sailed into the Fifth Sea,” Reya said as the trail inched toward the lake’s edge. “I have slain what lurks in the waters of the Kasmore Deep. Your king is dead by my hand, and you will let us pass.”
“Lies.” Above the water, the Siren’s voice was a screech.
They dipped their bared fangs into the water, tasting her blood on their tongues, and those strange eyes widened in outrage and fear. The waters churned with thrashing tails.
“You need me alive to open that gate. Kill either of us and you will never leave this prison.”
Reya prayed they could see in her future that she meant it.
The Siren snarled to her sisters. Their protests were like metal scraping stone, salt water spraying from their open mouths, and it was all Reya could do not to cover her ears.
But the one who had spoken to Reya merely bared her teeth in silent command, rearing at them all in turn until each Siren bowed her head in submission and sank beneath the surface.
Reya would have preferred they stay above the water where she could see them. Why were there no guards on duty down here? Then again, she supposed the hungry sea creatures were cage enough.
She ran for the mechanism keeping Caelan aloft.
It was no different than a drawbridge. The iron handle rotated the gears in either direction.
She could raise and lower the chains, but not much else, and she wondered how the rotting hell they’d strung him up there without anyone being eaten.
She’d have to let the chain all the way down before she could create enough slack to bring him to the edge.
If she wasn’t fast enough, he might drown.
She would be fast enough.
Reya removed every weapon she had and stared the creatures down as she let the light spread until she glowed from every pore, a shield to keep them at bay.
Then she began rotating the handle, knowing she might be delivering dinner to the Sirens on a platter.
Faster and faster, those iron chains clinking, Caelan’s body lowered.
The Sirens circled, churning the waters, and she kept spinning the wheels.
“Take a deep breath, Caelan!” she shouted.
His eyes were closed, and there was no way to know if he heard her before his head lowered into the lake, followed by the rest of him.
She kept spinning, heart racing, creating as much slack as she could.
When the chain reached its end, she didn’t hesitate.
The freezing water bit into her skin and stung her open eyes as she dove.
Reya didn’t think of the colorful tails that danced in the waves around her, of the death that waited in the Sirens’ eyes.
She only thought of Caelan and the bubbles trailing from his nose and mouth as he sank into a lake that had no bottom.
The glow emanating from her skin surged, lighting the way.
At last, she reached him. His eyes were still shut.
She fumbled for the chains with shaking, freezing fingers.
The line of bubbles from his nose began to slow.
Reya kicked up with all her energy, but she might as well have been trying to pull up a shipwreck with her own two hands. She screamed, an empty sound, merely a flood of bubbles. The Sirens closed in around them, waiting, hungry. Reya’s blood seeped from the wound on her arm like an appetizer.
Then their leader was before her, fangs bared. Reya bellowed in warning as the creature reached for Caelan. But she merely wrapped spindly, webbed fingers around the chains and began to pull. Another swam forward and did the same, then another.
Reya kicked alongside those powerful tails, shift billowing around her.
Caelan’s body rose like an anchor back to the surface, back to the torchlight that seemed so far away.
The last of her breath left her, and she kicked harder, urging them faster.
Remembering that Reya could not, in fact, breathe under water as they could, the Sirens thrashed their tails.
If she died, they died.
Reya broke through the surface with a gasp. The Sirens dragged Caelan’s body to the edge and pushed him up onto the rock, then placed their webbed hands on Reya’s backside and shoved.
“Caelan,” she panted, hands cupping his cheeks.
He wasn’t breathing. No, no, no, no. He had to be breathing. Had to wake up and call her thief in that tone. Had to kick her ass in training. Had to tell her how he’d won the rest of his scars. Had to find an after with her.
Reya shoved two fingers against the vein in his neck, felt the pulse there.
She’d saved him before. They’d saved each other.
She tipped his head to the side, draining the water, then took a deep breath, pinched his nose, and lowered her mouth to his.
She breathed into his lungs, once, twice, then pulled back and drove her hands, one on top of the other, through a gap in the chains above his chest.
One, two, three, four…
She chanted silently as she pumped, but couldn’t remember how many were required. So she picked a number and kept going. His chest did not rise.
“Come on, fire fingers.”
Reya pressed her mouth to his again, blowing air into his lungs until she had none of her own, then pulled back with a gasp and began again. The Sirens’ eyes were all that peeked out of the water as they watched her.
One, two, three, four…
She didn’t know when she began sobbing.
“Come on!” she screamed, pounding on his chest and breathing air into his mouth over and over. “Come back to me.”
He coughed onto her lips, and she tipped his face to the side again.
“Hey,” she said through her tears. “Easy. Look at me.”
One of his eyes was swollen shut, and there was a wound on his waist that had reopened during her ministrations, seeping blue blood. Their eyes met.
“Thief.” His voice was broken.
She gave him a watery smile, despite everything that had happened, despite the hell that still awaited them. He was here. He was alive. He was with her. And that made her feel more invincible than Etellinian steel ever had.
The chains were wound so tightly around him that it took her some time to free him. The moment he had use of his arms, he pulled her forehead to his, inhaling her scent deep into his lungs. She wanted to laugh and cry all at once.
“Release us,” the Siren demanded.
Caelan ran his hands along her body, feeling for wounds; meanwhile, she reached for his collar.
“I promise I’m fine,” she said. “Hold still.” It was difficult to work while her eyes blurred with tears, but she managed it.
The collar hadn’t even hit the ground before Caelan pulled her on top of him.
They were wasting precious minutes, but she couldn’t seem to force herself away.
“I’m so sorry,” she said into his neck. “I should never have let them take you.”
He cupped the back of her head and turned her face to his. “If they had taken you, I would have lost my mind.”
She opened her mouth to tell him he should hate her for running, should call her a coward, but he cut her off with his lips on hers. Like it was not air that sustained him but her.
“Release us.” The water churned around the Siren as her sisters grew restless.
Reya groaned against his tongue. She would trade her entire fortune for one uninterrupted moment of peace with this man.
“Now.”
“All right,” Reya snapped, climbing off Caelan’s lap and crossing to the mechanism that controlled the portcullis.
There was a low groan, and then a screech of metal as she began rotating the gears.
Reya pulled as hard as she could, but the gate chain whined and fought her with every turn like it hadn’t been lifted in years.
The Sirens dove, bubbles rippling across the surface as they swam for the opening.
She kept twisting, and the rusted gate rose one inch at a time, water and slime dripping from its bars.
All-Gods help whatever poor souls they might make a meal of on their way back out to sea.
When it was done, only their leader remained, staring at Reya with those strange eyes.
“Thank you,” Reya said.
Hair pooling around her breasts, the Siren drifted in the water.
“Do you know what you are, Kraken slayer?” she asked in a hiss of breath, jerking her chin at the wound on Reya’s forearm. “Your blood sings to me.”
The creature’s silvery lip curled, and what she spoke next, she said so softly, only Reya could hear. As the words processed, Reya’s breath caught, and she nearly hit the gears as she stumbled back.
The Siren watched her reaction with those shrewd, remarkable eyes. “We will not forget,” the creature said. Reya didn’t know if that was a promise or a threat. And then she was gone.
Clutching his side, Caelan tried to stand. Reya rushed to help him.
“Omira and Thance,” Caelan rasped.
“They’re alive.”
His shoulders shook with relief, and her heart cracked as he braced a hand on the floor to keep from falling.
“You need to heal that,” she said, scrutinizing the seeping wound. But there was no life for him to take from, not here in this chamber. “Take from me,” she whispered.
He glared at her. “Not even if I was dying, Reyanwyn.”
“I’m strong. I can bear it.”
He took her chin between his fingers. “I damn well know it. The answer is still no.”
“Stubborn bastard,” Reya muttered. She slung one massive arm over her shoulder and hauled him against her, grateful that he could support most of his own weight this time. Shoulder to shoulder and wall to wall, they climbed the tiny, spiraling passage out of the mountain’s core.
It had been at least a half hour since she’d left Omira and Thance.
“Do you have a plan?” Caelan finally asked.
“Don’t I always?”
They reached the top of the stairs, and Reya shoved open the door. Judging by the bells pealing through the prison, she was pretty sure her plan had gone to hell.