10. The Abyssal Fortress
The Abyssal Fortress
Valerie
My eyelids stick together. The air sliding down my throat is dense with moisture, coating my tongue with the taste of salt and medicinal iodine. I pry my eyes open.
A gray stone vault stretches above my head, and my fingers dig into the damp sheets beneath me.
A memory crashes over me. The emerald banquet table, the blinding heat of Sigurd’s mouth, the incredible way he’d felt inside me.
Then comes the terrifying suffocation. My lungs refusing to take in air no matter how hard I try.
I’ve got you, Valerie. I’m getting you to the water. Do not leave me, he had begged.
I jerk upright with a ragged gasp and drag the saturated air into my lungs. My throat burns, but the breath comes easily this time. I don’t know exactly what went wrong after Sigurd bit me, but I remember enough to know none of it was something he planned.
As I try to get my bearings, I realize I’m not alone. A woman sits in a low chair beside my bed and turns toward me when I move. Three delicate slits flutter open along the pale skin of her neck before closing again. Gills.
“Breathe easy,” the woman says. Her voice is a calm, melodic murmur in the quiet room. “Don’t fight the air. Give your body a moment to adjust to the moisture.”
I force my mouth closed and inhale through my nose. The air is thick, but it no longer burns my throat like acid. I can breathe, and for several seconds that’s the only thing that matters.
“Where’s Sigurd?” My throat is so raw the words barely come out. “Where am I?”
The woman reaches for a bedside table and lifts a small stone cup. She offers it to me without moving any closer. “Drink first. I’m Ysra.”
I don’t reach for the water. I stare at her until she nudges the cup closer.
“You’re in the healing chamber of the Abyssal Fortress, at the bottom of the ocean,” she says. “Mr. Eiriksson brought you here. You’re safe.”
I take the cup. The bottom of the ocean. The abyssal trenches. My hand shakes hard enough for water to slosh over the rim and spill freezing drops onto the sheets.
Hattie and Marta have no idea where I am. They know I left to confront the Eiriksson CEO, and now I’ve vanished without a word. My house, my library, my entire life are miles above my head.
“The abyss?” I stare at the spilled water instead of drinking. “I need to go back to the surface. I can’t stay here.”
Ysra watches me with the same maddening calm. “The claiming ritual requires the pressure of the deep ocean to stabilize. When Mr. Eiriksson initiated the bond on the surface, your body began changing without the environment the magic required.”
I bring the stone cup to my lips and take a measured sip. The water slides over my bruised throat, soothing some of the rawness left by those frantic attempts to breathe.
“So I just live in a fish tank now?” I ask, my voice rough.
“For now, the deep-water pressure is keeping your body stable,” Ysra says. “Your lungs aren’t ready for the surface yet.”
I grip the cup more tightly. I fought a billion-dollar corporation just to keep my grandmother’s cottage on a rainy cliff.
That house is my home, and I built a life in Saltweather that belongs to me.
Now my own lungs are keeping me at the bottom of the ocean, dependent on Sigurd’s world just to breathe.
“You can’t survive on the surface right now, Valerie,” Ysra says softly. “Until your body recovers and the claiming magic settles, you need to remain here in the deep.”
“Remain in the deep?” I lower the cup and set it on the bedside table. “I belong in Saltweather.”
I grab the blankets and shove them off before swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress. Ysra stands immediately, but she steps backward instead of reaching for me.
I tighten my grip on the bedding and look down at myself. I’m wearing gray lounge pants and a loose cotton shirt instead of the emerald silk dress Madame Eleni tailored for me.
“Who changed my clothes?”
“The female staff,” Ysra replies. “Your dress was ruined, and we needed to monitor your breathing without anything constricting your chest.”
The explanation makes sense, but that doesn’t make me like it. Strangers handled me while I was unconscious, after my body had already stopped belonging entirely to me.
I push myself off the bed and plant my bare feet on the floor. The freezing bite of the stone shoots up my calves, clearing some of the lingering fog from my head. A low hum vibrates through the floor beneath me, steady and mechanical.
Ysra shifts to block my path, though she makes no move to physically restrain me. “You should rest. Your body has endured too much.”
“I’ve rested enough,” I snap. “Where’s Sigurd?”
Ysra studies my face and sighs. She gestures toward the far end of the medical bay. “Just through the archway. He hasn’t left the corridor since he brought you in to heal.”
Walk straight out. Find the billionaire and get some answers.
I don’t know what kind of rules govern this abyssal empire. But I won’t cower in the dark and wait for permission to speak. He brought me down here and derailed my entire life. I won’t wait for him to deliver answers on his terms.
I turn my back on the healer and march toward the archway.
I step through expecting a standard stone corridor, but stop dead as the space opens up. The architecture doesn’t end in another hallway. It opens directly onto the ocean.
The right wall is a massive pane of reinforced glass, holding back the black water of the abyssal trench. I cross the wide floor until I stand inches from it, then press my bare palm against the freezing surface.
Outside, the trench opens into an entire city.
Rock terraces have been carved into the walls, their windows glowing with warm golden light. Towers rise from the seabed at different heights, connected by enclosed transit tubes that disappear into the surrounding stone.
A group of merfolk swims past the glass in sleek armor. Lamps strapped to their forearms cast narrow beams through the water. They patrol the perimeter with the casual routine of security guards working an ordinary night shift. I track their lights until they disappear behind one of the towers.
This isn’t a hidden bunker. It’s a functioning city at the bottom of the ocean.
A low vibration travels through the glass beneath my palm. Farther along the trench wall, a mechanical hoist crawls over the rock face while thick chains drag a heavy piece of cargo through the water.
Eiriksson Maritime owns shipping lanes across the surface, but this feels like the real heart of Sigurd’s empire. Saltweather would barely register against the scale of it.
For a moment, the sheer size of the place threatens to overwhelm me. I’m standing barefoot in borrowed clothes inside a fortress I didn’t know existed until yesterday, surrounded by a civilization built beneath miles of ocean.
“Just close your eyes and listen to the rain, Val,” my grandmother used to say when the coastal storms rattled our cottage windows. There is no rain here. Instead, the fortress carries the distant hum of machinery and the occasional groan of metal under pressure.
I keep my palm against the glass and make myself look at what is actually there. The merfolk are workers. The transit tubes connect buildings. The machinery moves cargo from one part of the city to another. However impossible the setting feels, people live and work here every day.
The sharp click of leather shoes against stone cuts through the mechanical hum behind me. I lower my hand from the glass and turn.
Sigurd walks out of the shadows and stops several feet away.
He’s wearing a fresh suit. The familiar corporate armor feels wrong after the memory of his bare skin against mine, but it does nothing to hide the exhaustion in his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept since the wedding.
For one disorienting moment, I want to step into his arms. My body remembers him too easily—the weight of him above me, the feel of his mouth against my skin, the way he held me when everything went wrong.
Then I remember why I’m standing at the bottom of the ocean.
“You changed your clothes,” I say. “Are we treating this like a corporate retreat now? Or what is this supposed to be?”
“Valerie.” His voice is quiet, and he makes no move to come closer. “I’m sorry. My restraint failed, and I forced you into this.”
There is no excuse attached to the apology. He simply stands there, keeping several feet of empty space between us.
“Sigurd, I only agreed to a few days on a mountain,” I hiss at him, the anger finally breaking through the panic. “My friends will be terrified wondering where I am. Hattie is probably calling the police back home right now, thinking the Eiriksson Corporation just made me disappear.”
“It’s not permanent,” Sigurd says, taking a half-step forward. “You’ll just have to stay here temporarily until the side effects of the ritual fade. Your lungs require the pressure to heal.”
“Temporarily,” I repeat.
“I’ll personally go to Saltweather to speak with your friends,” he says, his voice hardening into the flat, unshakeable vow of a kraken. “I will explain the delay. I won’t let them worry. I promise I’ll make sure you do not experience any discomfort. And in the meantime, I will let you rest.”
I remain silent, refusing to drop my guard. He doesn’t move toward the archway. Instead, he holds my gaze.
“Until then, I want you to know that the contract is fulfilled,” Sigurd continues. “Your town is safe, Valerie.”
The words knock the remaining wind out of me. The tension finally leaves my shoulders. He kept his word. Despite everything that just happened, he held up his end of the bargain.
Saltweather is safe. The eviction crew is gone. Marta’s fish stand and the library are secure.
“Thank you,” I say, all the anger gone from my voice. “That’s… that’s all I wanted.”
Sigurd nods once. The exhaustion in his expression deepens, casting shadows across his cheekbones.
“I will return soon,” he says. “Please, rest.”
He turns and walks away before I can decide whether I want him to stay. I watch his broad shoulders disappear into the corridor. The click of his shoes gradually fades into the ambient hum of the fortress.
I turn back toward the glass. The abyssal water beyond the fortress is no longer still, and a shuddering groan vibrates through the pane beneath my hand. Thick clouds of gray silt billow upward, swallowing the faint lights of the distant merfolk patrols.
A vast shadow moves inside the cloud and draws closer until the darkness itself seems to shift. Then a bioluminescent blue iris emerges from the silt, filling so much of the glass that I instinctively step back.
I recognize the eye immediately. Solveig has abandoned the humanoid form she wore on Mt. Qaf, and nothing disguises her true scale out here in the trench.
She doesn’t attack or even move toward the fortress. The kraken matriarch simply hangs in the black water beyond the glass, watching me with an ancient, unblinking eye.
I stand on the other side of the barrier and hold her gaze. I have no idea why she is here or what she wants from me, but one thing is unmistakable.
Solveig came to see me. Somehow, I doubt I’ll enjoy her visit.