Chapter 14
Alette
The hours after the merman leaves feel like the longest of my life.
Each hour is a hundred years, stretched out by the slow drift of silt and the way water warps all sense of time.
I just count breaths, count heartbeats, count the bruises blooming across my wrist and ankle.
I’m not even sure if I’m alive anymore, or if I’m just a forgotten creature, a fossil waiting for centuries of lake-bottom dust to turn me to stone.
When the door opens again, I’m not ready or prepared.
My entire body tenses, and I whirl around, ready for trouble.
Instead, there’s a muscular body in the doorway, silvered by the water, hair glowing pale in the gloom.
For a wild, mad second I think it’s another monster, but then it moves, slow and precise, and he slips in closer.
Cassius.
He stands in the open, arms clenched into fists, eyes cold and intent. The water slides over his skin like he was born to it, which, now that I think of it, he probably was.
I’m so relieved I want to laugh and weep at the same time, but all I manage is a sick little hiccup.
“Cassius?” My voice comes out small and frightened.
“Alette!” I see a flicker of relief and gratitude flash across his face.
He glides in, not quite walking, almost floating. It looks so easy for him, and the obvious hits me… that he's a water fae. He must be as comfortable on land as he is in the water.
I never thought I'd envy that.
He stops a foot away from the edge of my chain’s reach. He glances at the shackle, at my bare foot, at the bloody spots where the skin is scraped raw. He crouches and inspects the lock. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” I say, even though I don't feel okay.
His hand brushes my skin, and a jolt goes through me.
It’s impossible not to notice that we’re both barely dressed.
He’s in nothing but his boxers, and I’m almost naked.
Having him touch me in such a vulnerable state is hard to ignore, but I try to, because we have far bigger fish to fry than my outfit worries.
He examines the shackle, eyes darting over the mechanism. His hands are gentle, just careful touch and slow pressure. He tugs at the chain, testing it. “Iron,” he says. “Old, but not brittle.”
He glances at the rest of me, up and down, a healer’s look, but it still makes my cheeks burn. “What happened?”
I force my jaw to stop trembling. “He dragged me under. I couldn’t fight him, no matter how hard I tried. Then, he… kissed me, and I could breathe under water–”
“A merman’s kiss gives the recipient the ability to breathe underwater,” he says, which explains a lot.
I keep going. “He wants me to clean his house.” I gesture at the trash, at the fork and the wires and the bones. “He left me here, chained to this ball.”
Cassius frowns. “Did you try to open the lock?”
I nod. “I haven't been able to open it, but the key’s on his neck.” I hate how small I sound. “He’s big. And strong.”
Cassius cautiously pulls me into a gentle hug. I want to pull him in and bury my face in his chest, but I’d be too embarrassed to actually do it. Not with the serious water fae. And not when I can feel just about every inch of him with almost nothing separating us.
Releasing me, he tries the lock, then the hinge. He doesn’t waste time with useless questions. “Where’s your dagger?”
I point at the far wall. “I tried to stab him, but it ended up in the wall. I’m sorry.”
He lets go of me, turns, and, without effort, swims across the room.
The movement draws my eye to places I shouldn’t be looking, and I try not to gawk at the sheer size of him as his flaccid length bobs in his boxers down the side of his leg.
For some reason, I swallow. Hard. I force my mind to focus on the dire situation we’re in. On anything except that.
It takes him two seconds to find the dagger and yank it free. Wincing in pain, he drops it, and I suddenly remember that I’m the only one who can hold the dagger. Gritting his teeth, he picks it up again and makes it a short distance before hissing and dropping it again.
He finally brings it back and drops it in front of me, then inspects the blade, then the lock, then the chain. “I’ll try to cut through it,” he says, and I almost believe that he can succeed where I failed.
He hacks at the chain methodically, though he’s only able to hold it for a few seconds before dropping it from the pain over and over. The dagger is sharp, but the links just absorb the blows. He tries the lock, shoving the blade into the keyhole, wiggling and twisting. He gets no purchase.
I feel more hopeless with each passing second.
He frowns, then sets the dagger down. “Move your foot,” he says, then slips both hands around the shackle and tugs. His arms tense, cords of muscle flexing, but the metal doesn’t budge.
He tries again, this time bracing a foot on the floor for leverage. The chain strains but doesn’t crack. He sits back, breathing hard, but not giving up.
“We could wait for him to sleep,” I say. “Then maybe the key—”
“He won’t sleep,” Cassius says, tone flat. “Not if he thinks he has a new toy.”
He stands and walks the perimeter of the room, examining the walls, the ceiling, the little holes near the door. “Mermen don’t build,” he says, “they take over abandoned structures. There have to be many weak points in this building.”
He’s talking to himself now, but I listen, desperate for any sign of hope.
He comes back to me. “Can you move at all?”
I pull the chain and shuffle forward, but the ball is so heavy it’s a joke. My breath starts to rush in and out faster. This isn’t working. What am I supposed to do? “Not really.”
He kneels again, this time right in front of me, and takes my face in his hands.
“Breathe,” he says, voice low. “Just breathe. I'm going to get you out of here.”
I take a deep breath. The water’s cold, but his hands are warm, and for a moment I feel safe. Like maybe things were hopeless when I was alone, but now I have a fae king. A King of the Water. If anyone can get me out of this, it’s him.
He says, “I’m going to try something.” He gets behind me, wraps both arms around my waist, and braces his feet on the floor.
Then he pauses, his arms tightening around me.
I realize just how close we are yet again.
Just how little is between us. And it sends my emotions bouncing all over.
I should not be noticing how big his hands are, how hard his chest is, or how good his arms feel around me. Not ever, but certainly not now.
“Ready?” he whispers, his breath hot in my ear.
“Ready,” I say.
He tries to lift the ball and me at the same time.
It moves, a little, then thuds back down.
He tries again, this time with a grunt of effort, and moves it another half a foot before dropping it, breathing hard.
He moves to the ball, tries to lift it on its own.
The veins stand out in his neck, but it only moves another short distance before falling.
He curses under his breath. I watch him, waiting for the moment he gives up, but he never does.
He tries a dozen different ways—twisting the chain, bracing the ball against the table, even using the dagger as a wedge under the shackle.
The room fills with the sound of metal on metal, and at one point the chain snaps tight enough to slice into my ankle.
I hiss, and Cassius stops instantly, his hand hovering over the wound.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I manage.
He kneels, face level with mine, and the worry in his eyes almost undoes me.
“This isn’t going to work,” I say, hating myself for saying it.
He shakes his head. “It will.”
“It’s impossible. The ball—”
He shakes his head again, harder this time. “You’re not thinking like a fae.” He looks around the room, then back at me. “Down here, only the story matters.”
I laugh, bitter. “What’s the story, then?”
He considers my words, his lips pressed into a line. “The story is, the princess gets rescued by a knight.” He looks at me, something like a smile behind his eyes. “I’m the best you’ve got.”
I want to cry, but I laugh instead.
He takes my face in his hands again, gentle as the tide.
“Listen,” he says. “When he comes back, I’ll take the key from him. One way or another.”
“He’s huge,” I whisper. “You can’t fight him.”
He shrugs. “You’d be surprised what I can do… when I have the proper motivation.”
Then, he sits next to me, close enough that our arms touch, and we wait. The silence is heavy, but it's nice not being alone anymore. Everything is a million times easier when I'm with the kings. Even when it’s just one of them, I almost feel safe.
After a while, he says, “You’re trembling.”
“Am I?”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll keep you warm.”
I lean into him, letting the weight of him anchor me. His heartbeat is steady, slower than mine, which must mean he’s not afraid. And maybe if he’s not afraid, I shouldn’t be either.
Still, some part of me is surprised he came to rescue me at all. I know I’m the Chosen One, but he had to weigh the odds of saving me versus taking on a merman and decided to do it anyway.
“Why did you come after me?” I ask, my voice small.
He doesn’t answer at first. Then he says, “Wouldn’t you have come for me?”
I want to argue, but he’s right, and that notion is absolutely crazy. In just a short time this man had gone from someone I feared to someone I cared about, and I hadn’t even noticed the change happening.
We sit, two bodies curled on the sand, waiting for the monster to return.
He holds my hand, and I hold his back, tight, surprised by how natural it feels to hold his hand.
I’m surprised that I’m able to hold Cassius’s hand as easily as I was able to hold Ashton’s.
It’s something I never thought I’d be able to do.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The words settle into me, and I believe him. They may be fragile but they're real, something warm in the middle of all this cold. His thumb brushes once against mine, a small, grounding motion that keeps me from coming apart.
Then the water shifts. There’s not a sound exactly—it’s more like a pressure, a disturbance that crawls along my skin and sinks into my bones. The chain at my ankle goes taut as I instinctively pull closer to him. Cassius stills beside me.
The door rattles.
Once.
Twice.
Cassius’s grip tightens, his body angling slightly in front of mine without even thinking. The lock begins to turn. He squeezes my hand, and I see it in his face. There’s doubt. And that doubt clutches around my heart like a block on ice.
Can he really get me free? Or are we both going to die here?