AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As she pulled her mouth away from his, I watched in confusion as the water veil faded away, leaving me with a clear view of her now, even in these dark depths. She looked my direction and I gasped at the vision of her beauty and power. But beyond that, the shock of recognizing her left me paralyzed. In an instant, my mind flashed back to the old newspaper clippings Russell showed me and photos from Mrs. Gutierrez’ album. It was impossible, yet undeniable. Here down at the bottom of the ocean, I was staring right at Serena. And she was staring back.
“S…Serena?” I uttered, the name stuck on my lips.
Her dark eyes narrowed at me, piercing through the water between us like one of my ice spears. She ignored my question, and turned her attention back to Bellamy, who was somehow beginning to stir. The Kraken still held me tight, but it was no longer crushing me with its grip.
I watched Bellamy as he shook his head slowly, squinting here and there as though slowly rousing from a nightmare. He brought his hands to his head. Then he opened his eyes and sat up, seemingly unaffected by the fact that he was underwater. He glanced around, startled at the sight of the beast towering over him and eyes wide when he looked forward at Serena.
“How is he alive down here? How are you alive down here? And how did you do that?” I asked. I didn’t expect an answer from Serena, and she didn’t give one.
But Bellamy, still steadying himself as he propped himself up by his hands in the sand, took a deep, satisfying breath that reassured me he was miraculously fine. “A mermaid’s kiss…” he said, his eyes fixed on Serena. “…is said to grant the ability to breathe underwater.”
He spoke while transfixed on Serena, and she nodded to her Kraken a command to release me. I watched from my distance, unsure if I moved how the animal would react. So, I stayed in place, watching a scene so tense and quiet. Serena leveled herself with Bellamy, reaching forward to touch his chin as she held his gaze with hers. She spoke to him, not me. “A mermaid’s kiss indeed. And if it can do that, what do you think a kiss from a sea goddess can do?”
27
The Sea Queen
Bellamy
As my vision settled and Serena’s face came into focus, I thought I had finally died and found my way to her. But it didn’t take long before I noticed the entrapment of the water around me and the slimy squid beast at my back. I was still very much alive. Somehow, here on the ocean floor, and somehow I was staring at a woman I’d watched drown with her heart cut out nearly half a century ago.
But none of those unanswered questions mattered. Nothing mattered. Not the water, not the Kraken, and not the sea salt stinging my open wounds from my battle with it. I didn’t care if I’d been damned to Davy Jones Locker, if it meant Serena was here.
But I couldn’t let myself believe it. This couldn’t really be her. I refused to trust that this vision before me, walking underwater as naturally as on land and shrouded in an ethereal glow, was really Serena. I’d hallucinated her before. On my father’s ship, in the brig, I’d even sworn Katrina was her, only to be snapped out of my delusion and faced with heartbreak every time.
But this time, she didn’t fade away. Her deep skin shone with an almost iridescent sheen down here, like the purest pearl, as dark braids of black and even blue drifted around her amongst loose strands and pieces woven into gold. Her dress was like white sea foam forming an ever-flowing wrap around her, trailing off at her feet as it flowed into the water around her. Her voice held its same unmistakable lure as it did the night she stepped onto the shore in front of me. It was her. But it couldn’t be real.
“Serena,” I uttered, my hands shaking and lips trembling with disbelief. She looked at me for a moment that felt like it stretched into hours. Her eyes flickered from my face to my body and back up again.
“That is the name by which you know me. Yes, it’s me.” she smiled. “Good to see you again, my love.”
Ignoring the questions bombarding my mind, I pushed them aside, not caring that I was underwater, not concerned that I should technically be drowning, and barely even aware that Katrina was off to the side watching this insanity unfold.
I lunged forward and plunged my lips into hers, drowning in her as if to prove to myself one more time she was real. She guided my hands to grasp her, sliding her own down my sides as she deepened our embrace. When she pulled away, I stood dumbfounded, still trying to make sense of it all.
She smiled that wickedly seductive smile of hers and brushed her fingers along my pierced ear. “Stop trying to figure it out, sweet Bellamy. It took me dozens of lives to finally understand.”
Suddenly I felt weak. My father had killed her and somehow damned her to this pit. I led her right to him by loving her. I didn’t stay away. It was my fault. And now I had to face her. I had to remind her that I killed her.
“I’m sorry.” I choked, still half-convinced I was speaking to her in the afterlife. “I should’ve protected you better…I should’ve…”
She placed a finger to my lips and shushed me gently, as if reading my mind. “You did not send me here. You could not have protected me. It was meant to be this way. It was always meant to be this way.”
“Wha—what do you mean? No, you weren’t meant to die. You had a whole life ahead of you.”
She took my hand and gently guided me to her, the water passing between us like swirling magic. “I’ve had more lives than I can count. If your father didn’t kill me, I’d still be trapped.”
“Trapped? Trapped in what? Serena, please tell me what’s going on.” I begged, gripping her gently with my fingers in her hair, afraid to let go of her in case she vanished before my face.
Serena closed her eyes and looked down, her hair drifting in thick, heavy tendrils all around her. “You don’t remember,” she whispered. “Because you’re not meant to. But you and I have been bound since the beginning of time. Since I fell in love with you at the start of the earth. When I was called by another name—Atargatis.”
The blood drained from my face, leaving me with an icy stabbing in my chest. I thought back to Bastian when he told us about the sea crown and Atargatis.
The first sea queen. The ancient mother of sirens. A divinely beautiful woman who fell in love with a mortal man.
“You fell in love with a man and killed him? That’s how you became this?”
“I fell in love with you. It was you then, and still now. It’s been you all along. You have always been drawn to the sea as your first love. Because I am the sea, and you’ve been seeking me your whole life without realizing it. I’ve lived many lives, because my power—my crown—was taken from me. To lose their power is a god’s greatest curse. It traps us in a form opposite our nature. But we still cannot truly die at the hands of mankind, so we just keep returning as someone new. I’ve been a human for so many reincarnations, unable to return to the sea, forced to live and die on land. But when your father cut out my heart and cast it into the sea, he returned me to my true place — the water. But I’m bound here without my power, guarded by—well—her.” She pointed to the Kraken, who purred out a low, threatening growl.
