Page 1 of Drown Me Gently

Shivers ran down Auren’s back as he pressed himself against the cool marble column. His heart thumped steadily. Not from fear, but anticipation. The thrill of the escape. He’d memorized the palace schedule. Knew exactly how long the guards, with their golden tridents, held post at the outer gate.

This was far from his first time ditching royal attendants.

The sea was velvet-dark, its silence broken only by the faintest whisper of current sliding over sand. The palace of Atlantis loomed over him. Grand, immense, carved into the cliffside with a craftsmanship fit for a god of the sea. Its white marble columns reached high into the gloom, wrapped in vines of glowing kelp and gilded with pearls, a testament to Poseidon’s divinity. Braziers lined the gates, blue flames twisting inside glass globes and casting warped reflections on the marble archways.

Auren exhaled slowly, the soft tissue of his gills fluttering. His fingers curled tighter around the strap of his satchel. Inside were the usual tools—a dull blade and a bit of food—nothing fancy, but enough. The blade was for cutting through obstacles at the wall; the food, for waiting out a guard rotation if needed. He’d turned escape into a science, and tonight was no different. The sound of heavy motion sliced through the water behind him.

“Magister, we cannot locate him, we’ve searched⁠—”

“Don’t bother. I’ll get him.” A heavy voice replied to the frantic palace guard.

Auren’s stomach sank.

Shit.

A moment later, the water shifted beside him in a whoosh, and he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“Auren.”

There was that voice. Auren could recognize it from leagues away. It was deep and rumbling, like the blackest part of the ocean floor was settling into place. Auren winced, letting his head thump against the column in defeat.

“How’d you find me?”

“You aren’t as clever as you think, spriteling.”

Auren grimaced and turned.

Ulric hovered a few meters away, arms crossed, hair drifting around him like ink in water. His face was carved from rigid discipline and patience worn thin. Twin eyes, black as trenchwater, fixed on Auren with all the disappointment of a weary mentor and all the judgment of a high priest.

Even the tips of his obsidian tentacles twitched with irritation where they pooled at his waist like a living sash. Nine in total, sleek and gleaming like polished jet, ringed with pale suckers that caught the blue firelight. He made for a murderous sight, but Auren didn’t flinch.

He met the Kraken’s gaze head-on. “You gonna keep staring, or do you plan to drag me back by my tail?” Auren muttered.

Ulric’s brow twitched. “Don’t tempt me.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.”

Auren scoffed. “Yeah, right. Big scary Kraken. I’ve survived your temper a hundred times.”

Ulric’s skin was coppered bronze, sunless but burnished. His shoulders were broad and imposing, his chest inked in curling black tattoos. Dark lines curled over his collarbones, ran down his arms, and disappeared into the inky shadows of his lower half. Runes etched near his ribs marked oaths too old for most to remember in a language long since forgotten. His face bore a trimmed beard, neatly kept, the same color as his hair—deep black, threaded with streaks of iron-gray.

He wore no armor—just a dark leather wrap across his chest, a long, curved fang from some deepwater beast hanging from one ear, and a carved whalebone pin holding his hair half up. The only mark of his rank was an embossed trident on the leather, a symbol that set him apart as the Court Sorcerer.

He was Kraken.

Not Merfolk.

The water shifted around Auren, vibrating in response to the Kraken’s anger. Ulric was one of the few marked to carry Poseidon’s magic, the brands on his skin pulsing with power. Combined with his obsidian eyes, it was no wonder most Merfolk found the Kraken unsettling. Even terrifying. A creature of the ocean pits.

And still, Auren refused to back down.

“You aren’t as scary as you look.” Auren snapped at his mentor.

Ulric snarled, revealing pointed shark’s teeth.

“Ever the sea-sprite,” he hissed. “You know the meeting with the Tidelord begins in under an hour.”