Page 45 of The Unkindest Tide

He nodded, and turned back to me, and leaned in, and kissed me.

It wasn’t a kind or gentle kiss. It was the kiss of a man afraid of drowning, already trapped by some relentless riptide and being dragged farther and farther from the shore. He kissed me hard and fierce and unrelenting, and I kissed him back the same way, both of us fully aware that this could be the last kiss we ever had the chance to share.

But then, we always knew that. Our lives weren’t exactly safe, and one day, one of us wasn’t going to come home. We were both panting when we broke apart. His pupils weren’t slits anymore; they had widened until they almost consumed his irises, drinking in all the available light. I offered him a wan smile. He returned it, and together we turned to face the Luidaeg.

The blade of my knife was cool against the skin of my palm. I slashed downward, opening my flesh like a flower, and stepped into the Luidaeg’s kitchen, positioning my bleeding hand above her bowl. She watched impassively until she could be sure I wasn’t making a mess; then she plucked the knife from my hand and beckoned the boys forward.

“Kitty-cat first, then Quentin,” she said. “Tick-tock, kids, times a’wasting. You’ve spent too much of it on your petty little feelings, and now you need to hurry.”

Tybalt narrowed his eyes but stepped forward, watching impassively as she ran the already-bloodied blade of my knife across the tip of his index finger. He hissed a little at the pain, and she moved his hand over the bowl, squeezing out the required seven drops.

“Shapeshifter’s blood, to make the changes voluntary; they’ll need to move between sea and air until this is finished,” she said, and released his hand. “Quentin?”

My squire swallowed hard as he stepped forward and held out his hand. The Luidaeg took it gently, and rather than slicing his finger, merely pricked it, holding it above mine.

“Don’t worry, kiddo, I’m not keeping any,” she said, in a tone that was probably meant to be reassuring.

The liquid in the bowl sparkled and fizzed as our blood mingled with what was already there. When she judged that it had had enough, she handed me my knife and pushed us both backward, turning to rummage in the nearest drawer until she produced two small bottles. They were the sort of thing a sailor stranded on a desert island might use to throw messages out into the shoreless sea, hoping that someday they would go where they were meant to be.

“Once you drink this, you’ll have twelve hours,” she said, dipping first one bottle and then the other in the bowl. The first bottle came up filled with liquid so dark a blue that it was almost black, shot through with veins of bright, burning gold. The second bottle . . .

The second bottle was for me. The liquid it contained was layered like calico scales, white and red and black, and I knew the shape and texture my fins would take when I drank it. My body remembered what Simon had done to me, would always remember, and whenever I went back to the water, I would go in tricolor autumn, painted like the koi I’d been.

The Luidaeg handed us our bottles, expression grave. “Twelve hours,” she repeated. “You’ll go to the water, you’ll belong to the water, and you’ll be cast from the water all within that span. If you’re not on dry land when your time runs out, you’ll get to experience the wonder and joy of drowning. Toby will probably survive, she’ll just wish she hadn’t. Quentin . . .”

“I’m not as sturdy; I get it,” he said.

“Heroes raising heroes to do heroic bullshit since the dawn of time,” said the Luidaeg, almost fondly. She poured the rest of her liquid down the sink. “All of you, get out of my apartment. I’ll go seek my sister as soon as I’m sure you’re gone. I don’t want to see your faces again until you’ve had your dance with drowning.”

I frowned. “Luidaeg—”

“Go!”

We went, out of the kitchen and back into her apartment in the Duchy of Ships, and then out of that to the courtyard where our friends and allies waited, impatient and afraid, to see how much we’d paid for a slim shot at salvation.

ELEVEN

“I COULD GO WITH YOU,” said Patrick for the third time, his eyes on the bottle in Quentin’s hand. His hands twitched, like he was considering the virtues of snatching the thing from my squire. “I know the way.”

“It wouldn’t work for you,” I said. I wasn’t sure of that—the Luidaeg’s magic is strong enough to be surprisingly flexible—but I was sure her deal with me had been for myself and Quentin, not myself and Patrick. If he drank the potion, it might work, or it might do nothing, or it might somehow mystically cause my dose of the stuff to curdle and turn useless. If this was going to happen, it would happen according to the Luidaeg’s rules. “Now come on. Tell me what else we need to know. What’s going to be waiting for us when we get there?”

Patrick sighed heavily. “When you exit the Duchy and swim downward, you’ll find the channels connecting the various Undersea domains to this neutral ground. It’s how the Selkies were able to get here so quickly. The gate to Saltmist is marked with pearls and ancient teak carved in sea otters and kelp. Passing through it will deposit you at our borders. I don’t know what Torin will have done with the guards. Normally, you’d be able to pass through the fields to the palace, and enter through the lowest doors. Right now . . . I don’t know.” He looked at me, briefly, openly hopeless. “They may have destroyed everything. They may have taken it all intact. I don’t know.”

“Then we’ll find out.” I gripped his shoulder, squeezing hard. “Tybalt will take you back to the others. Trust him. Until we get back with Peter, it’s his job to keep you alive.”

“I take my job very seriously,” said Tybalt. “You will be safe in my company.”

“I don’t care about my own safety,” said Patrick. “Save my son.”

“We’ll do whatever we can,” I said, and glanced to Tybalt. He offered me a small, tight nod, but didn’t speak, only touched the leather jacket that hung, folded, over one arm. There was nothing left for us to say to each other, not until I had gone and come back. I returned his nod and turned away, offering Quentin my free hand.

“Now?” he asked.

“No time like the present,” I said, popping the cork out of my bottle with my thumb. He did the same, even as he took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, holding on as tightly as he could.

Together, we stepped off the edge of the dock, plummeting toward the surface of the sea. The wind was cold and stung my eyes, sending my hair whipping around my face. I raised my bottle, exactly as we had planned, and gulped down its contents in the instant before my feet hit the water. The liquid was sweet and bitter at the same time, like cherries mixed with battery acid, or honey mixed with snake venom. My body revolted, trying to gag, to spit it out, but it was too late; I had already swallowed, and warmth was radiating out from my belly, filling me.

The speed of my descent was enough that when I finally hit the water, I just kept going, cutting a trail of bubbles down into the depths, until ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet of ocean stretched out above my head. Quentin was gone, his hand ripped out of mine by the impact. So was the bottle, returning to the bottom of the sea, which was probably where the Luidaeg had found them in the first place. They could wait there until she needed them again.