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The sight of Caspian’s possessive glare sent a sharp jolt of heat shooting straight through my chest; a tragic, desperate pull that I couldn’t lean into. Not here. Not with the line of execution waiting for us back across the divide.
Mal walked with me in silence for a long moment, the sea wind pulling loose strands of his dark hair across his sharp cheekbones.
“My offer still stands,” Mal said softly, his low voice dropping below the thunderous roar of the surf, carrying that same dangerous, suffocating confidence he had used at the city gates.
As I ignored Mal, trying to anchor my focus onto the desolate shoreline, a sudden flash of movement caught my eye out in the grey water.
Something bobbed in the frothing surf between two petrified tree stumps.
I stilled instantly, my bare feet sinking an inch into the freezing wet sand as the foam washed over my insteps. I narrowed my eyes, staring intently through the thick coastal mist.
There it went again. It was moving along the crest of a rising grey wave, popping its pale, slick head up randomly before vanishing back into the dark, churning depths of the Pacific. Moving far too fast to be a harbor seal, far too controlled to be a piece of floating drift-timber.
I held my breath, watching the water ripple violently against the ancient petrified roots.
I saw it again. A face.
Translucent, iridescent, with wide, glassy eyes that locked directly onto mine from the middle of the breaking surf.
A sea-nymph.
Instinct took over my body before my brain could formulate a safer, more rational plan. Lorian’s journal had noted that the First Era sanctuaries were guarded by the elder elemental spirits of the deep—and the nymph was watching me, testing my resolve, waiting to see if I possessed the fortitude to enter her domain.
Mal was still standing directly next to me, his dark eyes fixed on the horizon, when I made my move.
I reached up, grabbing the hem of my leather jacket and black t-shirt, aggressively stripping both tops off over my head in a single, fluid motion and throwing them onto the dry sand behind me. Before Mal could process the shift, my fingers unfastened the button of my denim jeans, pushing the heavy fabric down my hips and kicking the pants away into the grit.
I was left standing on the freezing beach in nothing but my thin black lace undergarments, my pale skin completely exposed to the biting wind ripping off the ocean.
The brand on my right shoulder flared violently to life, the silver runes pulsing, while the black and gold ink of my Remnikai tattoos writhed across my ribs like living wires.
“Tauriel—what are you doing?!” Mal snapped.
Before my bare feet could even clear the tide line, Mal’s hand shot forward. His long fingers wrapped firmly around my bare waist, his grip possessive, hard, and entirely unyielding as he hauled my body back an inch against his broad chest.
“Let go of me, Mal!” I snarled, twisting my torso, my elbow snapping backward with lethal precision.
The blow caught Mal square in the ribs, forcing him to let out a sharp grunt and release his grip. I didn’t waste a heartbeat. I turned on my heel and waded straight into the breaking waves.
A sharp, violent gasp tore from my throat as the freezing ocean slammed into my shins, then my thighs. The water was brutal; frigid, bitter, a heavy mortal weight that felt entirely different from the silver currents of the Mani Vatn back in Nymeria. My lungs seized, the extreme temperature dragging a shudder from my frame, but I pushed deeper and deeper into the surf. The grey foam rose around my waist, pulling violently at my balance as the undertow churned the black sand beneath my bare feet.
“Tauriel! Get back to the shore!”
Dax’s frantic voice cut through the roar of the wind from further down the beach, blurred and distorted by the distance. Through the curtain of sea spray, I could see him waving his arms wildly through the mist, while Caspian’s massive frame was already lunging at a dead sprint toward the tide line behind him, his flared with unhinged, feral panic.
I didn’t turn back. I took one final, decisive step off the shelf of sand into the deep water—
And out of nowhere, a powerful, webbed hand clamped tightly around my ankle.
The grip was cold as ice, hard as iron.
Before I could draw a breath, the entity yanked downward with terrifying, supernatural force, dragging my body violently beneath the surface of the sea.
FORTY-FOUR
The grey, murky dark of the Pacific Ocean closed over my head with the force of a falling stone.
Bubbles rushed past my ears in a roaring torrent as I thrashed against the crushing current. My lungs screamed for oxygen, the frigid water striking my bare skin like a thousand tiny needles, threatening to freeze the blood in my veins. I reached blindly for the dagger I usually kept strapped to my thigh, but my fingers brushed only bare skin. I was in my lace undergarments, stripped of my steel, completely helpless in the cold abyss.
