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Chapter 11
“I’m fine,” I said, not looking at Phantom, not wanting him to see my face all ruddy and swollen.
“No, you’re not,” he said.
He wrapped his arms around my waist to hold me from behind, startling me, and I wriggled against him. This only made him press me harder to him, commanding me to relax.
Phantom wasn’t like Shadow. Either he hadn’t read the signals of my body language telling him to let me go, or he ignored them on purpose.
In his presence, lost to his magnetic charm, drowning in his embrace, I shed a layer of apprehension. Despite the protests exploding in my mind, I stayed, leaning my head against his neck. His arms were like heaven—strong, defined, and they fit my body. His earthy scent did strange things to me, intoxicating me, bringing on a giddy spell, awakening something inside me. Lust. Arousal. Possession. For a moment, all logical thought drifted away, and a hint of the old, carefree Snow surfaced.
But an instant later, reality came crashing back, and his intensity frightened me.
I pushed away. “I have to go,” I said, even though a part of me didn’t want to leave Phantom.
As I entered the clearing, Nyssa jumped up from one of the wagons she rested against.
“Take these,” she said, holding out some jewels, trinkets, and a handheld silver mirror. “Sell them. Buy what you can to feed these people.”
“Where did you get these?” I asked, my eyes caught by the mirror,
glimmering from the sun directly reflected on it.
“Stole them from the collector’s trove,” she replied, swinging her hips and giving me a wicked smile. “In case we needed to pay for a cabin for a night.”
A cabin? What was she doing on land anyway? With three merman staring at her lovingly and doting on her…?
“What are you doing here, Nyssa?” I asked the biggest question burning a hole in my chest.
“My father is in danger,” she told me. “I came in search of the dark pearl to save him.”
Neptune’s triton contained a light pearl said to contain power from the sea god. Rumor had it the dark pearl was its evil counterpart and just as powerful.
I wondered what kind of danger the sea king was in, but I didn’t ask. Guess we both had our own woes to deal with.
I glanced down at the mirror she clasped. It called to me in a strange and unfamiliar way. A voice inside my head was whispering my name. Was I going mad? Would I begin to hear imaginary voices now? I shook my head, trying to get rid of my madness. But it persisted. Almost as if the mirror had placed a spell upon me, and I was helpless to escape its grasp.
As if sensing my allure to the mirror, Nyssa lifted my wrist and placed the gift in my palm, wrapping my fingers around the handle. Determined to find out if my sanity remained intact, I accepted the mirror. Energy coursed through me when I lifted it and peered at my reflection. Dark clouds rolled across the face, mesmerizing me, reminding me of stormy seas. Worn faces, beaten and despaired, flickered on the glass. Gasping, I dropped the mirror, and it hit my boot and bounced onto the ground. I half-expected the glass to shatter, but it didn’t.
Nyssa replaced it in my rigid hands. “Take it.”
I trembled, building up the courage to look again, worrying I was losing more of my sanity, not getting better. What would I see this time? The same tempestuous clouds swept across the face, this time giving rise to an image of darkness and desolation, an evil rising, characterized by shadows growing from the soil. The gloom transformed into a figure with no eyes and no nose. Horrified, I squeezed the handle, unable to look away. A man stood before the darkness. He fell to his knees, throwing his arms wide as if worshipping the creature. It ran its dark, vaporous fingers over the man’s head and looked directly at me.
The scene shifted to Haven, somewhere in the woods, where a black, bubbling mass suffocated the trees, killing them. Someone in a black dress with elaborate sleeves with lace detail kneeled before the mass, as if in prayer. She tipped a goblet of blood onto the tree, and it seeped in, quickly turning inky and foul. The woman turned to me, and before the full extent of her face was revealed, I sucked in a breath, knowing her identity. My stepmother. Somehow, whatever she was doing had birthed this evil into Haven.
My pulse banged in my veins. What was this mirror? An omen? One of the seeing glasses I’d heard of in myths? Had Nyssa seen the same warnings when she’d peered into the glass?
“I can’t stay,” I stuttered, alarmed. The vision, a desire to make sense of it, suddenly fueled me to discover the rest of my stepmother’s plans. “I’ve got to get all these shifters to a safe place.”
Despite not looking at her, I felt disappointment radiating from my old friend. But she couldn’t dwell long. She had to get her people back to the sea. If they remained out of water longer than three days, they would die from desiccation. Already, the kidnapped merfolk had wrinkled, dry gray skin that peeled. They needed seawater and fast, and as much as I wanted Nyssa to stay, to find out the reason for her visit, I knew her people needed her more.
Then there were my selfish reasons for wanting to leave. Running into my old friend had stirred up old and new emotions for me, leaving my mind a tangled mess of confusion, anguish, and sorrow. Disappointment ate away at me that I hadn’t been able to open up to her the way I used to. I couldn’t get beyond that stupid, irrational fear. My mind kept repeating the same question over and over again. What if she hurt me? Damn the torturer! It had shattered my trust, had switched on my primal instincts, and I didn’t know how to turn them off, even though the rational side of me knew I was being ridiculous.
“I can spare you two horses to carry your merfolk,” I offered, knowing it
wasn’t going to be enough to transport them all back to the sea.
“Thank you,” Nyssa said, scrutinizing me with concern. “That would be wonderful.”
