AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Well, it was all bravado, really. I just hoped they didn’t know it. I really did need my mouth to stop moving and words needed to stop escaping. Alyx was my mate. No matter how angry I was at him the pull to go to him…to melt into his arms…was almost too great for me to overcome. I actually breathed a sigh of relief now that he had exited the room. Damn, but our bond was fucking strong. As angry and hurt as I was, I wanted to run after him. I could feel his hurt and rage seething inside him, and I wanted—no I needed to go to him and soothe him.
But I needed strength more. So instead, I climbed up on a chair and climbed and hoisted my way over into the huge aquarium in Alyx’s bedroom that obviously linked all the rooms together. There was an opening at the top of each of them above the water levels, so that must have been there for a reason. I had to admit, the room-linking aquarium had been thoughtful of Alyx when designed the house. I’d never tell him, but it was.
Then again, as an Atlantean he needed the water too. He must miss it terribly.
Instead of focusing on my pain, I splashed around in the water and glorified in the strength it caused to flow through me. Within minutes, gills popped out on my body, and a tail too, where my legs had been. Rather than being shocked by it, I reveled in it. I swam down to the bottom of the tank and rested there among the plants and the rocks. My eyes were open, but they’d just as soon be closed. All my physical surroundings were blocked out as I focused solely on seeking out Adan. Our link as twin brothers was strong; our link couldn’t be blocked—no matter what dark force was out there trying to separate us and keep us apart.
As I floated peacefully at the bottom of the tank, I allowed my mind to probe through all the darkness that had been previously locked inside my brain, keeping my true identity and my memories tucked away in the shadows.
Soon they all came back to me, one by one. All the fucking lies we’d been told finally revealed themselves. My childhood. Our mother abandoning us, choosing true evil over what should have been love for her husband and family. Alyx and Keion becoming our guardians, and our soulmates. Sending us away again…
No doubt, it had been Adan who had rescued me at Tybee—Adan who had been taken prisoner when it should have been me. He’d saved my life at the risk of his own…and I hadn’t even known who he was at that time.
I felt my fury building and a bloodcurdling scream ripped from my lips, the pitch so high that no human and most animals wouldn’t be able to detect it. My brother, however, would hear it through our psychic link. I could follow that link directly to him. Our bodies might not be able to connect, but our minds could. It wasn’t long before I heard his faint response.
I went to him, traveling in my mind out of the safety of that aquarium, across the country and through the depths of the Atlantic, all the way to the deepest and darkest part of the ocean. All the way to the Sea Witch’s lair.
It took a moment for me to be able to see in those murky depths. I waited quietly nearby, while my eyes adjusted to the stygian darkness. I could feel the heavy tons of water pressing down on me—pressure that would have crushed me if I’d been human. And if I’d really been there physically.
The bones of the poor, unlucky sailors who had been lured to their watery grave by the Sirens’ call lay scattered all over the ocean floor that surrounded the cave of the Sea Witch, Beathag. My own mother who had once nurtured me and held me to her breast—now a cruel and terrible witch who led the siren sisterhood.
Our own mother was holding Adan captive? But why? In my mind I mind traveled farther, winding in and out of the recesses of the cave, which were also littered with human skeletons, pitiful old rags of clothing and cast-off treasure. I followed the thin link that would lead me to my brother. It glowed in the darkness with a weak, flickering light.
Adan was sitting in his human form, sitting cross legged in the shadows in a coral encrusted iron cage. His green eyes were open but staring blankly ahead of him. I floated in front of him, wishing I had a real physical body that could somehow release him. I wondered why he didn’t just break free and then I saw that around his waist was an iron chain, securing him to the walls of the cave. I remembered that iron is the enemy of magic. All Fae creatures, like Fairies, Brownies, Elves, Selkies and the Mer People can be controlled and held captive by it.
I swam closer, floating in the water as near as I could without touching any of it.
“Kailar?” my brother’s voice sounded inside my head. “You’re alive, but why are you here? I was so terrified after what happened at Tybee when I last saw you. I had no doubt our mother wouldn’t rest until she had us both in her clutches.” The voice sounded distressed, and he looked that way too, but nothing else about Adan moved, not even his lips. Our mother must have had him under a spell. I was furious at the idea.
“You saved me,” I whispered back. “You lost your freedom by saving me. Why would you do such a thing? Adan, I didn’t even know who you were…who you were to me…that day. I thought my feelings were a figment of my imagination.” I wanted so badly to touch him, to hug him as twins should, but this was merely a mind game. I had to rescue him before I could hold him again.
“I didn’t know you either. I only knew I was drawn to the place where the kracken attacked you. Our bond led me to you. It was only later, as I wasted away in this stupid cell, that all my memories slowly started to return, and I realized who you were and just how powerful our connection is. Keion made me forget my family—made me forget you. Then he sent me away.”
“Trust me, I know,” I answered. I knew only too well the depths of their deception…and hated myself because I still loved Alyxsander. “As soon as I free you, we’ll make them pay.”
“No, Kailar. You can’t risk coming here in corporeal form. Our mother needs both of us for her sacrifice.”
“Her what?”
He kept talking like he hadn’t heard me. “We can never let that happen. Not only do we both die, but then she becomes more powerful than all the other creatures in the sea. And the waters of the ocean would become poisonous and far too deadly for any sea life to exist. She doesn’t come down here often but when she does, there’s only hate and the greed for power in her black eyes. You have to promise me you won’t try to rescue me.”
She’d be more powerful? The idea was frightening. A sea hag practiced dark magic and had control over the winds and the weather at sea. If anyone were so unwise as to offend one of the creatures, it would most certainly mean their doom. And our mother had always been extremely powerful.
But I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My twin honestly thought I would leave him in this hell? Never. “I’ll return for you Adan. You’ll never convince me not to. Wewillbe together again and together, and we’ll destroy the hag.”
It was the whispering that alerted me to someone behind me. A low, sibilant sound, a little like the waves gently lapping on shore. I raised my head to see an old woman appearing behind me in the dark. She was squatting by a fire that had suddenly blinked into existence too inside the watery cave, though the fire was blue and magical and it burned sullenly, never reaching the shadows. The woman was scattering some sparkling loose jewels over the fire that hissed like sea snakes when the baubles hit the odd flames. It was her voice as she was chanting that I had heard in my head. I could barely make out the old woman’s hunched figure in the murky water inside the cave.
I must have cried out in alarm, because the woman at the fire turned her head to look at me, and I flinched back at the sight.
She looked like an ancient crone, her nose hooked toward her chin, her eyes bleached almost colorless, and her wild, white hair floating around her face, the strands looking for a moment like snakes before they resolved themselves into just long locks of white hair. No wait—as I watched her, the hair turned back into writhing snakes, and then she stood up. As she rose to her feet, her entire body dissolved into those snakes, then reformed itself into a beautiful woman, with long, emerald-green hair curling down her back. It was our mother, though I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She had pale green eyes and skin as white as leprosy, and her lips were as dark red and glistening as an infected sore. She glided through the water toward me.
How could she have known so quickly of our mind connection…known I was here, in her stronghold?
“Tearloch,” she said in a sibilant whisper as she reached me. She came closer and stroked my cheek with an icy finger. Her voice echoed in the small chamber, and I cringed away from her touch, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Tearloch, how nice of you to come and see me.” Her voice was low pitched and husky. Hypnotizingly so. “Let me kiss you.”
She leaned toward me, and I turned my head so that her cold, clammy red lips brushed across my cheek.
“I’m not King Tearloch,” I said, my voice trembling only a little. “He’s my father. I’m Kailar, your son.”
