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“Easy. Gregor’s the only one who reported on a kraken’s poison whip. That’s one slide right there—as well as a slide on why no one else reported it.”
I wanted to whip him with something of my own.
“Maybe because krakens don’t have a poison whip?” I suggested through gritted teeth, suddenly wishing I did possess a whip.
“And how do you know? Do you have a kraken bestie? Or did you travel the oceans with Gregor a couple hundred years ago?”
I clenched my fist under the table until my nails bit into my palm. “Maybe youshouldmake a slide on that. On how Gregor made one claim that at least twenty other books deny.”
He leaned forward, a strange glint in his eye. “Twenty books that had an agenda. Ofcourseyou’re going to downplay how dangerous a monster is since you are determined to give it protected status. I bet you’ll lie about how boats go missing in kraken territory, too. And what about how many have disappeared off the coast of Alaska in the last year?”
“Those were poachers, and they deserved what they got,” I snarled.
“Yeah? What did they get?”
Too late I realized what that gleam in his eye was. It was cunning. He’d been drawing a trap around me, and I was two steps from admitting exactly what I was to him.
Sitting back in my seat, I chose my words carefully. “The guardians of the Deep broke the boats, but left the men alive. They sang incantations of healing for the injured whales, and my clan took the men to the nearest island. They were then picked up by their human government and dealt with.”
His black eyes bore into me. For a long time, neither of us spoke. Then he reached under the table and drew something from the pocket of his jeans. “Gentle giants? Is that what your ‘guardians of the Deep’ are? Then what are these for?”
He held up a triangular tooth the size of his palm. One edge was serrated. The root was covered in a dry brown substance. Blood.
His uncle’s war trophy. One of my brethren had been slain in cold blood, so that Ezric’s murderous Uncle Jonas could bring home trinkets and bragging rights. And now Ezric was waving it in my face.
My whole body went stiff, even as my beast stirred inside me.
Either Ezric didn’t notice the change in my demeanor, or he didn’t care. Holding the tooth up, he tilted it this way and that.
His voice was mockingly curious as he asked, “How many people do you think this tooth bit down on? How many lives were destroyed by one thing?”
“Put that away.” My voice was so cold I was surprised my breath didn’t frost over.
“Why? Because it doesn’t fit with your narrative of a gentle giant?” He brandished the tooth. “This was meant to pierce bone and tear meat. No creature on this earth has teeth like this. Except fordragons.” The way he said it told me what he thought of them and their protected status.
This was a mistake, and Deus was sadly mistaken about his friend. Ezric wasn’t about to change his mind about krakens, or about me. And I didn’t want anything to do with him.
Gathering my things, I stood up. “Thanks for the waste of time. The next time you feel like having a study session, don’t bother asking me.”
He got to his feet. “Look, Seta. I don’t want us to be enemies.”
“I don’t believe you, Ezric. You seem to love trying to upset me.”
“Aw, Seta. Just one more thing before you go.” Ezric’s black eyes met mine. They were cold and filled with cruelty.
His hand darted out, too fast for me to really see, grabbing the full glass he’d poured for himself. With a string of shouted Latin, he tossed the contents of the glass all over me.
A prickling fire flashed over my body, like all my limbs had gone to sleep and were waking up at the same time. The prickle faded, first from my right leg, then my right arm.
The spell seemed to be flowing over my body, moving toward my left wrist. My cuff glowed a bright blue as it sucked up the spell and I was left wet and seething with rage.
I wasn’t an expert with magic, but it felt like some kind of revelation spell. Under normal circumstances, it would have released my tentacles, but the cuff had protected me from it.
Of course, mermaids didn’t have a reason to use enchanted objects to hide their fins and tails. So just by defying Ezric’s spell, I’d given him more proof that I wasn’t what I claimed to be.
And he knew it.
Ezric set the glass on the table with a calculated thump.
