AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The palace gates were nothing like the proud barriers that lived in my memory. They stood porous and brittle above me, stripped bare of gems and coral coving. Even the tips of their once great palisades looked blunted and tide-beaten. We passed through them quickly, my head thumping against the fleshy prop winding around my shoulders while my tail swept freely against the stones below.
But bodily pain couldn’t shake me, not now. The bite of the rocks, the crushing weight on my shoulders—it was nothing compared to the cruel shards of loss working like splinters through my insides. This all-consuming worry, thisemptinessin me, not knowing whether any of us would make it out of the ocean alive.
Well, I knew with complete certainty that at least one of us wouldn’t.
“Can you believe she slaughtered aknight?Bludgeoned him right here, right in the chest.” The voice came from the nightmare at the head of the group, brash and uncaring about who overheard him. “And not only that, but I heard the queen herself was eyeing him for someprivatework, eh? Always looking for a bit of something new in her bedchambers, you know.” He broke into a suggestive purr that told me he would gladly slide into those chambers. “Guess she’ll be looking for some new meat now. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for my fat cock to be the closest thing near to her when she hears the news!”
That got a shudder out of me.
Their queen must have been blind if she thought thatthingwe’d fought was a prize worth welcoming into her bed. Those void-black eyes, those twisted lips…
“I imagine Her Majesty will have her revenge once that shadow puppet of hers gets his hooks into this one,” the great brute who’d caught me cut in. He vented an overblown laugh as he glided down the thoroughfare, tossing me against the sandy cobbles like a child carelessly dragging a ragdoll behind him.
“Hope he lets us stick around to see it. I enjoy a good racking. Just think of the wonderful squeals this one would make.” That was a voice I hadn’t heard before, and she sounded justlovely.
I couldn’t decide which was more ominous: the hooks, the racking, or the face-off between me and a queen’s shadow puppet.
Quietly, I muttered a prayer to the water, letting the current carry it away.I’ll praise you until my dying breath, Poseidon. “Just please let them be safe…”
Unable to move my neck, I stared up at the lanterns as they passed, letting the firm suction of the appendages manipulate me at their will. Milky algae covered every sea glass pane, and for the first time in my memory, not a single lantern was lit.
It shouldn’t have been surprising that magic had left this place along with the merfolk, but here I was, oddly shaken by it. Disturbed. The mighty Atlantic kingdom had become as broken as I was. A bright, magnificent palace dragged down by a useless layer of scum and shadows. And all I could think was,what a terrible place to die.
Loose rubble scraped at my scales as we veered off the path, sending a note of danger ringing against my eardrums. Polished walls grew rougher, darker, and then somehow darker still as we ventured around the palace’s perimeter.
This wasn’t the way to King Eamon’s old throne.
My gut whirled as the main tentacle binding me whipped with a strength that forced me along with it, chafing against rocks, thumping against dwellings, taking me further from the path I’d known. Realization choked me tighter than the squeezing weight around my shoulders.
They were taking me to a place Ididn’tknow. A place Papa had never dared carry me. The dungeons below the palace.
“Looks like you’ve sapped all the fight out of her,” the one who enjoyed a good racking said, and she broke off from the rest of the group.
“Don’t strangle her to death just yet. The queen won’t be satisfied if her puppet doesn’t get to play.” Prizing eyes and a sly mouth teased a glance at me before she slid away, vanishing into a crack in the rock wall of the palace like her body had been made up of nothing more than oozy slime and cruelty.
I had little time to process what “play” could mean before the surrounding bands constricted—oh, they were definitely strangling—and they were suddenly pulling me down the great throat of a chasm, leaving the rest of the group scattering behind.
I’d heard Papa speak of the dungeons, sure, but I never once imagined its gaping entrance butting against the rear of the palace, nor how far down the ragged, narrow trench would plunge.
When we finally hit the bottom, my eyes scoured over every detail—the barnacles set over the rocks, the abandoned ribcage and stretch of tail bones spread next to a ring of pitted chains that draped down the walls. Every nook, every crevice led to more chains, more decay.
This… this was a horror that predated the cecaelia’s arrival.
That thought shocked through me, sickening me more than any cruelty I’d suffered at the hands of the merfolk had. This dungeon, this pit of bones, was a dark mechanism of the Atlantic kingdom’s creation.
How many merfolk had King Eamon sent down here unjustly, like he’d sent me into his makeshift brig? Had Papa had a hand in it? It wasn’t hard to imagine him down here, locking and chaining, leaving live bodies spread about for the needlefish to pick clean. Would he then slide back up to collect me from the luxury of the palace, wearing his proud sash and smile like he wasn’t secretly a horror himself?
The dungeon was black as pitch, and even if the kingdom still held magic, I saw no lanterns to light. No, they had left these prisoners to rot in complete darkness.
Metal vibrated against the cavernous ceiling, and the cecaelia lifted me high, tossing me into an empty cell with a sudden lash that had me bouncing off the slimy, barnacled back wall. The weight of my tail drew me down to the bottom of the prison, and when my eyes opened, the brute’s ghostly pale face and scarred nose were close enough to surge a vile stream of water over me with his next salty breath.
Tentacles prodded as dark, unfeeling eyes took me in.
“Bludgeoned a knight to death,” he scoffed, poking at my ribs and the dead weight of my tail. He swept my hair up into a cruel twist and pulled it back, bowing my neck.
A slim tendril curled under my chin, and he used it to draw me even closer. His gaze sat heavy on my eyes, but I stared right through him, easily pretending the ocean was as dark and empty as the gashes in my heart. “I know of your kind’s tricks,” he said finally, and a probing pressure slithered down my arm, snapping the leather pouch clean off my wrist as soon as it came to it.
A second touch crept up my side, winding around my ribs, where it stopped to tease at the edge of my bra.
