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“No,” I gasped, twisting away from the firm pressure, endeavoring to get away from the brute for the first time since he’d snatched me up. “Please.”
The cecaelia’s fat lips tightened. “Do not flatter yourself.” His tentacle yanked the knife from my bra and swung it high over his shoulder. “Your pretty hair reeks of fish and lies. There were two of you, yes? Or was it all an illusion? A vision of magic? Tell me, how did you take down one of my brothers alone?”
My mouth clamped shut. If we hadn’t been underwater, I’d have loved to pull a page from Laverne’s handbook and shoot a wad of spit between his eyes.Give him the Albert treatment.
A strike of metal rippled through the stale water, and every inch of him, every restless feeler, stilled. He waited for the next strike to waft out a putrid breath.
“Well,” he whispered, drawing away. “It seems you’ll soon learn that not all magic is tricks and illusions.”
The prison gate drew shut behind him, but he didn’t bother securing it. Why hadn’t he locked it?
He threw the pouch of pearls down next to my knife as he retreated and let out a low, rumbling laugh. Silently, I stared at them. The knife, the pearls. They were close enough I could reach them through the bars, but I didn’t dare crawl for them just yet. Not while I felt the weight of a new gaze hidden in the darkness.
“Leave us,” a new voice said. Two sharp words spoken with the authority of a king.
The brute didn’t need to be told twice. He slunk out of the dungeon with haste, but whoever had spoken the words drifted ever closer.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Dark shadows seemed to move into the prison along with him, sucking the oxygen from the water with his approach. Suddenly dizzy, my head buzzed, shooting prickles all the way down to my fingertips. What… whatwashe? The shadow puppet the others had spoken of?
I squinted, looking through the prison bars, the rocks, the long rows of chains, and barely made out the harsh angles of a dark weapon held high toward the ceiling.Wait. Three deadly sharp points.
A trident.
Magic billowed off it in thick streams, clouding my night vision in a dark mist that obstructed my view of its wielder.
Then my blood chilled as the mist spread without the need of the water’s current, splitting into dark lines that seeped underneath the prison bars like tiny armies of ants. I gasped, my arms scrambling to move me out of the path of the charging magical mist, but there was no place to go, no means to escape it. The lines connected, curling around my forearms, seizing me up by my arms.
“What is this magic?” I gasped, brought up high enough I was hanging helplessly in the water.
I’d never seen anything like this dark magic.
The mist was condensing now, tugging at the end of my tail, fixing it to the wall behind me. It cradled at my shoulders, spreading my arms until they were wide above my head. The bonds pulled taut, and I cried out as each strand tightened and forced my back flat against the filthy prison wall.
The magic was quickly solidifying into… ropes? I struggled to move my wrists, but the bindings had the strength of forged metal, their lengths fastening, knotting, and weaving together in a beautiful, terrible tapestry until finally moving up as one, anchoring to the ceiling of the cavern for support.
When the magic finally settled, blackened strands of seaweed restrained every curve, every limb, forcing me up against the rugged, scum-crusted wall in a net of artfully tangled knots I’d never be able to escape.
This was why the brute hadn’t bothered with locks. He knew exactly what would happen, who would come here, but at least he hadn’t used hooks. I eyed the trident again, but as soon as the clouds of magic started to dissipate, its wielder turned, vanishing into thin wisps of magic smoke.
And I was all alone.
“Shit.” I struggled with my wrists, then my shoulders, but the seaweed held strong, its dark chords infused with strange, uncanny lines that shimmered like spider thread in my vision.Freaking magic.
I knew dying wouldn’t be fun, but I hadn’t expected being turned into a hanging rug, left to wither away on the wall of an undersea prison.
My head fell forward as I looked down at my tail, taking in how the seaweed had captured the length of it against the wall in an intricate series of knots that made certain it couldn’t slip free. A puff of bitter humor rattled my chest. What a waste of magical effort that had been.
My lips fell into a hard frown as I hung there, hopeless. Now that I was finally alone, all the feelings rushed back, the emotions bubbling up. Leander, Kai, Barren. Oh, what I wouldn’t do to go back to that morning that felt so long ago. I would have never gone out, never would have fished Leander up into my boat.
No, that wasn’t true.
The thought of not saving Leander, not fighting and pushing him away, not having his arms around me when we inevitably came crashing back together. Never knowing Kai’s bright, gentle smile, nor the comfort of Barren’s immovable strength. The thought of losing all of them made me shake in my bindings. It was too much to bear.
No, I didn’t regret it. I didn’t regretthem.Never. My only regret was that I’d been too useless to help them. Too distracted to keep them safe.
Too worthless as a mermaid.
