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“Either of you got orders back home soon?” the female cecaelia asked, not even bothering to take a breath and give the others a chance to respond. “I’d give anything to go back, take some leave, butno. They would rather waste my time out here, foraging through scraps those fish fuckers left behind.”
Her dramatic sigh chased any possibility of silence away. “If I have to uproot another coral colony, justonemore, I think I’m going to lose it. Look at this. This right here, look.Look at these nails. Overcorals. My hands can’t take the abuse!”
Did she ever stop talking? I had no clue why they needed three of them here anyway. Seeing as it only took the strength of one tentacle to subdue me, the twenty-four between them seemed a bit like overkill.
“Even if they send you back, you won’t be taking no leave,” the cecaelia who carried me grumbled as soon as the chatterbox took a breath. “Finding Malkeevo might be all the queen cares about, but I’m sick of those damn mirages messing with me, knocking my brains around, making me think my ass is up and my head is down!”
He bashed the side of his skull, then crumpled his hair in frustration. “If magic’s so damn important to her,sheshould be the one wandering out there ass-first, eyes crossed, searching for—”
He let out a violent gasp that I felt all the way at the end of his tentacle. A thunderous crack stopped all three of them dead in their tracks, leaving my body to smack down on the seafloor behind them. Straining my neck, I just barely saw the surge of inky darkness creeping through the quaking twists of their bodies.
“I will take her.” The smooth voice drifted through the water like liquid smoke, seeping into my ears and making my head buzz.
Oh no. Himagain.I could tell his abrupt entrance startled them, but surely the guards wouldn’t just—
Everything spun as I was flung forward, dropping in a heap on the sand in front of my captors. Finding my voice for the first time since they’d laughed over my impending execution, I used all the breath left in me to hiss, “Cowards.”
Just as the rough tentacle around me unfurled, a new one approached, snaking up to my waist, brushing against me as lightly as if it were a delicate band of silk. Before I knew it, I was upright, shivering under the weight of a chilly, white gaze.
Okay, I could see why they feared him.
Magic from his arrival was still billowing off his shoulders and trailing down the inky ends of his swept-back hair, making him look every bit the dark sorcerer he claimed to be. A silken tip of a feeler teased over my bound wrists, reminiscent of the way his magic had slid against me, and my stomach betrayed me by fluttering.Ugh.
Looking me over, his pale lips parted in amusement. “You’re still bound.”
Of course I was still bound! His creepy magic was the reason my hands were useless, tied behind my back. Did he have anything better to do than provoke me? Staring back at him, my lips curled in disgust. “Don’t talk to me.”
I’d had enough of his teasing, his magic, all of him. I glanced back at the others, but they were long gone, not even an inch of their dark bodies visible in the maze of buildings lining the thoroughfare.Dammit. They really were cowards.
Water streamed over my shoulder, and when my head jerked back, pale lips hovered dangerously close to my ear. “I thought you were supposed to be good at solving riddles, little captive,” he whispered, provoking me yet again. “At least you had sense enough to hold tight to mygift.”
My palms pressed into the ribbed surface, feeling out the shape of the shell I held between them. He was right. I’d kept it, but only because I hadn’t had time to think about tossing it before being wound up and dragged through the streets. Limbs spun to life, and before I could try to figure out how to chuck the shell at him from behind my back, he swept us through the archway and into the palace.
We came into the hallway, and I failed to suppress a gasp. The floors and walls were dull, stripped of every bit of decadence I could recall from my childhood. My head spun around, desperately trying to pick out pieces from my memory, but everything looked sowrong.
Unhurried, the sea wizard chuckled as our bodies drifted through what was left of the once grand foyer. “I can’t do everything for you, you know.”
Had I heard him right? Shaken back to the present, irritation tensed my jaw. “You expect me to swim to my execution?” I scoffed, imagining bashing his skull in with his stupidgift. “Scumbag. You can carry me. Or better yet, just let me go if you’re so lazy.”
“Let you go.” A smooth roll of laughter hummed through his chest as he dipped, spinning us around in a dizzying dance. My tail swung out beside me, billowing like the end of a flowing gown as his eyes swept down the line of my hips. “I think both of us know you won’t get very far. Not with that tail.”
What?
By the time we came out of another elegant turn, my head was spinning and my mouth had fallen completely slack. He’d discovered my night vision easily enough, but how could he possibly know about my tail?
Pulling me along beside him, he led me to the end of the foyer. When we arrived at the doors to the throne room, he paused. “I suppose I can offer one more morsel of advice.”
“Do you really think I’d take advice from the creep who bound me in the first place?”
The tentacle holding his trident pushed forward, and the doors parted. “Suit yourself.”
His lips were still cocked in amusement as we slid into King Eamon’s throne room.
Only there was no throne to be seen. Sitting in the very center of the grand platform where the coral-laced chair used to reside was a blob of a cecaelia, his belly rolling over his tentacles like pastry dough rising in an oven. A thin circlet sat among the knots in the bushy gray hair floating above him, its sleek elegance nearly lost in the mass of tangles. Looking at least a couple hundred years old, it was clear he’d never come across a comb nor scissors in all that time.
Before I could wonder who the cecaelia was, the sea wizard’s smoky voice was answering in my ear. “The Rook.”
The Rook. Was that title supposed to mean something to me? Well, I knew for sure the creature before me wasn’t a bird, so that ruled out crows. Chess was the only other thing that came to mind, but even Gram would admit I was never any good at it.
