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10
Claira
Even with the outside air refreshing my face, my cheeks still blazed. Leander clearly saw a string of nightly visitors, considering how quickly he’d thought to conjure up his charm when I’d snuck into his room. Something intense flared up in my chest, and I pushed it right back down.
Why should I care about who Leander invited into his bed? I gave my cheeks a quick smack to bring me to my senses.
My new knife wasn’t the only thing I’d found in the warehouse’s storeroom. A sigh eased through me as I went looking for the bolt cutters I’d hidden in the overgrown weeds next to the door. At least, I was pretty sure they were bolt cutters. The tool’s short blades had been sharpened at an angle, and the handles were lengthy enough to give me the impression that they meant business.
“Gas station?” I felt the deep rumble of Leander’s voice as he breathed the words down my neck. “What’s agasstation?”
My eyes rolled as I held out the sizable tool for him to take, passing it to his chest. “Come on now, you can’t keep playing the dumb merman card, Leander. Not when I was dragged all the way out here in the trunk of your bitch queen’s car.” Fury welled up inside me, and I drew my hands into tight fists. Raw energy threatened to burst through my fingertips if only I’d let it.
However long it took, I would get my revenge on those damn harpies.
Leander’s face hardened as he accepted the bolt cutters. One of his brows lifted in puzzlement. “What do you mean, my ‘bitch queen’?”
I stared back at him, wordless. Surely he knew of Aleena’s insistence on one day being crowned his queen—bitch or otherwise?
When I didn’t offer an explanation, he stepped forward.
“My father sent the Turbula twins to get you.” He spoke the statement like it was a question, and I drew in my lower lip, wondering if it was even worth the effort to explain. I didn’t have time for this, and I sure wasn’t going to start playing merfolk matchmaker.
“And you said they dragged you here in—which seat is the trunk? Is it the one next to the shotgun?” he pressed further, looking genuinely curious.
Memories of the nausea-inducing trip intruded my thoughts, and even though my stomach was empty, it stirred. Itrulydidn’t have time for this. Yanking Leander along by the sleeve of his shirt, I steered us toward the gas station.
“It’s the exact opposite of the shotgun,” I grumbled, pressing forward. My boots crunched with each quick step as we made our way across the gravel parking lot connecting the vagrant warehouse to the abandoned gas station next door.
My ears caught a hushed grunt of pain, but I dismissed it. Who cared if Leander was barefoot? He was the reason I’d been abducted to begin with—a treachery I wouldn’t soon forget.Honestly, the toughest part in all of this was realizing that he was the one to put me in this position. My chest still ached from the initial shock. Sure, we’d fought after I’d found him, but I’d still saved his life that morning. We weren’t anything to each other—certainly not friends—but still…
When we arrived at the gas station door, warm fingers spread over mine, wrapping over the fist still clenching his shirt. I shook them away.
“Your hands,” he said, insistently cupping his palm under mine. He drew my hand so close to his face I could hardly breathe as the ice from his breath danced across the sensitive skin of my wrist. “How long were you out here before you came to get me?” The rough pad of his thumb skimmed over the raw, blistered surface of my palm, and I flinched.
There was no way I’d admit to how long I’d sought to cut through the chain on my own, fueled by a mixture of rage and anxiety. “Not too long,” I lied, shrugging like the pain from the blisters was nothing to me. “Don’t forget I had to claw my way out of a cage first.”
“Sounds like you’ve had a busy night, Claira.” His lips pulled into a wry grin. “Think you could teach me how to sneak around like you do? Might come in handy one day.”
I scoffed. Like aprincewould ever need tosneak.
Releasing my wrist, Leander began experimenting with the bolt cutters by opening and closing the hinge. “But what made you want to escape to thisgasstation?”
Pretty boy sure loved asking stupid questions. “I don’t just stay where people put me anymore, Leander,” I shot back, remembering how easy it had once been for the merfolk to set me aside and put me wherever they wanted. Not anymore.
Leander rubbed at his jaw with the back of his hand like he was considering my words and gave me a firm nod. “I can see that.” He leaned into the glass doors and squinted, his eyes carefully roaming over the heaps of trash and broken-down cardboard boxes strewn between half-empty shelves. “Doesn’t look like there’s anything inside worth having.”
My eyes took to rolling again—of course the gas station didn’t look like much tohim. After spending the greater part of his life drifting through vibrant, coral-encrusted halls lit by literalmagic, could anything on land ever really compare?
I leaned in, glancing at the gas station interior as well. Honestly, he kind of had a point. It looked like a band of raccoons had dug through the roof at some point for a trash-throwing rave party catered by snack cakes and granola bars by the look of all the empty wrappers laid about. But even raccoons couldn’t stop me. I needed to get inside.
The gas station miraculously still had power, and I could clearly see the phone sitting askew at the checkout counter. My pulse quickened with a sudden longing. If I was lucky, there would still be a dial tone, and I could get in touch with Dad and Gram.
I’d spent hours sneaking through every inch of the warehouse I could get to, thinking of nothing but finding a phone. The anxiety had practically gnawed through me. They had to be so worried.
Dad would have already torn through every storefront on the strip, asking around for me and alerting the entire town. Every single one of them would be out looking by now, combing over the streets and maybe even on boats out at sea. And Gram, she would be raising hell. She’d probably already gotten out her pirate pistol and—
“Hey, are you okay?” Leander’s deep voice cut through my thoughts, snapping me back to the present.
