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4
Leander
Aharsh light irritated the back of my eyelids. I would have shielded my eyes from the nagging glare, but I could barely feel my arms.
“Ugh,” I moaned, my stomach clenching. Everything ached. I fought to sit up, but something heavy was draped over my chest, pinning me down. “Shit,did I get fucking keelhauled or something?”
Grit scraped at my throat, my lungs grating like sandpaper. Where the hell was I? This didn’t feel like sand.
The last thing I remembered was diving in the ocean, and—oh shit,that’s right. I’d been swimming back to the palace—or attempting to, I thought with a grimace.
After a minute of combating my fetters, exhaustion won, and I slackened where I lay.Fuck. Vibrations rattled my bruised ribs as I groaned, the pain only adding to my frustration.Damn, I’m an idiot. Desperation had driven me toward the palace, but the journey had been a fucking fool’s errand from the very start.
A shadow shifted above me, the movement snapping my body to high alert. My muscles protested the activity, but it was a necessary precaution. Wherever I was, I wasn’t alone.
“So, you’re finally awake.” A feminine voice drifted over me like a spell. Melodious and smooth, each syllable bounded off her tongue like she had deliberately crafted it to draw me to her. My head turned on instinct, the sound of her voice apparently intriguing enough for my body to get its shit together without bothering to wait for my brain’s input.
So she was a mermaid, then—but not a voice I recognized.Fuck.
“Yeah, sure, I’m awake.” I shook my head back and forth, attempting to clear the haze her words had cast over me. And what in Poseidon’s Deep had she used to hold me down?
My voice dropped to a dangerous growl. “I hope for your sake you planned on letting me go.”
Something creaked from above, and my eyes focused just as my captor came into view.
“Release you?” Her head craned over me, the act sending flaming red strands flowing over the side of the four-poster bed where she lay. Playful gray eyes examined mine, their brows dipped in mischievous amusement. Her spine straightened as she swung her legs down next to me. “Well, that all depends on you, pretty boy.”
Pretty boy?I definitely didn’t know this mermaid. If she had known who I was, she wouldn’t have dared to address me so carelessly.Interesting.
“Pretty boy, huh?” I chuckled despite my aching ribcage, feeling my lips curl at their edges. “I kind of like the ring it has when you say it.”
An abrupt scoff let me know she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
Very interesting.
She rose to her feet, and I followed the fluid motion of her legs as she strode around me, the cords of my neck burning from the slight motion. Worth it, though. Her hand went to a shelf, and she veered back, dropping a safe distance next to me.
“What’s your name?” I flashed my teeth as I spoke. If she thought my face waspretty, then I’d be an idiot not to use it to my advantage. Hopefully it wasn’t as bruised and bloodied as the nagging pulse running through my head suggested.
Whatever she had done to me would take time to shake off, more time than I had to waste lying around. Dealing with a mermaid underwater was tricky, but a mermaid on land was fucking ruthless. There was no telling what she planned to do with me now that she had me.
She shoved a sheet of glass in front of my face, and the movement sent my eyes reeling. “Whoa, give me a second.”
While I honed my vision, one finger tapped insistently on a wooden frame surrounding the glass.
“You see this?” she said, her tone flat.
Under the glass, a girl with scarlet hair stood next to a marlin strung up on a rafter. It had to be at least twice her length, if not longer. “Uh, yeah. I see it.”
Her finger dragged over the glass, up and down the length of the unfortunate fish. “Over nine hundred pounds—fast as lightning—and I caught it.” Her voice dropped with every breath, malice weighing down her words. “And do you know what I did after I caught it?”
“You, uh, you strung it up on a rafter and—”
“Wrong.” She leaned forward, dropping the frame from my eyes. Her probing gaze seized me, her gray eyes dark and unblinking.
“It was too big to stuff, so you know what I did?” she continued, but I knew better than to offer an answer this time.
“After my dad snapped this pretty little keepsake photo, I sliced it up. The head went first. Then I dragged my knife in, cutting along its belly, before raking my blade over each and every one of its bony scales, prying them off one by one. I didn’t stop until the entire carcass was smoother than a clam. Let me ask you, have you ever tasted marlin?”
