“If you’ve hurt her…” I threatened.
“That will be all,” Ren replied, glancing to Tiberion.
The guards moved forward, crowding me back with their presence, and for a moment, it was all I could do not to shove past them, just to pound that damn supercilious look off his face.
“Your highness,” Tiberion said beside me, the warning in his voice clear.
I looked from my brother to the commander, while in front of me, the guards showed edges of spikes on their arms, ready to defend their king.
There wasn’t a hope of getting past them.
And trying would only give Ren the satisfaction of watching his soldiers muscle me out of his presence.
Furious, I spun and swam from the room.
~~~~~
Guards trailed me all the way back to my apartment, and when we reached it, they took up stations around the door and beyond the windows.
And then they sealed them both.
Fighting not to give into the urge to break something, I hovered in the center of the room, my tail kicking every few moments to keep me from sinking to the floor.
I couldn’t believe this. Ren. He’d postponed having Tiberion tell us he was awake till after he’d taken Chloe away. Till he’d gotten the guards on the same page, and probably the servants too.
Us. His own family, who’d worried he might be dying.
My tail kicked again, propelling me back up into the center of the room as I stared at the door. In the back of my mind, I’d always dreaded what would happen when he took the throne. Whether he’d order me off to supervise some remote province on the edge of the northern wastes, or just keep me here under his thumb for the rest of my life. I’d hoped Dad would never abdicate, and maybe live forever at the same time. I’d dreamed of him seeing Ren for the jerk he was, and passing him over for Niall instead.
But I’d never wanted to imagine this. Dad dead. Niall possibly the same. And this girl I’d just been trying to help, now lost who knew where, if she was even still alive.
I closed my eyes. Niall had Liana, one of the best physicians in Nyciena, looking after him. I’d find Chloe, and she’d be fine as well. And as for the bastards who’d attacked my family…
Opening my eyes, I looked from the door to the windows. There had to be a way out of here.
The fejeria blocking the door whispered as they loosened back to passable leaves.
“Thanks, guys,” Ina called to the guards.
The smile on her face vanished the moment she slid into the room. “Are you okay?” she asked as she pressed a hand to the doorframe without looking at it, sealing up the fejeria again.
“Where’s Chloe? Did Ren say anything to you about–”
I cut off, grimacing as she shook her head.
Ina hesitated. “Zeke, do you think there’s a chance she did–”
“No.”
The answer came out harsher than I intended and my grimace returned. “It’s not possible, Ina,” I amended more gently. “I mean, that thing she does to the water? The Sylphaen, the neiphiandine, and the fact those bastards nearly killed her twice?” I shook my head. “If that was all just a trick to get close enough to poison Dad, it’s got to be the most complicated con game in history.”
Ina nodded reluctantly. “Ren just–”
“Ren’s obsessed with the idea she’s a spy.”
“He just wants to find who tried to hurt us.”
I looked away.
“Who did this, Zeke?”
Her voice was small, the way it’d been when we were kids and she would come to my room after she’d had a nightmare.
I swam over and put my arms around her. She hugged me tightly, her fingers gripping my back. A choked sob escaped her.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we’ll figure it out.”
And then they’d pay.
I didn’t add the words, knowing they would just upset her more. After what happened with Miri, revenge was something of a sore topic for us all.
No matter how much I wanted it right now.
I drew a breath, pushing the thought away as Ina nodded into my shoulder.
A moment passed. She leaned back from me, sniffling a bit as she tried to return her ordinarily confident expression to her face.
“Ren’ll make a good king,” she said, and from her tone I couldn’t tell if she was working to convince me or herself.
I didn’t respond, not wanting to argue. She seemed to read into the silence anyway.
“Just give him time to calm down,” she urged. “He’s shaken by this too.”
I grimaced. “I can’t. I need to find Chloe. Find out what he’s done.”
She hesitated. “I really don’t think he’d hurt her, even if he does think she’s a spy.”
I looked at Ina. She dropped her gaze to the floor.
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“I’m sure he’s ordered the guards not to say anything. And if you do this, now that he’s king it’ll be–”
“Can you help me?” I repeated, not wanting to hear it. I knew what I was asking would mean. Treason. Betraying an order of the king. And worse, aiding the person that king said had helped kill our dad. He wouldn’t hurt Ina for it; he had a soft spot for her just as he’d had for Miri. But me…
I’d be lucky if I ended up on the border of the northern wastes. More likely, I’d spend the rest of my life in prison.
But I couldn’t let a girl I’d brought all this way into the ocean just disappear. I couldn’t simply forget that. Not after how much I’d tried to help her, and not with the people chasing her still lurking around. With everything in me, I wanted to be out there right now, hunting down whoever had dared to hurt our family.
I just had to do this too.
“Ina?” I pressed.
She glanced up, hesitance obvious in her expression. “I don’t know, Zeke. I mean, Ren’s not a monster. Really. And we need you here. With Niall hurt and Dad…” She shook her head. “We
need
you. I know Chloe’s nice – or she seemed to be, at least – but if you help her…”
“I can’t let her get caught up in this, Ina. You
saw
Ren. Monster or not, he wants somebody to blame. And it wasn’t her. It was someone, and I’m going to do everything I can to help us find out who… but first I need to make sure Ren doesn’t hurt the wrong person.”
She looked back down. “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered. “Please.”
I wrapped her hand in my own. This was the side of Ina she almost never showed. The one behind all the devil-may-care confidence and flirting.
The one that had lost too much of our family already.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “And I won’t be gone long. I’m just going to get Chloe away from the city. Find her someplace safe to hide till we figure out who really did this. And then I’ll be back, okay?”
Trembling, she nodded. Pushing the fear from her expression, she looked up at me again. “I’m holding you to that.”
My lip twitched. “So does that mean you’ll help?”
Ina sighed. “Yeah, alright.” Her gaze went to the door, and she drew another breath, her typical self-assurance creeping back onto her face. “I’ll just go, uh, talk to the guards.”
I smiled.
Chapter Ten
Chloe
Days had passed. Or minutes. In the pitch-black water, my pounding heart made the only sound, sparing the occasional whispers and mutters from the prisoners somewhere above me.
And otherwise, nothing changed.
Floating in the middle of the tiny cell, I took another steadying breath, focusing on keeping myself from surrendering to panic. Earlier, I’d searched the walls, hoping for a crack, a drain, anything to give me a chance of getting out. But the walls, ceiling and floor were solid. Only a soft, slimy fuzz grew over them, thick enough to make it seem as though they’d been undisturbed for years. I’d even tried the door again, zapping myself on it so many times I’d begun to feel like an experiment subject who couldn’t figure out what she wasn’t supposed to touch.
But it didn’t matter, I reminded myself. Someone would come. Someone would find me here. Ren couldn’t get away with this forever.
The still water stirred beyond my cell.
I froze, my skin prickling at the faint current. My heart picked up speed as the motion grew stronger and then came to a stop in a blur of quivering water beyond the cell door.
Four pairs of glowing eyes watched me.
And their owners didn’t say a word.
“Hello?” I whispered.
No one replied. Like a flicked-off light switch, the quivering feeling that guarded the door disappeared, and then the shape of the dehaians became clear. Three men, with a woman between them.
Metal scraped on stone. The three men swam into the cell. I retreated, spikes growing on my arms as the trio fanned out, blocking any hope of getting past them.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you–”
My back bumped into the wall. The dehaians swam at me. Two grabbed my arms, avoiding the spikes, while the other snagged my hair and yanked my head backward, making me shout in pain.
A black shape enveloped my face. My head. A click sounded by my ear as I struggled in their grasp, and then a numbing feeling spread down my body, making the water like dense gel.
I gasped and choked on the sludge the ocean had become.
A blindfold. They’d put me in one of those blindfold things, just like Ren had done.
I twisted, trying to break their grip as I fought to tear the muffling fabric from my head.
Something slammed into my face, knocking me sideways and sending the muddy world spinning. My ears rang like a gong in the silence of the blindfold, and then another blow came to the insides of my elbows.
Tingles shot through my arms, and the spikes retreated like a reflex. Shackles clamped down on my forearms, and then jerked forward, as though they were connected to a leash.
I pulled back, fighting them.
A fist punched my stomach, doubling me over, and then hit my back, propelling me down. Electricity found me before the floor did, shooting through the shackles and sending me thrashing. I screamed, trying to escape the pain, and another fist struck me, driving me hard into the slimy ground and then returning with a second blow to my face just to make sure I got the point.
The shackles lurched forward again, hauling me up. The dehaians dragged me through the water.
Tears choked me. Everything hurt. My face, my stomach, my arms, even the water that slid into my nose and mouth like a dense, burning goo. I could taste blood amid the saltwater in my mouth, but I couldn’t tell if anything was broken. The sense of wrongness screaming through my mind from the blindfold blocked everything but the generalized blur of pain.
If I ever made it back to land, I’d never leave again.
The thought hurt as much as anything else. I couldn’t understand this. What had happened. I didn’t want this. Life had been normal a few weeks ago. True, my parents were crazy – and sort of not my parents – but otherwise it’d been fine. And now I was here. Being beaten up. Pulled through the water like a fish on a line. It hurt, all of it did. I didn’t want people to hurt me anymore.
I just wanted to go home.
The dehaians slowed. I trembled, wanting to fight, not wanting them to hit me again.
“Prisoner transfer,” came a woman’s voice, the sound murky to my ears.
Someone answered, though their words were too muddled by the hood for me to understand.
“I am aware of what you were told, but I have orders to inspect her condition before transfer, and I can’t do that in the pit, now can I?”
The mumble returned, terse and official-sounding.
“Good,” the woman replied.
The shackles jerked forward again. Gel-like water slid over my skin, the pressure changing infinitesimally as the dehaians turned at corners or pulled me onward faster.
“Stop,” the woman ordered.
The dehaians did as commanded. Shivering, I strained to hear or feel anything of my surroundings.
“Keep watch,” she said, and the sludge moved a bit as one of them swam away. “Put her in.”
Hands grabbed my shoulders, shoving me downward. Panic made me struggle, but a fist followed immediately. Choking, I doubled over again.
The dehaians grabbed my tail, bending it sharply. They pushed me down, and hard surfaces contacted my scales and my back, and then met my side as well.
Something clunked above me. Curled into a ball with my tail crushed to my chest and my fin twisted beneath me, I tried to straighten, only to find that walls surrounded me.
A box. I was in a box.
My heart began pounding harder as I shoved against the immovable sides. A cry escaped me, the sound somewhere between a sob and a scream.
A thud echoed through the box, and then the shackles sent a jolt of electricity through me. I shrieked, trying to retreat with nowhere to go.
“Silence,” one of the men growled.
Trembling, I choked on another sob as the charge faded away.
I wanted to go home. Oh God, I just wanted to get out of here and go home.
“You have the neiphiandine blend ready?” the woman asked.
A muffled response came.
“Good. Inject her again when we arrive. No telling what might happen if that first dose wears off.”
They lifted the box. It rocked as they swam, pressing me to one wall and then the next. I couldn’t tell when we went up or down, or gain any hint of where we were, and when they finally slowed, I was shaking so hard, I could barely breathe.
“Medical supplies,” the woman said. “Very volatile.”
Muddled words.
“Thank you.”
The box jostled as they started moving again.
Minutes crept past. My air came in short gasps, and in my mind, I kept repeating Niall’s words from a million years before. I could breathe. No matter what it felt like, I could still breathe.
And somehow, I’d get out of this.
Biting back another sob before it could escape, I fought to make myself believe the words. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I would. I’d get out of here. I
would
.
A muffled sound came from beyond the walls, and the box lurched as the dehaians stopped. In the darkness of the hood, I looked up, my heart pounding.
“Excuse me?” the woman demanded.