She relayed the message to the men. “She says you can eat.”
Jake lifted his hands in a gesture of thanks. “Thank heavens. I was about to faint from hunger.” He hurried over to the table, picking through the food.
Rising silently, Kenneth ambled over a little slower. “I have to admit I could eat.”
Tessa joined them, gaze skimming the elaborate presentation. A variety of fruits, some familiar, some strange, greeted her eyes. Fish and other seafood were also laid out, and she recognized a few of the more common varieties: oysters, shrimp, crab, eel, and some kind of fish that looked vaguely like haddock.
“The sea life seems to be thriving,” she commented.
“They obviously maintain some sort of fishery,” Jake guessed. “I would think this would be a diet more suited to a sea-based creature.”
Tessa scrunched up her face. Seafood had never been her favorite. “This Mer likes her steak, thank you very much.”
Kenneth eyed the fish, a dubious look crossing his face. “Is all this raw?”
She looked closer. “I think so.”
He shook his head. “I’m not eating it.”
Jake kept his selection to the fruits. “Maybe it’s how the Mer eat their food.”
Tessa’s stomach lurched. “There is no way I am putting that in my mouth.” Despite her words, her stomach clenched. Hunger was beginning to gnaw a hole through her middle. She reached for something that looked like an apple. “I’ll do the vegan thing, too.”
Shooting her a look of disapproval, Raisa slapped her hand. “This food is fit only for slaves. They are still dependent on the physical.”
Tessa looked at the Mer through narrow eyes. Had the woman lost her mind? “I’m still dependent on the physical, too. Just like them, I need food to eat.”
Eyes taking on a glassy stare, Raisa’s mouth turned down into a frown of intense disapproval. “You still eat with the mouth?”
Picking up the vibe that she’d done something very wrong, Tessa slowly nodded. “Of course. Don’t you?”
Suppressing a fine shiver, Raisa immediately shook her head. “As food began to grow scarcer we learned how to use the energy of crystals to nourish and energize our bodies.” Again she pressed her hands together in the particular manner resembling the act of prayer. “It is our sole nourishment.”
Tessa inwardly flinched. Just when she thought she was beginning to understand things, they took a turn from curious into downright bizarre. Like Alice going down the rabbit hole, she’d entered an upside-down world. Very little was familiar, and similarities were few and far between. Even the Mer, her own kind, were strangely unfamiliar.
Tessa licked papery dry lips. “Of course . . .” If she didn’t get something to eat soon, she’d faint dead away.
But it wasn’t Raisa who answered. Another newcomer broke in, interrupting.
“I have received word of a visitor from the outside,” an imperious voice spat. “Let me see with my own eyes this otherworld traveler.”
Tessa whirled on her heel. A tall woman, proudly erect, stood behind her. With hair the color of spun white silk and eyes so pale blue as to almost be colorless, her face was so finely molded as to be chiseled. Adding to the impression of her stone-cold beauty was the fact that her skin was pale, almost lifeless in appearance.
Slender and fine-boned, she wasn’t clad in the traditional leather Tessa had become accustomed to seeing the Mers in, but a filmy sort of gown spun of a material as light and flowing as a spider’s webbing. The strange fabric shimmered like frost.
She looked almost too ethereal to be real.
Arta Raisa immediately dropped to one knee. “Behold Queen Magaera.”
The queen flicked an impatient hand toward Arta Raisa. “Leave us,” she commanded. “I wish to speak to our visitors alone.”
Raisa immediately bowed. “Shall I take the guard?”
Queen Magaera shook her head. “Take your huslas and be gone.”
Raisa bowed. “Yes, Majesty.”
Tessa watched Raisa hustle the servants out of the chamber. The door closed behind them. Only the guards—still very much armed and at the ready—remained.
Tessa clasped her hands together as she’d seen Arta Raisa do, and offered a brief bow. Hesitantly, she dared to speak. “Thank you for your welcome. I am most honored, Majesty.”
Queen Magaera immediately frowned and shot her the evil eye. “Cease your groveling,” she snapped. “Your sniveling words mean nothing to me.”
Struck dumb by the blatant rudeness of the insult, Tessa shut up. The woman clearly wasn’t happy.
Magaera drifted closer, gliding effortlessly. The soft folds of her gown whispered around her as she moved. The vague odor of something cold and loamy clung to her skin.
Tessa immediately wrinkled her nose. The smell reminded her of wet stones after a hard snow had begun to melt. It occurred to her most of the Mer carried the scent, though none so strong as Queen Magaera. It was, she realized, the smell of pure crystal energy—the sole sustenance of the Mer.
Queen Magaera studied Tessa intently. “I never thought I would lay eyes on the seventh dynasty again.”
Tessa stood, openmouthed and confused. “Seventh dynasty?”
A look of disdain tightened Magaera’s face. “I speak of your symbiote’s markings. They show you to belong to the Tesch Dynasty.”
A nagging suspicion came to Tessa’s mind. “Would it have anything to do with Queen Nyala?”
Queen Magaera deigned to nod. “She was the last Tesch queen to rule before the obliteration.”
Obliteration
. That didn’t sound promising at all.
Tessa stood motionless, her feet rooted to the floor. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” She felt so stupid. So utterly stupid.
“The Tesch Dynasty was erased from Ishaldi’s historical record because of Nyala’s betrayal of her people.” A small smile tweaked up one corner of the queen’s cruel mouth. “ ’ Twas my own grand dame who ordered the Tesch Dynasty into oblivion. She could not bear to let her people remember a Mer queen betrayed them.”
Her words delivered a hard jolt. Gulping back shock, Tessa’s stomach turned cold. “I don’t know anything about it,” she admitted slowly.
Gazing at her in silence, Queen Magaera gave a fleeting smile that might have passed for amusement. The fine lines around her eyes tightened. “Because of her love for a land-walker, Nyala chose his people over her own.”
Tessa felt the dull thud of her heart against her rib cage. Hearing the queen’s words left her dumbfounded with shock. “I—I don’t understand,” she stammered. “Land-walker?”
Magaera’s lips momentarily thinned with disgust. “Humans.”
“Nyala loved a human?”
“Yes. But it is forbidden in our society. They are the lessers, good for nothing except breeding and servitude. Nyala saw them as equals, those who should walk beside the Mer instead of behind them. During the war she wished to make peace with them, but her council advised her to hold steady.”
A sense of foreboding crawled down Tessa’s spine, chilling her. “So it’s true we were at war?”
Queen Magaera laughed bitterly. “Of course. There was a time when Mer owned the waters of the land-walkers. The price was heavy to cross our waters, but they needed the bounty of the seas to sustain themselves. Soon they turned against us, began to hunt and slaughter our kind. To make peace would have been unacceptable. As our goddess Atargatis intended, the Mer have always been the dominant race.”
Deeply unsettled by the unfolding narrative, Tessa tried to keep her voice steady when she dared to speak again. “But wouldn’t peace have benefited both worlds?”
The ruling monarch stared for a moment, and then snapped, “Why should our people bend when Atargatis gave us the power to rule both land and sea?” She slammed her hand down. “If only the council had acted sooner to assassinate her, the Mer would still be a force to be reckoned with outside Ishaldi.”
Shock coursed through Tessa. Nyala’s own council planned their queen’s death. “That’s barbaric, the act of traitors!” she protested.
Magaera smirked, a strange stretch of her lips. “A Mer queen rules until her last breath. If she is strong, if she rules with an iron hand, she has a long life. If she is weak . . .” She didn’t have to say any more. What she left unsaid was perfectly clear.
Tessa’s mind whizzed back to the hieroglyphs she’d seen in the chamber outside the sea-gate. They seemed to make sense now. The figure depicted must have been Atargatis granting her people her power. The choker, the orb, and the scepter. All of them would grant a Mer queen the power of a living goddess.
Nyala had all in her keep. But instead of using them against humans, she’d turned on her own people.
“Nyala sealed the threshold between the two worlds,” she finished in a half- numbed voice. “And she never intended for this place to be found.”
At last the pieces had all been put into their rightful places. Tessa finally understood the great secret her mother’s people had concealed for so long. Instead of trying to preserve their heritage, they’d been trying to hide it.
Eyes narrowing, Queen Magaera raised her chin. “I can sense by your inner vibrations that you knew nothing of this.” She gave a short laugh. “So the Mer are not the only ones Nyala deceived. Fitting, is it not?”
Tessa shivered as a chill rushed down her spine.
I shouldn’t have meddled
.
Queen Nyala had loved a human. And had done something about it. It must have taken a lot of courage to leave her homeland, knowing she would never again be able to return. The act would brand her as a traitor.
Forever.
Tessa’s shoulders drooped. She felt sick to her stomach. “I don’t think I need to hear any more.”
Magaera’s smile dropped from icy to subzero arctic. “Given the service you have performed, it is a shame I can’t allow any survivors of the Tesch bloodline to continue. But your blood is muddied by inferior breeding.” She sniffed. “Your mother clearly had a taste for the common, just like Nyala.”
Tessa’s hackles rose. “I’m not inferior.” The bitch was starting to piss her off, and in a mighty big way.
Queen Magaera cut her short. “Of course you are.” She laughed. “And the circle of betrayal is now complete. As Nyala turned against her own people, it is only fitting I punish those daughters who survived her.”
Kenneth didn’t like the look on Tessa’s face. Grim didn’t suit her at all. Though he couldn’t understand what was being said, the gist of the conversation definitely wasn’t pleasant.
This is bullshit
.
I’d like to know what the hell is going on
. Clearly the visitor—who, judging from the look of her, could only be Queen Magaera—had Tessa rattled. And that, in his opinion, was a problem.
Breaking away from Jake, who seemed happy enough stuffing his face with fresh fruit, Kenneth tried to join Tessa. He’d taken no more than two steps before a couple of the Mer guards stepped in front of him, blocking his way with the spears they carried.
“I’d get the hell back, man,” Jake warned. “You definitely don’t want one of those sticking out of your gut.”
Kenneth shot his partner a nasty look. “I’m tired of being told to keep my goddamn place.”
Speaking in a sharp tone, one of the Mer gave him a hard jab in the chest. The tip went right through his shirt, breaking the skin beneath. Blood oozed from the cut.
Kenneth winced, pressing a hand against his breastbone. He could imagine the serrated edge of that obsidian point sliding between his ribs and puncturing his heart. “Ouch, be careful with that thing, damn it.” Though the weapons appeared primitive to the modern eye, they were still perfectly good when used for killing.
No reason to test that theory.
He raised his hands. “I just want to join my mistress,” he said, speaking clearly and slowly.
Tessa glanced his way. “Now isn’t a good time. You’re probably going to want to stay as far away from me as possible.”
Finished with his meal, Jake perked up. “What’s going on?”
Tessa pressed her lips together. “They say my great-something-grandmother betrayed her people when she stole the crown jewels of Atargatis and sealed the sea-gate. And that I have to be punished for her crimes against the Mer.”
Kenneth fought to collect his thoughts. “That can’t be right.”
Tessa’s shoulders drooped. “I’m afraid it is. The sea-gate looked like it was sealed from the outside. That’s true enough. We all saw that with our own eyes.”
The strange woman in the diaphanous gown made a motion with her hand. “At least you can accept your Nyala’s betrayal,” she said in perfectly understandable English. “A small credit in your favor.”
Tessa, Jake, and Kenneth looked boggled.
Jake was the first to break the silence. “You understand us?”
Touching the crystal at the base of her neck, the woman nodded. “Your simple language is very easy to understand.”
“Then why haven’t you been speaking it all along?” Kenneth demanded.
An icy stare pinned him down. “It is beneath a queen to speak to inferiors.”
Kenneth returned her stare with one of his own. “I’m not an inferior. And in the twenty-first century we don’t keep slaves, human or otherwise.”
The queen tilted her head, studying Jake and Kenneth closely. “It is my understanding the world outside the threshold has changed in ways we Mer do not yet comprehend.” She spread her hands in a magnanimous gesture. The guards holding him at bay lowered their weapons. “Therefore, it is my intention to personally welcome you to Ishaldi as ambassadors of your people.”
Jake perked up. “Ambassadors? Now that’s a whole different ball game.” He held out his wrists. “Do you think the shackles and collars can come off? They clash with my outfit.”
Kenneth rolled his eyes. Oh, brother.
The queen snapped her fingers. The guards stepped up, quickly removing the accoutrements of bondage. “I hope you find that more to your liking.”