She glanced toward Kenneth. He lay so still and pale. She’d drained him, leaving him as dry and barren as a desert plain.
She crawled toward him. She kissed his cheek, his cold, cold lips. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
Kenneth stirred a little in returning awareness. “Did it work?” His words were slurred, almost indistinct. His head shifted toward the wall she’d tried to break through. Weak as he was, he had to check for himself.
Tessa lowered her head, kissing him on the mouth again. “No,” she murmured softly, cupping his face in both hands. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re together, and we’re going to stay that way.”
He didn’t reply. Exhaustion crept in, dragging him back into unconsciousness.
Attempting to add her body’s heat to his, Tessa pressed herself closer to him. Neither of them could last very long at this rate. She was acutely conscious of the lack of energy in his body. He might possibly survive if they had food, warmth, and time to rest.
Rationally Tessa knew they weren’t going to survive. As it was, they had nothing. The Mer granted the condemned no comfort, not even a single scrap of material to use as a blanket to cover their shivering bodies.
A pang of homesickness filled her. She hated to think she was going to leave this world without seeing her sisters one last time. She missed Gwen and Addison. She missed her island. And her life hadn’t been as boring and worthless as she’d believed.
If she could turn back time, she would’ve refused to see Jake that fateful day he’d arrived with the artifacts. Instead, she’d fallen to that siren’s call, forever beckoning souls to their doom.
It pained her to realize she’d doomed not only herself, but Kenneth, as well. He was a good man. He deserved better.
She closed her eyes, wishing she could take it all back.
Just as she was about to drift off, there was a commotion, sounds outside her cell.
Tessa raised her head. “What the . . . ?”
She had no time to finish the sentence.
A sliver of the obsidian wall slid away. The Mer guard who’d earlier accompanied Jake stepped into the cell.
Tessa climbed painfully to her knees, attempting to shield Kenneth’s inert body. She had an ounce, maybe two, of his energy in reserve. It wasn’t a lot, but it might be enough to blast the bitch to hell.
Fear clutched at her throat. She’d never used her magic to take down another Mer, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Tessa concentrated, gathering the last remnants she possessed. Her vision wavered, jagged flickers of color dancing in front of her eyes. This was it. She was going to give it everything, every last drop she had. If she tried and failed, she probably wouldn’t care what happened next.
She’d be dead.
Trembling with effort, Tessa threw up her hands.
Sensing her intent, the Mer guard reacted instantly. Making a quick gesture, she dropped to her knees. “Do not,” she cried, raising her arms as if to shield her body. “I am here to offer my aid.”
Tessa slowly lowered her hands. “Did you say you were here to help?”
The Mer climbed to her feet. “We all are.” Returning to the threshold, she made a quick gesture. Two more women appeared.
Tessa’s eyes widened. Unlike the guard, who was a beautiful blonde with crystal blue eyes, the newcomers had darkly shaded hair.
The Mer guard stepped up. “I am Cyntheris, and we have come to help.”
Tessa looked at the women in confusion. “I don’t understand. I thought you served Queen Magaera.”
Cyntheris frowned. Her nostrils flared with disdain. “In name I serve her.” She spat. “In spirit I fight for what is right.” Her contempt, though unspoken, resonated.
A Mer with chopped chin-length black hair and deep black eyes stepped up. “My name is Kleio.” She offered a smile. “Like you, I am one of the outcasts, with no right to live.”
“Not all Mer believe that way,” Cyntheris added. “And we are fighting to regain what has been taken from us.”
The third Mer spoke up, the eerily identical twin of Kleio. “We must go, and fast. Too soon our treachery will be discovered.”
Her mouth a grim, set line, Cyntheris agreed. “Kallixeina is right.”
Tessa reluctantly moved aside, revealing the unconscious man. “I can’t leave him.”
Kleio knelt beside him, touching his pale skin. “He has been almost completely drained.”
Tessa felt like a criminal under her gaze. What she’d done was wrong and she knew it. She had no excuse. She should have known better. “I channeled his energy to try to break us out of here,” she finally admitted, pointing to the damage she’d inflicted on the obsidian wall.
Shivering faintly, Cyntheris shook her head. “The stone is strengthened so no one can take it down. You could have drained a thousand humans without success.”
Her words went through Tessa’s heart like a spike. “Then I sacrificed him for nothing.”
Kleio glanced up. “He is weak, but your symbiote didn’t drain everything. As long as he has a pulse he can be restored.” She looked at the other two Mer. “But I can’t do it here. We have to get him out of here.”
Kallixeina stepped up. “I will help carry him.”
Tessa moved to help. “I can, too,” she said.
Cyntheris caught her arm. “You are weak yourself. You will need all your strength to make the journey across the dead lands.”
Tessa gulped. “That doesn’t sound promising.”
Kleio looked at her levelly. “It is the only place where Queen Magaera’s people refuse to go. Their fear is the only thing keeping us alive.”
Tessa made a quick decision. She had no other choice. She’d do whatever it took to save’s Kenneth’s life.
“We’ll go.”
Kenneth lay helpless, his senses muffled by the grip of an intense headache. His pain prompted a groan. He opened his eyes. Confusion buffeted his senses. This place didn’t look familiar at all.
“Where the hell am I?” he mumbled numbly. The words falling from his mouth hardly sounded as if they came from a human being. Lost in the pain, he remembered only pieces. Right now, he only knew he was alone and that he was hurting. Death would have been preferable to the terrible agony crashing through his skull.
He tried to concentrate through his suffering. He heard his heart beating in his head, felt the reverberating thud in his chest.
Drawing in a deep breath, a strange scent caught his attention. Just the faintest hint. He filled his lungs again. The aroma was unmistakable.
Meat. Roasting meat.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him of how hungry he was.
He tried to sit up. Couldn’t. His limbs just wouldn’t obey the commands of his brain. He fell back, weak and spent.
Seeing only shadows and haze, he squinted. Hovering at a doorway, a flickering figure set into motion. It floated a moment, then began to advance, gliding closer until it had settled beside him.
Though everything else around him was blurred, he could see her perfectly. She looked vaguely familiar, but he could not place her. Her long hair was a rich honey shade. A straight nose, fine mouth, and strong jaw completed her face. She didn’t move for several long minutes, fixing her eyes upon him with a wonderfully delighted expression. Her presence lent the chamber an otherworldly spellbinding charm.
Gulping, Kenneth tried to swallow past the lump forming in his throat. His spine stiffened. A hand of fear touched him, held him immobile. A ghost? Nonsense! Clearly he’d gone quite mad. Pain must have driven him over the edge and now he was hallucinating. He closed his eyes tight. But when he opened them, the specter still hovered.
The woman smiled warmly. Up close he could see that her skin was pale, almost translucent.
“Who are you?” he asked, the words fumbling past slack lips.
“I am Doma Atheia.” She reached out, stroking the tips of her fingers lightly across his forehead. His heart skipped a beat. Her touch, though cool, was not unpleasant. Between her parted lips he could hear wisps of breath.
Kenneth trembled as his fuzzy memory produced a few vital pieces. “Tessa,” he started to ask. “Where—” Again, he struggled to get up.
Atheia’s hand moved to his shoulder and she gently urged him back. “She is fine.”
Kenneth sank down, too tired to resist.
“I can help you,” Atheia added. “If you will let me.”
Fist clenched tightly, she lifted her right hand over his chest. Hand hovering, she unwrapped her fingers to reveal what she held—an oval amethyst about the size of a fifty-cent piece. The glow of an unearthly radiance seemed to emanate from its heart, as though it generated its own inner light source.
She smiled again, looking from the stone in her hand to his face. As she did, the crystal rose from her palm, powered by an unseen force.
A flash of intuition reassured him she would do him no harm. “Please . . .”
Placing the hand holding the stone palm down on his chest, she began to chant the words of a melodic spell.
Doma Atheia began to speak softly. “Elements of day, powers of the night, I call upon thee, goddess of light, heal his pain with all thy might.”
As if generating some sort of lightning storm, fiery bolts emanated from the stone.
Closing his eyes to shield them from its glow, Kenneth felt tiny fingers of luminous warmth caress his skin. He could feel tense muscles relax as the warmth slowly advanced through his body.
For a long moment there was silence. He felt as if he were floating on air, his body buoyant, mind untrammeled. He was close to drifting off to sleep when a featherlight stroke across his cheek brought his eyes open. Immediately he could see that the stone with its mysterious healing light had vanished.
“Has your pain gone?” the Mer priestess asked.
Swallowing, his mouth suddenly dry, Kenneth nodded.
“It has,” he affirmed. “How did you . . . ?”
A familiar figure knelt down beside him. “Kenneth? By the goddess, how do you feel?”
Kenneth gingerly propped himself up on one elbow. Rubbing a hand across his face, he did a quick mental check. “I feel pretty damn good, actually. Better than good.”
Tessa smiled, relief etched into her face. “I shouldn’t have taken it out of you to begin with.”
Vaguely aware that he lay on some kind of low pallet, Kenneth looked around. The huge stone-walled chamber was simply furnished, lit by a simple lamp made of a clay pot filled with oil and a wick. Around the room, clay pots of oil with floating wicks brightened and warmed.
He looked at the two women. “Where the hell are we?” The last he remembered was lying on a cold stone floor in the obsidian-walled cell, praying he’d hurry up and die.
“We’re in Thonissi,” Tessa said. “One of the dead cities.”
Sitting up, Kenneth swung his legs over the edge of the low couch. “Dead city? I don’t understand.”
The Mer who’d introduced herself as Atheia answered. “Thonissi was one of the first cities affected by the sickening,” she explained. “It was abandoned a long time ago.”
That answer definitely confused him. That and the fact she was speaking a language he could understand. “How is it I know what you’re saying?”
Atheia laughed and touched her soul-stone. “Our soul-stones allow the Mer to communicate on a psychic level. That way we can speak with each other when we are unable to use our mouths.”
“Like under water,” Tessa put in. “And once we synchronize our soul-stones to the same wavelength, we can share information easily.” She touched the small stone hanging around her neck.
“But you didn’t do anything like that with Magaera, did you?” Kenneth asked, more than a little confused.
Tessa shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”
“Tessa was kind enough to share her knowledge of your language with us, so that we could speak with you without an interpreter,” Atheia explained. “As for Magaera . . .” she said with a shiver. “Our queen knows ways of invading the mind without your consent.” A fine tremor shook her. “To the rest of us, it is forbidden knowledge. But to a sorceress . . .”
Kenneth wasn’t sure whether it made sense. The more he learned about the Mer, the less he understood.
He decided to ask a question that might get an answer he could make some sense out of. “So why are we in a dead place?”
Atheia laughed. “Because slowly but surely life has begun to return. We are learning to overcome the sickening, return life to our lands.”
Tessa’s smile backed up her words. “Come on. You must be hungry. We’ll explain while you eat.”
As if to second her words, Kenneth’s stomach rumbled. He remembered what had first pulled him out of his comatose stupor. The smell of cooking meat. “I’m game. Take me to your food. Please.”
After taking a few minutes to wash up and relieve his bladder, Kenneth followed the women through a series of broad corridors. In the lead, Atheia conducted them into a suite of rooms with wide fireplaces and shuttered windows. In a kitchen-type room, several women worked around a stone hearth, preparing the day’s meal. Unlike the priestess, they weren’t all perfectly blond and blue eyed.
More surprising than the domesticity of the Mer females was the sight of the men who worked beside them. Instead of cringing and cowing, shackled and whipped, these men stood confident. And free. And they weren’t all blonds, either. They looked more like him—big, brawny. Just average men.
Atheia led them to a bench in front of a table. “Please sit. We will bring food.”
Kenneth sat down. Tessa took the space beside him. He leaned toward her. “Are we still in Ishaldi or am I really dead and don’t know it yet?”
She nodded. “This is the way it was before the Mer began culling humans for slavery and breeding.”
“Then these men—?”
“Are their husbands.”
“I thought the Mer took mates only when they were ready to have their daughters.”