She picked her way over the broken planks and rotting wood carefully. All the way to the end of the dock sticking out into the ocean. The surface was eerily still after the storm last night, as if the sea held its breath.
River cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Archer!”
The waves remained silent. She heard no response other than the seagulls overhead. Their cries echoed her yell.
Where was he?
She wrung her hands, holding them tight against her belly and trying her best to remain hopeful. He wouldn’t have left her. Not when he was so afraid for her safety just a few hours ago. She’d almost died. He’d given her everything of himself.
Disappearing didn’t sound like Archer. He was a better man than that.
Or so she thought.
River dashed away the tears spilling down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them once they started. They just kept coming, pouring out of her eyes as though she had become a river.
“Oh, please don’t cry,” a familiar voice murmured. “We all should have known this would happen.”
She rubbed her eyes. Tide’s voice? She knew him. The damned man had forced her to walk to the beach by magic. She wasn’t likely to forget him any time soon. But no head crested the water.
Under the dock? She knelt, held onto the edge, and stared upside down over the wood.
There he was. Floating in the salt water with the ocean up to his chin. His overly large eyes stared back at her.
“What are you doing here?” she sniffed.
The sad expression on his face only made her feel worse. Tide opened his mouth, closed it, and then sighed. Almost as if he didn’t want to tell her what he was doing. Or why he was here and Archer wasn’t.
The water beside him rippled, and another face appeared. This one was almost identical to the faerie she’d met before. But the eyes were a little larger, and her mouth turned down at the sides instead of up.
A sister? She must be. Or perhaps a twin.
This one opened her mouth and the words that came out ripped at River’s soul. “He’s gone, little one.”
“Gone?” she repeated. “What do you mean gone?”
The woman swam closer and reached out of the water with a hand for River to take. “You haven’t touched the ocean today, have you? You don’t know what he felt when he awoke.”
She didn’t want to know, but River reached for the woman’s hand. Their fingertips just grazed, drops of seawater clinging like beads of pearls. But it was enough.
River’s mind filled with screaming. So much pain and anguish it almost made her topple off the dock and into the water. The oil spill had gotten worse. The heavy thrum of sound bursts as humans scoured the ocean floor for more oil and the sea felt as though it were bleeding. Trash choked the animals and River couldn’t breathe either. Her throat closed up and her eyes welled with tears.
Gasping, she shook the water from her hand and scrambled back. Away from the sea. Away from the screams and the pain and the aching hope that someone might save it.
She couldn’t catch her breath through her sobs. The faeries clambered onto the dock and sat at the end. Twin bookends, both alike and yet different as well. One still holding onto hope, the other drowning in her own sorrows.
“Who are you?” River asked, her voice a watery mess.
Tide pressed a hand to his chest and bowed his head. “My name is Tide, as I told you before. I wasn’t lying to you. We both have been sworn to secrecy in our attempts to protect the faerie king. We have been tasked with containing the elemental within him, and unfortunately, we have failed.”
The woman beside him heaved a disappointed sigh. “I am his twin, Ebb. I am also part of this secret society, although I never wanted to be matched with the Water King. He is volatile at best but we had created a sense of safety for him in his home. Until he met you.”
River bit her lip. “And now? Where is he?”
Ebb glanced at her brother before speaking. “I think it’s time we take you home, River.”
“What does that mean?”
Tide reached forward and caught ahold of her hand. He squeezed it in his. “It’s too late.”
“The elemental has overtaken the king,” Ebb added. Her eyes were large and sad. “From what he’s told me about you, I have a feeling you’ll want to spend your last minutes with those you love. Perhaps your father?”
River didn’t know how to process the words. The last few minutes? What did they mean by that?
She swallowed hard. “You mean...” She couldn’t finish the question.
Ebb nodded. “The elemental will end the world as we know it. The faerie kings are meant to keep it locked away. We all did the best we could, but the sea suffers far more than the rest of the elements. Such pain and anguish would drive anyone mad. We have failed, and now we must make our last goodbyes.”
She couldn’t stop crying. Saltwater dripped down her cheeks and onto her tongue. She could taste her own sadness and it mixed with the sea until she couldn’t tell the separation. Only that so much sadness surrounded her.
They’d failed.
The end of the world was here.
“Dad,” she whispered, heart in her throat. She couldn’t die without saying goodbye to him. Or at least letting him know what happened. That she might have stopped it or... something.
Ebb and Tide stood at the same time. They each reached out a hand for her to take. “Come with us, River. We’ll take you home.”
But not to safety. They wouldn’t help her stop Archer. They were so convinced it was the end and if they had known his capability to do this all along, she had to trust them. The faeries knew their own kind. She was just a half-breed who knew nothing.
Swallowing hard, she recognized the numb feeling in her mind as shock. Cognizantly, she knew she couldn’t stop Archer even if she tried. Though it was unlike her to not argue or to fight for something, she also realized this was the end.
She’d done what she could. She had given him her body, her heart, and her soul.
And he still wanted to kill all the humans.
She took their hands, and they pulled her into the sea. River’s vision darkened as the screaming slapped her ears with more force than a gong. She didn’t know how long they swam through the ocean. She didn’t know where they went or what they passed by. River couldn’t even think until she was spit out by a wave and landed hard on the sand.
Her face scraped on a rock, pain bursting in her cheekbone and startling her out of the strange stupor. Crawling out of the waves reach, she spun to catch a parting glimpse of Ebb and Tide.
But the faeries were already gone.
“River?” her father’s voice asked, shocked and concerned. “Honey?”
She looked over her shoulder and saw her father standing on the beach. He held an umbrella over his head. Belatedly, she realized the water hitting her face wasn’t from the ocean. It was raining.
“Daddy?” she whispered. “I messed everything up.”
He rushed to her side, fighting against the sticky, wet sand. Falling to his knees beside her, Dad reached out and stroked his hand over the crown of her head. “What happened? I thought things were going so well? Was it your mother?”
She shook her head. “No, Daddy, it’s worse. It’s so much worse.”
Everything came out then. All the things Tide had told her, how much she loved him and how the world was about to end. There was nothing they could do to stop it, and it was all her fault. She didn’t tell him about her night with Archer, but her father would know. He always did.
When she had finished word vomiting everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, River fell silent. What else could she say? That she had been the one to end the world and no matter what she did, she couldn’t fix the problem?
Her father held the umbrella over the two of them, even though they sat in the wet sand. Drops of water pattered around them, dripping from the spokes on the umbrella. She counte
d twenty drops falling before he shrugged.
“Okay, well there’s only one thing for us to do then,” he said.
“What’s that?” She wondered if it was just hiding in their living room and holding each other. What a sad way to go.
“We’ll go back to the house, gather all the things we need, and then we’ll find him.” Her father punctuated the words with a sharp nod. “Yes, I believe that’s the only option. We must at least try to stop him.”
“Dad?” River couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “We aren’t superheroes. And he... well he kind of is.”
“Superhero or not, he also wanted to be with you. He saw the value in your kindness and in the light of your soul. Everything you told me doesn’t add up to a man who willingly wants to end the world. It speaks of a wounded man who is trying his best.” Dad bit his lip. “I’ve seen it many times before. So let’s get back to the house and see what we need. Jackson has a skiff we can take.”
“Jackson?” Their grumpy neighbor who they never talked to? “Why would he ever let us take anything?”
Dad grinned, and a spark appeared in his eyes she’d never seen before. “I didn’t say we were going to ask to take it, did I?”
Despite everything that was happening and could end at any moment, River grinned back. “I guess if it’s the end of the world, stealing one little boat isn’t that big of a deal.”
Her dad leapt to his feet and held out his hand for her. “Shall we save the world?”
“We’ll damn well try,” she said, taking her father’s hand.
21
Archer couldn’t see through the red in his vision. The anger and rage was too much for any man to bear.
He’d only wanted to go for a morning swim. He’d awoken from sleep to see the most beautiful angel resting on his arm, her cheek cushioned on his wrist. His heart had done this strange flip in his chest. In a good way, he thought. But also a way that made him want to break anyone who dared touch her, hurt her, or even look in her direction.
She was everything, all of a sudden. And he’d known she was dangerous the first moment he looked at her. It wasn’t just his attention on the line, but his very soul.
Archer had slept with many faeries. Sex was a tool they used to enjoy themselves after a night of revelry. He’d tasted the strangest of women in all dimensions when he was younger. Who wouldn’t? Faerie women were exotic in every sense of the term.
In all his memories, however, he’d never fallen head over heels in love with a woman. This half-breed had somehow wormed her way into his heart and that terrified him. He’d end the world for her.
But could he save it for her?
Troubled with his own thoughts, all he’d wanted was to sink beneath the waves for a few moments. Just a couple minutes where he could bargain a few more days from the elemental. Just a few to enjoy the feeling of her skin against his and her heartbeat against his palm. That’s all.
The elemental liked her. He’d been just as invested in their night time adventures as Archer. Together, they could find peace in her arms for longer than a night.
He didn’t think it was too much to ask.
Then, he’d dove off the dock into the water and everything changed. The ocean wasn’t just screaming anymore. She was crying out for help and there was nothing he could do to silence her. He needed to help. His time had run out.
The elemental charged to the forefront of his mind and together, they had raced away from the lighthouse. The elemental didn’t care that River was still in there. It didn’t care they had left her alone in a place she was unfamiliar with.
It wanted revenge now, and it wouldn’t wait. Archer argued even though he was no longer controlling his body. He’d gotten the elemental to agree there would be no bloodshed until they knew what the sea screamed for.
Now, he regretted making the deal.
He crested the surface of the boiling waves and stared at the carnage. The oil spill hadn’t been contained at all.
A dead nymph floated by him. Her hair twisted in the rainbow colors of oil, her blank eyes staring up at the sky. The lovely membranes around her body, like a jellyfish, were slowly dissolving as they were eaten away.
She’d been beautiful once. He remembered her singing in the currents, brushing her hair with a coral comb and dancing with the sea turtles.
“No,” he muttered, his mouth moving despite the elemental’s control. “This isn’t right.”
“This is what the humans have done to our world, Archer. This is what they desire.”
He couldn’t believe they were so heartless. The humans had always tried, at least some of them. He’d seen the efforts to clean the farthest reaches of the ocean. He’d watched the arguments and the activists who wanted nothing more than to save what they had broken.
“No,” he repeated. “We cannot destroy them for this. It’s one mistake.”
The elemental’s voice was a crash of a wave and the rumble of a voice from the deep. “No, it is one mistake and a thousand more. We cannot afford any more restraint.”
Flickering images burst behind his eyes. Archer sank down into the water as the elemental played a hundred images behind his eyes.
A whale was caught in a fishing net. Deep grooves etched into its body from where it had struggled against the ropes but all it had done was tangle itself further. Blood floated in the water, calling out to all the predators who knew the end was coming. The creature would die in pain and alone.
Far in the swirling currents of the north, trash islands had formed. Desperate, horrible creatures attempted to live beneath them. But the trash was too much even for the hardy creatures and choked out all the oxygen in the water. They were dying because the humans had too much plastic and they couldn’t fight the onslaught of garbage.
Another whale screamed along with dolphins as a sound wave blasted through their ears. They cried out because they couldn’t hear anymore. They couldn’t find their loved ones or their children without their ears. So they hoarsely called into the dead of night, praying that someone would hear them, and never knowing their families were calling back.
Oil choked so many animals. Birds tried to fly away, but they were stuck in the eddies. Archer could feel their breath leaving their bodies and thick liquid filling the space left behind.
“So you see?” the elemental whispered. “There is no more time left. Our future is written already Archer.”
Then, he saw it. The future of the ocean if they failed.
He opened his eyes in the deep, dark depths. Blackness surrounded it but it wasn’t the darkness that struck fear into his heart.
No. It was the silence.
Not a single thing whispered in his ears. No songs, no hymns, nothing. Just deafening silence.
The creatures of the ocean were gone. No whales drifted through the waters, no jellyfish lit the darkness, and no song from the sea. His court was gone, the faeries dead, their ghosts the only thing left in this dark, lonely realm.
Nothing but him. The King of the Sea who had let them all die and now was all alone.
He took a deep breath of the clean, saltwater that would eventually heal itself. But the ocean didn’t sing to him anymore. She didn’t speak because how could any mother live after all her children died in her arms?
Tears burned in his eyes. Though he could still feel the soul of the ocean, even she was sad. She knew what had to be done because she had seen this future as well.
It saddened her. She liked the human children who played in her tide pools and explored her depths. But they were killing her and she could only give so much.
“What would you have me do?” he asked, bubbles floating from his lips and disappearing into the darkness.
“Take the throne, Archer. No more arguments or deals. Choose your future.”
No choice suited the future he desired. He wanted to live out his life with River. He wanted to see her smiling at him, one last time.
Her lips curved up at
the ends, but one side was always higher than the other when she grinned. Had he ever told her that? How much he thought it was adorable that her smile was imperfect, just like the rest of her.
River was a flawed seashell but the only one in the entire ocean. He’d never said how she was the rarest of treasures. The only warped seashell in a pile of pearls.
He should have. And he hadn’t. Archer knew in his heart of hearts he hadn’t spoken to her nearly enough.
The elemental sighed in his mind. “Just because you didn’t tell her ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean she doesn’t know.”
“How can you be so sure?” No sound came from his mouth. Just the shapes of the words pressed into darkness.
“I could feel it radiating off her. She loved you too, and she wouldn’t want you to give up the ocean for a single woman.”
River loved him? Yet another regret. He wanted to hear the words from her lips. To see her shape them with that plush cupid’s bow, and what color her blue eyes turned when she admitted it.
He’d give up the entire ocean for those words. But he also knew he’d never forgive himself for it.
“I’ll take the throne,” he said. The words felt as though he’d admitted defeat. “I will not let the ocean die.”
His feet hit the sea floor. Blue magic glowed deep within his chest, spreading through his veins and disappearing into the water. It caught on motes of dust and murk, bouncing on currents until it lit the ocean bed and he finally saw where they were.
A giant carved being had sunk into the soft bottom of the sea. Its bearded face was vaguely familiar, an older version of Mac Lir whom he’d never seen before. Though its body was stuck deep in the seafloor, its hand lifted out of the mire. Stairs stretched up from the giant figure’s elbow, up his forearm and to his wrist where he held the throne of the sea in his palm.
The throne itself was made of blue stone he’d only seen once before in the Atlantean cities long ago. It looked like an open shell, waiting for him to sit upon it. If he accepted his role, there was no turning back.
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