I sniffed the air and my nostrils were hit with the scent of rotting fish. It was so bad that my eyes watered and I gagged.
There was a dirty old mattress in the corner of the room, and some blankets strewn across the floor that looked like they hadn’t ever seen the inside of a washing machine. Variously shaped silver and crystal goblets rested upon every available surface, including the floor, some of them tipped onto their sides.
‘Hello,’ I called out, my voice hoarse, as though I’d been screaming for hours.
‘She’s awake—go call him,’ said a voice from another room.
I heard footsteps leading away, and also footsteps heading towards me.
The skinny man’s face popped around the edge of the door, his lips and eyes forming a sneer.
‘He’ll be coming in a few minutes.’
I cringed at the stubbly air-kiss he blew my way, and turned my head and shuddered.
‘Eh, have some respect for your elders,’ he said, before his footsteps trailed away and I was alone again.
I tugged against the ropes but struggled in vain against their grip and ended up getting rope burn on my wrists. My chest was tied also, to the back of the chair, and I buckled beneath the rope in an effort to loosen it.
Just when I thought there was no way out, I spied more crystal goblets on a table beside me and got an idea.
I flexed my feet so that they grazed the ground, and then rocked my body forward, so that the chair moved in an awkward sort of shuffle, inching me across the floor until one of the goblets was in reach.
After several failed attempts, I used my unbound feet to knock the goblet to the ground. It smashed, leaving the stem intact and with a razored tip. I listened out for footsteps but none came. I exhaled slowly. Now all I needed to do was to get it in my hands somehow.
Sweat poured from my temples. Chewing my lip and staring at the stem, so far away on the ground, I realised I didn’t have much going for me in the position I was in, tied up to a chair and waiting for a psycho. I decided that the risk of cracking my head open was small by comparison.
Using the table for leverage, I tipped my chair until it lost balance, squeezed my eyes shut and crashed to the floor.
My shoulders hit the ground before my head, thankfully. Tiny glass particles bit into my skin. I gritted my teeth and wriggled through it to get closer to the jagged stem, propelling myself backwards, spinning on the floor like a dying spider until my fingers wrapped around the jagged piece of crystal.
I almost laughed with relief. This was good. I was 007.
I stopped and listened again, but no-one was coming; so with trembling hands I began hacking at the rope around my wrists with the sharpest part of the glass. I missed at first and ended up slashing it across my wrist. It stung like hell, but I focused on the job at hand and tried again. This time I hit the target and worked the crystal into the rope as deeply as possible. I rubbed hard at it, my fingers aching, when the glass bit right through the rope and cut at its threads.
I moved it back and forth like a saw, until every tiny muscle in my hands and wrists were burning. But it was all worth it: the rope sprung away and freed my hands.
I cried out with relief and broke the rest of the rope away with a swift yank of my arms and then worked my fingers quickly, untying the rope around my chest. The blood from my wrist dripped down my fingers, staining the grey rope with great gobs of crimson. When I wriggled my fingers, I noticed that the sun ring was gone. After all that trouble getting it back, the thugs had taken it.
I sighed and forced myself to focus, moving around the dingy room slowly and with stealth. Gripping my trusty new weapon—the goblet stem—tight in my right hand, I tiptoed to the doorway, but froze when footsteps approached.
I pressed my back flat against the wall.
After a few seconds, someone arrived at the doorway, but they stopped at the entrance. I braced myself, gripping my weapon tight.
A man entered the room and I lunged at him, sticking the sharp end of the goblet stem into his neck. I gasped and released the stem. It jutted out of his skin grotesquely.
The man didn’t utter a sound, though his vivid-green eyes widened in shock. Sylvia was right. Damir was a male version of her.
‘Damir,’ I whispered, stepping back.
He smiled, pulled the crystal out from the base of his throat and handed it back to me, blood flowing freely from the wound.
‘I believe this is yours, Miranda,’ he said in a calm, smooth voice so like Marko’s.
I shook myself out of my trance and pushed at Damir’s chest, grabbing the outstretched instrument and slashing it at his face; but he knocked it from my hand, grabbed me around the waist and lifted me into the air, up high against his chest as if he was carrying his bride over the threshold. He carried me out the doorway and into the next room to show the men gathered there, and they laughed raucously until they each spotted the blood seeping through Damir’s dark-grey shirt. The short, stumpy man stood up.
‘You alright, boss?’ But Damir ignored him and bounced me up and down in his massive arms. I balled my hands into fists and punched his jaw.
He roared like a bear, and a scream tore out of my throat as his face twisted into something monstrous. Before I knew what was happening, he threw me back into the other room, sending me crashing against the table. I thought of Pat, and how easily William had taken her life, and scurried across the room away from Damir, my cut wrist now gushing blood.
‘Have you had enough?’ he screamed.
I reached for another piece of the glass I’d smashed earlier, and rolled to my feet, holding my weapon before me with a trembling hand.
Damir stared at me for a long moment, before he threw his head back and laughed. ‘Okay, then,’ he said, before he rested his weight back on his haunches, adopting a wrestler’s pose. ‘I get it. You’re not going down easy.’
‘No,’ I said, my hand tightening around the glass so that it bit into my skin, drawing more blood.
He shifted closer, arms and legs out like a crab. ‘You know, I didn’t go to all this trouble to fight you, Miranda,’ he said with raised brows. ‘We could be getting to know each other in more pleasurable ways.’
‘Don’t make me vomit,’ I said, my voice slurring, before I stumbled towards him, the glass slipping from my hand and smashing to the ground.
Damir rushed forward to catch me before I, too, reached the ground, and held me tight against his chest.
Patches of red and white dots formed in front of my eyes. I felt so weak it was a struggle to even keep my eyelids open, let alone to fight him.
‘That’s better,’ he said, whispering in my ear, his breath stale and pungent with wine. ‘Life with me will be a lot easier if you don’t fight.’ He laughed, and I cringed and struggled with what energy I had left, but he held me tighter still, cradling me like a child. He pressed his lips to my ear.
‘Have you ever read Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Little Mermaid, Miranda? Have you ever dreamed of something so badly that you were willing to suffer the sensation of a thousand blades cutting into your feet?’
I said nothing, too terrified to speak.
‘Well, have you?’ He shook me roughly in his arms. ‘I just asked you a question, and I want it answered.’
By the time the answer reached my lips Damir had lost patience, seizing me by the hair and delivering a hard slap across my face, jolting me from my woozy state. Despite the reeling pain, it gave me a much needed energy boost.
I drew my leg back as far as it could go before delivering my knee, hard into his groin. He doubled over and released me.
Somebody shouted from the other room, and then I heard a whole lot of footsteps and the sound of scuffling and clashing blades. Help must have arrived. But where was Robbie? And Aiden? Had Damir already dealt with them?
I used the distraction of the noise next door as an opportunity to run, but Damir gripped me by the waist before I could reach the door and h
urled me onto the dirty mattress in the corner. His green eyes nearly bulged from their sockets as he straddled me, pinning me down with the weight of his body. I tried everything I could— head-butting, biting, scratching—but it only seemed to get him more excited.
Suddenly, he shifted his weight off me completely and cried out a filthy swear word. Somebody was gripping him by the shoulders.
‘Marko?’ I whispered in disbelief. Marko stared down at me, his eyes wide and wild before he dragged Damir off me. In a motion quicker than my eyes could follow, he brandished a glinting blade from his boot and waved it at his brother.
Damir lunged up at him. I leapt off the mattress and hovered around them, desperate to help Marko in some way, but they moved so fast they were difficult to follow.
‘Get back, Miranda!’ Marko shouted, and I backed away.
Marko threw Damir against the wall.
‘Get your blade out,’ he spat.
Damir reached down to pull a sharp, wide blade with a fancy golden handle from the inside of his boot. He spun it between his palms.
I looked at Marko, who brandished his own dagger, ready and waiting to attack.
‘Be careful,’ I cried out, but I shouldn’t have said a word, because Marko flicked his eyes my way, and, in that moment, Damir kicked out high and wide, like a martial artist, and sent Marko’s blade flying across the room.
Marko lunged for the knife, but at the same time one of Damir’s men from the other room rushed in and slammed Marko to the ground, his head smacking against the stone floor with a sickening thud. I screamed and rushed forward as Damir threw himself on top of Marko. He raised a heavy fist and was about to bring it smashing down against Marko’s temple, like William had done to Pat, when I kicked my leg out and sent his blow off the mark.
A figure crossed the room like a flash and sent Damir skidding across the floor. It all happened so quickly that it took me a few seconds to realise that it was Robbie.
He was dressed in the same black jeans he had worn with the sharks, and had bleeding scratches across his arms.
Shouts and screams sounded from the other room, amid the ruckus of fighting. My eyes found Marko’s. He had already managed to knock the other guy out cold, and we both looked up to see Robbie lunge at Damir, who was backing up against the wall. The two men fell to the ground in a tumble, and swore at each other as they rolled. Someone’s blade got kicked across the floor and I stiffened when I saw that it was Robbie’s.
Marko leaned against me and pulled himself up to his knees.
‘Get off my brother,’ he shouted to Damir.
Damir, with blood saturating his shirt completely, turned around to face Marko, forgetting about Robbie entirely.
Marko rose to his feet and stepped forward, his blade turning in his hand.
‘I’m your brother,’ Damir said to Marko, poking his thumbs into his own chest. He glared down at Robbie, who was just getting to his feet, and sent a boot right into his chest. I cried out. ‘This piece of shit is not your brother; he’s nobody.’
I ran to help Robbie, but he was already on his feet. We both turned to see Marko pin Damir against the wall, holding him by a fistful of his dark hair and pressing the blade of his knife into his neck.
‘How’s my sister?’ Damir asked pleasantly, before he spluttered and coughed.
‘She hates you; we all hate you,’ Marko’s voice shook with rage. He pulled the knife back for a second, and then sent it soaring straight toward Damir’s neck. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see it.
But when I opened them again, Marko was hunched over on the floor, coughing and dry-retching, and Damir was laughing madly, sliding down against the wall.
‘You’re soft, Marko. You’ve always been soft. Why don’t you just do it, just kill me?’ he said, clutching at his bleeding neck, where I’d wounded him with the crystal stem. He shook his head and looked from me back to Marko. ‘Your bitch has got more balls than you.’
Marko raised his head, dropped his knife and lunged at Damir, punching him square in the face.
Damir cried out, his eyes wide with shock, blood bursting from his nose. At that moment, about eight guards from the castle stormed in, securing the last of Damir’s men. The fight was over. Marko and Robbie were both alive. I was alive.
Behind the guards stumbled Aiden, a dark mass of blood soaking the centre of his shirt.
I stared in shock as he staggered over to collapse beside me, rolling onto his back.
‘Aiden!’
‘I’m so sorry, Miranda,’ he said, tears streaming from his dark eyes to wet his smooth, brown skin. ‘I didn’t mean to snob you off or hurt you.’ He shook his head and slowly raised a shaky arm to wedge his thumb and index finger into the corners of his eyes.
‘They gave me a name, because I’d forgotten mine, but memories and faces started to creep back into my brain after I saw you the first time. I started to remember home. Mum and Dad, my little brothers. It hurt me to remember them and the pain they must have gone through when I…’ He swallowed thickly and shuddered. ‘Then I remembered what happened that night…with you…and I was angry with you for saying that you and Lauren hated me…It ripped me apart…then I stupidly got pissed on beer…Dad said I could never hold my drink—’
Blood continued to pump from his chest. He was getting delirious from the loss. I covered Aiden’s pulsing wound with my hand. His blood was warm and sticky.
‘I could never hate you, Aiden. I’m so sorry I said it,’ I whispered through my tears. ‘You were—no, you are my best friend.’
Warm blood spread through his shirt, the stain expanding beyond my hands.
‘I know, Miranda.’ He reached up and touched a tendril of my hair, his dark eyes turning glassy. I stroked his cheek with my fingers, my tears falling in great drops on his shirt, mingling with his blood.
‘What happened? Who did this to you?’ I asked him.
‘I was working for Damir, as a castle spy. But after I flipped out and nearly killed you I promised myself to come good. I led Marko here, after I found out Damir got you.’
He reached out and touched my hair. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you, Randy. You’re like my sister and I’ll always love you.’ A half smile softened his trembling lips. ‘You don’t mind… if I ask you to kiss Lauren for me, tell her how much she meant to me?’ His eyes lit up at the mention of my sister.
‘No, of course I don’t. But you’ll get to do it yourself, Aiden. Don’t go. I’ll be happy for you and Lauren. I’m not jealous anymore. Please don’t leave me.’ I found his hand and squeezed it, but it had gone limp.
Tears blurred my vision and streamed down my face as I cradled Aiden’s head against my chest and stroked his soft, curly hair. Memories flooded my mind, memories of the beautiful boy who was constantly at our shack; the boy who could drink undiluted cordial and still have great teeth; the boy whose laughter could send rain clouds away. I should never have let my insecurities with Lauren and my stupid crush on Aiden get in the way of our friendship.
I raised my head and caught sight of the guards as they dragged an unconscious Damir away. Pressing my lips against Aiden’s forehead, I gently closed his eyelids.
Marko rushed forward. His head was bleeding. I wanted to touch it, make it better. I tried to get up, but everything around me spun and I collapsed against my dead friend’s chest.
‘She’s hurt,’ I heard somebody say.
My eyes fluttered open briefly. I was eye-level with a bookcase, empty all except for one book.
Frano Tollin’s mermaid book—the one I’d last seen in Sylvia’s room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WHEN I OPENED my eyes, silken clouds and winking pearls greeted me. I was back in my room at the castle and a warm familiar feeling spread through me, as though I was home. But I wasn’t—at least not technically.
The low rumble of Marko and Robbies’ voices filtered through to my ears. Robbie mentioned the words ‘family’, ‘waiting for her’ and then
a long silence before Marko said, with a heavy sigh, ‘We have to send her back.’
I sat up with a jolt and my wrist throbbed in response to my sudden movement. It was wrapped in a thick bandage, and I was now wearing fresh clothes: a pair of jeans and a soft, pale-blue jumper I’d never worn before. While I assessed my wound, I felt the weight of the sun ring back on my ring finger.
‘Miranda,’ Marko called from across the room, and rushed to my side. He saw me staring at the ring.
‘A kind citizen found it in the street and returned it. He said you lost it during the struggle with Damir’s men.’
‘Was it an old man?’
Marko nodded. ‘His name is Blake, if I remember correctly.’
‘He’s a poet who intentionally lives in the Underworld for inspiration,’ said Robbie, shaking his head before coming to stand at the foot of my bed. ‘Sylvia offered him a reward, but he refused to accept.’
The mention of Sylvia brought back what I’d seen at Damir’s before passing out.
‘The book! Frano Tollin’s book was at Damir’s place, and he was talking about Hans Christian Andersen and The Little Mermaid and—’ I gasped. ‘Sylvia must be working for him. She had it in her room last week and now it’s at Damir’s. That can mean only one thing—she must…they must be plotting something…maybe to take your throne, or even kill you, Marko.’
Marko and Robbie shared a glance—a glance reserved for the insane.
‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ Robbie said, offering me a sad smile before leaving.
Marko sat beside me on the bed. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a dried gash on his right temple.
‘Does it hurt?’ I asked, reaching up to touch his face.
He closed his eyes at my touch and I shivered, wanting to press my lips against his.
‘It’s not as bad as your wrist,’ he said, opening his eyes and carefully stroking the back of my hand. His touch sent a rush of warmth through my body. I threaded my fingers through his.
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