by Starla Night
“Do not wish away my crime. I must atone. I will never give you happiness like Jonah. I am not pure.”
“Neither am I, and trust me, you’ll never replace Jonah. No one will ever replace Jonah. That’s what I realized. It’s why I’m here.” She pressed her palm to her chest. “Stay with me, Balim. We’ll be happy and sad together. That’s okay.”
Her soul glowed with her faith.
“You are happy now,” he accused.
“Because I’m with you. Oh! Look.” She flexed her foot, and her fins unrolled. Her smile glowed, brilliant. “Somehow, as soon as I said ‘We’ll be happy and sad together and that’s okay,’ I felt deep inside I could make my fins. And now I am.”
“You channeled your power.”
They enjoyed the swirl and flash of Bella’s fins. The long trailing beauties were cream-colored and speckled with her freckle-tattoos just like the rest of her. He observed every detail. She was beautiful.
And his.
“It’s impossible to imagine breathing water when you’re in the air,” she mused, “and it’s impossible to imagine being happy when you’re drowning in sadness. But both worlds coexist. You dive back and forth between them. Zoan said it best. I have faith that no matter how sad I become, someday, I will once more be happy. And vice versa. And that’s okay.” She pulled him close. “So long as I’m with you.”
He held her.
She’d found her strength. Her queen power. He’d been wrong to think she wasn’t dedicated to Jonah because of her convictions. She was dedicated to justice and never gave up on Jonah no matter how dark his chances. She would never give up on Balim either. Not even if the rest of the world did.
He’d always known he was beneath Jonah in her heart the same way he’d been beneath his father’s and prince’s memory in Undine. But Bella explained she loved Balim and also her son. He wasn’t beneath anyone. Her love coexisted.
“You have changed.”
“I couldn’t be happy while Jonah was sick,” she confessed. “It was supposed to be my last bargain with God. But really, it was the voice of my deepest fears inside me. My heart is bigger than one emotion. And so is yours.”
His heart clenched.
She was right.
Confessing the truth of his past had lanced his inner wound. Earning her respect drained the infection and allowed healing.
“I may never return to Atlantis,” he remembered, not able to release the last vestiges of his sadness.
“Never say never.” She squinted at the distant mouth of a vast undersea tunnel. “Are we going in there?”
“You cannot. The All-Council stronghold lies on the other side. I must go alone.”
“Nice try.” She shook her head at him. “The warrior who administered the disease is not a fake. He’s connected to the Sons of Hercules. I promised Aya I’d find her answers. You’re not going alone.”
Nora pulled closer now that their serious talk had finished. “A merman, two humans, and a giant octopus walk into a bar…”
“And then what?” Bella asked.
“I’ll tell you once I come up with the rest of the joke.”
“That is no sand bar,” Balim corrected. “It is the Under-Continental Current and is well guarded by warriors. A giant cave guardian will be noticed.”
“He can cause a distraction while we sneak in,” Nora suggested.
“There are too many warriors.”
“Okay, so we’re all the distraction. There’s Troy. Here’s our giant wooden horse.” She gestured behind them at the discordant Octopus Kong. “He can hide us in his tentacles. We pop out once we’re inside.”
“He will never convey us.”
“We don’t know that until we ask.”
“Giant cave guardians are unpredictable and violent.”
“That helps us.”
Bella interrupted. “I asked, and he brought me to you.”
The giant cave guardian ruffled his tentacles, plucked a passing flounder, and crunched it contentedly.
“Such a radical plan has merit,” he conceded. “Healer Dalus’s training hall is distant from the main All-Council stronghold. Fewer warriors will chase after us. We could use the distraction to claim a secret audience with my mentor.”
Bella approached the giant cave guardian with respect and explained their plan. “This could be dangerous.”
He warbled something and curled his tentacles around them, even Balim, gathering them into his underside as the ocean closed into thick walls of rubbery tentacle.
“He says, ‘Not for a giant octopus.’” Nora grinned, squishing against him and Bella as they twined together.
“Do you truly understand his words?” Balim asked.
“No. It’s a feeling.”
“Bella?”
“Same,” Bella said.
“There’s no way this can go wrong,” Nora vibrated nervously.
He held Bella closer. “For the sake of averting an incurable plague, I hope you are right.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The group sat tight while the giant cave guardian flew into the massive underwater hole that comprised the Under-Continental Current.
Balim had been through it several times during his training. Never in the tentacles of a giant cave guardian pressed against his soul mate while praying for their lives.
The current forced them through, and the giant octopus navigated the tunnel, his warble changing from yowl to snarl and back again.
Warriors’ shouts followed them, and Octopus Kong banged about, holding them tighter as he performed rolls and sweeps.
Bella rested her head against Balim’s taut pectorals.
Nora tried to hold herself steady. “It’s like riding in a barrel over Niagara Falls.”
“Let’s hope we stick the landing.”
The longer they continued on and the more aggressive the shouting pursuers sounded, the more Balim was grateful for the giant cave guardian and the queens who had partnered with him.
Any other plan would have been suicide. The exile had clouded his mind. With Bella pressed against him, his mind cleared.
So long as her faith in him was real, someday he could vanquish the darkness in his soul and be the warrior—and healer—she and her ill son needed.
Someday.
“Once we arrive near the healer’s hall, you and I will go out,” Balim told Bella, because he hinged his recovery on her strong, queenly presence. Being without her was nonnegotiable. “Queen Nora, you will remain with Octopus Kong and draw off enemies or stand lookout.”
“Queen?” Nora cocked a brow. “Me? As if that will happen.”
“Did you not drink elixir and transform? Did you not already make your fins? A flower will bloom for you. You are a destined queen of Atlantis.”
Nora’s light swelled. She rubbed her mouth to hide her smile. “You’re the only one not trying to get in my pants, so I almost believe you.”
“You are not wearing pants.”
“Yeah, okay, Doc.” She dropped her hand, revealing her pleased grin, and peered through the tiny gaps Octopus Kong had kept between his tentacles to circulate water for them. “We’re coming up on a cliff.”
“Overlooking a battlefield?” He gripped Bella’s hand. “Octopus Kong must release us and carry on with the distraction.”
The giant cave guardian flung his tentacles wide. They tumbled out. Nora grabbed a sucker. “Whoa! Not me!”
Octopus Kong scooped her up.
She waved as his tentacles closed around her once more. “I’ll catch up with you guys later!”
Her vibrations cut off as his protective tentacle closed around her.
A massive army of elite warriors stormed the giant cave guardian from three directions. They were efficient, well-armed, and coordinated.
And no match.
The giant cave guardian raced over the distant pursuers, driving and scattering their formations. They regrouped and chased after him. It was like watching a human wearing an impenetra
ble suit antagonize swarms of bees. No matter how the bees might think to sting him, Octopus Kong was barely irritated. His appalling song rose in volume. He frolicked over their formations, having a wonderful time.
The All-Council warriors who usually guarded the great stone hall of the healers had disappeared. Trainees raced around disorganized, flying with armfuls of instruments and healing tools, some hurrying toward the giant cave guardian to prepare for healing injured elites and others fleeing from the awesome creature.
Balim and Bella had a short window in which to enter and escape.
He pressed Bella to his chest and dove along the ground, skimming the rock. His fins pumped, rested and ready to move. She belonged pressed against his body. And she did not think he had an irredeemably dark soul.
He flew.
There, the unguarded back entrance led into the great hall of the healers. “Can you make your fins?”
She flexed her stubby feet. “Not on command. I’ll practice.”
“Pretend to be injured.” He coached her to swim side by side with him. When satisfied that they would pass as two male mer, he led her through the cavernous carved stone of the hall.
Unlike most mer cities, which were comprised of organic Life Trees, the All-Council carved their city from immutable stone and cloistered their sacred plant inside a stockade. No warrior could enter its sanctuary.
Those who had seen it said it was disappointing and not worth the mystery. Living in such rocky, harsh conditions, it was spindly and weak, with few resin Sea Opals and never any flowers. The only warriors elected to be elders or representatives had long ago claimed brides and raised young fry. Their reproductive days were behind them. It was the same for All-Council generals and, until recently, the elite military. Any who held power had already met and discarded their sacred bride soul mates. So of course, the Life Tree of the All-Council never put forth any blossoms.
Balim flew across the barren stone.
Most of the guards must have been drawn off by Octopus Kong. Balim snuck along the empty colonnades flashing through the shadows. Other healers hurried to the entrance. None glanced at him or noticed Bella.
His mentor’s voice boomed from his chambers at the end of the hall. “Go forth, my trainees! Rarely does the battle come to the All-Council. Do not let pass this training opportunity. There are warriors to heal!”
Balim reached his mentor’s private chambers, confirmed they were alone, and pulled Bella inside.
The room was as he remembered. Empty of comforts, barren as the rocky halls, but filled with study tools, equipment, and small gardens of curative plants, cages of animals, and piles upon piles of rare healing materials in various states of growth or harvest.
His mentor, Great Healer Dalus, looked up from the weave of one such flat plant. “I told you to—Trainee Balim.” He straightened, noted Bella, and fixed on his former trainee. “I should say, Healer Balim. You are far from the rebel city.”
“I was exiled.” He positioned himself in front of Bella to disguise her appearance. “This is my apprentice. Bella.”
“Bel-la,” he repeated and folded his fingers over his thick abdomen. In the years since Balim had trained with him, the elderly warrior had grown older, wider, and balder. “Not rebel nor Undine.”
“No.”
“You have, of course, come to study Blue Ring.”
Balim’s belly lurched. He knew?
“Yes, yes, of course.” Great Healer Dalus kicked at an easy pace out of his private study and down the empty hall. “This battlefield has seen great interest lately. General Giru has asked endless questions. He has ambitious ideas on how to end the rebellion.”
“Did he share those plans with you?” Bella asked smoothly.
Dalus glanced back. “Only what was necessary to prevent contagion within his warriors.”
Balim’s belly fell further. “Then he was successful in removing a weapon from the cursed field?”
“I will show you. See with your own senses, Balim. Do not become lazy because you hold a title of Healer now.”
Bella vibrated to Balim. “Is the battlefield honestly right outside?”
Healer Dalus answered her. “It is my favorite place to contemplate the limits of knowledge.”
“It seems risky to live right next to an infectious hot zone for an incurable disease.”
“Is it not natural? So many traveled to study the field, it became an established meeting place of healers. A cursed, incurable battlefield is the most natural place.”
They exited to the upper ledge of sheer cliffs.
Below, the battlefield spread out. Like the wrecked boats in Lake Eerie, broken tridents stabbed out of rocks where the bodies, abandoned even by fish, calcified into limestone skeletons.
The shouts of the living echoed along with the noise of Octopus Kong leading a merry chase. Here, the still water contained a deadly message for any who would sit and ponder it.
Dalus heaved himself onto a rock worn smooth on the ledge. He had often rested there to ponder this battlefield during Balim’s apprenticeship. More lines etched his old face, and a deeper sadness mixed with the active curiosity that had safeguarded his permanent place as the highest healer of the mer.
“You still force your trainees to study it for lessons?” Balim asked.
“I ask them to consider what drives a male to continue to fight when his body breaks down around him, when sense should hold him back, when even honor has abandoned his fight.”
His curiosity was legend. If anyone cured the disease, it would be Dalus.
“We’re more interested in how to cure it,” Bella said.
“Yes.” His mentor’s lip quirked. “And, perhaps, how it has spread from Oannes Field to Undine to Atlantis?”
Balim’s stomach rolled. “You knew?”
“Not much passes by my eyes unnoticed, especially if a gifted trainee turns his gaze on my passion project.”
Balim had thought himself so sneaky, stealing away when the others were occupied and studying the field. Fantasizing how the old king would die and no one could stop it just as no one had stopped him from killing Balim’s father.
Dark times were only a thought away.
Bella pressed her hand on his.
Her presence washed away the darkness in a soothing wave of light. He needed to trust and focus. The dark time was past.
“The ingenious method you used to remove the cursed items without contracting the illness is the reason new items can be removed.” Dalus cast his eyes back at Balim, insulted by Balim’s surprise. “I know the interests and occupations of my warriors, Balim. Although I am a healer, I am not a hermit.”
“Why are others items being taken out?” Bella asked. “And where are they going?”
“First, to study. But it is impossible for mer to conduct such research without contracting the illness. So, in the end, we collected them for you to study.”
“Me?” Balim repeated.
“You.” He nodded beyond Balim to Bella. “Humans.”
Balim gripped the pommels of his daggers. “Make any hostile move, and I will forget you are a great healer.”
Dalus narrowed his eyes.
“Well, you got me.” Bella hugged herself. “I guess I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought.”
He laughed. “I am trained to examine warriors for physical illness. It would be a sad day for healers if I did not notice your particular deformities in the chest, hip, and fins.”
She squished her breasts. “Thanks for the tip.”
Balim’s heart thudded as hard as when Dalus had revealed he knew of Balim’s crimes. “You will not summon your guards?”
“They are busy with a giant cave guardian that has arrived at the same moment.” His suppressed smile told them he was no idiot. “To answer, I have no interest in engaging in another war where the two sides would rather die than allow the other to survive. We know how that ends.”
They gazed out on the battlefield. Ghosts had
come and gone. The past battles were long ended, deaths long forgotten, but still caused a powerful effect on the living.
“You should be on our side,” Bella said. “We’ll save your race.”
“You will save nothing if you succumb.”
“Is that why you surfaced and broke into Balim’s hospital? So you could infect Pelan and the other humans?”
“Surface? No. I have too many responsibilities here. But you say Blue Ring infects humans? Do they get the bruising, the blue chains, the suicidal memories?”
“Suicide?” Bella and Balim both repeated the word at the same time.
Balim followed the thread. “The incurable disease kills by suicide?”
“It causes irreparable body decay unhalted by the Life Tree and wracks the warrior’s soul with pain. Most commit suicide before the disease finishes its course, but make no mistake: the disease will finish its course. We have learned that much.”
“What else?” Bella asked.
“What else have you learned?” Dalus pushed back, eager and interested.
“Tell us!”
Balim answered. “Human females and males are both susceptible, but elixir slows the disease or cures it in females.”
Balim shared the information about Roxanne and Mitch.
“At least one modern bride was immersed in the diseased fluid and suffered no effects, while the warrior now circles the last stage of illness.”
“Fascinating.” The healer’s eyes glowed with great interest. “Then, I suppose it will not matter for long. I have lied to you, Balim.”
He clutched his dagger and moved in front of Bella. “How?”
Dalus ignored his movement. “I teach that there were no survivors of this war. That is the lesson of the field and the wish of the All-Council. Not the truth.”
“So there were survivors,” Bella breathed.
“Two,” Dalus confirmed. “They came not from this battlefield. As you know, the last kings carried the disease home in their dying corpses. The citizens, weakened by age and starving from the long war, succumbed also.
“Except in Derketo. A young male remained with his new bride.” He nodded. “They survived.”
Balim frowned. This contradicted everything. “How? Why did they survive?”