Oceanborn

by Amalie Howard

  “It was an accident. I went down when she went up.”

  Jenna frowns. “That’s not what Kate said.”

  I squeeze her hand. “Kate was wrong. I’m fine,” I say, and push myself somewhat dazedly to my feet, grabbing Speio’s arm. “Coach, just going to sit out the rest of the half.”

  Coach Fenton nods. “Payton, you’re up,” he shouts to a junior sitting on the bench. “Come on, the rest of you, back on the field. We have a game to finish.”

  Hobbling over to the bench with Speio, I watch the start of the game halfheartedly, my mind racing while Speio goes to get me some water. Within minutes, I see Echlios at the edge of the field, his brow furrowed. Nova and Nell are with him. They would all have felt that I was in some kind of jeopardy.

  “Where’s Lo? Is he safe?” I ask once Echlios reaches my side. Nova and Nell melt into the rest of the kids sitting in the bleachers behind us.

  “Yes.”

  Relief floods through me. “So he’s not hurt?”

  “No,” Echlios says.

  “Did you feel it?” I ask. “What I felt?”

  “Somewhat. It was hazy to all of us. We sensed your fear and pain more than anything. Are you all right?” Echlios asks. I shake my head slowly and he sits next to me. “We need to get you somewhere safe. This is too open, especially since we don’t know what just happened.”

  He has a point. What I felt was foreign and invasive—it wasn’t the touch of something friendly, even if it hadn’t been overtly hostile. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before—nothing—not us, not hybrids, not human. We can’t afford to take any risks. I nod, watching as he walks over to Coach Fenton. They exchange a few words, and Echlios returns just as Jenna jogs over, calling for a time-out.

  “How are you?” she says, eyes narrowing as Nova and Nell appear at my side.

  “Fine. Heading home.” I see her worried look. “Nothing major, I’ll fill you in later. Don’t worry. Just a precaution. Speio’s going to stay here with you, just in case.” Speio shoots me a look but knows better than to argue with Echlios standing right there.

  “Okay.” She doesn’t look convinced but seems reassured by Speio’s presence. “But you better call me.”

  “I will. Promise.”

  In the car, Echlios doesn’t waste any time as he helps me into the passenger seat and climbs in on the other side. Nova and Nell get in the back in eerie silence. Their faces are expressionless, but I can feel their combined worry. Echlios’s thumb brushes over the already fading bruise in the middle of my forehead for a second before he starts the engine.

  “Tell me exactly what you felt and when,” Echlios says. “Every detail. Don’t leave anything out.”

  I explain the sensation to Echlios as best I can recall, watching his frown deepen with every word. “So, do you know what it is?”

  “No,” he admits. “No human can breach your Aquarathi defenses, and if it were an Aquarathi, you’d know it.”

  “That’s what I thought. What about the hybrids?”

  “I doubt there are any hybrids strong enough to do what you’ve just explained, even though you are not able to sense them.” He pauses. “In fact, the only person strong enough to get into your mind is the prince regent.”

  “But you said it wasn’t him.”

  “No. I said he was safe.” Echlios lowers his voice. “My queen, we still do not know what the aftereffects of your...interaction with him could be. He is still not himself.”

  “It isn’t him,” I say. “I would know. I’d recognize him instantly.”

  “The hybrid part of him?” Nova says from the back.

  A shudder ripples along my spine, but I shake my head in resolute confidence. I know Lo as intimately as I know myself. “All of him. If it were him, I’d feel it.”

  I twist to stare at Nova, eyeing him and his sister in turn. Their dark eyes are stony. I can’t blame them for not trusting Lo. My choice of life partner has created unexpected aftershocks within the Aquarathi realm, even among my own guards. They know that Lo’s loyalty is to me and not necessarily to our kind. He’ll always be half human...half of what all Aquarathi mistrust the most. But I chose him and I trust him. That is all they—or any Aquarathi—need to accept.

  “He is your prince,” I say through my teeth. “Bound to us. To me.”

  Nell’s voice is quiet, though she’s ever respectful of my capricious emotions. “And the toxin? What if it’s weakening...your bond?”

  “Enough. He would never hurt me,” I snap, anger racing through me at her choice of words—your bond.

  “As you say,” Nell murmurs, bowing her head.

  The trip to our house takes less than ten minutes, and we drive the rest of it in silence. Echlios seems preoccupied, his fingers like steel clamps on the steering wheel. He is as confused by the turn of events as I am, and that scares me. Echlios knows everything about who we are. Everything. So maybe he’s not far off to assume it’s Lo. Maybe I’m the one who’s being naive by believing that Lo can’t hide things from me. He is a hybrid, after all, and one who has lied to me before.

  But that was before you bonded, a voice argues. He is bound to you now. No other.

  Then again, being bonded hasn’t helped either of us since the negative effects of the biotoxin began. Maybe Nell was right. Since his attack, our bond has become weaker, making Lo forget his Aquarathi side—and me. What if Lo is changing into something else, something that none of us, including me, have anticipated?

  I turn to look at Echlios as we pull into the driveway. “Where is he? The prince regent?”

  “He is with Dr. Aldon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Echlios eyes narrow. “Why?”

  I meet his eyes, and then Nell’s. She nods just once, making the painful admission stick in my throat. Somehow what I’m about to say feels disloyal. It feels like I’m giving up on Lo. On us. But the alternative is too scary to contemplate. It’s my duty to assess any and all threats to the Aquarathi people. The truth is, we don’t know what he is or what he can become, and my feelings for him aren’t going to influence any of that. Nova’s eyes are glittering in anticipation of my command.

  Ruthlessly, I shove the words out with such force that my eyes water. “Go now. Find him.”

  * * *

  Dr. Aldon’s house in Rancho Santa Fe is deserted. So are his boat moorings down in the neighboring marina. After Lo’s earlier transformation, the Sea Queen was sent in for repairs, but she isn’t the only toy in Aldon’s fleet. Her counterpart, an ostentatious yacht aptly named Scylla, is nowhere to be seen. It could be anywhere, but that is hardly a problem for me. Standing on the dock, surrounded by my royal guard, I stretch my glimmer out, feeling it immediately bolstered by the others. Breathless with the sheer force of it, I cast it outward until I sense the vessel—and the ephemeral essence of Lo—floating haphazardly in the middle of the ocean, a hundred nautical miles west of San Nicolas.

  Shielding my emotions from my people, I feel the fear seize my stomach. The yacht is devoid of life, human or otherwise, but I can sense the blood...the metallic shimmer of Aldon’s blood, the visceral sheen of Aquarathi blood. As I release the glimmer with a gasp, my eyes meet Echlios’s, my heart in them.

  His lips tighten into a white line. “Let’s go.”

  We reconvene at my house, a line of swimmers entering the water and transforming into something otherworldly once out of sight of human eyes. We reach the abandoned silver craft in minutes, where the cloying smell of blood is even stronger. Huge great white sharks are circling it, drawn by the floating human bodies—the fractured remains of the crew. Despite my relief at none of them being Lo, I feel a moment of pity for those who have lost their lives. I scatter the sharks with an enraged click.

  I swim closer, and transform into human form
to pull myself up on the slatted wooden rails of the transom.

  “My queen,” Echlios begins in warning.

  “There is no one alive on that boat, Echlios.” I sigh, and wait on the edge. “But go first, if you must.”

  Following Echlios, we step into the spacious cabin. I gasp, clutching my fingers to my lips. There’s no doubt that this was a carefully orchestrated massacre, and one left for us to find. A message of sorts. Wide swaths of crimson spatter the plush gunmetal carpeting. A suit-clad man sits at the far end of the gray sofa as if in repose. But the thin line of red along his ashen throat suggests otherwise.

  Aldon is dead.

  Unlike the rest of the crew, Aldon’s body is carefully intact. The thick scent of blood is noxious. Upon closer inspection, Aldon’s charcoal suit is drenched in his blood. Echlios moves aside the outer lapel, and my stomach free-falls to my feet. Violent clawed gashes stretch from shoulder to navel, the cloth and flesh shredded like crepe paper.

  Echlios’s voice makes me jump out of my skin. “Aldon knew his killer.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, my mouth dry. But if anyone would know, it’s Echlios. He’s a master of forensics.

  “No struggle.” He sniffs at the blood, making my stomach roil. “No distress. It was someone familiar.”

  Did Lo do this?

  Echlios moves over to a spot behind the sofa, kneeling to touch something on the floor. “Arvus is dead.”

  Recognition is slow as a human form with white hair and a lined face comes to mind. His silvery Aquarathi body is more familiar. Arvus, one of the Aquarathi who was on the Sea Queen—one of my guard, obviously tasked with Lo’s protection. Arvus was paired with a blue-scaled, equally seasoned Aquarathi. Kemari, a female. She’d be here, too, unless by some miracle, she escaped with Lo. But hope dies a swift death at Nell’s shout.

  “So is Kemari,” Nell says from the far side of the bow.

  “And the prince?” I say out loud. “Any sign of him?” Lo was definitely on this boat. I can sense a faint memory of him, one that is fading quickly.

  “No, my queen,” Echlios says.

  Nova clears his throat, studying the remnants of Arvus. “They were all murdered by someone familiar. Quick and silent.”

  I wave a hand at the dismembered crew. “And the rest of them? The humans?”

  “Quick, too. But not silent.” Nova gestures to the bodies in the water. “Some tried to escape. They didn’t make it far.” He glances at me. “If the prince regent survived, you will be able to sense him via the bond, unless his human side is blocking you. Maybe you can try to summon him?”

  What Nova is suggesting makes sense, but something is stopping me. A part of me almost doesn’t want to know what happened, whether Lo has indeed lost his mind and killed all these people. “Echlios?”

  “He was here. Perhaps he was taken.” He pauses, and the dullness in his voice makes me shiver. “Perhaps not. Nova’s suggestion is sound. You can try to summon him, but do not get your hopes up, my lady. We cannot be sure of anything.”

  It can’t be Lo, not him. He wouldn’t have done this—he’s not capable of this kind of cold murder. I think of Ehmora, and a violent wave of trembling ricochets through me. How well do I truly know Lo...who he is deep down? He’s Ehmora’s progeny, genetically tied to a stone-cold, brutal killer.

  “Lo’s nothing like her,” I hiss to myself. “You’re wrong.”

  Desperate, I fall to my knees, pushing a glimmer out. I try to sense Lo, a fevered summons bursting out of me, calling to him. I brought my mother to me with a summons once. Via the bond, I should be able to do the same with Lo. But there’s nothing but an echo of emptiness along the connection. In despair, I push so hard that a slow trickle of blood leaks from my nose as I reach out into the endless void. But I can’t feel him. I drive deeper into the void, frantic, until my skin feels like it’s separating from the flesh beneath it. My brain is buzzing, its edges blurry, and still, I push myself deeper into the beckoning darkness.

  “Leave us,” a foggy voice says, the sharp command drawing me beyond the reach of oblivion. Dimly aware of movement around me, I sway dizzily and fall into strong arms.

  “Nerissa, enough,” Echlios whispers gently, pulling my shoulders back against his body. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I want the boat swept,” I scream to the guard standing just outside the glass cabin door. “Every inch of it.”

  “They have already looked, my lady.”

  “Then look again.” There’s no way I can equate not being able to reach Lo with a betrayal this ugly. There has to be something, something that we’ve missed. “He didn’t do this, Echlios. Every drop of water inside me knows it. Please, just check again. We have to be sure. I have to be sure.”

  “As you say.” Echlios studies my face for a long moment before pulsing my wishes to the guard. We wait in silence—in weightless hope—until there’s a shout from the bow. Water rises like a surging tide from deep within.

  “My queen, come quickly.”

  As I follow Echlios in breathless anticipation, my fear is palpable. Images of the time Ehmora sent me a piece of my mother in a box flash across my mind. I force myself to go to where Nell is crouched beside a shimmering drop of something smudged on one of the upper railings, near where she found Kemari’s remains. It’s so tiny that it’s no wonder it was missed the first time around.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Aquarathi blood?” Please don’t be Lo’s, I think to myself. Please don’t be his blood.

  Nell’s eyes are wide. “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  Echlios crouches down beside her, his nostrils flaring and brow furrowing. “It’s not from one of ours. It’s not the prince’s.”

  Relief floods me, making my knees almost buckle. “Hybrid?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Kemari must have got in a strike before it killed her,” Nell says quietly. “A rogue exile, perhaps?”

  Rogues are unpredictable, but still bound to me even though they’ve been banished from their courts and from Waterfell. Echlios wouldn’t be able to recognize an exile. Neither would Nell, or any of the others. But I could. With a breath, I sink to the deck. “Let me.”

  I swipe the oily substance onto my human fingertip, rubbing it back and forth between forefinger and thumb so that the remaining essence breaks up into pungent molecules. A few minutes more, and it would have been too late. The drop would have dried up from the sun and disappeared. This tiny, near-evaporated smear is all we have to go on.

  Electric green-and-yellow lights shimmer along my arms as I call forth my Aquarathi form. A shimmer of movement gleams across my face, replacing human skin with golden scales, as my crown of bones and luminescent fronds tears through my forehead. My jaw locks and elongates, rows of razor-sharp teeth protruding from wide greenish-yellow lips. The half transformation is gruesome, but I need all of my Aquarathi senses. I slip my human finger into my mouth, mindful of my fangs, letting the remnant of blood dissipate on my alien tongue.

  A cold, familiar rush of sensation hits me like a tidal wave—the very same one I felt earlier on the hockey field: alien and unyielding. No rogue, after all. Something different. Dangerous. Steeling myself against the immediate panic, I try to separate the indistinct fragments of thoughts and images blooming in lightning-quick succession—female, no court, no allegiance, royal, Lo, hybrids—before I collapse into a heap and revert to full human form.

  “My queen!” Echlios shouts. I clutch his arms so hard that he winces. “What did you see? Was it one of the hybrids?”

  I nod. “They’re strong, Echlios. They’ve been watching us—me. That feeling earlier? It was the same.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the prince? Is he with them
?”

  I wrench away, a guttural sob bursting out of me. Nothing I’d seen suggested it wasn’t Lo who had betrayed us, but I can’t let myself believe that. “It wasn’t Lo, Echlios. I know it. He has no reason to hurt Aldon, or any of them. And there has to be a reason I couldn’t even sense him before. Maybe he’s hurt, or they’re holding him prisoner. Maybe it’s Cano,” I blubber wildly, turning to face him. I can hear the shattered desperation in my own voice. Echlios’s face is tortured. “Or my mother. They’ve taken him to keep him from me. To keep us from finding out what he’s been hiding, because they know we’re getting close. We were getting close, weren’t we? Oh my God, Echlios, what if he did do this? What then?” The single sob explodes into a horrific cacophony of sound—heart-wrenching cries of pain erupting from my mouth as I slump backward. “What if he’s with them?” I say in a half-broken whisper. “Like Castia said.”

  “We will find him, my queen. And then you will decide what needs to be done.”

  “How?”

  “We will renew our efforts.”

  But Echlios’s words offer little comfort. We haven’t been able to find anything on Cano or my mother. And now Lo has disappeared without a trace, presumably to wherever they are with a powerful hybrid that owes me no allegiance. I have no idea whether Lo is still with me or not. All I know is that I have to find him before other people get hurt. The biotoxin may have weakened our bond, but the Lo I know and love wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me like this. He wouldn’t have left me like this. Not willingly. Despite the mistrust and fears of my guard, I have to believe that. I have to hold on to that with my last remaining shred of hope.

  Lo loved me. He loves me.

  Not just the Aquarathi side of him, but also his human side. He’ll remember who I am. He has to. When he changed into Aquarathi form, he told Jenna that he had come back to his human side by thinking of me. That has to mean something. Pushing to my feet, I inhale a harsh breath and reopen the connection into the infinite abyss between us, putting everything I’ve ever felt for Lo into the summons. I release the message into the fabric of time and space with nothing but frail human hope anchoring it back to me.