by Jade Kerrion
The Nereid’s body jerked sharply, and a sharp pain pierced Ashe’s heart. Water swirled into a fury, surrounding her, crushing her and Galene together. Something surged through her. She stared into Galene’s blue eyes as life faded from them. The Nereid’s body dissolved into sea foam, the white wisps blending into the ocean as the water beaded on Ashe’s skin.
No—Ashe frowned—they only appeared to bead on her skin. Visually, the water was no different, but she sensed it now, differently, every molecule alive against her skin, dancing at her fingertips. The blood from the wound the trident had inflicted over her heart faded beneath her skin, leaving only three vertical wavy lines crisscrossing three horizontal wavy lines.
Galene had sacrificed her life to unite the elemental powers of the Daughters of Air and the Daughters of Poseidon—in Ashe.
Zamir stared at his mother, his eyes searching her face as if trying to understand what had happened. Then, his gaze fixed on something behind Ashe. Rage mottled his skin. “You!” He lunged past her, his arms extended, his hands tensed into claws. His royal guard raced alongside their king.
Ashe twisted around. Varun hovered in the water, a Beltiamatu breathing mask on his face.
He could only have found it at Oceans Court—before the Dirga Tiamatu blasted the royal palace and the entire city of Shulim into mythology.
Somehow, Varun had reached the Oceans Court and reprogrammed the Dirga Tiamatu. Then he had returned to find her. The mask allowed Varun to breathe underwater, but he did not possess the swift agility of the Beltiamatu in the water. He was still no match for Zamir and his guards.
But Ashe was no longer trapped in her physical form. She shifted into a maelstrom. Air spun water into a weapon. Zamir’s guards hurled their weapons into the heart of the storm, but the maelstrom flung the platinum spears away like twigs of wood in a hurricane.
One guard stared in stricken defiance as the maelstrom swept down on him. He screamed once before water, sharpened by air until its soft edges were as honed as blades, shredded him. The other warriors darted away, fleeing from the water tornado.
But not Zamir.
The mer-king and Varun wrestled in the water. Zamir was the stronger warrior, but Varun grabbed the trident with his left hand and jammed his other hand against Zamir’s side.
The mer-king roared, throwing his head back in pain. He flailed, and his massive, powerful tail knocked Varun back. Varun’s sonic gun fell from his right hand. Zamir lunged toward Varun, more enraged than injured. He ripped the oxygen mask from Varun’s face. His hand, talons glittering, closed around Varun’s throat.
Ashe abandoned the fury of the maelstrom. Air slithered between Zamir and Varun and reshaped into the astral form of a mermaid who glowed translucent with the light of the universe.
She stood between them—between her son, who craved a soul, and the man whose soul would have been good enough, even perfect, for Zamir.
Except that Varun’s soul was his own, and would always be his own.
“It is over, Zamir.” The air vibrated water molecules; the elements spoke for her. “There are no more battles to be fought here. No more oceans to corrupt.”
“It will never be over between us,” Zamir snarled. “You betrayed your birthright as heir of the Beltiamatu. You abandoned your calling as my mother. Do you expect the ocean and me to live with your selfish, terrible choices, without protest, without an opinion?”
“Not without protest, nor without an opinion, but you can have both without destroying the oceans and the Earth in revenge.”
“I can never have either without denying you your choice!” He yanked a spear from his guard’s hand and stabbed it through Ashe’s astral form. It passed right through her. Its honed tip raced toward Varun’s heart, but stopped at the edge of his skin.
Zamir’s muscles tightened, veins cording, but the spear could go no farther. Water and air exerted a force powerful enough to precisely balance Zamir’s strength.
Ashe lifted her chin. “You are right. I betrayed my birthright when I left the Oceans Court in search of your soul. I now reclaim it.” Her eyes met Zamir’s. “And your throne.”
She raised her arms. The spear embedded in her astral form quivered, then shattered. The pieces of platinum drifted away from her reformed body.
Not her human body.
Ashe once again wore the body of her birth.
The scales on her long tail glittered silver and gold in the sunlight piercing the waves. Her sapphire and emerald-hued hair spread in the ocean currents like a cloak in a breeze.
The sight incensed Zamir. He raised his trident. The waves rolled in at his command and carried him to the surface. His glare fixed on Ashe who, like him, rose to ride upon the white caps of the waves.
“You will never rule the ocean!” He flung his arm forward, sending the tidal wave crashing toward Ashe and Kalymnos. The wave reared, surging into gigantic proportions. The unstoppable wall of water would wipe everything off the island.
“I am air, and I am water.” Ashe held her hand, palm up, in front of her, and slowly raised it. The water beneath her rose like a column, lifting her high into the sky. The air above her swirled into a narrow point, then pierced the sea. Air and water melded into a giant water tornado. It twisted above the ocean and turned toward the tsunami, gathering strength as it moved.
The tsunami and the water tornado collided in a massive spray of water that obliterated all vision for several moments and drenched the area in heavy rainfall.
The tidal wave collapsed, flattened back into the sea. Zamir stared in shock as the water tornado spun furiously toward him. “That’s impossible! You will never be stronger than me.”
Ashe met his eyes. “I already am. I always was.”
She leaped off her column of air and dove into the heart of the water tornado. It reshaped around her, a legion following its commander. Almost faster than the eye could follow, she appeared in front of Zamir. Her hands closed around his trident. “I claim lordship over the Beltiamatu.”
Her words were uttered coldly, but her heart shattered at the devastation in Zamir’s eyes.
The water tornado coiled around her. With a seemingly indifferent flick of its powerful tail, it flung Zamir away. Ashe traced his arc through the sky and watched as he tumbled into the ocean.
He did not rise again to challenge her.
Her throat tightened against the pain she could not utter, against the emotional anguish that cut a thousand wounds in her heart. Ashe dismissed the water tornado with a wave of her hand. It dissipated like a sulking pet told to return to its crate, its energy winding down, releasing the water it had snatched up. Ashe stared at the trident, then at Varun as he swam up to her.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Willpower alone steadied her voice, as melodic as the song of the whales. “That I now rule the Beltiamatu—whatever is left of them.” She glanced in the direction of Shulim. “And there is nothing left.”
Varun nodded slowly. “Do you command water? Are you a water elemental now?”
“Perhaps.” Her frown concealed her confusion and her ache over Galene’s sacrifice. The Nereid had poured her innate power into Ashe at the moment of her death. More than anyone else, Galene had paid the price of saving the ocean. “I finally understand what Medea meant about embracing my past and my present. Air and water had to unite to defeat Zamir.” She sighed. “And fire…In the end, nothing was more powerful than fire. It was the only way to destroy the infected Beltiamatu without shedding their blood.”
“Most of them,” Varun said. “But not all. They’re still out there, and until we figure out how their blood was poisoned in the first place, we’ll never be able to undo the damage they’ve done to the ocean.”
“But Shulim and the Oceans Court are gone. Forever.”
Varun released his breath in a shuddering sigh. “Kai redirected the Dirga Tiamatu. He destroyed Shulim instead of Kalymnos.”
Ashe’s eyes widened.
“Kai?”
He nodded. “I fought my way to the Oceans Court, but ran out of oxygen. Kai revived me with the breathing mask, then reprogrammed the Dirga Tiamatu. We fled in an escape pod.”
Her heartbeat quickened. A breeze swirled around her, streaming through her hair. “Where is Kai now?”
“Still in the pod. We landed on Kalymnos, about a half mile from the beach. It would have taken too long to get him back to the water. He told me to leave him, and find you.”
A brisk wind swept in, lifting Ashe and Varun above the waves. “Take me to him.”
The escape pod was empty. The flattened grass suggested Kai had dragged himself toward the sea, but they found no evidence that he had ever reached the water.
Ashe, once again in her human form, trod lightly over the grass. She wore Varun’s shirt, which skimmed the middle of her thighs. Frowning, she squinted against the glare of sunlight skittering over the waves. If Zamir finds him, it will not go well for Kai.
“Then we should find him first.” Varun followed Ashe’s gaze out over the Levantine Sea. “It’s not over, is it?”
The flutter of wings drew their attention. Ashe glanced up and smiled as Jinn landed on her shoulder. The parrot squawked then continued speaking on Ashe’s behalf, “No, it’s far from over. The corruption of the oceans continues to spread. The dead zones will not heal themselves until we uncover the cause.”
“And Zamir wasn’t the cause?”
Ashe shook her head. “The Beltiamatu have no access to souls, but Zamir was obviously in contact with someone who did.”
“Did you find anything in the archives you read?”
“Elusive hints to ancient gods. I’ll need more to go on.”
Varun winced. “Except that the archives are gone.”
“Not entirely.”
“Are there other mer-cities?”
“There are clusters of rural merfolk communities, but nothing like Shulim.”
“But there are other archives.”
She nodded. “There was one other archive. In Atlantis.”
“But wasn’t Atlantis blown up…just like Shulim?”
She nodded. “Atlantis was on an island. The molten rock had to travel through a greater expanse of the ocean before hitting the island, so it hit it with less force. If any archive survived, it would have been the one on Atlantis.”
A muscle in Varun’s cheek twitched. “Then that’s where we’re going next.”
“We?” She arched her eyebrows and glanced at him.
He waved his hand over the ocean. “The Earth is ours, which makes it our problem. Human problems demand human solutions.” He grinned at her. “At least partly.”
“I am—” Ashe stumbled over the words. “—grateful for your help, Varun. I would not have defeated Zamir without you.”
“You probably would have eventually.” Varun shrugged. “Just whisk up several more maelstroms and water tornados.” The smile faded from his face. “You were going to kill me and take my soul for Zamir.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. I thought about it. Ashe spoke, her mind to his. No translator. No Jinn. In that moment, naked honestly was more important.
“Why didn’t you?”
Ashe did not answer him. Varun studied her, a slim young woman, wearing only his shirt, staring out at the ocean with bleak eyes.
Did she know how alone she seemed? How vulnerable she appeared?
Even to him.
Even though he knew she commanded the air with a whim and a wish.
Even though she held a trident that symbolized her rule over the ocean.
When he looked at her, he saw just Ashe. Captain of the Veritas.
He did not see three hundred years of regret and loss.
He supposed it was because she was stronger than anyone had ever given her credit for, than even she had given herself credit for.
Varun squatted and ran his hand over the flattened grass. His fingers brushed against something flat and smooth. He picked up a glittering black scale and held it up to the light. Kai’s. It looked just like the scale Ashe wore around her neck as a pendant. “How much farther do we have to go?” he asked quietly.
“As far as I have to…to undo all the wrong I have done.”
Varun corrected her. “The wrong we have done.” He rose and met Ashe’s quizzical gaze. “If my great-grandfather, several generations removed, had been less of an ass, you might have taken his soul, and we would not have this problem.”
Ashe laughed, the sound wistful. “Perhaps, but then you would not be here either, Varun Zale, and that would have been a loss.”
For the world.
Her astral voice faded, and Varun wondered if he had only imagined the trailing end of her whispered sentence. And perhaps for me.
Chapter 28
Deep within the ocean’s midnight zones, sunlight was an ancient myth. Fish and eels glowing with internal luminescence skirted around a red glow emanating from a narrow-mouthed cavern. Zamir gestured to his remaining guards, the few who remained loyal to him, and they clustered around the cavern entrance, their watchful and anxious gazes seeking out threats.
For whatever good it did.
The greatest threat, as Zamir well knew, was within the cavern.
He entered alone, for she did not entertain visitors with pleasure. The shifting water currents announced him, even though it was unnecessary. A goddess required no such warning.
The deep crimson radiance within the crater made her formless presence known. Her melodic voice rose upon the heat waves emanating from the broken surface. “The most ancient of Earth’s civilization, tens of millennia old—the masters of the most advanced technology on this planet—extinguished in an instant on the whim of an air sylph.” Her sing-song lilt mocked him. “Your mother.”
Zamir curled his hands into fists, but not even the pain of his talons digging into the palms of his hands distracted him from the numbing loss of everything.
His people.
His city.
His empire.
His soul.
“It is not all lost,” she murmured. “Your soul is yet to be earned, and it can still be yours.”
“But the Beltiamatu—the ones who were to establish your dominion upon the ocean—they’re all gone, perished in the hell fire that consumed Shulim.”
“They’ve established a foothold for me. My dominion of the ocean and of the land will continue unabated, but she must pay for her insolence and her interference. Are you willing, Zamir? Defeat Asherah, Daughter of Air and Lady of the Ocean, and you will win your soul.”
He bowed low. Water trembled around him. “You swear it, my lady?”
“Nothing will please me more than to gift your soul to you—in exchange for Asherah’s life.”
Zamir’s voice, harsh with pain, broken by anguish, grated upon the current. “I will defeat Asherah.”
The heated water bubbled with her response. “You have allies, more than you know. Use them well.”
At Varun’s home on Kalymnos, Ondine Laurent gazed out of a window. Her attention fixed on Varun and Ashe standing side-by-side on the cliff. The marine biologist and the captain of the Veritas gazed out upon the ocean as distant waters spewed ash, molten rock, and poisonous fumes, burying all traces of Shulim, the ancient mer-capital.
Ashe and Varun did not touch. Their shoulders did not even brush. Yet unity of purpose bound them. The energy they jointly created was palpable and powerful.
But it would still not be enough to defeat her.
Despite Zamir’s defeat and the loss of the Beltiamatu to that audacious air sylph, all was well.
For an instant, Ondine’s eyes gleamed bright gold. With a faint smile on her lips, she too gazed out over the ocean and watched as the Oceans Court, like Atlantis and Krakatoa, conceded to the unchallenged power of the Dirga Tiamatu, and vanished forever beneath the eternal waves.
THE END
Journey with Ashe and Varun to Atlantis in CURSED B
LADE … or dive straight into the COMPLETE SERIES!
A cursed dagger. A desperate king. His quest will damn his kingdom, and the entire Earth.
The mer-king has bargained with demons, trading the death of the oceans for his soul. As the seas churn with disease, the marine biologist Varun Zale and the mermaid Ashe battle the mer-king's army across the black tides to the ancient stronghold of Atlantis.
They cannot hold back the mer-king forever, but there might be another way to end his rampage before the demonic bargain is fulfilled. When Ashe's cursed dagger claims a life, it can gift the soul to the king, and the way Ashe looks at Varun makes him wonder if she has identified him as the perfect target.
When the dagger finally strikes, it will rip the shroud of deception. For the mer-king, three centuries is a long time to live with hate, but it's even longer to believe a lie…
Keep reading for an excerpt from CURSED BLADE … or dive straight into the COMPLETE SERIES!
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Author’s Note
January 27, 2019
Dear readers and friends,
* * *
CURSED TIDES began with a picture.
I am a cover addict and have been known to buy pre-made book covers on a whim, trusting the rest to inspiration. (Which usually works, but rarely merges flawlessly into my already packed writing and publishing schedule…)
One of the pictures I bought was of a woman, floating on the surface of the water. The vertical layout of the elements, however, made the woman seem as if she were transitioning from water to air.
I spent a day mulling over the cover, and then asked myself the fateful question…