“Please… please don’t take her… I need her Ethan… please,” I beg, beginning to see what’s been happening right in front of me. He had believed my visions, but he had waited until his child was out of me to do anything about it.
“I’m sorry,” he utters, moving to leave the room.
“Please… please! I’ll do anything… at least let me see her,” I plead, my eyes streaming and heart hammering. I can feel myself weakening. How can he do this to me? He sighs and tilts the baby wrapped in burlap toward me. Her huge, icy blue eyes stare at me, runny from the shock of entering the world. I love her so much and I’ve never seen her face before this… how can that be? Ethan pulls away and I scream as he takes her out into the rain, into the cold…
“NO! ETHAN YOU CAN’T DO THIS! I NEED HER! SHE’S MY BABY! PLEASE… I’LL DO ANYTHING!!!” I scream until I’m hoarse. The medicine woman covers me over with a blanket. I cry until I have no energy left, weeping over the loss of my daughter. Slowly, under the stormy night sky… my blood trickles off the edge of the table I’m laid on and onto the floor, I bleed, letting out a final, slow and heartbroken breath, with my only thought before death being of the ingrained image of my beautiful Arabella.
I return from the memory, a single tear falling down one check. She would never have known who I was, who her own mother was. I had failed her in the most important way. I only had to be there, but I never was. Ethan had taken that chance from me. I wonder about my Arabella, what she had become. I’d like to think she went on to be happy, but in the world I had grown up in, where having visions left you bleeding to death or in a convent, I wonder how likely that really is. For a moment I let myself fantasise, wonder how it would have felt if I’d ever held her in my arms. Had her tiny eyes looking up at me, her little fingers clutching mine.
I ache, intensely, deeply, letting my head fill with the image of her. The fog rolls in, pushing the image away, instead putting something else in its place… something bad. My eyes snap open. The time for meditation is over. I need to get to Orion and fast. The time for evolution is upon us.
CALLIE
I come back from my trance like state, finding my body not where I had left it. I open my eyes, meeting with those of the two people who had put me in the vents to start with. Alyssa and Solustus.
“Did you get that?” Alyssa turns to Solustus and he smiles slightly. My body is lying sideways and I’m trapped in what appears to be a naturally formed prison cell, with stalactites and stalagmites instead of bars.
Shit, I think to myself.
My head is thudding. Solustus speaks, his eyes gleaming with deadly promise.
“Yes. Blood of someone pure. I got it. Now, I must go ready the army. We will take the city at dusk.” That gets my attention as I find myself upright and acutely tense in mere moments. Alyssa looks at me and laughs before turning to leave with Solustus.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Solustus asks her, her tentacles a bloody rust.
“Going to help you prepare my children for war? Where else?” She sounds annoyed at Solustus’ lack of ability to see her intent. She has her back to me and all I can see of her is a cascade of black hair longer than any I’ve ever seen.
“I need you to stay and watch her. I don’t trust her. Besides, you two have a friend in common…” he dismisses her with a wave of the hand, darting out of the corridor where my cell is situated. I can tell Alyssa is pissed.
“Great, so now I have to babysit the brat!” I hear her protest.
“Hey! I’m right here!” I cross my arms. Pouting. After everything, I’m feeling cocky now that rock separates us.
“Oh, I’m well aware of your existence,” she snarls.
“So what? You’ve heard of me then?” I cock an eyebrow, wanting to make out like I’m not afraid. Maybe she’s heard about me kicking Daryl’s ass, if that’s the case then I had better live up to my reputation.
“Heard of you? You ruined my life!” She bites out, wrapping two tentacles around the rocky teeth that make up the bars of my cell. Suddenly something clicks about the name as her face comes toward me, too close for comfort.
“Alyssa… wait you’re…”
“Your father’s soulmate! Yes, that’s me. The one he left for your harlot of a mother.”
“But I thought you were dead?” I cock my head, confused as to her existence. Saturnus had said she’d killed herself.
“No, it’ll take more than a broken heart and being outcast from the Occulta Mirum by Saturnus to kill me off, dear. As you can see, I’ve made quite the comeback,” she gestures to her surroundings, laughing.
“What happened to you?” I ask, furrowing my brow.
How can this be? How is it that nobody knew she was alive?
“I found my true calling. Much more than anything I could have hoped for up north with your stupid father. You won’t find me sticking with some sap, mooning over his wife and baby daughter, freezing my tailfin off up there.”
“North?” I snag onto the word, finding my eyes widen. She smirks.
“So… I found my children. Young men who would love me forever, who want me, but can’t have me. You see, child, as soon as you give someone your heart, they no longer want you. That’s why your father went for your stupid mother. She was nothing but a taboo. How could she ever mean as much as hundreds of years together?” Alyssa is angry, but beneath her pale, rust coloured façade of clutching, suckered tentacles and eyes that lead to an abyss, I can tell she’s still devastated.
“So you’re responsible for all your… children,” I gulp as I utter the last word, feeling physically nauseous.
I hover, suspended in the tiny volume of water that my prison cell allows.
“Yes. After I saw how your father…” she begins but cuts off… “Why am I telling you any of this? I don’t need to be stuck here. Those are my children out there! Screw this!” She waves a hand, her tentacles sliding back from the rock formations holding me captive. “So long, little girl.” I hear her mumble. What an odd woman, she’s entirely desperate. It’s like she needs to be loved, wanted, so badly that she’d tell her worst enemy a story just to have someone to listen to her. She has a cruel face and I wonder how Vex or any of her other prey had thought her beautiful. I feel pity for her, but then remind myself that she’s frenzied enough to murder young men to be loved. She is dangerous to say the least and she has a personal vendetta against me. Great.
I think back to where she’s going, to help Solustus put together the army that’s going to take apart the city I am supposed to be ruling over. I feel guilt wash over me slightly, sure, now more than ever, after my encounter with the Necrimad that the Psirens are on the wrong side.
If there had been any doubt in my mind, it’s long gone.
I am trapped by the earth with nowhere to go while the people who had taken me in as family are left to be slaughtered. They are strong, but they’re also outnumbered. I wonder about Orion momentarily and my heart constricts. No matter my romantic feelings toward him, I can’t stand the thought of him turning to sand. In fact, it makes me feel very violent. Orion had always said I run away from everything, when things get tough. It’s true, I had fled from the masked ball when I had discovered I was the vessel, I had fled from the site where the demon rose out of the earth the first time I had seen Orion fight. Now I think about it, the only time I hadn’t run was when Titus had bound me to the scythe and sacrificed me… but then death in itself was just another form of escape… wasn’t it?
When I’d sat with Atargatis in my car she’d given me the option to become a Goddess. I’d turned her down, saying I didn’t want the power she had to offer, but perhaps it wasn’t the power I had been afraid of, perhaps it was the responsibility that came with it.
I was scared of responsibility. I was scared of being Queen and I was certainly scared of being somebody’s wife, especially Orion’s, someone who had such high expectations and had set the bar infinitely higher than I could ever hope
to repay with his own perfect ways. I have been looking for an easy alternative to being a mer, being a warrior and a leader, but the only alternative has damaged my trust in my ability to make even the simplest decision.
When I had been a child I had thought being a grown up meant you had all the answers, it’s only now that I realise you can only make the best decisions you can with the information, time, and resources you have. I also realise that I’m not brave enough to deal with the consequences that come from making mistakes, but not docile enough to take instruction or advice from the one person who had my best interest at heart. I had pushed Orion away because I was scared I wasn’t good enough. Vex was right when he had said I couldn’t let him love me, because I couldn’t. How could I when I didn’t even know how to love and trust myself?
I have made a mess of things and one fact, more than any other has become increasingly evident:
I am a coward.
I allow myself to sink to the floor of the cell; the dirt beneath me is mixed in with sand and the bones of dead animals. I let myself lie there, in the dark of the ashen, burned corridor inside the giant vent palace, gathering my courage and trying to quell the voices in the back of my mind that are telling me I can’t save the city. That it’s already too late.
I rise slightly after a few minutes, ready to try dismantling the natural formations that are barring in me in. I know ramming them isn’t the most sensible idea, and that I’ll probably somehow impale myself and die, but this is no time for caution and fear, I have to try. I’m about to begin gathering as much momentum as I can toward the rock teeth, hoping to break clean through, when I see something behind the corner. A tentacle, and a familiar one at that.
“Vex is that you?” I call out.
“Oh bloody hell. Shut up! This is a rescue mission not a bloody news bulletin.”
“Rescue?” I cock my eyebrow as he turns the corner. He’s in a chest piece made of black rock, like a crust, with a helmet of a similar material on his head. All kitted out to go and slaughter everyone I love.
“Yes, you need it, don’t you? Or would you rather stay in the nice cell?” He comes forward, hurrying along the long corridor.
“How are you going to get me out? Did you bring, like, a chainsaw?” I ask him and he shakes his head.
“No… I brought some extra hands though,” he smirks and wraps his two thickest tentacles around a central stalactite.
“You’re going to pull it out? That’s your big plan?!”
“Hey, I abandoned my army and came back for you. Don’t make me regret it. I didn’t exactly have time to think out a detailed plan.” He looks up at me, his head bent from concentrating on forming the best possible grip around the rock.
“You’re right. Sorry,” I apologise, trying not to laugh.
“Don’t mention it… like seriously don’t. I don’t want my irrational desire to not see you killed discovered. It makes me look like a bloody nancy, alright?” He mutters and I laugh slightly.
Not quite prince charming, but he’ll do.
“Your secret is safe with me,” I promise.
“Okay, get back…” he orders, bracing himself with his other tentacles against the floor. He heaves, his face turning red and after a few moments, the rock comes away, disturbing sand in small plumes that disperse in its wake. A normal person could never have mustered the grip to remove it. It seems tentacles have perks. Who knew?
“How did they even get me in here?” I ask him as he places his tentacles around the next tooth along.
“Regus. He has powers to manipulate earth. He must’ve done it.”
“But then how do they get prisoners out? Does he have to release them?” I ask him, his eyes turning dark as he prepares to brace himself against the burnt floor once more. Summoning the darkness to gain maximum strength he replies.
“Most prisoners don’t get out, Love.” I wonder now if the bones at the bottom of my fin are animal. Maybe they’re just people who rotted away in here. I shudder. I’m thinking on this awful thought when I hear a crack as the calcium of the stalagmite falls away. One more and I’m free.
“Save the best til’ last,” Vex mutters.
He’s right; the last stalagmite is huge, thick at the base and looks completely solid. However, if he can’t break it, it’ll all have been for nothing, as I can’t fit through the gap he’s created without its removal.
“What if I try slamming into it from this side?”
“That might do it.” He wraps his black tentacles around the stalagmite at the middle point, this time using his two thickest and one slightly smaller tentacle. I take two strokes backward so my back presses against the end of the cell.
“On three,” I say and he nods, his mouth a thin line of focus.
“One…” I feel my tailfin twitching, the musculature ready to power me forward.
“Two…” Vex follows on, shifting his grip slightly.
“Three!” He pulls back with a grunt and the stalagmite falls away before I even get to it, my momentum carries on, unable to stop in time.
I sail through the now open gap, smashing into Vex’s chest and causing us both to fall to the floor. I’m lying on top of him, panting, blood coursing through me, heating my face and chest, which are now pressed into him.
The sand clears and our eyes meet, black to black.
Then something I don’t expect happens. Vex is putting his hand on my cheek and then he’s kissing me. Holding me to him in a rush of passion that has come from nowhere. His lips push against mine and a heat grows as I feel the energy drain from me. I start to get into it, kissing him back until I feel something heat, really heat between us.
The heat I can’t quite describe, but one minute I’m smooching the tentacles off him and the next I’m being thrown at the wall, hurtling away from him like we’re two magnets of the same polarity. Vex is thrown to the end of the corridor opposite me, the force of the kiss sending him flying through the water too. He looks confused.
“See…” he pants, “This is why I said no kissing.”
ORION
Starlet’s eyes cloud over, turning a brilliant bone white. She’s having a vision and as her mouth contorts in horror, I know it can’t be good.
“Starlet! What do you see?” I thrum my musculature backward, propelling the water away from me and moving toward her. I place my hands on her shoulders gently, shaking her ever so slightly.
“They’re coming… the city… the city is tumbling… cracking. Glass, everywhere,” she’s mumbling but I get the general notion of what she’s saying.
“When? When are they coming? How much time do we have left?” I shake her again, harder this time. Her eyes clear, turning that familial glacial blue, and I watch her lips form the word I most dread in a single, terrible exhalation.
“Now,” she looks like she might lose her tread in the water, tumble backwards.
“We need to summon The Knights of Atargatis! Someone get me Cole, Ghazi… Everyone! Someone find Saturnus!!!” I’m babbling, freaking out, as Callie would say. They’re coming. A swarm of darkness larger than anything we can hold back. We’re out of time. Luckily for us, I suddenly remember, we don’t have to hold them back at all.
“Where the hell is Saturnus!!!” I bark. Nobody is here… I’m suspended in the throne room barking orders and there’s nobody to hear them. I have asked the guards to back off, leaving me with my misery.
How stupid am I? I’m wasting valuable time.
Panic stricken, I speed through the water shoving the double doors of the throne room forward with a blast of air exuding from my outstretched palms.
“Starlet! Come on!” I bark behind me.
I hear her gasp slightly, as though I’d broken a sort of daydream with my abruptness, but I don’t have time to check if she’s okay, I have to make sure everyone else will be first. I move into the column that runs through the centre of the palace, plunging as fast as my tail will allow, pushing through the water with a wilf
ulness I haven’t found for a long time.
Cole is floating, diligent, at the double doors as usual, he sees me and his mouth forms a grim line.
“Cole! The Psiren’s, they’re coming! We need to get everyone ready. Summon the Knights. Ready the weapons!” I bark at him. He nods, looking concerned. He has every right to be. I know we have the glimmer protecting us, but I’m not taking any risks. Not after last time.
“Sir, yes sir. I’ll get Ghazi.”
“Good. I’m going to find Saturnus. Do you know where he is?” I speak quickly, unable to find patience, my heart beating heavily within my chest. I’m a fine example of a ruler. I should be calm, but after the centuries I’ve lived through, the wars I’ve fought, when it comes to laying the responsibility of it all on my shoulders I feel like I’m ready to crumble.
“I think he’s in his study. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed,” Cole muses.
“Well, I don’t think he’ll mind on this occasion,” I mutter.
Starlet catches up to me, touching my back gently. “Come on, we’ve got to find Saturnus,” I remind her.
“What about Azure?” she asks me, the concern for her soulmate evident on her face. I wonder why I haven’t thought about Callie. Maybe she’ll be a part of the army, so far gone as to attack a city she had once loved. Maybe she hadn’t entered my mind because I’m finally grasping that nothing could ever be as important as my role as Crowned Ruler, or maybe I am just too afraid of the consequences of her attacking my city.
“She’ll be okay. Azure can take care of herself. Come, we need to find Saturnus,” I repeat myself, Saturnus’ name a prayer, a magic solution, on my lips.
I know we’ve had our differences, but maybe this was what we need to come together. He had been right when he said we needed him and I had never felt more thankful for his protective walls around his city than today.
The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) Page 26