Saved by the Sea Lord (Lords of Atlantis Book 9)
Page 18
Still, his mind cleared and his heart calmed. He reviewed their alternatives more intently.
“A faster current has opened in this direction.” He pointed up the coast of Africa and Europe. “We are taking the weaker crosscurrents to reach the cities in order.”
“Oh. Well, can we cut across the ocean and take the faster current?”
But there was no faster route from their current location—close to this Canadian shore—over to the bulge of the land humans called Africa. “We must go back.”
They floated in the current.
“That’s too bad. We’ll have to sneak past the All-Council. Or…” Her eyes suddenly widened. She pressed her palm to her forehead. “Oh my God. I’m an idiot. It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to think of this. Of course there’s a way to sneak past the All-Council! Oh, wow. Oh my God. Please don’t fire me. And it will be like a million times faster if it works.”
He did not see it.
“How close are we to land right now?” she asked.
“In surface time? A few days.”
“Okay, we have to go to the nearest inhabited point. Go back to the echo point and announce we’re going to Djullanar.”
Djullanar! “No traveler on the All-Cities Gyre has ever cut from Newas and Oria to Djullanar.”
“Because no other traveler partnered with a human.”
“A land route is impossible.”
She patted his chest. “We’re not going to walk, Lotar. We’re going to fly.”
Announcing his destination in the echo point was an act of faith. Then he led her to the surface and followed the coast until they came upon humans fishing from a small dock.
The humans gaped at them clambering out of the water to stand in the snow, nude, Hazel choking up seawater and him with all his weapons. After a short time, more humans arrived with a female elder in a woven, feather-covered blanket.
Once the elder realized they didn’t speak the Newas tongue, she repeated one word over and over.
“It sounds like she’s saying ‘iliat,’” Hazel told Lotar.
The elder nodded intently. “Iliat!” She produced a large white pearl. No, a mating gemstone.
Oh.
“She was a sacred bride,” Lotar told Hazel.
“Wow! What are the odds? So you know what she’s saying?”
“I am not from Newas, so I do not know.”
The sacred bride interspersed “Iliat” with a string of otherwise unintelligible words. She gestured at the sea as though asking why they had come at this strange time.
“Wait, are you saying that you were the sacred bride of Elder Iliat?” Hazel asked. “Does that mean your son is Tial?”
“Iliat, Tial,” the sacred bride said happily and gestured at her womb.
“No way! That’s so crazy. Seriously, what are the odds?”
“Fairly good.” Lotar had taken the strongest current from Newas to the surface, and another strong current along the coast. If any sacred brides remained, they would also be near to the place of strongest resonance, the sea. “And there may be more nearby.”
“Lotar knows Tial,” Hazel told the sacred bride. “He’s from Atlantis. You’re invited to our party. Tial will be so excited if you come.”
The sacred bride smiled vacantly, clearly having no idea what Hazel was saying.
Hazel put her thumb to her ear. “Is there anywhere around here where we can make an international phone call?”
The sacred bride turned to her human family, and the humans conferenced among themselves. The sacred bride waved goodbye and ambled to the end of the dock, staring out into the misty evening. Her family put Hazel and Lotar into the hard metal bed of a grimy car that Hazel called a pickup truck and had them get out, onto the snow, at a square humming dwelling surrounded by a wire net.
The driver howled to the sky. Lights blinked on inside the dwelling. The driver zoomed away quickly as though afraid.
But the humans who exited the dwelling and crossed to the wire net were even more shocked at their appearance than the sacred bride’s family.
Hazel held her hand to her ear again. “Hey! By any chance do you have a cell phone I could borrow to make an international call?”
One male staggered, and the other nearly fell over backward.
A third one shouted from the doorway of the dwelling, “Americans?”
“Just me.” Hazel waved.
“Crazy Americans!”
“Fair enough.” Hazel hugged her chest and covered her lower area. “I mean, we’re naked in the snow, and I’m not even cold. That’s pretty crazy when you think about it.”
The other two opened the wire net, rolling it on wheels, to let them in. They gave her and Lotar brown blankets and found the phone for Hazel.
“I knew I should have brought my passport,” Hazel murmured as she waited for the call to connect. “Oh, Flora? Are you settling into the MerMatch office now? Yes, this is Hazel. We’ve surfaced on an island off the coast of Newfoundland and we need to fly to Morocco, I think, but I don’t have any ID or…you have? Okay, that would be great. I’m borrowing this guy’s cell and I…thanks. Okay. I’ll get the name and wait for your call.”
She returned the cell phone and collapsed against Lotar. “Even though we just ate, I’m exhausted and starving.”
That was normal. Surface needs differed from underwater needs.
After a small meal of plastic-wrapped sandwiches that Hazel devoured, the three humans showed them to a room with a shower and a cot. The door closed, leaving them in privacy.
“Rest,” Lotar ordered. “I will wait for the call.”
“Just a minute.” Hazel slid her arms around his waist. “You know what? Suddenly, I’m not so tired.”
His cock flooded with heat. He rested his trident against the wall, within arm’s reach, and covered her mouth with his kiss.
And within a human day, Flora called back with instructions. They received clothes and more food, were driven to a human airport, and got onto a private airplane. The flight was so different with Hazel curled against his side, chatting on the new cell phone she’d received or snoozing. In Morocco, they were conveyed straight to the seashore and released.
At the first echo point, they listened for a long time, but he had crossed a month’s distance in a day, and even the All-Council army might not have heard his message yet. So he announced their destination again, now so much closer, and away they swam.
“I can’t believe it worked.” She glowed with excitement, repeating a refrain she’d shared with her friends on the cell phone multiple times. “I won’t believe it until we actually get to Djullanar. But if it did…I can’t believe my plan worked!”
“It was a good plan.”
She glowed and squeezed him tight. They zoomed through the current faster than ever toward their destination.
And her glow matched and strengthened the glow in him.
Even in his unworthiest moment, she had not cursed him.
He’d tried to hide from her, but she always saw through his disguise.
Perhaps, with her, he could be himself.
Perhaps.
Twenty-Four
Lotar must have a lot to think about, and Hazel did too.
Her plan had worked!
They arrived in Djullanar first, startling the warriors despite Lotar’s announcements, and this time Lotar refused to separate from her. They had to spend a while in the city’s coral jail beneath the Life Tree, but between threats of summoning the kraken—if that was even possible, honestly—and the carrot of promising their moms might attend, Hazel got them released without violence.
They even had a nice meal and guarded rest before swimming on to Rusalka—which followed a similar pattern—and past the ruins of Nerissa, Faier’s first city that had been destroyed by an undersea volcano. The molten volcanic destruction was still so sad.
They flew through the most amazing shark-infested waters with iconic Jaws great whites, an
gry bulls, darting tigers, and aggressive white tips chasing them through the clear oceanic sky, but Lotar outsmarted or outmaneuvered them all.
Every time he did something amazing—and she commented on it, or reacted with awe, or asked him to teach her—he looked guarded and slowly, almost unwillingly, forced himself to relax and accept her compliment with grace.
How awful to have his successes used against him. That was the opposite of how things were supposed to be. How unfair.
And it made her super mad at the Syrenka jerks who had treated him so badly.
But he also seemed surprised when she second-guessed herself. Like, he thought she was a lot smarter and more successful than she was.
Maybe her friends were right. That she’d failed all the other times not because she was doomed, but because she settled for the wrong partners.
How funny that the “easy” cities had turned her down and the “hard” cities had committed to RSVP. Lotar was exceptional, so she was becoming exceptional too.
After they passed the wreckage of Nerissa and approached the next echo point, Lotar vibrated to her. “We must decide on our route. Cut west to Dragao Azul and the Azores, or continue north to Syrenka.”
Where she would meet his father, the king, and try not to spit in his face.
Lotar tensed.
She mentally promised not to spit in his father’s face right away, but Lotar didn’t relax. “What about the All-Council army? Do you think they’ll try to ambush us?”
“Perhaps on the way to Syrenka. If they passed Dragao Azul, we would know.”
Because Dragao Azul was filled with queens and totally on their side. Their warriors would have broadcast any All-Council army sightings over the echo points. “Could the army have snuck past?”
Lotar shook his head.
“We were going to surface in the Azores anyway. We could hop another flight over the All-Council army and land on top of Syrenka.”
Lotar announced their next destination and veered into a deep current toward Dragao Azul.
His shoulders relaxed, his kicks lengthened, and he gently hummed the sweet lullaby he had done for her once to clear her head. Did he even hear himself? When he looked carefree, he was carefree.
All because they were zooming away from Syrenka.
She was no personal relations expert, but it would be great if she could help him. Somehow.
“Closure,” Hazel vibrated.
Lotar swam along the current toward Dragao Azul, so named because of the plethora of blue dragons that floated near the surface of its sacred islands. “Hm?”
“Oh, I was thinking about times when success got snatched right out of my hands.” She pretended to grab for something and opened her hand. Sparkling plankton drifted out. She grunted in surprise. “The ocean is so weird.”
She had already succeeded more than Lotar had imagined.
Had he gone on the All-Cities Gyre himself, he would have perused the cities unseen, tossed the message to whatever unsuspecting guard he captured, and counted the mission accomplished.
She had already spoken to—and argued with—kings. She’d impressed warriors of all ranks. And even her powers, weak as they still were, had convinced more than one hotheaded warrior to pause, think, or even fall back.
“When I entered the Young Entrepreneurs competition, my partners and I got the invitation to present our product idea in New York. And we even won.”
She still seemed surprised, although he sensed it had happened long ago.
“Only third place, but that was still enough seed money to build a real prototype and test it. We made plans, but I had to spend a couple of weeks on my grandparents’ farm, and when I got back, I found out my two partners had spent the money not on tools or materials, but on a high-end gaming PC and a bunch of computer games.”
Her soul flared with remembered anger, and she squeezed his shoulders. Then, her light extinguished, and she went limp.
“They wrote some stupid end-of-project summary about how our product had ‘failed in testing’ and offered me download codes for games that I couldn’t even play. I was so mad. They were both already graduated and headed off to community college, so what could I do? Complain to the high school business teacher? It was done. And when I raged at them, they laughed at me.”
He held her. “They lacked honor.”
“Oh, yeah. You got that right.” She expanded her chest, her light brightening to normal levels, and rested her head on his shoulder. “Since we’re going to Syrenka after Dragao Azul, I’m sorry for suggesting your dad might be like Tial’s dad. You know him. If he cared, he wouldn’t try to sabotage your journey with those rumors.”
Ah. “My father has never hidden his opinion.”
“Well, I originally thought this trip would be a good chance to reconcile, but it sounds like that will be impossible. Reconciling is a two-way street, but maybe you could get closure. What would give you closure?”
“Closure?”
“You know. The fantasy is for your dad to say, ‘Oh my God, Lotar, I was totally wrong. I always loved you as much as I loved your brother. I was just bad at expressing it. I feel terrible you went away, and I’ve missed you every day.’ Then he goes in for a hug.” She squeezed him. “You know. The fantasy.”
His nostrils tingled, and his throat tightened.
How strange.
Even though his father would never, ever, ever speak these words, imagining him doing so, even in fantasy, made Lotar’s eyes burn. He could not expand his diaphragm. The strength went out of his legs. He slowed and floated, fighting the unexpected sensations.
“Lotar?” Hazel cupped his face. Her brows lifted, and she hugged him tight. “I’m here. It’s okay.”
He closed his eyes, but the burning would not leave. It flooded his cheeks and wrinkled his chin. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Did he cry? He would know on the surface, but here, the current carried away the tears. Grief, for the mer, was swallowed by the ocean.
Eventually, the waves of pain receded. His muscles went limp, and he felt heavy.
Hazel stroked his hair and hummed his childhood song, the one he’d used to soothe her.
And it was soothing.
She would be a fine mother to his young fry.
Which she also believed he deserved and would teach well.
The pain flared again. He held her, absorbing her comfort, not even aware of how much he had ached for this until she’d come and squeezed him and it gushed out. Unspoken wishes flowed out in a river of sparkles on a silent current far from home.
Eventually, he recaptured his control, pressed her to his chest once more, and kicked to their destination.
“That…” He had to control his chest tension and tried again to communicate with vibrations. “…will never happen.”
“Yeah, I know. It was nice to imagine, though, right?”
It had not been nice, but it had been what he’d needed. Lancing the old injury to release the sickness trapped inside. Peace settled in his heart for the first time, even though his chest still throbbed like a freshly opened wound. Her gentleness soothed him like a balm. She was not a traditional healer, but she was exactly what he needed to heal.
“So we’re going to have to see your dad,” she continued, “and even though the fantasy outcome’s pretty unlikely, what can you do to get something out of your meeting?”
“I need nothing from my father.”
“I mean for yourself. You tense up whenever you think of Syrenka. Say that your dad hasn’t changed. You deliver the invitation, and you could also tell him…what? What would finish this off, close it for you so the next time you think of Syrenka, you feel okay?”
He shook his head.
“There’s nothing you want to say? That’s okay too. In my case, I couldn’t sleep at night and hated those guys for weeks. I wished for awful things. I wanted them to die. And then they did.”
“Wronged humans executed them?”
“Do not grieve for dishonorable males.”
“Oh, I know. And it wasn’t even real, but it showed me that I really didn’t want them to die. I wanted recognition of what I went through and an honest, heartfelt apology.”
“But they would not give it.”
“Right, so I wrote out a ‘closing statement’ with all my anger, my disappointment. The things I should have said when I confronted them instead of freaking out and screaming. It was very cathartic. And ever since, whenever I get stuck in a place where I can’t get closure—because the person who wronged me is gone or they won’t care—I write out a closing statement. It gives me peace.” She paused. “Of course, that’s usually after I scream incoherently and cry with shame later to my girlfriends. But eventually, I write the statement, and I get peace.”
A closing statement?
Hmm.
Hazel did not ask for him to produce it on the journey to Dragao Azul. She gave him the space he needed.
But he must say something to his father.
And her fantasy words had broken something loose inside him.
He had until they finished Dragao Azul and surfaced at the Azores to figure out how to proceed.
Because Hazel would come with him to Syrenka.
He needed her now more than ever.
And he must know his plan before they entered the city.
Twenty-Five
Warriors did not meet them at the edge of the territory belonging to Dragao Azul.
Lotar swam out of the fast currents and pumped his fins over the rugged seafloor. The bright flashes of coral marked the territory’s farthest edge. Fish glimmered, and the rocky floor filled with vibrant life much sooner and thicker than he expected.