by Ana Calin
Time to get out of here. Tucking the shell in my panties, I start to design a plan in my mind. Even if I could conjure a water portal to transport me back to the lake, I can’t use it because I’m caged, and this iron box is so small that the portal surely won’t appear inside.
I close my eyes and feel into my powerhouse of magic, sifting through what I can do. Feeling out objects, magnetizing them, telepathy, love spells, glamour, and now I’ve picked up some of the Sea Witch’s skill of peering into minds through a mirror. But none of that is going to help me. Unless...
I put out my palms, and activate the magnetic power I used with the fetching spell, trying to bend the bars. But apparently the magnetism only matches my own physical strength, which isn’t nearly enough to bend the iron. I try harder, clenching my teeth, my lip curling over them. I salivate from the effort, but nothing happens.
Exhausted and breathing hard, I magnetize two hairpins from the vanity table, and try to pick the lock with them, but the one time I googled how it’s done doesn’t help much. I cry out in frustration.
Come on, Arielle, think.
I’m no longer the powerless girl who got thrown into Lysander Nightfrost’s dungeon, now I’m a powerful fae, with the ability to control black magic. I have to be able to free myself.
I close my eyes, and turn to my last resort.
CHAPTER VI
Arielle
Sweat trickles down my forehead as I reach the one person I have a direct telepathic line to—Lysander.
“I need help.”
But all I get back is clamor, the sound of battle. My pulse accelerates.
“What’s happening, where are you?”
A blade strikes into his armor, making me wince. My body is in an iron cage in the Sea Witch’s lair, but my mind is firmly anchored in Lysander’s.
I focus harder, trying to see through his eyes.
“Don’t,” he blocks me just before another blade lands somewhere on his metallic body. “I’ll lose focus if you take over my eyes.”
“Where are you, what’s going on?” I insist.
“Hang in there, Arielle. I’m coming for you.”
His last words have a soft, longing sound to them. My knees melt, but then roaring blasts through my mind, ripping the connection and leaving me with a terrible ringing in my ears. I crouch to the floor, hands to my temples, pressing against the pain. The iron door opens, and when I raise my head, the Sea Witch stands in front of me. She holds out a black shirt that I recognize as Zillard’s.
“Do it,” she commands.
“I’m going to need some kind of guarantee that you won’t kill or torture me after that,” I manage, my temples still throbbing from the telepathic experience with Lysander. I’m going mad with worry about him.
She bares her razor teeth.
“If you pull this off, I’m going to ask it of you again. And again. For that, I’m going to need you alive, and maybe even comfortable.”
“You want to make Zillard your sex slave?”
“And you’re gonna be watching.”
She drags me out of the cage, her stench of putrid fish making me gag. Only now I realize it’s the stench of stale black magic. She tosses me by a black cauldron of seawater.
This is my last chance. I have to hi-jack this properly, otherwise I’m dead.
She throws his shirt in my face.
“There’s a stain of blood on the collar. I put him to sleep and pricked him. You have the blood, so no excuses.”
I glance from the cauldron of water to the shirt in my hands, but I can’t even consider doing it. I close my eyes tightly, and hold out my palms, Zillard’s shirt draped over them so the Sea Witch doesn’t notice the blue swirls forming in my palms. I chant the spell in my head, conjuring seawater from the bowl to form a portal, putting all my energy into it so that it goes fast.
But it doesn’t go fast enough. Realizing what I’m doing, the Sea Witch grunts, and slaps me hard with the back of her fleshy hand. The impact sends me tumbling over the cauldron. I push myself up from the floor, my hair and my rags drenched.
Something slices into the back of my thigh, white pain shooting through it. I scream, and look at my leg. There’s a deep gashing wound, an iron hooked into it. My skin already starts to blacken around the metal.
“Jesus Christ,” I cry.
“I guess it’s going to be torture after all,” the witch hisses, rising her big arms above me. Her hands grow like shadows, and her fingernails elongate, transforming into iron claws. My eyes widen in terror as she brings them down on me, and slices through my other leg.
I scream, and turn on my stomach, crawling away from her on my elbows, regretting the day I was born. I hear her tentacles rustling close behind, following me. She laughs, watching me crawl in agony away from her, leaving traces of blood behind. Jesus Christ, please let this be only a nightmare.
But no. She strikes again, this time my back. Her iron claws slash my rags and slice my loins. I cry out and thrash, which causes the Pearl of Riches to slip from its hideout. The Sea Witch lifts it up in one of her tentacles, inspecting it closely.
“You tried to steal the Pearl from me?” she snarls. “Is this why you were really here?”
“You don’t understand,” I manage through shallow breaths. “I-I need it to stop a war. It’s not like I could have just asked for it.”
“And if I’d helped you with your sea powers, those would have been a nice bonus, right?”
“If you’d agreed to help me, I would have been completely honest with you.”
She shrieks and strikes again, full of hatred, but she misses me by an inch.
I creep into a corner, watching her grow larger, her big arms above her head. Her claws are stained with rust ready to do as much damage as possible.
Except, even though my wounds have started to blacken, I don’t have quite the same aversion to iron as full fae. My wounds can be healed. I close my hands over the hook in my leg, focusing the healing energy into the wound. A few seconds, and I can already feel my flesh pushing out the hook.
I grimace at the devilish witch, making her think I’m going mad with pain. That way she won’t hurt me again, she’ll just enjoy the show. She takes delight watching me, unaware that I’m healing myself behind her back. And thinking of ways to annihilate her.
I’ve never felt pure hatred before in my life, but I’m pretty sure this is it. I look deep into her evil eyes as she raises those thin, arched eyebrows, realizing that something is wrong. But it’s too late. I’ve already regained enough strength to call forth the darkness that has been lurking in my powerhouse ever since Aunt Miriam willed it to me. I’m ready, willing, and even looking forward to killing her, which is what activates it. The black ink travels up, flowing into my irises.
My upper lip curls up, my gums harden, and my teeth sharpen.
“What in the cursed realms,” the Sea Witch shrieks as she watches my appearance change.
I speak the special dark spell, and will the fire of Tartarus to ignite under her black octopus skin. It starts in her tentacles.
She thrashes around, struggling to put out a fire she can’t even see. As she twists and turns like a stabbed snake I get up to my feet, walking around her.
“I’m using this power for the first time.” I look down at her like a dark queen. “So I’m not very skilled with it, which means I could kill you without actually intending to. So be careful with your reactions, don’t give me reason to flare—pun intended.”
I tone down the fire, and step in front of her. “Listen, Ursula, and listen well. I have the power to burn you with Tartarus fire from the inside out, do you know what that means? It means that you’d become a vassal of the underworld, with me as your mistress. I could control you like a voodoo doll. My power would work on you only at night, but any attempt to harm me or free yourself of me during the day would be punished harshly after sundown, through this burning pain you’re experiencing now. Not to mention that I co
uld send you on suicide missions, or condition you to torture yourself.”
“But how can this be?” She cries. “You’re the descendant of Poseidon, not a creature of the underworld.”
“I would have expected more consideration of the variables from the ancient Sea Witch. You see, my grandmother—you know, the nymph who got that old bastard of a king to ask for her hand in marriage—she was forced to marry another man in the human world, someone who could keep her safe. Turns out that someone was none other than Hades.”
“No, it can’t be.”
“As you can see, it can. Seems you were right about my grandmother. There was something special about her that got the most powerful men, gods no less, to fall for her. She had a daughter with Hades. My Aunt Miriam. Who inherited this dark power, and now passed it on to me. Zillard being Hades’ son as well, I suppose our signatures are quite similar.”
She hisses and attacks, launching herself at me like a snake. Instinctively, I move out of her way, and she tumbles on her own weight, but she gets back up quickly.
“Stupid girl,” she hisses. “I’ve been around for thousands of years. I looked Death in the face so many times it’s grown tired of me. You wouldn’t be able to destroy me if you were made of Hades’ very rib.”
She waves her hand, and telekinetic force smacks me in the chest. It throws me across the cave, my back slamming into the cave wall. It knocks the air from my lungs, and I fall down on all fours. By the time I get a grip again, the Sea Witch has already gotten to me, now standing on her tentacles again. She grabs me with one around my throat, and pins me to the wall.
This is what it must feel like to have a snake around your neck, strangling you. My face swells, and darkness starts to creep at the corners of my vision. I can’t reach my powers anymore, which means she’s strangling them, too, through my body.
“The only thing that you’ve accomplished with this show is that I won’t take the time to put you through different kinds of almost-deaths. Take this as a blessing, that you’ll die quicker than I originally planned.”
Which means that at least now she’s afraid of me, and won’t give me a chance to attack her again. My head is swelling, my mind clouding as darkness closes in on the Sea Witch’s face. As she’s always desired, hers is the face I’ll see right before I die. But at the last moment it transforms into another face. God, I hadn’t realized how deeply I craved to see him.
Lysander. His ice blue eyes are charged with the intensity he showed when we last saw each other. The same longing. His sharp warrior features change as he raises his hand and brushes a tear off my cheek. I didn’t even realize I was crying.
I run my fingers through his long, golden hair that feels like silk, and finally close my eyes, letting the mating bond permeate me, and smooth my passing.
“I will always be with you,” he whispers in my head.
Arielle
A CRASH RIPS THROUGH the air, and fire bursts in my lungs. I find myself on all fours, on the ground, the Sea Witch cursing like a mad woman somewhere close. Beside me, a flashing blade embedded in the rock, and a severed tentacle.
I spot the Sea Witch, howling, her face distorted with pain. Tiny red vessels crisscross the whites of her eyes.
“You,” she snarls, baring her fangs at Lysander.
Lysander. My heart slams into my chest. The mates’ bond between us, that’s how he must have found me, like last time.
He’s standing on a platform above us, looking like a god in his armor. His gaze meets mine, and our bond lights up like a neural pathway between us, filling my heart with an unbearable affection.
The Sea Witch grabs me, with her hands this time, holding me in front of her like a shield. She puts a piece of chipped iron to my throat.
“Come down here and drop your weapons, or I’ll kill her,” she snarls, spittle landing on the side of my face. She stinks badly of stale black magic.
Lysander jumps down from the platform, landing with a thud on the ground, dust rising from under his feet. He rises to his full height, looking sleek and deadly.
“I cannot drop my weapons, Sea Witch, because I am my weapons.” He opens his gauntleted hand, and a blade takes form out of thin air, showing her that his weapons are made of his own flesh, like his mail. It glints sharply, the same color as his armor. “But don’t worry,” he continues, “because I won’t be fighting you.”
“No, you won’t fight me. You’ll surrender to me. You’ll take a blood oath to serve me whenever I call upon you, if you want your protégé back.”
“I can’t make a blood oath to you. I already bound myself to someone else, to serve as man and as warrior.”
One glance is enough to understand he means me. He can’t be acting, not in a situation of life or death, like this one. Can he?
“Then your little princess is coming with me.” She starts retreating. “If you came with warriors, tell them to stand down, or I’ll slit her pretty throat.”
“I didn’t come with anybody, but I didn’t come alone either. And I didn’t come to kill you, but neither to let you live.”
“No, it would seem you’re here to battle me in riddles, King of Frost.”
I struggle against the witch, but my body is exhausted from the struggle, the wounds and the healing process, I’m too weak. I try to conjure my darkness, but I’m too weak for that, too.
The Sea Witch looks around for hidden warriors, losing her cool. I glance around for magic, dark mist or the rippling air caused by invisible beings, but then I begin to feel it.
The silver drawings start to move under my skin. They glow, emerge to the surface of my body, and then peel off like dead skin. I stare in awe at them and then at Lysander, noticing his lips move.
By the highest realms—he’s releasing my powers. They start to boil in my powerhouse, until they feel like rising waves. The sound of the sea outside turns into a roar. It feels me, too, it wants to bond with me. I abandon myself against the Sea Witch’s body, my mind opening to understand her on the most profound levels—the sea gives me that power; in the end, the Sea Witch is her child. She might be the villain in my life now, but she’s meaningful to the sea. I know I have to kill her but, surprisingly, I know I won’t be enjoying it.
I turn in her grip. I can see myself in her eyes now. I’m no longer made of flesh, My body is shifting into the water girl, which is why I was able to slip from her arms.
“Thank you,” I whisper to her, and I mean it. She’s done so much service for the sea, I can feel it in every one of my water cells.
Ursula the Sea Witch stares at me in awe, and I hope she feels how hard this is for me.
My powers mount, my body becoming completely made of water. I retain my human shape, but little else of my human condition. Slowly, with respect, I open Ursula’s mouth with my hands. She gives in easily, as if hypnotized by me. Acting on instinct that feels more like ancient wisdom, I descend head first into her mouth, and flood her body in my water form.
Basically, I’m drowning her.
But she doesn’t offer resistance. She opens her mind to me, and I understand—to her, it feels like sacrificing herself to a goddess.
“Killing me doesn’t solve your real problem,” she speaks in my mind. “Xerxes will never stop hunting you.”
“Xerxes’ fate is already sealed.”
“Don’t underestimate him. Some say he is invincible.”
“And it’s almost true. Almost.” I reveal the secret that Zillard showed me at the lake, the secret weapon that will lead to Xerxes’ demise. It mirrors in the Sea Witch’s mind, and she smiles.
She takes a few moments as if to bask in the sensation of me flowing through her system. The last thing she says before her soul dissipates into the water is, “Your Majesty.”
And I feel honored. It means a lot that, before she died, the Sea Witch acknowledged me as her princess, royalty of the ocean. And that is exactly how I feel as I reform in the cave, my body still made of water. I spread
my arms and lift my face, enjoying the feeling of complete liberation. I can feel the ocean outside roar for me, demanding that I let it embrace me.
Then I feel them. The trapped spirits of my family, dissolving in the air with a collective, echoing sigh, as if perfect pleasure courses through them. With the Sea Witch dead, they’ve been freed from their deformed bodies, which served as prison for their spirits. What an awful fate she gave them—and how much she must have suffered after Poseidon stabbed her in the back; she was in love with him, I know that now. It had been her grief that turned her evil, but she’d been evil for so long, it couldn’t be reversed.
“Arielle.” It’s Lysander, his voice like cream on my senses. Since now I don’t hear with my ears nor see with my eyes, I can feel the essence of him.
I face him. There’s no more lying now. In this shape, I can see through him, but his aura turns opaque in an instant.
“You won’t reveal your secrets to me, King of Frost,” I say in a voice that I barely recognize. It’s musical, and fluid, a little deeper than in my human form. “Anything particular you prefer to keep hidden?”
He suddenly jumps in front of me, his blade blocking the attack of a walking shark with the snout like a sabre. The creature isn’t alone. Dozens pour in from dark tunnels connected to the cave—the Sea Witch’s minions, thirsty for revenge.
“Run, go, now!” Lysander urges me, swinging his blade expertly, blocking and slicing the beasts in half as they appear.
But the power in my veins won’t let me back down. I open my arms, close my eyes, and call on the ocean.
“It’s time you and I finally united,” I whisper, inviting roaring waves into the cave. They swerve around Lysander, but hit the beasts head on. As the sea washes them away, I can feel it take complete control over my body. It’s like holding the reins of a carriage that goes too fast, the speed dizzying, and the wheels breaking against holes.
“Lysander,” I whisper, reaching out to him for help. My hands are already starting to lose their shape, turning into a fingerless mass. “I’m losing my body,” I cry, my voice turning into the sound of a cascade. “I can’t contain it, Lysander, please.”