slice through bone really nicely.”
“And have my flesh burned off when I touch one of them?” she asks.
“Keep walking.”
“Damn, there goes my maniacal plan,” I say as hands shove me.
“What’s your plan? My parents are pretty middle class so we don’t have
much in the way of ransom. My college fund won’t get you much in this
economy.”
“Can I put an arrow through his jaw?” A dude’s voice comes from
somewhere in the back. “His babbling offends the river gods.”
“Sorry, river gods!”
“Lord Sea,” Dylan hisses.
For his benefit, I stop talking. Brendan didn’t mention anything
about angry see-through people. What have I gotten myself into?
A hand presses against my chest. We must be at another waterfall
because it sounds like water rushing everywhere. When my blindfold is
cut off, I know I’m right. Here the trees grow thicker and lower to
the ground.
“Where’s your merry band of lost boys and girls?” I ask.
The others have vanished, but Tiger Eyes is beside a wall covered
in ivy.
“You talk much for someone who’s lost the things he loves the
most.”
Her smile grows bigger when I don’t have a comeback.
“I didn’t lose things,” I growl.
“So you can be serious.”
When she stands directly in front of the ivy, it parts like a
curtain.
“A tunnel,” I say. “Of course.”
“You first.”
I hesitate.
“You haven’t spent much time in darkness, have you?”
“Only at the water park,” I say, swinging my feet into the
opening. “The Slip ’N Slide is my favorite.”
“Then slip and slide, Land Prince,” she says.
“Will you untie my hands at least?”
“Of course, Land Prince. But first get in.”
I sit at the mouth of the tunnel. It angles down and off to the
side. She slices through my ropes. Before I can say another word, she
shoves me down the hole.
I must’ve hit my head. The numbness on my skin returns. My temples
throb, and the foggy edges of my vision are back. I instantly
recognize my grandfather’s chambers in Toliss Island. This time I’m
looking at Gwen. Her face is pale and sad. Gray eyes are cast down at
her lap. She’s in human form with white and black scales at her
ankles.
“Gwenivere!”
She snaps her head up and stands. Her hair is gathered into a
braid at the top of her head. Pearls and shells are woven like a
crown. Her dress is an ivory sheath that shows her scales at her
calves. Princess Gwenivere in all her splendor. The daughter of the
silver mermaid.
“Are you listening to us?”
I know that voice anywhere by now. Nieve’s slithering voice fills
the cave of the room.
“Forgive me, Mother.”
Nieve swims in a backlit pool. The Staff of Eternity is in her
hands. She’s not the weak and frail mermaid of weeks ago. A blush
colors her ivory cheekbones, and her pale eyes spark with frenzied
energy. But when she tries to channel her magic through the staff,
nothing happens. Her forehead crinkles with concentration, and I want
to laugh because her third of the trident is failing too.
“Mother, what is it?”
“Something is wrong-the boy must be doing it.”
Gwen shakes her head. “We both know Tristan isn’t capable of
that.”
I resent that.
“Perhaps you exhausted yourself with the battle, taking the
island, keeping La-the girl-conscious. Even you have your limits.”
“I don’t want to have limits,” Nieve seethes. “I want to be
limitless.”
Archer runs into the room. His jaw is bruised where Kurt hit him
the day before, but the rest of him is patched up. He kneels before
Nieve and she strokes his patchwork face, her own creation. “It’s
done, Mother Queen. Anyone who has opposed us is in the cells.”
“And my brother?”
“The king is gone,” he says nervously. “There is no sign of him.”
Nieve reaches into her well of power. It fills me with a rage I’ve
never felt before. Then she releases it at Archer. He slams into the
white stone wall. Gwen stands to tend to him, but after one look at
Nieve, she sits back down.
“What was that, my child?”
“Karanos,” the merrow groans, standing at attention. “The leech
Karanos is gone.”
Nieve holds her hands to her face. “You see what he makes me do?
He makes me hurt my own children.”
Archer comes back for more, this time on both knees, placing his
head on his mother’s lap. He’s so big. He could squeeze the life out
of her with one hand. But despite all of it, she made him. She saved
him when the Sea Court decreed that all children born
deformed-merrows-would be executed or left in caves where they would
not be able to survive in the wilderness.
I try to shake Nieve’s thoughts out of me, but it’s like we’re one
person.
She moves her tail in the pool, as if she sees something in the
water. “I know my brother. I know where he will go. Gwenivere, you
will go after him. As for the girl-”
The girl. The girl. The girl.
“Is she awake yet?”
Archer nods. “Do you want me to break her?”
“No!” Gwen stands. “She’ll be worthless unless she’s untouched.
Tristan-”
“Tristan will do as I say as long as I have her. Her condition
means nothing to me.”
“But-”
“Your infatuation with the boy is clouding your better judgment,”
Archer says.
Gwen steels herself. “I am not infatuated.”
Gwen and Archer are face to face. He’s twice her size, but Gwen is
drawing on her magic. Sparks fly from her fingertips.
“There’s that fire, my darling girl.” Nieve chuckles. “We’ll need
it to bring our people together. For too long we’ve cowered before my
brother and his love of humans. Send out more search parties for
Tristan. He can’t have gone far.”
“What about Kurtomathetis?” Gwen says.
Nieve keeps her hands on the staff, gripping it and searching for
the magic. “My allies tell me he will bow to me before sunrise.”
“What allies?”
Nieve studies Gwen’s beautiful face. The thin, pearly scars that
run down the right side of her face, shoulder to hip bone. “You have
never questioned me before.”
Gwen lowers her head. She takes Nieve’s hand and holds it to her
face, kissing the center of her palm. “I mean no offense, Mother
Queen.”
Nieve looks at Archer and Gwen in a way that makes my skin crawl.
It’s the way that my mother looks at me, like no matter what I do,
she’ll love me forever. I didn’t think the silver mermaid was capable
of feeling. I don’t want to think of her this way. I don’t want to
think of her at all.
“Go now,” Nieve tells Gwen.
And she does, leaving Archer in the glittering room that once was
my grandfather’s chamber.
“The girl, Mother Queen?”
Nieve winces. Presses her hand to her forehead. A drop of red
stains the pristine blue of her pool. She rubs the red stain between
her fingers. Their voices become distant, like we’re on opposite ends
of a dark tunnel.
“Break her.”
“Lord Sea.”
Hands lift my face and smack my cheeks.
“Lord-Tristan, wake up!”
I open my eyes to Dylan looking over me. Tiger Eyes is at his
side. The white sun beats down on us. I sit up and my head throbs
where a bump has formed beneath a gash. Bright red blood comes away on