Then Kurt barrels into the Second Circle, down the winding steps,
along a green velvet corridor, and through a mahogany door. The golden
tiles are wet, and Lucine, the split-tailed mermaid, is there. The
eldest of the four remaining sea oracles. She swims happily in her
golden pool because she’s been waiting for him.
Her red hair glistens, and her emerald eyes are beams looking up
at him.
“My love. I knew you’d come back,” she says, taking his hands and
pulling him closer to her. “Now we must hurry. We have much to do.”
I wake up with that painful numbness when your limbs fall asleep.
Tiny clawed feet walk on my chest. It’s the lizard-bird. It opens its
mouth and throws up on me.
“What the-”
It does it again, shutting me up with a caw. Then it walks over
the mushy yellow vomit. The wound cools instantly.
“That’s disgusting.”
It yells at me and I remember-the Naga.
In her place is a girl about my age. She’s on her side, her arms
limp and bloody. Dried blood is smeared around her wound, a black mark
where my dagger cut her.
“She lied to me,” I say, searching for the memory of some hint,
some mention that this would happen. That they sent me after a girl,
not just a beast. “They all lied to me.”
I stare at the girl on the ground and things start coming
together. The reason why Isi was stalling. I lift my dagger, dirty
with the girl’s blood. My wound, on the other hand, has stopped
bleeding.
The dragon-bird flies in front of my face, batting wings urgently.
I guess we’re friends again.
“I got it,” I shout.
I pick up the girl in my arms. Her breath is shallow but
consistent. Her copper skin is cold. Her eyes flutter, her lips part.
I tell her to be quiet, save it. She’s going to be fine. Because I
can’t be the one to kill her. I just can’t.
I hurry back the way I came, slowing down at the patch of gnarled
trees. The sky is lightening under the white and purple moons. How
long were we out of it? I shake from exhaustion before the path looks
familiar again.
A tendril of smoke swirls above the trees where the fire pit
roared and the villagers danced. Some are asleep on the ground. Others
are still talking and drinking. They’re oblivious to where I’ve been
and what I’ve done.
“ Isi! ” I shout her name.
They come out of the river, out of their tents. Whispers become a
loud buzz of questions.
Who is that?
Who is the Land Prince holding?
No-it can’t be-
I’ve brought their wolf into the den.
Karel runs at me and Brendan tackles him. I make it to the dais,
the bleeding Naga girl in my arms.
Brendan has Karel in a headlock. Dylan and Kai wrestle off two
other guards who advance on me. Isi walks among her people. From the
look in her eyes, she hasn’t been to sleep.
“Call them off!” I shout at her.
“What have you done?” Her face ages in seconds, like a thousand
sorrows pulling at her life strings.
“Let’s get into that after you tell your warriors to stop.”
She lifts her hand, and with the wave of her fingertips, they stop
fighting my friends. I shoot a warning glare at Brendan who
begrudgingly lets go of Grumble. He falls on the ground and picks
himself up, enraged and ready to take my cousin’s head off.
I match her stare. “You said a son of Triton had to break the
curse of the Naga. You lied to me.”
“That is not so,” Isi says. “Everything we told you was true.”
“Oh sorry, was I supposed to fill in the blanks? The part where
the Naga is a girl? I won’t kill her.”
Isi lifts her chin defiantly. “Even if we refuse to aid you?”
“I told you he was weak,” Karel growls.
I look at the shifty people. The scared faces of warriors. What is
one girl, one beastie girl, compared to the lives of these people and
the future of this tribe? Without their help, how will I awaken the
Sleeping Giants?
I know what Kurt would do…
I know that is where we’re different.
“I will find another way,” I say.
“Very well.” Isi turns her back on me. The air shifts around us,
rippling with water, and I know we are surrounded. “Take them.”
The River Clan warriors materialize around us. They wrap around
Kai, disarming her and tying her arms behind her back. Brendan screams
and tries to run to her, but Karel knocks my cousin on his back with
one sucker punch. Dylan is buried under a fury of fists, but there are
too many of them and I’m left holding a wounded girl.
I can make out Yara’s voice saying, “Mother, please.”
But the same warriors I’ve trained with now advance on me. They go
for the Naga first, taking her away as an arm grabs my neck and
squeezes. A fist pounds on my bruised ribs until the pain is too much
and I’m pushed to my knees.
“These are the court’s great champions,” Karel says, spitting on
the ground.
One by one, they tie us to the dais. My heart thumps in my ears.
Everything feels still, muted, as if I’m underwater.
Isi takes my face and holds it in her hands. “You could have been
happy here.”
She leaves a handful of warriors to guard us.
At first the villagers keep their distance. Then they come by with
rotting fruit, and kids make it a game to see which hits on body parts
will make us react. But we don’t react. Not even when the sky darkens
and tiny bugs bite the sweet, rotting fruit off our flesh. Not even
when I can hear a girl screaming from somewhere in the distance. Not
even when Yara stands in front of me, unable to give me any comfort,
to say she was sorry, that she didn’t want it to end this way.
And I think, who says it’s over?
“I’m going to strangle him,” Brendan says, keeping his eyes steady
as a sniper’s gun on Karel. When the guards change shifts, Karel
stays. He walks around the dais like a hawk.
“No one is strangling anyone,” I say.
“Really, Cousin,” Brendan says.
I test the leather ropes to see how strong they are, but there’s
no getting out of them.
“They’re not going to let us go,” Dylan says. “Not until you slay
the Naga. And even then, we don’t know how to get out.”
“Brendan,” Kai says, fidgeting with her hands behind her back, “be
a darling and distract Karel. I believe he’s still angry that you, how
do you say, hooked up with his blue-haired mate.”
“I’d love to,” Brendan says. The moment he tries to stand up, he
falls forward. Karel is on him in an instant and so is his backup.
“Leave,” Karel tells them. “This one is mine.”
“Kai,” I whisper, “what are you doing?”
Brendan is shouting obscenities at Karel, and he’s eating it up.
“Quiet,” she says. But I see what she’s done. She’s gotten her
hand free from her bindings.
“Thank Poseidon for your tiny girl hands.”
“Really, Tristan…” she says, but she digs into the pocket of her
dress and pulls out a familiar knife the size of an index finger. I
won it from Rachel the red-headed demigoddess. Kai widens her eyes and
signals for me to come closer. She whispers, “I must cut off your
hands.”
“ What? ” I hiss.
Her shoulders shake as she silences her laugh. “Are you the only
one allowed to laugh in the face of doom?”
“I think you mean danger.” I adjust my body so she can cut me
loose.
“I like ‘doom’ better,” she whispers.
I can feel my restraints snap, but I keep my hands behind my back.
Karel kicks Brendan in the gut and my cousin doubles over. But he