our fingers, and then she’s gone. I can see my mom standing at the
boardwalk. I fight every impulse to run to her, to go home and let
Kurt have at it. A scream is caught in my chest and I push it back
down because I have to be strong for her. She’s singing one last song,
a melody that I know as well as the lines of my face. A sailor getting
lost at sea and finding a beautiful castle with riches and a love that
is magical and impossible but true, but in the end he comes home.
This is not her world anymore. It’s mine.
“Tristan,” Frederik says from behind me. “A word?”
I turn to where he stands. “It was Gwenivere. She was calling out
to them.”
“I saw. Where is she now?”
“Gone.” I press my hand over my chest where my skin is red from
her handprint. My scabs are bleeding. “I thought she was going to
burst my heart out of my chest.”
Frederik shakes his head. “She wouldn’t.”
“I was sure she would come back with me, but I was wrong.”
“We lost at least a dozen humans,” Frederik says, walking back up
the beach to regroup with the others. “Thanks to your mother, we can
usher the rest back inland Come on.”
When he turns around and I don’t follow, he knows what I’m about
to do. The sun and moon are stuck, splitting each other in half. As if
she’s reading my mind, Amada is at the shoreline waiting for me.
“This wasn’t the plan,” he says. I might be crazy, but I think he
sounds concerned. “You said-”
“I have to go now,” I tell him.
He nods once. “When I first met you, I didn’t think I’d be here
side by side in your fight. I couldn’t wait to get your kind off the
shore.”
I grin. “Did my charming ways make you change your mind?”
He pulls his hands in his pockets. “Who says I changed my mind?”
But he holds his arm out for me to take, all the same.
“What should I tell the others?”
“That nothing else has changed.” I take his hand. “And remember,
wait for my signal.”
Amada breathes in deeply. The air is thick with salt. In this gray
noon, I’d never guess it’s summer.
“There is blood in the water,” she says.
“You can still turn around,” I say. “You don’t have to do this.”
She gives me a long sideways glance, her loose black hair all over
her face. In her human form, it’s easy to forget how powerful she is.
That she’s a cursed being. That her talons can rip your head clean
off.
“Any other prince would be happy that so many clamor to risk their
lives for him,” she says. “Yet you would rather risk your own.”
“Don’t ask me to explain,” I say.
“Not asking.”
The Alliance has cleared the shoreline, and they’re putting
themselves in place like chess pieces. Somewhere Layla is wondering
where I’ve gone off to, why I didn’t say good-bye. And I know that I
couldn’t say good-bye to her. When I close my eyes, I don’t see Nieve
or Gwen. I see Layla on top of me, pressing her hands on my chest,
kissing me like she might never get another chance.
Amada nudges my shoulder. “Focus.”
“Focus.” I repeat the word over and over. Focus on Toliss Island
ahead of us and the white room where the nautilus maid waits for me.
Focus on not giving up. Focus on being alive.
My body hums with energy and anticipation until I think I’ll burst
right out of my skin.
And we run straight into a cresting wave. The sea tries to push us
back at first, but we push ahead and swim on. My eyes adjust to the
dark water. I hold my dagger ahead of me and let my tail do the work.
We swim for two miles surrounded by silence and dark. I swallow
against the coppery tastes in the sea, the mangled body parts that
float back up to the surface. It nearly makes me retch because I can’t
get the flavor out of my mouth.
Then we see the island. From beneath, it is an expanse of stone.
The tunnels are lit with the white-blue light of tiny creatures that
cling to the stone walls. Beneath that, the shark guard are chained in
a circle, ravenously biting at the space in front of them. Their skin
is raw where their chains have drawn blood.
Around them, merrows swim in a circle, taunting the creatures.
Amada and I hold back, watching and waiting for the right time. If
we move too quickly, they’ll know we’re there and we’ll lose the
advantage of a surprise attack. I swim close to the ground and stay
behind the boulders.
“If we go in from different directions, we can create enough of a
distraction to get rid of the merrows and then free the sharks.”
I wait for Amada to agree with me because this was what we decided
on. Distract the merrows and get in through the tunnels.
“Amada?”
She’s gone. I look over the boulders, and there she is, swimming
in her beast form. Her dragon jaw is open wide; her hind legs retract
to let her tail do the work. If I scream for her to stop, it’ll give
away her position.
The merrows shift around like they can smell something new,
something dark and threatening, her roar a deep echo around them.
When I fought her, I know she was holding back. She’s faster than
I imagined. With her claws, she rips across a puffer merrow’s chest,
slicing so deep that she rips the heart out before he breaks down into
black blood. Before the others can reach her, she lunges with an open
jaw, ripping the head off a hammer-headed merrow. She doesn’t spit it
back out.
They’re crazed, and she undulates, swimming toward the sharks. I
ready myself to help her. There’s no way she can take two dozen of
those things and another dozen sharks.
But she cries out and even though I can’t fully understand the cry
of the river people, I know she’s telling me to stay put. With her
claws, she breaks the chains that hold back the shark guard. One, two,
five, ten. Their teeth are like bear traps closing against bone. They
charge straight at the merrows, and within minutes, they’ve swallowed
them whole.
As the sharks swim in a cyclone formation Amada swims between
them. They nudge her body in a silent thank-you.
I hover just outside their circle. Then they stop. I brandish
Triton’s dagger and they part for me. Amada shifts into her human
torso.
“You didn’t wait for me.” I frown.
“I saw an opening and I took it,” she says. “The way is clear.”
The shark guard swims around the island, but they’re not a danger
to me or mine.
“I will return to the others. I will tell them I saw you through
safely.”
And then I swim up into the bright light of the tunnels.
•••
The tunnels are a maze. Thalia said to choose one of the openings
on the east, which would lead me to the farthest chambers where
prisoners are held.
The problem with looking at an island from underneath is that I
don’t know where east is.
I take my best guess and decide to not jump out of the pool like a
topless girl inside a birthday cake. Nope, that would give away the
element of surprise.
The first tunnel leads me to a dim-lit room. I break the surface
slowly, keeping my body pressed against the stone. I don’t recognize
the voices, but there are children crying. The sound is pained and
lonely and scared. Footsteps walk in quickly. A girl’s voice cooing.
“Please don’t cry,” she begs.
Then another. A softer voice, singing. Gwen.
“They’re pretty,” the strange girl says. “Aren’t they? All things
are pretty when they’re small. Even us.”
Us.
I chance it and lift my head a fraction over the ledge of the