red and blinding. The floor is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the
floor. My head spins like I’ve been shoved down a whirlpool, like I’ve
been swept into a dream.
It has to be a vision because I’m still me.
I’m me looking at me.
I’m king, sitting where my grandfather sat the first time I
stumbled onto Toliss Island. The people are somber and there is no
singing. At first, I don’t recognize my face. I’m old. Like thirty at
least. Considering how merpeople age, I might look thirty, but I could
be one hundred. There’s a woman beside me on the throne, and she talks
and talks. She’s beautiful with hair the color of corn silk and amber
eyes. Her lips are as red as roses, and she places a hand over mine.
My stomach is all knots when I look at her, and the me that is king
leans over to kiss her. Then I lean back and she’s quiet, as if all I
wanted to do was shut her up.
I realize that the court isn’t sitting idly. They’re all dressed
in armor, waiting for me.
I hold the trident in my hands. Thick white scars decorate my
skin. In the king’s chamber, I fiddle with a picture. It’s faded and
wrinkled like it was left in water for too long.
Someone walks in behind me and I drop it.
“It’s only me, Cousin,” Brendan says. He doesn’t look as old as I
do, but white streaks his hair. “The guard is ready.”
“I’ll be right out,” I tell him, but my voice is so distant.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Brendan says. “You warned Thalia
not to go fight him, and she did so on her own. Her death wasn’t your
fault.”
“Is that true of all of them?” I start naming people I haven’t met
yet. Then I get to the ones I have. “Dylan and Layla? Are you going to
tell me those weren’t my fault?”
Tendrils of lightning circle the prongs of the trident. Brendan
steps back.
“We must go,” I say and walk past him.
Brendan doesn’t follow right away. Instead he picks up the
photograph. It’s of me and Layla, but her face is nearly washed away.
He puts it back in the hiding spot I took it out from.
The dream changes, vertigo returning. I’m charging headfirst in
the water, my guard behind me. I can’t see my enemy’s face, but the
fury in my eyes scares me. I’m a wild thing, cutting down mermen. They
turn to surf and become part of the wave that takes me to him. His
hair is long, down to his hips. A white scar marks his face like a
crescent. But the violet eyes are still the same.
Kurt wields another trident. It’s one piece and solid and new. The
silver catches the sun.
I’m shouting. The dream-me. Not the king-me.
I tell myself to stop because I know that this is the wrong thing.
This is not what is supposed to happen. Not to me, not to all of us.
Not after we’ve worked this hard.
The image dissolves and I stand on my shore. Toliss. The white
sandy beach. Bright blue waters that you can see right through.
Something about the way I stare at the sky unnerves me. I’m waiting
for something. Or someone.
She comes out from the patch of forest that leads inland. I didn’t
expect her. A leaf is caught in her crown. I look back at the water.
She wraps her arms around me and I let her, but there is no
warmth. She talks to me. Her voice is sweet like a songbird. Pleasing,
consoling me over my stalemate with the bastard king. We’ll get him
soon enough.
Who is she? Where is Layla? Why do I keep looking at the sky?
Something in her hand glints. I want to reach out to stop her. I
can feel the stabbing pain in my side. Her blade digs deep into my
skin. She twists the knife and stares into my eyes as I fall back onto
the sand. I’m not surprised. I’m not anything.
I’m lying on the sand, bright red blood tainting everything around
me. I try to stand but poison spreads in blue lines across my skin. I
reach a hand out to my queen, but she keeps on walking.
Maybe it’s watching myself die.
Maybe it’s the chill of the room or the painful pulse that runs
through my body. But I can feel a change. I roll over on my side, sure
that I’m not going to make it out of this room alive. Maybe I’m
already dead.
I taste copper in my mouth and I spit it out. My tongue is dry and
my lips are swollen.
In my hand is the Scepter of the Earth. I’m afraid to look at the
end of it, but I force my eyes to open. The nautilus maid is gone. In
her place is a tall coral the same shade of pink as her eyes. A lone
fish is swimming in the shallows.
I hold my side where I saw myself get stabbed and replay the
vision in my head. It couldn’t have been a vision because that’s not
how my life is supposed to be. And then I think really hard about what
another oracle-Lucine-showed me the time I watched her give Kurt the
Trident of the Skies. She showed me the same thing. Me, dead, with a
crown on my head.
Thalia’s words ring like a belclass="underline" killing an oracle is a curse.
And then I feel it. The ground is shaking, trembling like an
earthquake. The quartz in my scepter lights up, and I know I’ve done
it. I’ve released the Sleeping Giants.
The sensation is thrilling, pushing every thought of death out of
my head. It is the lightning and current that flows through the earth.
I hold my scepter horizontally, and the energy that flows through it
is like ten shots of adrenaline in the chest. I could swim for miles,
for days. I hold out my scepter, and a blast of light crashes into the
wall, breaking it down.
I concentrate on pushing the lightning straight through the rock
of the ceiling until it’s a single beam into the sky. The room is
flooded white and the walls are crumbling around me, but I don’t care.
I hold the beam as long as I can.
The island trembles all the way through. Pieces of stone break
away from the ceiling. I have to get out of the chambers and find
Nieve and Kurt. But I’m high on adrenaline and the power of the
scepter. The ground is shaking so hard that it knocks me off balance
and I fall forward, right on top of the pink coral.
That sobers me up.
Focus, Amada said. Focus.
I dive back into the main artery that leads to the tunnels and
swim down. The shark guard is all gone. Instead three prongs wait for
me, pointed right at my throat.
Kurt’s violet eyes glow fiercely; his mouth is an angry snarl.
My mind flashes to us fighting in the vision Chrysilla gave me. I
shake it away because that can’t be how we end. Not after all we’ve
been through.
Chunks of the island break off from the tunnels, and the hungry
chatter of merrows echoes through them.
“You can’t go that way,” Kurt says, lowering his trident. “They’re
coming for us.”
He swims along the base of the shaking island. The ground beneath
us is also trembling, splitting like a hairline fracture across glass.
First a nick, then with every shake, it keeps going and going.
When I don’t follow, Kurt turns around. “Please.”
This could be the worst idea I’ve had in a while, and I have a lot
of bad ideas. But when Kurt gives me his back, I know he’s not worried
that I’m going to skewer him. So I follow him where he leads, back to
surface that is overgrown with vines and trees. It’s a part of Toliss
where I’ve never been before. A waterfall breaks the landscape and
rushes into a narrow stream full of multicolored fish. We trip over
broken branches and scratch our legs on jagged rocks until we’re under
then behind the waterfall. It’s relatively dry, and a hole in the
ceiling of the cave provides some light.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I have to!”