Cursed Throne: Lord of the Ocean #2 Page 10

  “We’ve saved you too,” Naia reminded him. “As you have saved us. You are doing this for us—enduring pain, risking death. The least we, your people, could do, is support our prince. Watch his back. And fight for him, should he demand it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Of course not. You’re not like the king.”

  Kai’s head snapped to her. His eyes narrowed.

  A warning.

  Naia did not back down. Instead, she closed the distance, her chin lifted proudly, until she was no more than inches from him—so close that their breath and their body heat warmed the water between them. “Your grandfather knew his place in the world. He never doubted, for an instant, his unchallenged right to rule, or in fact, his absolute right to anything else.” Her upper lip lifted into a snarl. “Including a soul.”

  Zamir grimaced. Ginny winced. But both those subtle motions were lost in Kai’s explosive response. “My struggle here, today, to retrieve the aether core from Atlantis, has nothing to do with my grandfather.” Kai ground his teeth. There was no way to make Naia understand without telling her the truth. No way to make her turn back without revealing what he had done.

  Even if it would forever change everything between them.

  But what choice did he have?

  Concealing omissions and perpetuating lies fatigued him, especially when he needed everything in him—all his strength, all his energy, all his will—to deal with the task he had taken on.

  And if the truth shattered everything his people—Naia, especially—wanted to believe of their prince—

  So be it.

  Kai’s heart recoiled, but it was the only way forward.

  Naia was looking directly at him when Kai confessed the one—the only—truth he had so desperately hoped to conceal from his people forever. “I destroyed Shulim.”

  Chapter 15

  Shock encased them all in a vacuum of silence.

  “No.” Naia’s voice, breathless and thin, shattered the overwhelming quiet. She shook her head, her violet tresses swaying in the current. “That’s impossible. The mer-king activated the Dirga Tiamatu. Only he had the codes—”

  “He focused it on the island of Kalymnos, but I returned to Shulim. I tried to turn off the Dirga Tiamatu, but it could not be stopped. It could only be redirected.” Kai’s voice was matter-of-fact and resolute.

  Every bit the voice of the mer-king—absolute, unchallenged.

  Emotionally isolated.

  Untouchable.

  Only Zamir knew how much willpower Kai expended to maintain that facade of calm control. After all, Kai had learned by watching the best.

  Zamir’s heart clenched, expelling the breath from his lungs.

  It was not the path he would have wanted for Kai, especially now that he knew where it led, and how impossible that solitary road would be.

  Naia screamed, the sound spilling over with pain. “But Shulim? Our city, our home?”

  “Our people were sick. Diseased. Our blood was destroying the ocean.”

  “The blood our king polluted when he made the pact with demons for his soul!”

  Was she thinking of her family? Her family, who, like many others, was diseased? Her family who was killed in the incineration of Shulim?

  “You didn’t have to kill them!” Naia’s sob warbled toward the madness of grief. “They could be cured. They could be saved!”

  “They couldn’t,” Zamir said quietly. He couldn’t let Kai take the blame for a catastrophe that began with him. “Kai did what he felt was right—what he believed was a choice between the survival of the ocean and the entire Earth, and the city of Shulim.”

  “It was our king who led us into this madness, who created this disaster,” Naia shouted.

  “And it was Kai who took the first step away from it,” Zamir insisted.

  “By destroying Shulim?” Naia burst out, her voice incredulous.

  “There was no other way.”

  Naia stared at Zamir. The anguish on her face, which would have certainly carved Kai apart, splattered harmlessly against Zamir’s polished, unyielding facade.

  After all, Zamir had several hundred years of experience on his grandson.

  Naia’s shoulders trembled. Kai instinctively reached out to her, but she spun around and burst into tears against Thaleia’s shoulder.

  Kai and Zamir exchanged glances, then Kai said to Badur, “Take her back to the colony.”

  Badur scowled, the lines in his forehead and cheeks more pronounced than ever, as if the revelations had aged him. “And you? What about what you’ve done—destroying Shulim? And the king—bargaining with demons, trading what was not his to trade—the lives of his people, the ocean—for what? His soul?” Badur sneered. “Who will answer for that? You?”

  Kai’s shoulders squared, and he replied before Zamir could speak. “I answer for the throne—the throne my grandfather cursed with his actions, the throne that I doubly cursed with mine.” He swam up to Badur and faced the blind merman. Even though Badur could not see him, the blind merman surely knew he was there. “I will spend my life answering for actions I can never undo, never make up for.” Kai’s lips twisted into a self-mocking smile. “I will run away from nothing. I know now that my exile will solve nothing, and my death even less so. But if you want me to answer for my actions, summon a council and I will answer to them when I return from Atlantis.”

  “If you return from Atlantis. Once you have the aether core, you will hold the Beltiamatu hostage, won’t you?” Badur challenged. “Our restoration as a nation, as an empire, will be entirely in your hands.”

  “The aether core belongs to the Beltiamatu people, not to one person.”

  “And we have nothing, but your word, that you will not be the dissolute ruler your grandfather was?” Badur’s voice ached with the underlying anguish of a merfolk who had experienced it firsthand. “That’s not enough. We have suffered enough tyranny from the throne.”

  Kai’s voice remained steady, so steady that Zamir felt a tremendous rush of pride in Kai who was—unjustly—taking all the blame for the catastrophe that had befallen the Beltiamatu. “All you have is my word. I know it’s not enough after my grandfather and I failed you so terribly, but it’s all I have.” He paused. “As your prince, I’m ordering you to turn around, to take Thaleia and Naia back to the colony.”

  “No!” Naia shouted. She twisted out of Thaleia’s arms and spun to face Kai. Her fins swirled in the water, like the multi-hued layers of a girl’s skirt, spreading in the wind. “I do not accept you as prince. If you were prince, you would have made decisions that advanced the empire. You would have behaved like a king instead of...” Her voice broke. She was silent for a moment as she fought for composure, then raised her chin. “No, Kai. I deny you any right to speak for me or to make decisions for me. You gave up that right when you spurned me as a mate, and yet again, when you killed my family. I am alone now—the only one left of the Anaitis clan. I alone choose where I go, and what I do.” She darted away from the group, her tail undulating—not away from Atlantis, but toward it.

  “Naia!” Kai’s involuntary cry was anguished.

  Ginny glowered at him. “Didn’t work, did it?” She shook her head. “Really, Kai. You must have grown up in a bubble where everyone deferred to you just because you were the prince. In real life, females—human or Beltiamatu—have minds of their own.”

  “I am trying to keep her safe—”

  “By telling her you destroyed her city and killed her family?” Ginny all but yelled at him, the effect only subtly lessened by the hilarity of shouting underwater. Her garbled words, and her intent, however, were perfectly clear. “She’s still in love with you, Kai. The least you could do is be kind.”

  Kai snarled. “Not when my kindness and love will get her killed. I sent her away to save her life.”

  Ginny folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It scarcely worked the first time. It’s obviously not working the se
cond time.” She tossed her head and swam after Naia.

  Kai growled under his breath. “Are all females so difficult?”

  Zamir shrugged. “Never really had to deal with one before, not over an extended basis anyway.” He frowned. Ginny, really, was the first woman he’d ever— He shook off the thought of her, and looked toward Badur and Thaleia. “You should turn back. We’ll send Naia back too.”

  “We are not leaving Kai,” was Badur’s immediate response.

  Zamir’s eyes narrowed. Badur’s insistence on accompanying Kai despite the obvious dangers was completely irrational. “I don’t think—”

  “Kai!” Ginny’s voice rang out sharply. A bright purple light glowed, rippling with the currents.

  Kai surged forward, but convulsed, his body seized by spasms of pain. He recoiled, his shoulders shaking, tail trembling.

  Zamir shoved Kai into Thaleia’s arms. “Stay with him.” Then, he swam toward the telltale glow of aether.

  Ginny and Naia were both visible in the purple light. Translucent forms bobbed around them, long strands, like silky threads, trailing from beneath umbrella-shaped bodies. The jellyfish lunged toward the two, but they were repelled by aether’s glow. One of the ghostly forms bobbed too close to Zamir. He twisted away from it, and his shoulder brushed against the tentacles of another.

  Scorching hot pain pierced his arm, followed by numbness. He tried to fold his fingers into a fist, but his body reluctantly obeyed, as if it no longer realized that his hand was a part of him.

  “What are these things?” Ginny demanded, her voice thin with panic.

  “They look like…irukandji,” Naia said.

  “But box jellyfish are small creatures,” Ginny insisted. “I read about them. They’re supposed to be smaller than a fingernail.”

  “The Atlanteans must have modified them. Or something about the area…” Zamir tensed.

  “The exposed aether core. Varun noticed it too. The exposure to aether made things grow large,” Ginny whispered. “But the irukandji has one of the most venomous toxins on Earth. What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t get stung.”

  She glared at him. “All your plans are disturbingly light on details.”

  “My warlords usually handled the details.” He glanced over his shoulder. “The irukandji are both attracted to and repelled by aether. Let’s lure them up to the surface, so that Badur and Thaleia can get Kai past.” He raised his voice. “Badur, do you know what to do?”

  “I do…” A deep and melodic voice rolled over the current.

  For an instant, that voice almost sounded like Kai’s, but the accent was rougher, blending the elite accent of the Oceans Court with that of the distant colonies. If nothing else, it explained Badur’s authoritative air, his blindness notwithstanding. If he had been raised near the Oceans Court, he had likely grown up wealthy, surrounded by servants and retainers.

  “Hurry,” Thaleia’s voice beseeched from the darkness. “Kai is moments away from another transformation. Get that aether away from him.”

  “Let’s go.” Zamir grabbed Ginny about the waist, as did Naia. Together, they sped Ginny toward the surface. The shimmering translucent irukandji followed, their tendrils trailing like gossamer threads.

  Zamir glanced down. In the distance, Badur and Thaleia flanked Kai, supporting him as they swam below the net of irukandji. Kai’s shoulders were hunched, and his taut body betrayed the agony flooding through him.

  The Beltiamatu were right. Zamir ground his teeth.

  Kaia was not going to make it to the aether core alone.

  Sunlight glittered like gold across the surface, welcoming them.

  “What now?” Ginny demanded. She swung her arms out in a circle overhead, out to the side, then down. The irukandji fled from the glow of aether in her hands, only to drift closer as her hands moved in the opposite direction. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  “Wait…” Zamir held up his hand.

  Naia, too, stiffened. She glanced toward the outer islands. “Something approaches.” She closed her eyes, as if trying to listen for something only she could hear. “Like the submarines. But different. Faster. On the surface, and below.”

  “The cult,” Zamir murmured. “It tracked us here.”

  Ginny’s eyes narrowed as she fixed her glare on Zamir. “But how?” It didn’t sound like she was asking a question though.

  It definitely sounded like a challenge.

  To face up to the truth.

  The connection between Ondine and me? But what could it be?

  He saw the answer in Ginny’s eyes. Nergal.

  But how could it be Nergal?

  He would know, wouldn’t he, if there was something of the god of fire and pestilence within him?

  Gritting his teeth against the pressure of questions without answers, Zamir searched for a solution. “Aether…” He smiled. “Don’t break the surface. We’ll lure the irukandji to the cult. Then turn it off.”

  “Turn off the aether? But it’s the only thing keeping the irukandji off us.”

  “It’s also the only thing attracting them to us, but Ondine emits aether too.”

  Ginny scowled. “She’s not going to turn it on because you ask politely.”

  “Politeness didn’t even occur to me,” Zamir said. “Let’s go.”

  As the distance of deep blue waters lightened, the source of the disturbance emerged. Sunlight, refracting through water, gleamed off metallic hulls. The underwater vehicles were larger than drones, but much smaller than military- and research-class submarines. They were also swifter and far more maneuverable. On the surface, the wake of frigates streaked like tracks over an icy road. At least six, Zamir noted. Two more than the underwater two-person submersibles.

  “I will lure Ondine out,” Naia said.

  Ginny frowned. “I don’t think—”

  “I am faster than you,” Naia pointed out, her tone matter-of-fact. “Open a way for me.”

  Ginny did not look happy, but she raised her arm, and the irukandji scattered away from the purple light. They quavered on the rim of aether’s glow as Naia darted through the narrow opening. The translucent tentacles of the irukandji quivered, dangerously close to the Naia’s tail, but the mermaid seemed to possess an instinctive awareness of danger. Her tail fins flicked out of the way each time, always by fractions of an inch.

  She undulated toward the surface, then her tail slapped down hard, propelling her out of the water. Her arc through the air seemed to last forever before she landed on the far side of the frigates with hardly a splash.

  “That’s one way to get attention,” Ginny murmured, then yelped as the water erupted with bullets streaking toward them.

  “Idiots,” Zamir snarled. “She’s not even anywhere near here. Clear the area, Ginny. We have to get out of here. Now.”

  The aether in Ginny’s hand flared even before he had completed his sentence. The irukandji swerved away. Zamir grabbed Ginny and dove sharply. The bullets streaked over them. One whizzed past Zamir. Too close.

  He didn’t have the spatial intuition of a Beltiamatu, not anymore. Not in water. He could still read currents, but not as well as he used to.

  Which meant that Kai, injured and weakened, needed the Beltiamatu to navigate through the aquatic dangers of Atlantis.

  “Where’s Naia?” Ginny demanded, turning around in Zamir’s arms to look for the mermaid.

  “Doing a better job of staying alive than we are,” Zamir remarked drily. Naia was swimming figure eights and Celtic knots around the small submersibles, turning them into collision routes as they tried to track her in the water.

  “Zamir, look!” Ginny pointed at the green glow emitting from the one of the submersibles. “It’s Ondine.”

  The irukandji knew it too. They converged, like a ghostly cloud on the cluster of submersibles—and on Naia, who darted among them.

  “Get out!” Zamir shouted a warning, but his voice no longer carried across th
e ocean’s currents. The flood of irukandji collapsed upon the submersibles, like water sweeping over rock.

  Naia vanished behind the sudden flurry of movement as submersibles churned in the water, then spluttered to a stop.

  “What’s going on?” Ginny demanded.

  “The irukandji are getting sucked into the engines—”

  “And stalling them?” Ginny blinked as the hatch of one of the submersibles opened, and two divers in sleek, black wet suits emerged. For a moment, they hovered in the water, before the irukandji swarmed toward them. The sunlight cast their lean forms into dazzling clarity.

  They stiffened, then spasmed. Their bodies floated limply, heads sagging against their chests, their bodies bobbing with the current.

  Mere seconds. That was all it had taken the irukandji to kill a man.

  Ginny drew a deep breath. “I still don’t see Naia. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I think—” He glanced up at the surge of water from the central isle, far too strong to be a natural current. The sunlight glinted off gold-colored metal as three more manta ray drones glided through the water toward the submersibles.

  “The manta’s sonic blasts won’t affect the submersibles,” Ginny cried out.

  “It will. It’ll take out most of its navigation. The submersibles will have to navigate by sight. Tricky in unfamiliar waters. Far harder when attempting to travel in a pack.”

  One of the three drones shot vertically up into a reverse loop, then winged through the water toward them.

  Zamir’s grip tightened on Ginny’s hand, but she stiffened. “We can’t go without Naia. We need to make sure she’s all right.”

  He didn’t think Naia could possibly be all right after the irukandji converged on the submersibles and on her. Regardless, Kai came first. Always. “You and I can handle the sonic blasts, but the Beltiamatu can’t. If the manta gets past us, it’ll get a straight shot at Kai.”

  Ginny turned her head and saw, as he did, Kai and the other two Beltiamatu in the distance.