Cursed Throne: Lord of the Ocean #2 Read online

  If there was a single right answer, he did not know what it was.

  Four generations—every single one of them seemingly in the wrong.

  Could his family never make the right choice between love and duty?

  Zamir’s head snapped up. For the first time, love and duty could coincide. Save his son and his grandson.

  Whatever it cost.

  He stared along the titan’s back—three leagues long from the tip of the snout on the middle head to the tip of its scorpion tail.

  Scorpion…

  Hadn’t his mother defeated one of the Scorpion men in the underworld by stinging it with its own tail? Same problem. Just…larger. Infinitely larger.

  Zamir sprinted up the titan’s middle neck toward its head. The tail movement wasn’t spasmodic, which suggested that only one—and not all—of the heads controlled it.

  And given the distance between head and tail, and generally ponderous movement of the titan, Zamir would bet on the titan not being able to recall an attack, once it had been launched. He just had to provoke the titan into attacking him with its tail, while he was running around on its head.

  And he had nothing with which to attack the titan.

  He ground his teeth. Not hard at all.

  “Arman!” Marduk’s voice roiled with hate.

  Zamir instinctively dropped into a forward roll. Golden light blasted the ground where he had been standing, sending a spray of what looked like shattered rock into the air.

  The shards of rock was the titan’s hide.

  And the titan didn’t even flinch.

  Zamir twisted around as he came up in a battle crouch and glared at Marduk, who scrambled effortlessly up the titan’s neck, leaping from ridge to ridge with natural grace.

  Marduk, too, seemed to have noticed the differences in their physical capabilities. “You appear to have lost a great deal in your reincarnation,” he mocked.

  Zamir did not shrug, although with effort, he matched Marduk’s tone. “It’s the best aether could pull off with a human body, but it’s better to have a second chance than nothing at all.”

  “A second chance at what? Doing the right thing?” Marduk sneered. “The right thing is to turn that Beltiamatu prince over to me. Without him, I cannot return the aether to Aldebaran. Without him, an entire planet will perish.”

  Something clicked in Zamir’s head, a scarcely audible sound, almost like gears changing. Zamir’s furrowed brow relaxed. His shoulders straightened. “The high council of Aldebaran knew the choice it was making when it banished the royal family.” Zamir’s accent changed, the difference subtle to his own ears, but Marduk frowned; he, too, had perceived the change. “Inanna alone wove the aether cores from raw dark energy. They were hers to keep. Hers to give away. Why would the people who cast her family aside expect to keep any of her treasures?”

  “The aether cores belonged to the people of Aldebaran, a planetary resource—”

  “A personal resource that Inanna chose to share, and that she rightly took with her when she realized that the council would have seized it by force.”

  “She damned an entire planet!” Marduk roared.

  “The council expelled her family from the civilization they created. You know Inanna. What path did you expect her to choose?”

  “She left innocents to die!”

  “Should she have damned her family instead by leaving behind the one thing they needed to start their new lives here on Earth?” Zamir asked.

  “We left behind family. Friends. They are dying, Arman. They will die if the aether is not returned to Aldebaran.”

  “It is too late.” Zamir’s voice was cold, matter-of-fact. “The Beltiamatu prince carries the last aether core, and it is not enough to save Aldebaran. The vast stores of aether that were on the Tiamat is beyond our reach. You saw to it.”

  “I saw to it?” Marduk’s voice rose in outrage. “What do you remember of that battle? I defeated you. I killed you!”

  Zamir drew a deep breath. He remembered nothing, and perhaps that was a mercy. The words came from somewhere in him, not from any memory that evoked any emotions. What had he actually said? On the Tiamat… Was the Tiamat a starship instead of some kind of celestial embodiment of chaos? Ginny had told the story of Marduk’s battle with Tiamat. How much truth had been concealed in myth?

  Zamir faced Marduk. “It will not be easy for you to kill me the second time.”

  “You are lessened!”

  Zamir shrugged. “That’s a matter of perspective.”

  Marduk raised his arm again. When golden light blasted out, Zamir twisted aside, and it struck the titan instead. Flecks of its hide sprayed like shrapnel on Zamir’s legs. Below the hiss of rising steam, the titan’s hide looked smooth, as if it had lost layers of the tough ridge that protected it.

  A muscle twitched in Zamir’s cheek. Would another direct hit tear through the titan’s hide?

  He stood his ground as Marduk advanced. “I pledged my loyalty to the An dynasty, and I kept my oath. What’s your excuse for breaking it?”

  “Your oath?” Marduk snarled. “It wasn’t your oath that kept you in service to despots and tyrants! You allowed love to silence your conscience. You chose her over me.” He stopped and kept a careful distance between him and Zamir. His tone shifted, the hostility lessening into a plea for reason. “Surely death has lessened your ties to the An dynasty, or at least increased your perspective. I need your help, Arman. Help me convince the Beltiamatu prince to aid us.” He extended his hands, palms open, to Zamir. “It is not too late to save the ones we left behind. The ones we love.” His face twisted in agony.

  Had Marduk left behind people he loved on a doomed planet?

  And why couldn’t he remember anything? How could he utter the words that incited Marduk into responding, yet remember nothing that drove the schism between them? He could piece together what happened, but he still didn’t know why.

  Solve one problem at a time.

  And right then, the biggest problem was driving the titan back underwater.

  Whatever happened between him and Marduk, he would address later.

  If he ever had a chance.

  Zamir stepped over the section of thinned hide. “You know how we regard oath breakers. There will be no warm welcome, not for you, not for whatever reason.”

  Marduk’s face twisted. “Are you not an oath breaker, too? A servant who loved where he should not? Who craved what he could not have?” He bared his teeth in a snarl, but looked more pained than furious. “You—who judge me—you are no better than me!” His fingers folded into fists.

  Zamir dodged, but the blast of light seared against his side. His body numbed for an instant, before flaring into bright hot pain. He crumpled to his knees. He would have pressed his hand against the injury, except that it hurt everywhere. The agony stole his breath and brightened his vision into blinding white light.

  A shadow moved to stand over him.

  “Are you not lessened?” Marduk mocked. “The Beltiamatu prince cannot stand for long, not on his own, not without you beside him. When I kill you—again—he’ll fall easily.”

  Marduk brought his arm up. Jackson’s instinct and training rolled Zamir to the side.

  The blast of energy struck the titan instead.

  Right over the section of thinned hide.

  Fragments of hide sprayed in all directions.

  Flesh sizzled, burning, acrid fumes rising from the injury as the Ancient’s blood boiled.

  The titan reared, the sudden momentum flinging Marduk off his feet. He went sprawling, but scrambled to his feet and lunged at Zamir. Both of them rolled across the titan’s broad skull, wrestling. The bright light around Marduk flared and dimmed like flashing strobe lights, but did not intensify enough to blast out another surge of pain. It almost seemed as if Marduk was too consumed by emotion to focus his power.

  A long, dark shadow lunged toward them.

  Zamir flipped Marduk over his shoul
der then rolled aside as the tip of the scorpion’s tail plunged down—

  —straight into the open wound.

  The titan’s middle head roared, tossing wildly. The motion tumbled Zamir off the monster, but he grabbed on to one of the spikes protruding from the titan’s head. The sea tossed far below him, the splash of the waves inaudible. The only sound was the creature’s pain-filled rumble, deepening into agony with each passing moment. The titan’s right head swung toward the middle, as if seeking to comfort the middle head, but it caught sight of Zamir, and its eyes narrowed.

  Fangs bared, its head pulled back to attack.

  Zamir started swinging, the momentum carrying him back and forth, and when the other head lunged at him, he let go. Momentum hurled him forward, rolling him across the snout of the other head. He came up in a crouch and ran up between its eyes as they crossed, trying to follow his movement.

  Shadow quavered over him, a split-second warning. He leaped forward, onto the titan’s neck, as the tail smashed onto the titan’s head. The impact sent him stumbling but before he could regain his feet, the titan roared, flinging back its head.

  Zamir tumbled off the titan’s head. He grabbed one of the spikes, but the sharp edges cut his hand, and his blood made his grip slippery.

  “Arman!” Marduk crouched low on the titan’s middle head. “I can save you. Just swear you’ll help me capture the Beltiamatu prince. We can still save Aldebaran!”

  Zamir bared his teeth in a snarl. “I will never surrender my grandson to you!”

  Marduk’s eyes narrowed, and he raised his arms. His fingers curled into fists aimed directly at Zamir. A golden glow shimmered, then brightened into deadliness.

  Death spewed out.

  Zamir let go.

  He was falling, still falling, when the golden light blasted into the titan’s right head. The monster let out a thunderous bellow. Its entire body reared up onto its hind legs. Its scorpion tail flailed like a writhing snake and its three heads recoiled, its gills flaring wide, fangs bared.

  Zamir twisted around in midair and prepared to enter the water, but even as he turned into the perfect dive position, he knew it was pointless. He would not survive the impact. No one could.

  As if in slow motion, the titan splashed down into the ocean.

  Waves surged a hundred feet high.

  Zamir plunged from air into water, the monstrous wave breaking his otherwise fatal fall into the sea. Salt water drenched him, swallowed him whole, and he hardly even realized when he had dived through the entire height of the wave and entered the ocean.

  Zamir plunged into the madness of the whirlpool.

  He breathed easily, effortlessly in water, but panic gripped him. He was beneath the titan, caught up in the maelstrom that spun beneath the titan’s belly, churned into a living nightmare by the massive displacement of water caused by its four huge legs.

  Zamir pushed against the tight bands of the maelstrom, but it might as well have been a solid granite wall. He could not break through. He couldn’t swim hard enough, fast enough.

  The riptide and maelstrom intensified. He looked up. The titan’s white belly sank lower in the water. It was retreating into the depths, and taking with it everything trapped beneath it. Zamir cursed and pounded at the whirlpool’s outer edges, but it was swirling so quickly that he could not even get in a solid punch or kick before he was swept away.

  On the other side of the maelstrom, two familiar shapes raced along the riptides, keeping up with the ferocious speed of the whirlpool. Zamir squinted, his rapid heartbeat unsteady. No. It couldn’t be—

  But it was.

  Kai and Badur swam beyond the boundaries of the maelstrom. Safe.

  But Kai met Zamir’s eyes, and Zamir had seen that look before.

  Kai had worn that exact expression when he confronted Zamir about the contract Zamir had struck with the goddess of the underworld. Unrelenting courage in the face of bleak despair, of nearly absolute certainty of failure.

  Kai glanced at Badur. Said something Zamir could not hear.

  After a moment, Badur nodded, his face grim.

  “No!” Zamir shouted.

  Too late.

  Kai, with his arm tightly gripping Badur’s side, plunged through the walls of the whirlpool. Badur extended his arm to Zamir as the currents carried them past him. “Take my hand!”

  Zamir grabbed Badur’s arm. His son winced, grunting from the effort of holding on, as Zamir pulled himself close enough to switch his grip. He slung his arm around Badur’s back. His fingers brushed against Kai, on Badur’s other side.

  The titan sank lower. The pressure intensified until Zamir could feel it building up behind his eyes and his ears. They were out of time.

  Zamir’s gaze met Kai’s, and the mer-prince nodded.

  If they did not break out now, they would all perish beneath the titan. “Hit the wall at an angle,” Zamir ordered.

  Together, Zamir, Badur, and Kai swam alongside the riptides, then accelerated. Zamir’s lungs ached, his muscles burned from the effort. And then they struck the wall.

  For several terrifying moments, he felt nothing but the crushing weight of water piling in on him with so much force that it slammed the air out of his lungs. Beside him, Badur’s tail thrashed down hard, far harder than any human legs could kick. He heard, distantly, the sound of Kai’s heaving breaths, the low grunts of near superhuman effort.

  “Push together!” he shouted. “Now!”

  With his son and grandson on either side of him, Zamir flung all his strength against the riptide. The pressure squeezed in upon him so hard his skull throbbed in rhythm with his pulse.

  A mere heartbeat from exploding—

  In the life-saving fraction of a heartbeat, the crushing weight vanished as they shot forward, unrestrained.

  The currents still tugged and pulled, but without the devastating intensity of a riptide.

  Zamir glanced at Kai, who looked as astonished as Zamir felt.

  It had been a gamble—a gamble Kai had clearly not expected to win. “We made it,” Kai breathed.

  Badur nodded slowly. His chest still heaved from his efforts, but there was the stamp of royalty in his raised head. “And the ship?”

  Zamir’s gaze swept across the ocean. The dark hull of a small ship, unlike the other storm-tossed ships, moved in a purposeful manner, away from the titan. “There! It looks like they fixed the engine.”

  Kai started kicking toward the ship, but Badur’s grip tightened on his son. “Forgive me.”

  Kai paused at the stricken tone in Badur’s voice. “What is there to forgive?”

  “I did not mean to drop the truth on you in that way. Thaleia and I debated for hours, and we had decided not to tell you.”

  Kai’s jaw dropped. “What? Why?”

  “The truth shatters more often than it rebuilds. You had built a life for yourself, an identity for yourself that did not require any one else to define you. There was no need to disturb that—”

  “So you and Thaleia would have stayed near me, advised me, protected me, but never told me who you were?”

  “What would it have changed, Kai?”

  “Everything,” Kai snapped the word. “I have a father. A mother. It changes everything.”

  “It changes nothing. You are prince of the Beltiamatu, the mer-king’s heir. And with him gone, you are the lord of the ocean now, the lord of the abyss. May you lead your people with more courage and more compassion than he did.”

  Kai darted Zamir a questioning glance.

  Zamir shook his head. His throat was so tight, he could not swallowed through it. No, Badur did not need to know that his father, Zamir, was still alive, although physically changed beyond recognition. Like Badur’s own justification to Kai, Badur and Thaleia had built identities and lives that were no longer defined by the existence of the mer-king. There was no need to disrupt their identities—especially not by bringing back the one person they despised and hated above all other
s.

  “Let’s get back to the ship,” Kai said quietly. “There’s so much I want to say to Thaleia…to my mother.”

  Zamir nodded, assured that Kai—at least for the moment—would keep his identity a secret. As would Ginny.

  There was no need—ever—for Badur and Thaleia to know.

  He glanced over his shoulder as the titan sank into the depths of the Atlantic, the maelstrom pulling down all the ships that had not been able to escape.

  Perhaps the titan had claimed Marduk, Ondine, and Jacob too, for there was no sign of them.

  Chapter 28

  From the deck of the Endling, Ginny stared at the swirling seas. Her heartbeat was still quick and erratic as she leaned against the radio. “You need me to come down there and fix anything else?”

  “No. The magicky thing you did is holding together.” Corey’s voice sounded thin but clear from the engine room. “I’d like a real mechanic to look at it, but I’m afraid about what he’d find.” He hesitated. “Any sign of the others yet?”

  Ginny glanced over her shoulder. Thaleia huddled in a corner of the deck, tending to an unconscious Naia. The mermaid’s eyes betrayed her emotional strain and heartache. “No,” Ginny murmured. “Nothing else. Over and out.”

  She stepped away from the radio and squatted next to Thaleia. “They managed to both turn the titan, and drive it back down. It’s too early to lose hope.”

  “I’ve never seen anything as terrifying as that Ancient. It is irrational to keep hoping—”

  Water splashed against the side of the ship, the beat irregular and stronger than the waves that had been lapping against it. Before Ginny could rush over to check it out, Zamir appeared and pulled himself over the rail. His gaze swept over the deck, taking in Ginny, Naia, and Thaleia. “Corey and Meifeng?”

  “In the engine room and on the bridge.” What was that stupid, overwhelming rush of happiness in her chest? She fought to modulate her voice. “They’re okay.”

  He nodded and turned his back on Ginny. She bit her lip, holding back the obvious question as he leaned over the rail.

  Badur’s haggard face appeared. Thaleia’s gasp was a broken, sobbing sound, but there was a smile on her lips.