Cursed Throne: Lord of the Ocean #2 Read online

  Ginny pressed her lips together, but she could not conceal the smirk at the corners of her mouth. “I almost followed that.”

  “Then we will all take the underwater route,” Kai decided. “There may be safety in numbers.”

  Ginny glanced at Zamir. His deepening scowl implied that he did not agree, but surprisingly, he did not counter Kai’s decision. King and prince had argued; of that much Ginny was certain. Zamir and Kai had emerged from below decks, walking side by side, but the emotional gulf between them shimmered with tension. That they had argued at all was surprising; Kai had a tendency to defer to his grandfather, and Zamir was too long accustomed to being immediately obeyed to brook much—if any—opposition.

  What could it have been about? Ginny wondered.

  Zamir’s gaze rested speculatively on Naia.

  Damn it, no. She wouldn’t have put it past Zamir to harangue Kai into mating with Naia.

  Yet the outcome—Zamir’s thwarted air—suggested that Kai had, surprisingly, won—if not the war, then at least the battle. Good for him. Ginny smiled. Not enough people stood up to Zamir, and likely not many would have if they’d known he was Zamir—the mer-king, instead of Zee, a mere human. Badur certainly, would hardly have argued with the king.

  No one challenged the mer-king.

  That belief was firmly ingrained into the Beltiamatu. The countless ritual sacrifices of royal mates reinforced it. To attempt to sway the mer-king could cost your life.

  The sound of the engine puttered into silence. Meifeng and Corey emerged from the bridge. Meifeng’s sharp gaze flicked across all present, including the merfolk perched on the rail. Corey’s usual smile was absent. “Are you sure you don’t want us coming along?”

  “Not unless you can breathe underwater without scuba gear,” Kai said.

  Corey grimaced. “Never quite picked up the knack for that.”

  “And we need people to stay with the ship.”

  “That too,” Corey acknowledged. “If the cult arrives—”

  “Hide. Leave. Do not engage.” Kai shook his head. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “Might not have started out that way,” Meifeng said. “It is now, though.”

  Irony touched Kai’s smile. “I have too many deaths on my conscience. I would not like to add yours to it. Besides, we’ll need a ship to return to the Levantine Sea. It’s a long way to swim.”

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” Meifeng promised. He made no reference as to how long he would wait; Kai said nothing of it either, as if the conversation would reveal too much of themselves.

  Or of the friendship that had sprung up between them.

  Ginny rolled her eyes. Men.

  She made certain the little knife with its snug, hidden button was safely tucked in a sheath on her dive belt. Corey swore that the button, which released a burst of air, was effective at deterring sharks, but implicit was the assumption that she would first have to strike a shark with it—which would be problematic. It meant being near those serrated rows of teeth.

  But if she wanted to minimize her use of aether, especially around Kai, she needed an alternate way of protecting herself.

  “What is the plan, Kai?” Badur asked, his terse question bordering on rude, but perhaps Kai heard, as Ginny did, the thick layer of anxiety undergirding the question.

  “We’ll split into two teams and make for the center island. The teams will maintain visual contact, in case of an emergency, but otherwise, the plan is to swim as swiftly as we can for Atlantis. Once we reach the island, I’ll get the aether core. Alone.”

  No one said anything, but Ginny glanced at Zamir. The former mer-king’s narrow-eyed expression clearly indicated that it would not be the case.

  Kai’s attention rested over each of the group in turn, brushing much too quickly over Naia. “Let’s go.”

  Ginny cleared her throat. “Do you…want your tail back?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll need legs once I’m inside Atlantis anyway.”

  Ginny nodded. “Okay, but any time you change your mind—”

  “You’ll be with Naia and Zee.” He glanced at the blind mer-warrior and his mermaid companion. “Badur, Thaleia, you’re with me.”

  Ginny bit her lip and tried not to look too mutinous. She knew why Kai wanted her in the other group. He wanted to make sure she did not feel constrained in using her aether powers to protect herself, if necessary. She also knew why he had Zamir go with her. Someone capable had to protect Ginny, and Zamir was the best person for the job, better even than Kai.

  But Naia?

  Kai was just looking for a reason to not deal with Naia.

  Relief flashed across Badur’s usually stern, unyielding expression. Of course. Badur and Thaleia were practically inseparable. He needed the mermaid to be his eyes, and she had a way of guiding Badur so that his blindness was less of a liability than it should have been.

  Short of keeping the three legged beings together, and the three tailed beings together, Kai’s suggestion made perfect sense—Ginny scowled—especially since it rather conveniently kept Naia away from him.

  Kai strode to the stern of the ship and dived over the rail, entering the water without as much as a splash. Badur and Thaleia peeled away from the rail to swim after him. Naia was frowning—not that Ginny could blame her—but she said nothing as she, too, entered the water.

  “Ready?” Zamir asked Ginny.

  “I guess so.”

  He gestured to her to go ahead.

  Feeling like a graceless penguin, Ginny scrambled over the rail and hopped into the water. She held her breath for a moment, then inhaled. Water entered and exited her nostrils as effortlessly as air, filling her lungs with oxygen. She hadn’t taken much biology since high school, but it didn’t take a science expert to know that something in her—physically—had changed to make breathing under water possible. Whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn’t show up on a routine physical examination for her annual health insurance. It might have been hard to explain.

  Assuming she lived long enough to need health insurance for another year.

  Motion twisted the water around her. She glanced over her shoulder. Zamir met her eyes and nodded. Naia waited for them a few feet away. Ginny’s breath caught as it almost always did when she saw a mermaid underwater, their beauty and grace perfected in their natural surroundings. Their diaphanous fins—like fancy goldfish with long, draping tails—looked nothing like the stiff, pointed tail on the statue of the Little Mermaid gazing forlornly over Denmark harbor.

  But then again, Ginny didn’t think that Ashe had managed to look forlorn. Ever.

  Naia was not living up to the image of the surf-napping, hair-combing mermaid, either. She might have been the equivalent of a socialite in the Oceans Court, but the cool, determined look in her eyes assured Ginny that Kai was grossly mistaken if he thought he could brush her off with a simple no.

  Naia’s hair, violet and indigo, swayed in the ocean currents as she turned and led the way toward the center island. In the distance, Kai swam beside Badur and Thaleia, maintaining an effortless, tight formation.

  Not so with their group, and it was almost entirely her fault. Ginny had no doubt that Zamir could keep up with Naia if he chose, if only out of sheer stubbornness. She, on the other hand, might have looked like a penguin on land, but in the water, she lacked even the penguin’s grace and speed.

  Ginny blinked hard, surprised—and, although she would never admit it aloud, touched—when Zamir gripped her hand and squeezed hard. He said nothing, but the slight curve of his lips, edging toward a smile, encouraged her. Maybe she looked like a fool, a human trying too hard in a place where humans had no place, but at least she was trying.

  The water vibrated around her. A faint pressure pulsed against her skin. “What is it?” she asked Zamir, her words emerging in a barely coherent bubble.

  “Sonic blasts.”

  “What do you mean—?”

  Naia screamed, her hands
pressed against her ears, every line of her body taut with agony. Her nails dug into the sides of her head, piercing skin. Trails of blood corkscrewed out, streaking her purple hair.

  Ginny threw her arms around Naia’s trembling shoulders. “How can we help her?” she demanded. “And why isn’t it affecting us?”

  “Because we’re not Beltiamatu,” Zamir snapped, his voice harsh. “Stay alert. Sonic attacks are usually just the prequel to something larger.”

  He glanced past her shoulder, and his jaw went slack.

  Ginny twisted around in the water as something massive streaked from the center island—

  Straight toward them.

  Chapter 14

  Kai felt it first as a faint buzzing in his head, the slight tightening of his shoulder muscles.

  He recognized it instantly.

  “Get down to the seabed!” He twisted and shoved Badur and Thaleia out of the way.

  The two Beltiamatu were on the far edge of the expanding concentric range of the sonic blast when it thundered past them. Momentum kept them going, until they were able to take cover behind the toppled marble columns in the water.

  The sonic attack, however, struck Kai, dead center. He screamed as every nerve in his body lit, every neuron fired. The overwhelming burst of sensation forced him into a fetal ball. Escape was unthinkable. He could not move. Every muscle revolted against it. His thoughts crumpled into incoherent tangles.

  “Kai!”

  It sounded like a woman’s voice he heard often—too often—when he slept, when his dreams teetered toward nightmares. In those dreams, he saw nothing, but felt the swirling of water around him, rapid and frantic. He smelled the unforgettable metallic scent of blood, although he did not know where it came from. And he heard that voice screaming his name. “Kai!”

  And then a deeper voice. “Tara!” His father, Bahari, calling out for the mermaid he loved. “Kai!” Then, a single, final scream—a shout of denial, of raw pain. “No!”

  The dream—nightmare—happened too often, and always in the same way. No more detail. No less either. Not a figment of his imagination, but a memory.

  It was the only memory he had of his parents.

  So odd that he would think of it now, when he could think of nothing else. When his head pulsed with so much pain, he could not move it—

  Then it began. The tingle at his toes—

  No… Please no. Not now.

  I can’t take it.

  Not now.

  He flung his head back and screamed as agony peeled through his legs, from his toes, up along the length of his leg, over his hip, until his waist. Flesh and bone dissolved, the intense pain ripping through the numbing, crippling effect of the sonic blasts. Kai stared down in disbelief as his tail reformed, whole and perfect, his scales glistening iridescent black as if his tail had never been broken.

  But how?

  A brilliant purple radiance gleamed through the rapidly twisting currents.

  Ginny. Of course.

  And she was in trouble, or she would never have resorted to the use of aether.

  Which meant that Naia was in trouble, too.

  Grimacing against the effects of the sonic blasts, Kai swam toward the purple light, but something large emerged from the deep blue. Training and instinct allowed him to duck his head as it skimmed over him. A manta ray, he concluded dazedly as he stared at its massive underside, but not quite. It possessed all of the manta’s fluid speed and grace, but it gleamed as if it were made of gold.

  A drone, made of adamantine, powered by aether.

  One of Atlantis’s many guardians.

  The manta ray swooped into an inverted loop and charged at Kai. The mer-prince twisted out of the way, moments before a powerful sonic blast emitted from the manta ray’s mouth. The edges of the expanding ray caught Kai across his hip. The burst of pain was followed by icy numbness. His tail heavy and graceless, he turned to face the manta’s next charge. The drone’s mouth opened, and in that instant, Kai dived. He shot up in a tight arc beneath the manta ray and landed on its back, before sliding forward to seize the long cephalic lobes.

  Kai twisted the lobes, forcing the manta ray into a turn and steering it toward the brilliant purple light that marked Ginny’s location. The glow of aether cast enough light for Kai to see Ginny hovering in the water next to Naia, protecting her from another manta swooping around them.

  Zamir was nowhere to be seen.

  Grimacing against the pinpricks of pain at the base of his tail, Kai forced his manta ray into a direct collision with the other. Ginny’s head snapped up at his approach, and the purple glow in her hand blinked out.

  The tingles—the first warning of impending transformation—did not subside.

  His grip tightened as the tingle intensified into shafts of pain, ripping upward from the base of his tail. Just twenty more feet.

  His scales peeled off, exposing raw flesh to salt water. From his waist down, he was a bloody mass of pain, and he knew well—too well—more pain was yet to come. Ten more feet.

  The water turned bloody and cloudy with shredded, melted flesh. Agony incinerated every coherent thought, but one—

  Five more feet.

  He pulled hard on the manta’s lobes, forcing it into vertical dive.

  Straight into the other manta.

  The collision flung him off. The explosion hurled him even further. The initial blast of flames through the metallic carcasses gave way to a dissipating ethereal, purple glow.

  Aether.

  More aether.

  Dark energy tore through his sensitized, vulnerable body with as much subtlety as an orca pack attacking a shark. Kai’s scream was a despairing shriek of pain as his bones shaped into human legs. Flesh and skin had scarcely layered on before his legs shook from the onset of another transformation.

  The anguish of the first transformation flowed seamlessly into the agony of the second. No longer in control—so far from control—Kai floated, scarcely conscious in the water, as his body tore apart and reformed.

  The water was so murky with blood and torn flesh that Kai could see nothing through his own quavering vision. His thoughts quivered on the edge of coherence, but could not make that final step. They fizzled out, but still he stiffened when arms wrapped around him.

  “Shhh,” a voice, trembling with unshed tears, crooned in his ear. A gentle hand stroked the side of his face. His savior pulled him out of that swirl of filthy water, created by the remnants of his transforming body.

  Cleaner water, cleaner air entered his lungs. His thoughts flickered. He narrowed his eyes to dispel the moving blur of his vision. A lovely face. A swirl of purple hair.

  Naia.

  He wrenched himself out of her arms. A weak flick of his tail carried him a short distance from her. His back tensed, muscles knotting, and his hands clenched into fists.

  Naia’s violet eyes—tearful anguished—fixed on him.

  But it was Ginny who spoke. “Kai…are you…?”

  Are you what? A muscle twitched in his cheek as he bit back the sarcasm, the bitterness that would do no one any good.

  Alive? Yes.

  All right? No.

  Motion in his peripheral vision turned his attention to Badur and Thaleia. The mermaid stared at the churn of blood and flesh in the water. “What happened?” her question sounded strangled by fear.

  “He transformed,” Naia said, her voice snapping harshly. “Three times in mere minutes. This cannot go on. It will kill him. He cannot be anywhere near aether!”

  “Where is Zee?” Thaleia demanded.

  “He lured the first manta ray away. Then, a second one attacked,” Naia said. “I don’t know where he is. He said that the mantas and their sonic blasts are a prequel to something larger.”

  “What?” Badur demanded. His hand rested, as it always did, on Thaleia’s arm. His tail swished beneath him, his black scales dull from a lifetime of deprivation.

  A liability, Kai noted, not for the fi
rst time. He should have sent Badur, Thaleia, and Naia back to the colony. How did the addition of a blind merman, and two mermaids improve his chances at Atlantis?

  They didn’t.

  If he, Zamir, and Ginny traveled together, they could have handled the manta rays without resorting to the use of aether.

  Without forcing him through not one, not two, but three transformations.

  He spoke quietly. “I want you to return to the colony. All three of you.”

  A stunned moment of silence followed.

  The currents parted gently as Zamir returned, without a sonic-blasting manta ray in tow. Whatever he had done, he had managed to stop it, and far away—without exposing Kai to yet more aether.

  Sometimes, it seemed as if the only one with a handle on the situation was the mer-king; Kai grimaced. The rest of us, Ginny and I included, are fumbling our way through this nightmare that I created when I turned the Dirga Tiamatu upon Shulim.

  All the more reason to send Naia away.

  Kai shook his head, his words filling the silence. “This isn’t your fight, Naia.”

  “You can’t do it alone, Kai,” Naia objected. “I’m not sure you can do it at all.”

  He twisted around in the water, the flick of his tail spinning the currents. “All the more reason for you to get out of here. It’s not as if there are so many of us left that our people can afford to lose the three of you on a suicidal mission.”

  Naia’s chin lifted. “Can our people afford to lose our prince?”

  “Weeks ago, you didn’t even know that your prince was still alive. Turn back the clock. You will be no better or no worse off than you were then.”

  “We will be far worse off.” The quiet intensity of her voice matched his. “Then, we didn’t know what it was to hope. Now we do. Would you take it from us?”

  “I am trying to keep you alive.”

  Naia bared her teeth at him. “I am trying to keep you alive. You need help, Kai, whether or not you admit it. You need our help, not that of a woman whose powers tear your body apart.” Her voice cracked.

  The sudden, brief glimpse of Naia’s terror, her fear for him, shattered him. But he couldn’t cave. He had to send her—them—away. He forced anger he didn’t really feel. “Leave Ginny out of it. She freed me. Saved me.”