Page 122 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“Sounds like Nimue,” Bodil murmured.

“But it is fortunate for our purposes, as it leads past the Margygr realm and into the new palace complex. The portal was shut down once the invasion began but not destroyed. You should be able to get out that way once you restart it.”

I glanced around, but nobody looked relieved. Everybody was looking the way I felt, a combination of shock and alarm. Because there was something wrong with that pit.

There was something very wrong.

“Is there another way?” Bodil asked as she could sense it, too.

“Not one you would survive,” Faerie said pleasantly. “You’ve seen the land route; it is impassable. And even if you did fight your way through, the palace is flooded, a last-ditch attempt by the defenders to hold off the creatures the gods sent against them. It failed, and in the end, no one was left to drain it.”

“Okay, but if we gotta swim either way. . .” Alphonse said, speaking for all of us.

“The portal is on the lower levels, leaving you to swim down many floors to reach it, and those floors are filled with perils. Many creatures have taken refuge in the palace now that the land is overrun, and . . . some of them are hungry. This way, you can take the lower entrance and come out quite nearby.”

Nobody said anything, but nobody moved, either.

“Maybe we could drain the palace?” I offered, hopefully. Swimming through a pitch-black sea to a flooded labyrinth of corridors to find a portal we might not be able to get working again anyway wasn’t my idea of fun. Especially through that water.

God, what was wrong with it?

“It has a fell nature,” Æsubrand said, kneeling by the side of the pit. It was deep, maybe five feet from where we stood to the water itself, down a craggy gap with large black rocks all around. It forced him to lean over to get close, and I had to stop myself from pulling him back despite the fact that I didn’t even like him.

He reached out a hand, making me wonder if he was completely crazy. But just before it touched the surface, he jerked it back, although it was mailed. There were some things that even dragonscale didn’t help.

“It’s cursed,” Pritkin confirmed, staring at it.

“Can you lift it?” I asked because I really, really hoped so. My goosebumps had goosebumps, and I hadn’t even touched the stuff. I couldn’t imagine going down there, submerging myself under those inky waves, feeling them close over my head—

A shudder went through me, my whole body revolting at the very thought.

Pritkin didn’t immediately reply. He just knelt by the crag, but instead of reaching down as Æsubrand had, he hovered his hand over the top as if feeling the heat of a fire. Only there was no fire here. Instead, the closer I got to the water, the colder it felt, like a portal straight to the Arctic.

I backed off a bit because my cred as a badass demigoddess had already been shattered by having to be hauled around over Alphonse’s shoulder like a toddler, but Pritkin stayed put. In contrast to Æsubrand, he looked fairly barbaric—shirtless, with muddy spikes in his hair, and a body painted with streaks that looked more pale than dark in the moonlight. Like a pagan priest caught in the middle of a ritual.

One that he wasn’t enjoying, as slowly, a strange look came over his face. It took me a moment to recognize it as shock. “I don’t know this magic,” he whispered.

“I am sure there are many forms you don’t know,” Æsubrand sneered.

“No,” Pritkin sounded bewildered rather than insulted. “There aren’t.” He looked up at Faerie. “What is this?”

“The Margygr cursed it to protect their realm from the gods’ creatures as they did all access points to their kingdom.”

“And the gods didn’t care?” I asked, staring at the inky darkness.

Unlike normal water, it didn’t reflect anything. The serpentine-shaped hole in the roof was letting in a flood of moonlight, but none was dancing on the surface of that stuff, not so much as a ripple. And sure, maybe that was the sides of the crevasse shading it, but I didn’t believe it.

I didn’t believe it at all.

Faerie shrugged. “The Margygr are . . . temperamental. And as they had effectively trapped themselves, why interfere? It was easier to let them be.

“They also butcher anyone who dares to enter their realm.”

“Oh. Oh, really?” Alphonse blinked at her. “You mean the very thing you are telling us to do?”

“We should drain the palace,” I said more forcefully.

But Faerie was shaking her borrowed head.

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