Page 72 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

“Guilty,” I spat and rolled my eyes. “Apparently, I should have tried harder to stop Cormac from running off half-cocked through the Whispering Pass.Apparently, it’s all my fault that my uncle decided to stash a whole host of dead bodies in the cavern for whatever reason he does anything.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Have you eaten?” Rainn demanded.

“No,” I scoffed, flicking my filthy hair away from my face. “I don’t think they offer food to the prisoners down here. I haven’t heard another person all night.”

Rainn glanced over his shoulder as if looking for something or someone.

“How did you get in here?” I asked once I realized that Jitney, the guard in the corridor, was nowhere to be seen. I doubted he would have let the selkie into the dungeon without an escort.

Rainn ignored my question. “I’ll find a way to get you out,” he declared, his sky-blue eyes burning with determination.

“Wasn’t this the plan all along?” I said nastily. “Ransom me back to my uncle. Take me as a prisoner of war?”

His eyes widened. “For the love of Belisama,no!”

“Then why did you take me?” I gestured helplessly. “Why didn’t you kill me after I led you to the Frosted Sands? I have no idea what you want from me. Do you want to take my hand in marriage, or do you want to see me rot?”

A flash of pain struck Rainn’s face, but he allowed it only a moment before he steeled himself. “I can’t tell you.”

I laughed without humor. “So much for our friendship,” I said, but the statement had no fire. I was so tired and close to curling into a ball and giving up. There was only so much that I could take. After losing my home and my friends and being thrown in a cell after being teased with the idea of a better life, I was unable to summon even a modicum of care for what happened to me. Why should I care when no one else did?

“Maeve…” He pushed his fingers through his silver hair and groaned. Rainn shifted and reached for a bundle of fabric laid at his feet. I hadn’t noticed that it was there until that moment, and it appeared that Rainn had also forgotten.

He unfolded the blanket and hesitated before passing it through the bars.

“Here,” he said. “It will keep you warm.”

I stepped forward nervously as if the bars would reach out and strike me and snatched the blanket. Pulling it to my chest and feeling the warmth of it. It must have been enchanted in some way, as it didn’t appear to hold the water but actively repel the chill.

A sound at the end of the corridor signaled the guard’s approach.

Rainn adjusted the chain on his waist, and I expected him to pull his coat free of the chains and shift into his seal-form, but instead, he simply swam away.

Chapter 14

The single meal I received marked the passage of a day, though there was no window to show the light shining through the lake’s surface and changing the water’s color.

Jitney was replaced by another younger male with a permanent scowl and a determination to swim through the cells and bang on the bars as he went past to ensure that any measure of sleep was impossible. The guards had mentioned someone named Eldun, but I didn’t make the connection until the screams started.

I waited for Eldun to come and get me the entire day, for the screams that echoed through the hall to come from my mouth, but no one came to get me. It was almost worse in a way—the waiting.

I refused to pull Rainn’s blanket over my shoulders, though it smelt like him even underwater. Like salt, sunlight, and something else that I couldn’t place. Instead, I bundled it up and used it as a pillow against the hard stone, refusing to use the rotting and dirty bed in the corner.

There wasn’t much to pass the time, save for feeling the ebb and flow of the water on my skin and exploring every inch of the cell in hopes of finding a way out of the godforsaken dungeon. The screaming was hard to ignore, but exhaustion claimed me and allowed me a brief respite.

Unfortunately, the feeling of being powerless and trapped was not unfamiliar to me after years in Cruinn. I had dreamed for years about my magical majority. The gods were laughing at me; I was sure of it. I was so close, only to have it snatched away.

I had expected to be forgotten in the dungeon and never see the princelings again. I was served my second meal, marking the second day in the dungeons, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat the rotting crab they had tossed into my cell. Its shell was too hard to break with my bare hands.

Rainn had gifted me something warm to assuage his guilt. Still, he did not mention helping me escape or appealing to Lady Bloodtide. Heck, he hadn’t even mentioned if Cormac would wake up.

Instead, I curled up in the corner. I tried to sleep, imagining that I was back in my bed in the Cruinn castle and imagining a day with Moira and Liam as we walked the royal gardens. Liam waxed on about how he was going to become a Troid Sídhe. Moira chattered on about the courtiers and their arranged marriages and what kind of gemstones and materials were going to be in fashion for the upcoming season of balls—occasions that I was not allowed to attend, lest I ruin them by reminding everyone of the mad queen’s existence, or offend anyone with my ‘barbed tongue’.

Apart from the High Throne and the war between each fae creed, there had been fun and beauty in the small moments that I had taken for granted.

I’d left Moira in the cave in the Night Court, possibly dead at the hands of Cormac’s soldiers. I didn’t want to think about how Liam’s blood had stained the sand red.

Cormac Illfin was the king of the merfolk. Rainn belonged to the selkie royal family. Tormalugh was the prince, soon to be king of the kelpie, and Shay was also held in high regard by the nymphs.

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