Page 73 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

Our lives couldn’t have been any more different if the gods had written them.

I was the daughter of a mad queen, and I would never wear a crown.

I was meant to be dead and beaten. The lake was no longer my home, even though the water was like an extra limb. I couldn’t return to Cruinn, and Tarsainn hadn’t wanted me either.

If I ever made it out of the dungeons alive, I could go to land, or I could go to sea.

The Night Court or the Dark Sea. I could have a new life there. Perhaps try to appeal to the gods in a year or two and finally receive my magic.

It would kill me to leave the lake behind.

Mother, why can I feel the water?I’d asked when I was a wain.

All Cruinns can feel the water, Maeve. It’s in our blood. We are the lake and belong to it as much as it belongs to us.

But that’s magic, isn’t it?I’d wondered.

Aye, Maeve. But once you reach your magical majority, you’ll know the difference. You’ll know what it’s like to be touched by the gods. Treat the lake as your friend, little one. It will never lead you astray.

The presence of iron shuttered much of the connection I felt the lake, but every so often, I felt its mournful wail as the water tried to comfort me. It felt like all my senses had been muffled—my eyes blinded and my ears plugged.

The bars clanked in the distance, the sound ear-splitting as the hinges squealed in protest.

The changing of the guard. Eldun was replaced by Jitney, marking the beginning of another long night where I wondered if Cormac would live or die.

I hadn’t even thought about the hundreds of other souls trapped in the Whispering Pass and how they dissolved into foam when freed. I tried to tell myself that they had been dead long before we found them, but it didn’t make me feel better.

I doubted anything could.

“Maeve?” a quiet voice whispered my name as if it had slipped out in shock.

I squinted into the gloom beyond the bars of my cell, seeing only the shine of yellow eyes.

Precisely like the eyes I had seen in the silvers a lifetime ago.

I stepped closer to the bars, and once I could see better, Tormalugh’s dark form emerged from the shadows. The yellow eyes were nothing but a trick of the light from the fading sconces on the wall.

My eyes narrowed, and I could not hide the ugliness I felt inside. “Why, hello there,” I sneered. “Visiting hours have ended. Perhaps your vigil will be better spent at Cormac’s bedside if the mer-king has yet to perish.”

The kelpie blinked, offering the same dispassionate state that he always did. As if nothing or no one could touch him. He lifted a hand towards the bars before deciding better of it. “How are you fairing?”

I quirked a brow. “As fine as a summer’s morning.”

Tormalugh rolled my eyes. “Could you attempt anything but hostility for a moment?”

“I would, but I don’t think it’s appropriate.” I offered a saccharine smile.

The kelpie rolled his dark eyes before he glanced over his shoulder, and the water pulsed as it did when he shifted.

“How is your horse form going to help at this moment?” I hissed to the empty water where Tormalugh stood a moment before, startling when I felt the water ripple over my shoulder from a sharp, horsey exhale.

I squeaked and stepped back before placing my hands over my mouth. The kelpie wasinmy cell.

His body folded and twisted, and a moment later, the dark prince stood where the pitch-black horse had been. Tor brushed the shoulder of his fine coat as if he had simply changed outfits.

His magic clung to the water around us and coated every breath my gills tasted—it was as I imagined strawberries to taste.

“How did you do that?” I lowered my voice, hoping that the guards wouldn’t choose that moment to walk through the cells.

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