Page 8 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

Would I become a Troid Sídhe? With magic to give me strength, courage, and the ability to handle any weapon and heal from almost any wound.

Or perhaps a Òran Sídhe with the ability to lure unsuspecting fae and muddle their minds.

My mother had held the ability of all three.

Chosen by Belisama himself.

My sigh was so heavy that a flurry of bubbles escaped my lips.

A prickle of awareness raced over my body, something cold and unnerving. The lake churned at my feet, turning my attention to the entrance to the tower.

My uncle’s advisor, Sir Douglas Dougall of the esteemed Undine Court, waited disapprovingly. His robes curled as the water licked the hem. His black hair was pulled back into a braid, and his face was free of wrinkles, save for a few at the edge of his mouth where his lips pinched out of habit. A collar made of the same thin metal as the rest of my uncles favored curled around his throat.

He was a good-looking man, though his face was set in displeasure—as if he had smelled something foul. It always amazed me that Douglas Dougall had a wife.

“You’re late,” Douglas griped.

I didn’t argue. I had long since learned it was a waste of energy. Instead, I silently tilted my head to the side and affected innocence that could have been mistaken for stupidity.

After a moment, Douglas scoffed. The sound was full of derision, and he waved his hand in my direction dismissively. “Come. Quickly,” he barked, turning towards the door and opening it without ceremony. The King’s advisor did not hold the door open for me, instead, allowing it to slam into my side as I followed on his heels. We swam up, rising into the tower’s depths, through the shaft that led to the other floors.

The guards swam behind, their large bodies enough to send a rush of unease through me as they crowded me and forced me up up up into the tower.

I hated the tower.

I was certain that when my father held council with his advisors in the war room, the tower was a very different place. Unfortunately, every time I had been summoned to the tower was a different story—and I would go as far as to say, a different book entirely.

I swam up towards the room at the top of the tower. Not the war room and the maps painted with luminescent algae or the missives from the front lines, but to the observatory at the top.

I reached the top long after Douglas, finding him at the open window, frowning at the Abyss.

“There used to be a time that one could see the Reeds from across the Abyss. Past the edge of the city, when the sun was high,” he noted impassively before clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Such a shame.”

I knitted my fingers together, using every ounce of my will to not look over at the mossy stone chair in the corner of the room—the back of my neck prickled as if the magic had woken up in my presence and was watching me.

“You’ve never been to the Reeds, girl?”

I gave him a look as if he had lost his mind. “That’s the ’kelpie’s territory.”

If he heard me, he didn’t pay my words any mind. “You haven’t been to the Skala Isles to see the home of the selkies, heard their song,” Douglas continued wistfully. “Or Tarsainn, where the lake once met the Dark Sea, and the merfolk made their home. Or the villages along the shore, where the nymphs play with the waves and frolic with any fae crossing their path.”

I said nothing.

“You know of all of these places.” Douglas turned to me. “The lake gives you sight.”

I took a breath and held it.

“The mare in the stables belongs to an important bloodline,” Douglas informed me. “The kelpies launched an attack on one of the smaller villages outside Cruinn to distract from their spies entering the city.”

“I don’t want to sit on the throne,” I said.

Douglas smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Didn’t you learn as a child that we rarely get what we want?”

My fists clenched hard enough to leave marks on my palms. “I learned there is only pain. You’ll take a whip and do the same if I don’t allow the throne to bleed me,” I spat.

“Just so.” Douglas’s eyes glinted. “Do you wish me to tell your uncle that you resisted again?”

My nostrils flared. “I fecking hate you.”

---