Page 107 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

Her lip ticked into a nasty smile. “My son’s room.”

“We’re to be married, don’t you know?” I cocked my head to the side, rounding my eyes to affect innocence. “Do you often come into Cormac’s room at night and watch him sleep?”

Lady Bloodtide’s eyes narrowed. “You stink of other males.”

“Well, when a male and a female love each other very much—” My words cut off a moment later as Lady Bloodtide sprang from her chair with the whip of her tail and swam towards me so quickly that I did not have time to react.

I felt her blade at my throat and my back pressed against the bed’s soft linen as I looked into her eyes—the same vivid green as Cormac’s, the same hooded lids and long lashes.

“Your uncle claims you amongst the dead of the Frosted Sands.” Lady Bloodtide’s voice was calm, delicate, and measured as if she had not pinned me to the bed with a dagger to my throat. “It wouldn’t be hard to slit your throat here and allow your uncle to believe that you died with the others.”

I glared up at her. “Your entire court has seen me. Your son has declared me his bride.” My voice was strained by the pressure of her blade, tightening when Lady Bloodtide pressed more deeply into my skin with every word I spoke.

The seam of my jaw stung, and I tasted blood on the water.

“My son won’t mourn you,” she chuckled. “Not when I tell him that you have been forsaking the shíorghrá bond to lay with his brothers—the friends he has had since he was a babe.”

I thrashed under her weight, bucking my hips. Her tail sat on my stomach, making it hard to breathe.

“You have no idea what’s—” I gasped before the blade stopped me speaking.

“Iwas the one who planned the Frosted Sands. My son claimed it was a sacred place and that no one should try to invade. Sentimental to a fault. He saw reason eventually. To hit the undine where they would hurt the most, steal their youth from them. Their children. Their future.”

My vision turned red.

Moira. Liam.

The blood in the water. The screams of my people.

The water turned hot with my anger, and I gripped Lady Bloodtide’s biceps as if to hold her to me. She threw her head back and laughed, assuming I was trying to stop her from slitting my throat.

I tasted metal on my tongue as I reached inside of myself, wrenching my anger at the root, gripping it with two fists, and pulling it free.

I blinked as Lady Bloodtide swiped her dagger across my throat, and before the feel of the blade could reach my brain, Ibecamewater.

Like those painful moments on the High Throne, I felt my consciousness everywhere. I felt Lady Bloodtide’s skin and, through that, her heartbeat. Every breath she took, the water that rushed through her gills and into her lungs, I was the lake, and the lake was me.

The water was hungry. The Heart of the Lake had been screaming for so long, living off the drops of blood and pain from my lessons back in Cruinn.

The lake wanted blood, and the water didn’t care if it was rotten with hatred and malice. It had been starved for too long, and I was the lake, and the lake was me—so I took what I wanted.

Lady Bloodtide flew from the bed, her dagger coated in my blood as she held it to her chest. She was alone, save for the rapidly dispersing cloud of my blood. The moment her blade had sliced my throat, I had ceased to be, and I could taste the bitter tang of the mermaid’s fear on the water

Something inside of me had snapped. There was no mercy—just as the merfolk, kelpie, selkie, and nymphs had not shown mercy to my kin on the Frosted Sands.

For days I had been hungry, tired, and worn down. Hopeless, as a captive of my kingdom’s enemies. Hated for being undine. Played with and used.

Even after giving my maidenhead to Rainn and Tormalugh, they had left me in a cold bed. Alone.

I had never felt so small, so worthless, and so frightened as I had been in the past week.

I’d hadenough.

I was the lake, and the lake was me.

I rushed into Lady Bloodtide’s lungs, bursting them inside her chest. Forcing myself down her throat and into her stomach, mincing her organs as I went, water turning to ice in her veins, the water fed until there was nothing but an empty body filled with destruction.

And as all of the water-fae did, Cormac’s mother turned to foam and disappeared.

---