Page 31 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

Silence fell as my captor stepped onto the sand, his gait changing at the terrain shifted.

I was dumped onto the floor without ceremony. The frozen ground was hard enough to jar my bones and click my teeth together with the force of the drop.

My hands were tied, and I couldn’t stop my body from pitching forward. Someone grabbed my arm and righted me until I was seated.

I tried to speak, but my words were muffled.

The festive celebrations resumed as the fae that had invaded the beach continued to laugh—as if the death of my kin meant nothing to them.

The blindfold was ripped from my head, taking several strands of hair.

The sand had a dark tint in several places where blood had dried. The glassy eyes of a dead undine nearby, staring lifelessly into my eyes. I blinked, unable to look.

My shivering started anew as my entire body began to quake in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.

I searched for Moira, praying that she was alive and had been brought with me, but she was nowhere to be seen. I could’ only hope that she had gotten away and her corpse was not rotting in the cave inland.

Someone had crafted a table in the middle of the beach. Several half logs were tied together and propped on the beach rocks to form a banquet table for the victors. The makeshift furniture groaned under the weight of fish and wine as the merfolk and kelpie roared with laughter as they feasted amongst the dead on their battlefield.

The sun peeked over the horizon, turning my vision white for a moment.

That was it, then.

I had missed my opportunity.

I would not be reaching my magical majority for another year—if I even lived that long.

Any fight inside of me had gone, as I sagged like a puppet with its strings cut.

Ten feet from where I had been dropped in the sand, the soldiers drank their wine. Their armor had been dumped unceremoniously in the sand now that any threats to them were dead.

Why had I been brought back to the beach?

Though I shared a family name with the King, I wasn’t important. I had failed to reach my magical majority in the eyes of Belisama.

My uncle had made it clear that I was to be mated and no longer welcome at the castle, but how could I find my shíorghrá if I didn’t have magic to guide me?

“Bring the female closer,” someone at the table commanded.

Someone grabbed my arm and hauled me towards the banquet. My feet didn’t have time to gain purchase, and my toes sunk into the sand and twisted, spraying grit as I was carried towards the laughing men.

My eyes caught on the armor in the sand. I wasn’t strong out of the water—my ability to communicate with the lake was the only thing that perhaps set me apart from the average undine. Even then, I couldn’t speak to the water if I wasn’t in it.

My next best bet was the element of surprise.

My uncle had kept me weak, deeming that the undine did not need to see their dead queen’s only daughter learning to use a sword or her fists, lest it send an unwanted message about the war.

I had always lamented that I could not train with my friends, but Ihatedmy uncle with a burning passion as the fae male carried me to my jeering enemies—knowing that if any of them wanted to lay a hand on me, there wasn’t anything I could do.

My nightmares seemed to be coming true when the fae male closest to me at the end of the table stood up as my captor approached.

“Gilded pussy, bring it here, Toddy!” the male’s eyes gleamed in a way that I did not like as he used a slur against the undine.Gilded.All undine were born with adornments; they were as natural as fins or scales.

The one called Toddy let go of my arm and dumped me at the end of the table, allowing my face to slam into the wood. Pain raced through my nostrils like a spike to my brain, but I used the moment that no one was touching me to my advantage.

Despite my plan’s stupidity, I had no idea how I acted so quickly as I ducked under the table. I dropped to the floor and raced with tied hands and bent knees towards the armor, praying it would take the males at the table by surprise.

My tied hands clasped the edge of a shield, the metal cold on my fingertips, before I was tugged backward. My bare stomach burned with the friction of being pulled across frozen sand.

---