Page 19 of The Dark Sea Calls

Colm made no move for the shadowy abyss under the Kraken, instead trying to reach its head amongst the vast squirming mass of tentacles; I realized only I could hear the Kraken.

“Would you let Colm touch the stone?” I asked, dipping my head respectfully.

The Kraken hummed in thought.

“A concession?” I spluttered in disbelief. “You said your eye was useless!”

The Kraken chuckled.

“What do you want?” I pleaded.

“How does someone lose their own eyes?” I muttered indignantly.

The Kraken didn’t answer my question. Instead, it stopped flailing and bobbed in the water, its tentacles motionless.

I didn’t recognize whatever name he called me, though the syllables sounded like—In-yeen. I hoped it wasn’t the Kraken word forlunch.

“I will find your other eye,” I said solemnly. “Do you have any idea where it is? Is it in the Dark Sea? On the shore?”

The Kraken folded its tentacles into its body. The beast said solemnly before disappearing down the crevice of darkness on the sea floor.

I held my breath, and a moment later, Colm emerged. His wings were bright gold, outstretched as he raced for the surface like an arrow.

He had made it.

Chapter 5

I didn’t dare surface close to the Glittering Diamond, its bloated wooden belly moving with the currents on the water above the Kraken.

The beast did not surface, sucked back into the trench like a clam’s tongue. The darkness was so deep that I could not distinguish a single shape in the fissure that broke the seabed in two.

Though the hunger and rage had abated, likely because the Kraken had tucked itself neatly in his home, I still felt the water. Heavier and more willful than my home.

I didn’t know which way to swim to the shore, but I asked the water—and though we weren’t friends yet, the Dark Sea nudged me in the right direction, carrying me back into the safety of Siren’s Cove.

I didn’t dare surface until the open water ended, the sheer drop replaced by a shelf of sand signaling that the beach was near.

I broke the surface, searching the darkness for the Sirens, only to find the skies were clear. I had not seen Colm since he had broken the surface. I prayed to Belisama that he had made it back to shore.

I didn’t even want to think about my bargain with the Kraken; my promise's magic was a shackle around my throat.

If I went to the Twilight Lake, it would be a competition between my uncle and Cormac over who could find and kill me first.

The lake that had once been my home was now a death sentence.

But I didn’t want to know what would happen if I didn’t fulfill my end of the Kraken’s bargain. Fae bargains were binding, deeper than law, and older than time. Death could not save a person from a bargain. Bargains marked the soul and followed the Fae into the next life and the one after that. A broken bargain was a disease that no Fae would willingly suffer.

I had to find the Kraken’s other eye.

Ihadto.

I would rather pull out every one of my fingernails than return to the Twilight Lake, but I was quickly learning that we didn’t always get what we wanted. Life didn’t work that way.

I pulled myself onto the sand. Rolling on my back as I sucked in air and felt my gills dissolve, and my pearls sucked into my skin one by one like a child eating pomegranate seeds. I felt my body return to its other form. The one I had worn for more than a month. It felt nice to be back under the waves, but it also reminded me of what I had lost. I mourned the life I had envisioned, though it was not the life I had lived. That mourning was a gaping wound in my chest, as if my heart had been ripped clean out.

The Twilight Lake had been my friend.

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