Page 65 of The Dark Sea Calls

The same tricks I had seen over and over in Cruinn.

Something Ishouldhave seen a mile away.

Had I been blinded by a pretty face and a skilled pair of hands?

I sunk down, a foot from the squirming wall of reeds. Dropping to my knees as I lost all strength.

I had tried to escape. I had run to the dark sea, and even then, I couldn’t escape the war or the princelings.

I didn’t know what kind of life I wanted, but I knew that the one I was living was too painful. Too much for me.

My eyes trailed up, up, up, the wall of reeds that protected the city, up to the protruding cavern shelf. I imagined the sky and the gods beyond that.

I had thought that I was being challenged. That I was facing a trial. That the gods hated me.

Maybe it was none of those things.

Perhaps they just didn’t care at all.

I didn’t know how long I sat in the shadow of the squirming reeds, but I felt Elsbeth approach before I heard her.

Elsbeth had always been kind to me, even when she didn’t have a reason to be.

I might have freed her from the stables, but I was part of the family that had imprisoned her in the first place.

My head dropped to my hand.

I imagined the war as a dry desert canyon, like Belisama’s Cradle, but instead of sand, the ground was a sea of blood that kept rising. Every drop, a death. No matter where you stood, the blood would stain. The canyon walls were too high to escape.

Hurts upon hurts and evils upon evils.

A game that never ended because no one would just surrender.

How can someone win a war?

I couldn’t see the answer.

Elsbeth came to sit by my side. She said nothing. I pressed my lips together but couldn’t muffle the sob that escaped my armor.

“Come with me.” Elsbeth placed a hand on my shoulder.

I turned to look at her.

She smiled kindly. “There’s an outpost. We can watch the Merfolk march on Tarsainn. You can see your friend. Check he’s alright.” She offered me her hand, and I took it, allowing her to pull me to my feet.

When Elsbeth had mentioned an outpost, I expected one of the castle towers, an enchanted set of eyeglasses, or a silver that would allow us to see through the Reeds. Instead, she gripped my hand and swam to the very top of the rocky overhang.

The water grew darker until both of us were swallowed by shadows. I tried not to think of the claustrophobia that pressed against my skin like a clammy fist wrapped around my entire body. I focused on Elsbeth as she swam, entirely at ease, through a small hole the width of a pair of shoulders. A cave system at the top of the wave-cut notch that housed the Reeds.

Bypassing the magical barrier entirely, she flashed a grin over her shoulder. She let go of my hand before slipping into the hole like a whale’s mouth sucking down krill. I shuddered as I looked into the tiny hole, wanting to swim inside as much as I wanted a leech to crawl inside my ear. I took a deep breath and stared out at the city below. The hundreds of faelights in the windows and balconies built into the rocky wall and the castle in the center of it all.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I kicked my legs and closed my eyes tightly. My ears popped. One moment I was in the Twilight Lake, surrounded by its familiar friendly warmth and embrace. The next, my gills melted away, and I was thrown onto the slippery rock. Spluttering, I pushed my chest up and looked around.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Elsbeth grinned, standing at the edge of another watery pool on the other side of the cave. “The next one isn’t so bad. Promise.”

I growled under my breath and pushed myself to standing. “You could have warned me.”

“Don’t like enclosed spaces?” She guessed, her dark eyes knowing.

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