Page 42 of Crown and Dragon

“I fashioned a rope,” he answered, not at all concerned.

“Why?”

“To help Tahlia free herself.” His head swam, and he rubbed a hand over his face quickly to try to clear his mind.

“Hmm.” The melodious voice sounded closer though the speaker didn’t appear to have moved. “Come with me. You won’t need to worry about rope or her with me.”

“But she needs me. And I, her.”

“I doubt that. Come,” she sang. “Come with me.”

Each time she sang the wordscome with me,a breeze fluttered through Marius’s half-bound hair and the scent of brine filled the air. He remembered a day long in the past, a day that honestly he might have invented, something that wasn’t a true event and only real in his imaginings. But in this makeshift memory, he stood beside his sister, hand in hand, and they stared at the sea. There were no fires in the cliffside fortress or pirates firing arrows from their quick ships. Only the rolling waves, a soft wind, and the scent of sand and sea. It was before he had known much about the world at large, back when everything felt safe.

“Come with me, Marius,” she sang, the song unfurling in his blood and making him feel as light as air.

Pleasure and anticipation danced through his veins. He looked up and realized he was standing instead of sitting besidethe hole where Tahlia had fallen. A figure stood beside him, her eyes trained on a pointed archway opening to a low roof that hung over a sloping stretch of black sand.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, turning to face the figure.

Swiftly flowing water covered every inch of her skin. He looked her up and down, unable to stop his lips parting in shock and wonder. No, the waterwasher skin. Beds of kelp, coral shelves, and schools of fish lived in her skin. The scale altered from one moment to the next with the fish and kelp looking miniature now and then full scale somehow. He shook his head, dizzy with the impossibility of what he was seeing. Her watery flesh held in a heart as bright as a gold coin and lungs as red as rubies. She was made of the sea’s treasure—both natural and lost in shipwrecks. The female was gorgeous, but his mind couldn’t comprehend her in full.

His gaze slid to her face. “Your eyes…”

They were topaz—copper and sea blue. It was like they laughed at his wonder, but how could eyes laugh like that? The sound of her voice chimed in his ears. He growled in frustration, but the song crashed into him anyway, turning everything to bliss. A soft hand tugged at his hand, and the black sand was pleasantly gritty beneath his bare feet.

When had he removed his boots?

When had he left the labyrinth and decided to follow this female made of sea and treasure?

“Come with me,” she sang again, and that breeze and those feelings once again swept across him and burned his worries into ash.

All worries and every thought besides the sea melted from his mind as they left the dark and sandy corridor and approached the easy waves of the shoreline. He sighed and went with the being into the ocean, delighting in the feel of the cool waterlapping at his knees. They walked slowly until the water was chest-high.

“Be still,” the female said.

He obeyed, and she passed a hand over his face.

Then she pulled him under.

Chapter 21

Tahlia

Tahlia was free from the dark hole and back in the labyrinth.

But Marius was gone.

Damn. If she had her Weaver magic, she might be able to track him. But she’d tried the four-count breathing as Fara had instructed, in and out, with all the ridiculous holding and everything. But no magic had sparkled over her head or eyes or whatever. No, she’d found a rope though, and she was out of the hole. She assumed Marius had made the rope out of his clothing because his scent had drawn her through the inky darkness to the rope’s braided fabric.

She lifted her nose, trying to scent Marius again, to see if anything led her the way he’d gone. But no, her nose was good, but not full-Fae-blood good.

“I really hope I don’t run into a minotaur right now. My ankle and ribs are still killing me. At least my head is feeling better.”

Lija’s voice mumbled through Tahlia’s mind. Tension tightened Tahlia’s shoulders and neck. She couldn’t stand to lose her aural connection to Fara and Lija when Marius was missing.

“I couldn’t hear that,” she said quietly, hoping the mythological beasts roaming this madhouse wouldn’t be alerted. “Can you speak up or toss some more of that herb into the mix?”

“Rider, do you hear me now?”

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