Page 38 of Enslaved

The queen utters a soft, burbling, songlike sound. No words that I can discern, merely a delicate note. The merwomen around the bed hastily move away, retreating to the edges of the room and bowing their heads. The young man turns his face slightly and with an effort manages to open one eye. His iris is blue and perfectly human, not at all like the fixed stares of the merfolk. “Mother,” he says and raises a limp hand, which she hastily moves to take. Only then do I notice the webbing between his fingers, the delicate gills behind his ears, small compared to the other merfolk. But it’s enough to reveal his true heritage: he is half-mer.

My mouth nearly falls open. I clamp my teeth tight around the flower stem but cannot stop staring. It is well known that the merqueen has peopled her entire city with her many hundreds of daughters and their daughters. I didn’t think it possible for her to bear a son. There’s no denying the evidence of my own eyes, however—the way Seraphine sits and holds his hand so gently, the way her hard, cruel face seems to soften with tenderness as she gazes upon him.

“Is itthe rot?” the Prince’s voice speaks suddenly from behind me. I start and look back at him, surprised to see true compassion in his gaze.

Seraphine lifts her face slowly, fins fluttering. “Yes,” she sings. The single word carries the weight of an entire tragic aria.

At my inquiring look, the Prince inclines his head and whispers, “It’s a mer sickness, not incurable among their kind. But should a human catch it, it attacks the vital organs, rotting them from the inside out.” He shakes his head. “A terrible way to die.”

The queen lets out a low moan. “I have birthed two thousand and seventeen daughters,” she says, stroking the young man’s face and gills, “but only one son. His father was the great adventurer, Ormetrius.”

“Indeed?” The Prince sounds surprise. “He was thought to have been lost at sea.”

The queen smiles sadly. “Lost at sea, lost in love. A beautiful memory. A memory which lives on in his son and heir.”

I scarcely believe my own ears. “The Lay of Ormetrius the Mariner,” written originally in Old Araneli is a well-known feature of any classical education. I myself have read a recent translation. It was terribly dry, with pockets of excitement, but the character of Ormetrius is deeply ingrained in contemporary conscious, a literary icon. I’d never considered the possibility that he might have beenreal.

I study the half-mer young man. He must be much older than I’d initially thought if he’s the adventurer’s son. Then again, the air of Eledria could keep him alive and youthful for many hundreds, even thousands of years. But apparently it isn’t enough to save him from this sickness.

“Is there a cure?” My voice is a whisper, but it seems to echo in that chamber.

“No,” Seraphine replies. “The poison is setting in fast. Soon it will reach his heart, and he will be lost to me. Just like his father. Just like all my many loves.”

She sounds so stricken—it’s too easy to forget she steals and drowns all those so-called loves of hers. But then, it is her nature. One cannot blame a shark for being coldhearted and ravenous, can one?

The queen turns her predatory eyes on me then. “I would giveanythingto save my son.”

Realization comes over me like a wave. What she’s asking. What she needs. A cure for an incurable sickness. An impossible miracle.

“I’ll do it.” The words fall from my lips before I’ve quite resolved to speak them. They seem to echo in that large chamber, underscored by the Prince’s bitter, “Gods blight, I knew you’d say that!” I ignore him and continue determinedly. “I will find a cure for the rot. I will save your son. And when I do, you owe me a kiss to be given to Lord Vokarum of Skullkreg.” I step across to that bed and hold out my hand. “Do we have a bargain?”

Seraphine looks at my hand as though I’ve just offered her a lump of horse scat. Then she lifts her gaze to mine. “If you find a way to save my son, I will grant Vokarum his kiss.” She smiles, and a barbed tongue flicks between her teeth. “I’ll even make sure heenjoysit.”

With that she grips my hand in hers, sealing her promise.

The Prince is silent as Seraphine’s two terrifying daughters escort us from the dying boy’s room back to the dripping chamber we first entered. When we are ushered into the echoing space, he proceeds ahead of me and stands with his arms crossed, not looking back.

I look over my shoulder just as the door shuts. It echoes terribly, and a thrill of panic coils in my gut. The next moment, water begins to rush into the chamber. Even though I knew it would happen, I let out a yelp and turn in place. Instinct tells me I’m in danger, even though my lungs are already sloshing with salt water, and the flower continues to do its filtering work. I close my eyes as the water rushes up to my ankles, my knees. It’s cold—which I shouldn’t be able to notice. The Prince’s glamour should prevent me from feeling it.

Is his magic wearing down?

I turn to the Prince. He still stands with his back to me, braced as the chamber continues to fill up around us. “Prince!” I gasp, while I can still get the words out. He hears me above the rushing water and turns. I hold up my hands, but there’s nothing to see. “The glamour!” I manage.

Then water sweeps over my head, and I’m obliged to bite down hard on the flower stem. The Prince ducks under and gets a good look at me. Now that I’m submerged, his glamour should surround me in a golden aura. Instead there is nothing but a pale white glow which flickers faintly. His eyes widen. He grabs me by the wrist and places one palm against my chest, right between my breasts. I can feel him trying to augment the spell. But salt compromises fae magic; not to the same degree as iron, but enough to interfere with his working.

He lifts his gaze from his hand to my eyes. It’s difficult to read his expression behind the masking flower. But I don’t like what I see.

He jerks his head sharply and swims for the door. It opens at our approach, and we emerge from the palace into the waiting circle of seahorse riders, including Sereia and Starreth. The Prince pulls the stem from his mouth and speaks, his voice a blur of noise in my ears. The merwomen exchange looks.

The next thing I know, one of them has pulled me behind her on her mount and urged it out into the highways and byways of the city. I don’t bother looking back to see if the Prince is close behind. Now that his glamour is fading, the water rushing past my face stings my eyes, and I’m obliged to keep them shut, buried between the merwoman’s shoulder blades. With every passing moment, the cold and pressure intensify. There is no time anymore. Only cold. Only the vastness of this ocean around me, ready to claim me as it has so many of my kind. My mind slows, too sluggish even for fear.

I’m scarcely aware when the rider pulls her mount to a halt and unceremoniously pushes me off, leaving me floating and alone. The next moment, strong hands grip my arms, pull me close. I’m able to open my eyes just enough to see the Prince staring down at me. He turns and shouts through the water back at the cluster of riders, some angry demand. But they, wavery phantoms to my vision, merely turn and vanish back into the ocean depths without response.

The Prince puts his flower stem back into his mouth and swims for the surface, dragging me as dead weight behind him. His strength is tremendous, equaled only by his will. I try to lend some help, to kick my feet, to move my arms. But my efforts are useless. And that cold, that terrible cold, freezes straight through to my bones. When I open my eyes, the light surrounding me is little more than a thin sheen clinging to patches of my body.

Suddenly a glow from above. I tip my head back, peel my eyes open. There. Sunlight—rippling through the waves overhead. My heart leaps. To my surprise, I still have some small spark of life inside me that yet longs to survive. The last of my strength surges. I kick upward, pulled along in the Prince’s grip.

Then we break the surface of the ocean. The Prince spits out his flower and coughs up a terrible gush of water. The next moment, he shouts, “Here! Here, down here!” It sounds as though he’s speaking through many layers of reality as I drift away, away, away . . .

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