Page 45 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

But as she stood there, the chatter of the city flowing around her, she felt none of those things. In fact, it was all she could do to muster a weary sense of curiosity.

Maurits helped her aboard his skiff, and pushed off. They left behind the traffic of the canals and headed toward open water. When at last they were clear of the docks, he dropped the paddle, and held out his hand to her. She did not relish going back beneath the surface, that sensation of simultaneously plunging down and feeling impossibly light while her lungs contracted.

But she would do it, for Pim. She would get her dog, bring him back with her to Alida’s, and put all of the magic, the heartache, the death, behind her once and for all.

She waited for Maurits to bow his head to hers and give her breath, but instead he simply touched one cold finger just above her collarbone where her shawl was slipping. When he drew his finger away, she found a small marble, no larger than a robin’s egg, hanging from an invisible chain on her neck. “What is that? What are you doing?” she asked, quickly trying to peel it off. But Maurits caught her hand and shook his head.

“Giving you breath for below. So long as you have it on you, you shall be able to draw breath and move freely. Do not try to remove it,” he added sternly.

“That’s not how you did it last time. Don’t you need to... kiss me?” She didn’t want her question to be misconstrued, but heat rushed to her cheeks all the same.

He slanted her a look from above. “Did I, now?” he mused. “I must have forgotten.”

He didn’t even remember kissing her. She looked past his shoulder to the jagged gables of Amsterdam silhouetted against the cloudy sky and gritted her teeth.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

The marble sat cool and snug on her throat. She gave a short nod, and then he was taking her lightly in his arms and hopping off the side into the water. Maurits was holding her, but she felt nothing. The last time he had taken her down into the water, there had been a promise in his embrace. Never mind that he had been bearing her away from all that she had ever known, she at least had felt his tenderness, his concern for her. But now there was... nothing, and soon the frigid water was stealing any sensations from her at all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Where is Pim?”

Barnacles and slick seaweed covered the ground of the cavernous hall in which Clara now found herself. Pillars of pearl and coral towered above her, shells strung on thread delicately clinking in the current. The sheer beauty of the place would have stolen her breath away if not for the marble at her throat. “And why are we not at the grotto? I thought you said it was the only place that was safe from your mother.”

Maurits had his back to her, his broad shoulders bare, his torso tapering to where an emerald green tail met his lower back. She had never seen him in his true form before; at least, she thought this must be his true form. His hair was darker than she remembered, his posture rigid despite the gentle flow of the water. Perhaps she had not committed every detail about him to memory after all. She wondered how much of her brief infatuation had simply been the result of boredom, desperation. Now that she knew the satisfaction of working, of creating worlds of her own on canvas, she did not need to let her heart fly away on the smallest promise of excitement.

The minutes stretched out, and Maurits seemed in no hurry to answer her or produce Pim. She shifted her weight, glad to at least have her boots this time to protect her from the creatures that scurried across the ground.

“Where is my dog,” she repeated, a sudden heaviness pressing in around her chest. She had left the little life that she had scratched out for herself in Amsterdam to follow a man—or whatever he was—who had only ever lied to her. Something was very wrong, and she knew that she only had herself to blame for whatever was about to happen.

When Maurits finally turned to face her, it was a slow, deliberate movement, and she felt her already frigid limbs go colder.

Something was happening to his face. It was like when she had leaned over the canal as a little girl to see her reflection, and a frog would jump in, rippling her visage into something blurred and unrecognizable until the water settled again. He was changing right before her eyes, smudgy and blurry until it was no longer Maurits’s face, nor even his body.

The eyes that had given her pause now shone a completely different color. Gone was the beautiful green-blue, replaced instead with a piercing slate gray. There was some resemblance to the man who had once kissed her by the canal, but it ended at the strong curve of his jaw and the tousled hair. He was wrong, all wrong. Her mind screamed at her to run, but her body was anchored to the rock floor.

“You’re not Maurits.”

The man who was not Maurits stretched his mouth into a humorless smile. “How clever you are. No, I am not your Maurits.”

Clara swallowed the fear that threatened to clog her throat. “Where is she?”

The smile slipped, just for a moment. “She?” he asked.

“The queen. Whoever you are, you have brought me to the water queen, haven’t you?”

Clara did not like the way his gaze sharpened on her, the corners of his mouth pulling up again. “No, though I am sureshe would have liked to have seen you for herself. No,” he said again, “you are here at my leisure as my guest.”

“Please,” she pleaded. “Whoever you are, just let me have Pim and go. I will make no trouble for you, I will not tell a soul about you. Just please, let me have my dog and go.”

In the time it took her to blink, the creature had darted to her with amazing speed, hovering before her so closely that she could see the unearthly shimmer of silver in his skin. She leaned back, nearly losing her balance, as he regarded her with something between curiosity and amusement. “You truly don’t know, do you?” he murmured.

“Know wh-what?”

“Your dog—Pim. You don’t know what he truly is.”

Her already tight stomach clenched further. Though she could breathe and speak, it was terribly cold here, and her body was aching from it. She forced a swallow and tried to remember anything Helma might have ever told her that would help her deal with this nature of creature. Merfolk were clever and dangerous, that much she knew. She might have had a chance on land, but here in his domain, she felt her disadvantage both in size and knowledge.

---