Page 67 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

The dire whale slowly, slowly turned back the way it had come through the wall, but not before fixing her with its cloudy stare that seemed to see right through her.

There will be no revenge. Let this be the end of it.

And then it was gone.

Chapter Forty-Two

There was nothing for her here.

Maurits was dead. Thade was dead. The queen was probably likewise dead. She had hardly had time to let the grief soak into her. Clara picked up the crown, weighed the copper and pearl design of braided seaweed in her hands. But what of the land?

A crab scuttled over the upturned rocks, but otherwise it was silent. Clara replaced the crown on the throne with aclink. It would have sat on Maurits’s head someday, but now none would wear it.

The flickering blue light caught her eye from behind the throne. Reaching for the bubble, she watched as Maurits’s voice danced within its translucent prison. She cradled it in her hands like a mother might a newborn, overcome with awe and love and terror. It had not died with him. She could have wept for the words he would never speak to her, the words that even now shimmered within her hand but had no mouth to give them life.

She had loved him, given him a piece of her heart whether she had known it or not at the time. How else could every memory of him, every breath, evoke such a burning ache in her? Why else did she feel like dropping to her knees and howling from the pain of it all?

But there was no time for grief. A loud groaning above her head snapped her from her thoughts and sent her hurrying out of the throne room. A moment later, a pillar fell and shattered where she had been standing. Land. She would go to land. There was no other choice.

She made her way through abandoned halls, sometimes swimming as she was able, somethings walking through knee-deep water. Her fingers were numb, her mind was numb. Later, there would be time later to understand what had just happened and its implications. For now, she had only to find her way back to the surface.

Another groan sounded, and Clara dropped to her knees, hands over her head as she braced for more debris to come crumbling down on her. But nothing happened, and when the sound came again, she recognized it for what it was.

She followed the voice. Someone was here, and they were in pain. Trapped, perhaps, by one of the fallen walls or pillars.

“Neese?” Clara rushed to the other end of the corridor, picking her way over debris as she went. A slender arm was draped over a pile of rocks, disappearing into a pile of rubble. Crouching down, she could see a red eye peering back at her. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but my leg is pinned.”

The rocks were heavy, but Clara put her shoulder against the largest of them, and with her counterweight, was able to roll it off. Then it was just a matter or digging out the rest of the rubble. Neese watched her work patiently, only occasionally letting out a little wince when the weight of the rocks shifted.

When Clara was nearly to the bottom, Neese wriggled free, the rest of the rocks falling away. The nixie stood on swaying legs, cuts and bruises painting her body. “Come,” she said, head cocked as she listened to the groaning of the palace. “There’s no time.”

Clara followed Neese down the hall, water tugging at her hem, until they reached a flooded passage. Taking her arm, Neese hooked her arm around Clara’s waist and they shot up and out of the palace. Behind them, a pillar came crashing down.

Neese brought them to a rocky overlook where a handful of other merfolk were watching the last great gasp of the palace as it returned to rock and sand. Schools of fish darted wide, giving berth to the plumes of debris. An empire was falling, but life went on.

“There will be a flood,” Neese said, unflinching as she watched, “a small one. Perhaps the dire whale will break a dam, but there will be no loss of life.”

Clara wanted to ask how she knew that, and what made the dire whales such great purveyors of justice. “But why? Why had they never intervened before?” Clara asked.

“There needs to be some form of reckoning, else when will it end? Shall the lesson the humans learn come at the cost of the whole earth and all its creatures?” Neese shook her head, her dark hair swinging. “No, it is better that it is now. A council of seven creatures from both land and water will be formed, and rule just as once was the custom. Justice will be restored, and a ruling reached.”

“There will be no revenge,” Clara said quietly. “The dire whale said as much.”

Neese only gave a slender shrug. “Well, it is a question for the council when it is formed.”

Clara did not have much use for councils and rulings and faraway pronouncements made in the name of justice. Whatever the future held, it would be bleak and narrow without Maurits.

She pushed down the heavy knot of grief in her stomach as they watched in silence as the last remaining wall of the palace swayed and then buckled, a cloud of sand blooming around it.

“Are you angry with him?” Neese asked.

Clara watched as the rest of the merfolk gradually dispersed, returning to their homes in the secret caves and tunnels of the sea.

“I am angry that I never got the chance to know him, the real him,” she said quietly. “I don’t even know his real name.” Mostly she was surprised, though. Surprised at how keenly she felt the loss, as if part of her soul had been ripped away, a part she hadn’t even known existed. All of the little moments that she had analyzed a thousand times for proof of deceit were now thrown into the golden light of the past, rosy and lovely. She clung to them desperately.

Their last night spent together... that was one memory that did not need to be gilded with longing or regret. It was a dream that had ended too soon, the hazy threads of memory already slipping away. She had wanted more of him, and he had been unable or unwilling to share it.

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