Page 92 of The Princesses of Ruin
We slow our descent, and I pull closer to Jasper. His body is cold against mine, but I need the comfort of his skin, his heartbeat.
“Narrow passage,” an escort murmurs so close to my ear I yelp.
“One by one,” another says, and I feel the water displaced by its passing.
My chest is heavy and tight. There’s not enough oxygen in the water. I clench my jaw and pray for Nol’Ther’s calm so that I don’t fling any more yelps or curses.
Jasper presses his head against mine. “I’ll carry you.”
“Too narrow,” another ga’hanoi says behind us. “One.”
Jasper’s body contorts, shifting until he’s a massive octopus. He can’t speak, but I know what to do. I make myself into a tight ball and he curls his limbs around me. I lean my face into his rubbery skin and squeeze my eyes shut.
Then we’re moving.
I wrap my fingers around Jasper’s limb and hold on. If he drops me, or something happens, I need to have a grip. I need to have something to keep me anchored, from floating away in this void of darkness and ill-intentioned creatures.
We bump something, then bounce on the other side even more violently. I can’t stop the whimper that ripples from my throat. Jasper slows and we settle, then he begins again.
The darkness stretches on. Jasper’s suckers pop against my arms and neck, giving me something to focus on so that madness doesn’t take me.
For so—so long—we move this way. Bumping and slowing. Adjusting and resuming. The regularity of it should be calming. Nothing is wrong, nothing bad is happening. It’s just a narrow passage.
But it feels like we’re crawling into the first realm of hell.
Maybe we are.
At least we’re going together.
The sound of the water changes outside the folds of Jasper’s limbs, and we move a little faster for a moment. Then he’s unfurling.
Colors in every shade I’ve ever dreamed glitter before me. The immense city of the ga’hanoi is made of magus crystals, and each tower is a surging aurora of all the magic of its inhabitants. Pinks, purples, blues, and greens shimmer and flash.
The structure of the area is a crater, as if something immense smashed the rock here and left its mark. At the center of the bowl, at the deepest point, are the tallest towers. They stretch all the way to the top of the bowl and bloom like mushroom caps, creating a ceiling of magus glass that blocks out the darkness of the Deep.
Stretching out from the center are larger structures composed of stone and crystal, creating a mosaic of dark and light. The other structures’ shapes vary greatly, not one building looking the same as another. There are so many it’s impossible to count.
I suck down a breath of warm water. “Beautiful…”
“I’m pleased the princess finds our city to her liking.” A familiar ga’hanoi rasp comes from below, not in the selkie tongue, but Fynish.
I look down to see what might be the representative from a month ago waiting with an escort of their own. The ga’hanoi are all sofeatureless, they’re hard to tell apart, but he has a scar on his body below the ropy layers of his additional limbs that I recognize from the first meeting. It’s not justanymark. It’s a rune.
He glides on the water, twisting his tentacles until he’s face to face with me. The large eyes atop his bulbous body bore into mine, their dark depths seeking. Hunting. He reaches out with an amorphous hand, something not quite human but certainly not ga’hanoi.
Jasper yanks me into his grasp, covering me in all his limbs like a shield.
The representative’s tentacles rise in a posture that appears startled, or defensive. “I only meant to greet her as her people do.”
“Jasper,” I murmur, my voice much more natural in this space. The warmer water and lower density make me feel more like myself.
His large octopus eyes stare into my soul, pleading.
I skim my palm under his eye and up the side of his body. He releases me and returns to his selkie form. With Jasper subdued, I turn back to the representative and extend my hand.
“I’m Reina Hilden, the fourth and youngest princess of Fynren.”
He takes my hand and then does something unexpected. The upper half of his body shapes into something man-like, and he presses his featureless face with oversized eyes to my knuckles.
