Page 2 of Surfaces
There should be a rule, some sort of limit to the number of horrors a soul can endure.
My tears erupted in a fountain despite my effort to maintain control and blink them away. Too much had happened today, and I’d had to hold back for hours. A queen had to remain calm in any crisis.
I’d had to shovel aside cold, unmoving rock after the tournament arena collapsed in upon itself, its rainbow benches disintegrating into a mountain of debris. I’d helped move bodies. Lifeless bodies. And I’d carefully had to bite my tongue—but never hard enough to draw blood and scent the water for the shark shifters. The mask of calm, collected control I’d worn all day had grown too heavy and now that I was in my room, it fell from my face as tears slid from my cheeks into the seawater.
Up on land, tears didn’t dance. But under the ocean, your tears mocked you by trailing from your skin and spiraling gorgeously down toward your feet. Sadness turned into this beautiful wisp. It didn’t fall and plop with a splat, breaking apart just like you did. Tears under the ocean were wrong. Just wrong.
In my private quarters in Mayor Deacon’s home, away from the aftermath of the rebel attack, with the spell to transfer my heart to my enemy complete—I couldn’t staunch the flow.
The emotions that swept me up and leaked out of my eyes varied from one second to the next because I was overwrought. First, I remembered the lifeless eyes of two people dragged from the rubble with a dull sort of regret and self-loathing. Then I pictured my advisor, Sahar, sobbing over her son, Keelan, the sweetest, funniest man competing for my hand in this shite tournament. I catapulted into a turbulent sorrow that rocked me like a boat in a storm. I had to remind myself Keelan would live. His arm was ruined, his life forever changed. But he was alive. The next emotion that tugged at me wasn’t driven by a visual memory. It was just a red-hot bolt of anger.
I was a mess, and my chest ached horribly with all these chaotic feelings. It was almost as if giving up my heart had doubled my ability to feel, which was absolutely wretched. I tried to breathe and calm myself, not to let the sensations take over my good sense, but it was so difficult—my feelings were wild, and I’d leashed them for so long that now they bolted around inside of me bucking and trilling some wordless lament.
“Avia.” Lizza, the undead witch who’d just performed her spell on me, spoke my name.
I stayed turned away, not wanting her to see my pain. I was crying too hard to respond anyway, though her voice made me start and then grow embarrassed. I’d nearly forgotten she was there, caught up in this whirlwind of emotions. I swiped at my eyes and took a deep breath, before I turned toward her rotting face, spotting a flap of skin that hung loose on her cheek.
Wallowing won’t do. Buck up, Avia.I scolded myself firmly as I searched my head for solutions because I needed to ground myself before these abysmal sobs bruised my ribs and scalded my throat. I decided to use a physical distraction to center myself. It was a technique one of my fathers had taught me when I’d been four years old and prone to fits. I used to have a stuffed toy mouse and I would stroke his tail to calm down.
I grabbed at one of the ribbons on the skirt of my ruined dress, trying to ignore the rips and frayed spots from the day’s disaster. I stroked the material while I took slow deep breaths, trying to focus on the external instead of the internal. I let my fingers travel over the silk and noted the smooth texture, the ripple of the hem. I focused on the steadiness of my own breath. It worked a bit differently underwater than it had when I’d thought I was human. Though the ocean felt like air to me, it didn’t act like air, and when I blew out a steady breath, a tiny little current traveled through my room and jangled a small bedside sconce hung with crystals.
I tried to focus on what I could do now rather than everything that had happened. I could access my power. I could prevent things like today’s terror.
A sea sprite was meant to control the sea itself with her magic. I was half-sprite, one of maybe a dozen in the entire world. The entire ocean was at my beck and call. Or would be, once I learned to control it.
I squinted my eyes as I attempted to envision myself bending water to my will. Naturally, I imagined stopping the arena’s collapse by shoving a huge wave across the rainbow-colored coral seats, a wave that swept the crowd safely away, gently suspending the rocks in water while those in the tunnels beneath swam off. If I could do such things, surely there’d be no more protests. No more shouts of sky-breather. No one carryingForsake the Crownbanners.
I felt light-headed at the prospect that I’d be able to do so much. But there was also a growing sense of foreboding in my belly. It was like the little bursts of smoke and lava that preceded a volcanic eruption. Because there was a price to that kind of power. To access such power, a half-human sea sprite like myself had to give up her humanity—her emotions.
The first step: magically giving away her heart, which I’d just done. The organ had been magically plucked from my body and placed inside the body of my greatest enemy—so that I could access my powers and protect my kingdom from violent rebellions like the one today.
I still had emotions because I hadn’t used my powers yet. But soon, I’d be forced to do so, I was certain. The rebels wouldn’t stop. There’d been two attacks in a short period of time. There was certain to be a third. One I’d have to react to, and then…who kew who I’d become…
I’m slowly going to turn into a monster because of Watkins and his fucking rebels.But if I was going to suffer, then so was he.
That bastard.
The shark shifter had taken advantage of my hospitality and used it to feed information to them so they could attack the jousting arena—no one but an insider could have done it.
Keelan had nearly been killed in that strike. Other innocent people had died today. Two that I knew of but more were with healers, their outlooks uncertain. It was the kind of horror I would not stand for. It would end, I’d make certain of it.
I gritted my teeth together. “Get it together,” I chastised myself softly.
“What was that?” Lizza asked from across the room. “One of my eardrums is about rotted out, you know? Speak up.”
I shook my head and said, “Nothing,” but my tone was harsh, and my face was grim as I thought about the rebel who was responsible for all of this.
“I don’t like that expression at all,” Lizza retorted while she fiddled with some of her magical knick-knacks, things I didn’t know the name of. “You look as wild as the Queen of Gitmore.”
I turned my violet eyes toward her, my mind still swirling with furious thoughts of revenge as I stared at the mage that I had been loaned by my sister, Bloss. I swiped at my tears one more time and finally managed to stifle them. “I do not. She’s ancient.” I was only eighteen.
Lizza cackled as she gazed back at me, the greenish tone of her undead skin highlighted by the floating lanterns that bobbed around the bedroom. One of her eyes was starting to get a bit of a grey film over it. It was disorienting to look at—but the undead always were. Their bodies rotted even as they lived on endlessly, and Lizza had lived for quite some time. Her jawbone peeked out from beneath her skin as she said, “She’s a babe in swaddling as far as I’m concerned. In any case, the vengeful look doesn’t suit you any more than crying does. And I won’t do a spell for that wrinkle between your brows—best not to encourage it.”
I stuck my tongue out at my mage, embracing her levity because it was better than the other emotions tugging at me. Those were all much darker monsters, ones better wrestled in private. I tried to relax my face though my stomach still fizzed fearfully. I was too impulsive. I knew that. But I’d just given in to impulse in the most terrifying of ways, trusting it with my magic—my future.
Mayi, my birth mother, had had terrible luck giving her own heart to a lover and then her unwitting child. I wasn’t repeating her mistake, wasn’t trusting someone with mine. In fact, I’d done the opposite by giving mine to the man I trusted least in the world, one I hated. It took the saying,Keep your friends close and enemies closer,to another level. But I still wasn’t certain that my decision wasn’t a huge mistake.
It was risky.
