Page 9 of Waves
And so, my siren and I swam up to the open front door of the palace, peering in. The interior was empty and undecorated. No furniture. It didn’t even have sconces in the walls for torches. Without lighting, only the windows provided streaks of light, and we proceeded from one to the next, peering in, looking for clues about the occupants. But there were none.
“These walls are unnaturally smooth. You can’t even see any seams,” Keelan murmured, running his hand over it. “Insane workmanship. It doesn’t make sense that someone built this and swam off.”
“Or they were killed before they moved in,” I responded, ice shards nicking my spine.
“Or that.” We shared a dark look.
Nothing about this place made sense. Who would have chosen this location in the first place? Who’d want to live in the middle of this detritus field? The rubbish around us wasn’tmerely construction debris, it was a compilation of random items…some possibly even dumped by land kingdoms into the sea.
“Majesty!” Paavo’s voice drifted to us from the side of the castle and my guard sounded concerned. “You might want to see this.”
Quickly, my entire retinue swam over to where Paavo hovered, just feet above a mound of trash. Beneath his flickering fin, however, was a wooden treasure chest bursting with sand dollars.
“What the…who would leave all that money?” Keelan’s voice faded as we all shared fret-filled glances, knowing that no one would willingly leave it behind.
Something very bad happened here.
Intuition prickled at the back of my mind, but I wasn’t quite certain what it was telling me.
“It’s like they magically up and disappeared,” Ugo muttered.
“Let’s get out of here,” Paavo’s eyes didn’t stop darting around. “Before we do the same.”
We quickly mounted up onto the sharks, the guards pairing up so that Keelan and I could take one.
It was a sign of how spooked we all were that not one person tried to take a sand dollar with them.
No. There was something wrong with that shell castle.
It almost felt cursed.
As if I needed one more problem to deal with in this damned kingdom.
Chapter 5
Avia
Sahar, Lizza, and I sat at a table placed in the middle of the ring of tents as dappled sunlight danced over us. We’d been up before dawn, conferring with Lizza to amend the competitor’s contract and allow them to withdraw without damaging their nether regions. Nearby, a lavender fire crackled merrily, the flames happier than we were.
“Don’t see why the shrimp dick spell is so bad all of a sudden,” Lizza grumbled, her back hunched even more than usual as she leaned over the table and scratched magical words onto the parchment. I watched her while trying not to stare at the bald patch of skull on top of the undead woman’s head. “Think a lot of women would rather put shrimp in their mouth than a cock.”
Sahar cringed so hard that her nose wrinkled. “They’re live shrimp. They have legs.”
“Still. Unwashed cock cheese is worse. And those cowards who withdraw deserve it.”
“Thank everything I haven’t eaten breakfast,” I groaned as my shoulders rose and a disgusted shiver rolled down my back as I added my signature and then shoved the scroll away. “Look,it’s signed. Let’s change the topic. I want to address the official statement you drafted for me.”
“Yes?” Sahar looked relieved to move on from Lizza’s tirade.
“It’s just…there’s nothing personal in there about the dead. And, I don’t even say I’m sorry for their loss to the families.”
Sahar took a deep breath as she looked down at the wood grains and gathered her thoughts, but Lizza had no compunctions about sparing my feelings. The undead wench grabbed the scroll and whacked me on the head with it.
“They don’t want to hear a ton from you, ninny. Not about sadness. Down here, emotion is weakness.”
“Compassion?”
“Weak! The old queen exploited emotions right and left. Punished them. You can’t rewire their brains in a few months.”
