Page 66 of Female Fantasy
Inside the chest are four objects.
Instinctively, I reach for the first: a three-pronged spear made of solid gold.
I expect I will struggle to lift it, but it feels light in my hand.
Right.
There’s a rushing in my ears, the sound of water crashing at the bottom of a waterfall. Then a loud, violent clap of thunder sounds, followed by a blinding burst of lighting that explodes from my body. I begin to levitate above the ground, as the mer do. But I am not swimming. I am floating, tiny droplets falling from my skin.
I am a rain cloud. My tears of wrath are a summer storm.
And then it stops.
I fall to the floor with a thud, and everything goes quiet.
But the door to the room is now open.
A tall shadow appears in its frame overhead.
I point the strange spear in that direction.
“Minnow,” someone says.
Ryke.
I go sprinting, the spear still in my hand, into his arms. His mask is gone, and there is a gash upon his defined cheekbone, another along the left side of his tail. He swims with a slight asymmetry, as if in pain.
“You are hurt,” I whisper.
His eyes search mine, tiny embers of hope floating in them.
“You saved me,” he says.
I choke on my laugh. “By hiding like a coward?”
“Come see for yourself.”
He carries me back to the ballroom. The blood misting the air has now settled, painting the sand a dark maroon. There are dead mer and sirens scattered all over the room.
But the siren queen and her siblings are nowhere to be seen.
Ryke looks down at me, his eyes wide.
I realize with a sick feeling that the crown prince of Atlantia is afraid.
“Merriah,” he whispers. “What did you do?”
Chapter Thirteen
The taxi pulls up to a three-story townhouse on Washington Park, a quiet, tree-lined street in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. A few residents of the block have already begun to decorate for the holidays, and I can see the glimmer of star-adorned Christmas trees and unlit menorahs through the uncurtained windows. Giant fluorescent snowflakes hang from traffic lights overhead, welcoming us to the community.
I take a look at the cerulean-blue door and swallow hard. “I’m so sorry, but do you mind waiting a minute?” I ask the cab driver, who grunts in response.
Nico trails behind me, holding our things in one hand and an old-fashioned paper map from a tourist information stand in the other. Navigating New York without an iPhone has proven absolutely impossible. Of course, we asked several pedestrians if we could quickly borrow their smartphones tofigure out our subway route. Two didn’t stop walking, one told us to go to hell, and the last spat at us.
Yep. We’re definitely not in Mystic anymore.
Slowly, I make the trek up the stairs and knock three times.
