Page 169 of Cruel Tides

“You give me far too much credit, princess,” he said, a hint of amusement dancing over his words. “But if you’re curious,” he murmured, one of his tentacles slithering close enough to flick the end of my tail. “I could feel your magic from the moment I first laid eyes on you. And when I got close enough to wrap you in my knots…” A smirk slowly dragged up the corners of his mouth, and I shivered as his gaze roved over the swell where my tail met my waist.

Abruptly, he turned. “That’s when I was certain you were a sea witch,” he admitted, the smile dropping from his lips. “As for that vile woman being your grandmother, I’m well aware of her search for her lost successor. It’s been a priority of hers ever since the late princess’s untimely passing.”

My hands clenched, tearing up strands of seagrass. “And if you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You honestly think you’d have believed me?” he said, his dark eyebrows lifting. “You barely believe it now.” A casual shrug accompanied his words, his hand sweeping through his obsidian hair. “Although I hoped it would be obvious I was doing everything in my power to keep you away from this place, but no. My curious little mouse seems to be quite enamored with danger.”

There was a pause, and a sly grin crept across his face. It was a look that seemed to dredge up every dark, unexplored thought hidden in the corners of my mind. “Maybe it’s not the danger you’re enamored with,” he mused. He leaned over me, and I felt my face heat. I wanted to turn away, but something about him held me captive. “Could it be that you missed my company?”

He was teasing me like he always did, yet this time there was a distinctive shift. A dangerous edge to his tone letting me know his intentions were far from entirely pure.

“I didn’t come here for your company, wizard,” I said, unable to stop the tremble that ran through me at his proximity. “I came here because I wanted to believe that the cecaelia were willing to help the merfolk break their curse. Because I need to figure out how you’re able to separate yourself from your trident. It had nothing to do with wanting to be nearyou.”

The sea wizard huffed a laugh, a low, throaty sound that seemed to vibrate through the entire Undersea. “Well, you’re stuck with me now, princess. Now that the queen has found you, she has no intention of letting you go.”

It was like a punch to the gut, dizzying me with fear. My intuition had been right, and this chamber was nothing more than a glorified prison cell.

“I should have known better than to think I could trust her,” I whispered, already feeling the walls closing in around me. Why hadn’t I worried more about coming here all alone? Because now I was stuck.

I fought to keep my panic from showing, but the sea wizard seemed to see straight through me. “You did well,” he murmured, and I flinched when his hand grazed the side of my face. “Keeping your eyes a secret.”

If that was his way of consoling me, he was doing a terrible job.

“I take it there’s a reason you didn’t want your queen knowing about my eyes,” I bit out, unsure if I was ready to know what that reason might be. “It’s not good to be a sea witch, is it?”

My heart froze as I thought back to when Barren tried to teach me to swim. He’d told me executing sea witches was one of his duties.

Had I done something during that time to make him suspicious of me? Is that why he’d wrapped his hand around my neck?

Had… had he known what I was all along?

“To put it simply, sea witches aren’t meant to survive.” The bluntness of the sea wizard’s declaration was unexpected, causing me to flinch. “A sea witch would be safer here, among the cecaelia. But even the queen doesn’t have enough power to keep someone safe from the entire ocean.”

Had I heard him right? “What do you mean, the entire ocean?”

“Sea witches are hunted by not only the merfolk, but byeveryliving thing under Poseidon’s control,” he explained. “It’s written in the very laws he laid over the oceans, and only a few… unfavorable creatures, such as the cecaelia, can act outside Poseidon’s control. You see, sea witch magic goes against the natural order of things. To a god like Poseidon, it’s a power that shouldn’t exist in his waters, and those who wield it, therefore, must cease to exist. You have never seen another with eyes like yours simply because they’re killed off as soon as their eyes turn white—the mark of a sea witch.”

He paused, studying my face before adding, “If one of your lovers had seen your eyes in that mirror, they wouldn’t have been able to help themselves. Poseidon’s laws are part of their very nature.”

“Wait, slow down…” I shook my head, not willing to believe what he was getting at. “They would never hurt me.”

Closing his eyes, he let out a deep sigh. “You have much to learn, princess. Believe me when I say that even the most powerful merman is nothing more than a slave to Poseidon’s will. It’s not up to them. The law dictates that sea witches are to be eliminated. They see the mark of the sea witch and, much like I’m bound by the crown’s commands, merfolk are forced to act.”

“But you have white eyes,” I said, my voice straining. If that were the truth, how had he survived?

“Ah, but you’ve seen the difference.” When he pointed to his eyes, I understood right away that he was referring to the thin black ring that encircled the white. “I’m the exception. The first and only of my kind.”

“So, the title ‘sea wizard’… Did you come up with that?”

His lips pursed. “Indeed, I did,” he admitted. “My powers awakened when I was merely a spawnling, and I was tossed out in the ocean to rot.” A grinding anger tinged every word as he continued, “Weeks later, when I was found still clinging to life at the mouth of the Undersea, it was determined that my eyes didn’t trigger bloodlust in those under Poseidon’s control.”

He looked away from me with a scoff, his expression darkening. “The queen reveled in this discovery, of course. Even more so when she found a way to harness my magic for her own use.”

“They abandoned you?” A sickening feeling came over my stomach as I stared up at the sea wizard. The idea of his own kind turning on him when he was just a child—a spawnling, as he’d called himself—was a hurt I knew all too well. “I’m sorry that happened to you…”

He shrugged as if attempting to project an air of indifference, yet the pain remained unmistakable in his eyes. “It’s the way of our world, unfortunately. But enough about that. I hope you realize now why I arranged our deal to keep the nature of your eyes a secret.”

I was starting to realize, yes. “Are you afraid the queen would toss me out if she knew?” That didn’t seem like a problem at all, actually. In fact…

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