Page 173 of Cruel Tides

“It seems she really did leave us.” My voice caught in my throat. Outside, a burst of lightning cracked over the horizon, and I tensed, knowing that the storm was only just beginning. “Kai thinks she left a message behind. Laverne and clams. Does that mean anything to you?”

Barren didn’t study the note long. “Those are hearts,” he muttered. “Four hearts and Laverne.”

I could hear Kai’s breathing as he came up behind me to study the note over my shoulder. “Uh, you sure about that, big guy?” He stole the note away, holding it up in the air as if searching for a hidden message within it. “I mean, I’m not a warrior. I’ve never actually seen someone’s heart. But I’ve read a scroll or two about anatomy, and these symbols definitely look more like clams to me.”

Barren didn’t react or acknowledge what Kai was arguing.

“Hearts or clams, it doesn’t fucking matter,” I said, my teeth grinding. “If she really went off somewhere, then we have to find her.”

“Wait.” Kai’s head tilted. “Claira’s gone? I thought she was in here, uh, you know…” His face turned bright pink, the color spreading all the way to his ears. “… with you?”

Barren looked like he’d been sucker-punched.

“What?” Kai gasped, his gaze snapping between the two of us. “She wouldn’t just leave us.”

Leaveus? No—she’d promised she’d always come back to me.

Still, a sharp panic ripped through me like an old wound reopening, and a burst of lightning lit up the bedchamber.

Kai’s voice trembled with similar unease. “Do you think this has something to do with why she disappeared earlier? The thing she didn’t want to tell us about?”

“We have to find her,” I growled, my voice as turbulent as the growing swell of waves outside. “Now.”

Barren had already grabbed clothes and was out the door.

“Right—okay.” Kai snatched the fish off the floor and spun, scrambling back out to the main room. “Laverne, catch! Time to go.”

“Go? Go where?”she whined, but her voice faded from my mind as I followed Barren out onto the deck.

Wind whipped my hair across my face, and droplets of beating rain stung my skin.

Fuck.It was happening already.

I’d thought I’d been doing better. Thought that the breathing exercises were working. But no, here I was, still clinging to the same anger and anxiety that had been a part of me since I was a helpless merfry.

Dammit.

No matter how hard I tried to control it, my rage was still there, lurking in the recesses of my mind. An inescapable shadow ready to rear up and take control at any moment.

Now that I had the trident, it was clear I was no different from my father. The same fury that consumed him kept threatening to take me down with it, too. But I couldn’t let it. Not yet.

The sound of thunder followed another flash of lightning as the brewing storm drew closer, frothing up the waves. And here I stood at the edge of the storm, holding on to my last threads of control, my heart rate surging as my mind raced with thoughts of revenge.

Claira was out there somewhere, alone and in danger, haunted by something or someone she hadn’t felt comfortable sharing with us.

I’d keep the storm at bay until I knew who was responsible for this. And then I’d make them pay.

She may have left, but there wasn’t any place she could go where I wouldn’t follow her.

I’d find our girl. Even if it killed me.

40

Claira

My mind awoke with a violent force from the vivid nightmare that had just played out before it.

Darkness. Trapped in the Undersea. The chilling, white eyes of a sea witch.

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