Page 176 of Cruel Tides

Rest easy—ha. There would be no more rest for me, not anymore.

My tail felt like a leaden burden as I pushed myself to move, dragging and crawling over the jagged rocks toward the curtain. When I finally dared to peek beyond it, my heart leaped into my throat.

There he was, camped out in front of the entryway, immersed in the pages of a scroll. He was guarding my chamber, just as he’d said he would, with a quill poised in his hand and Aracos coiled around his neck like a living, affectionate scarf.

“Seems you don’t trust me to guard you, after all,” he murmured without turning around, interrupting my study of his back.

I froze, caught in the ebb and flow of embarrassment and guilt. “It’s not that,” I rushed to explain. “There’s just too much in my mind right now, and I thought…”

His graceful hand was a distraction, dancing along, etching a series of mysterious glyphs as I spoke, leaving me to wonder what they meant.

“You thought?” he echoed, his hand gliding along.

After swallowing down a gulp, I huffed. “Okay, fine. I didn’t expect you’d actually be out here. I thought you were trying to appease me as if I were a child, but here you are,” I muttered. “What are you working on?”

“You think so little of me, princess,” the sea wizard said dryly. He canted his head slightly, his eyes still fixed on the scroll. “Unfortunately, a puppet’s work is never complete.”

Yeah—that told me nothing.

But before I could press him for more, he rolled up the scroll and tapped the end of Aracos’s tail. “Bring me the next. The one on my desk.”

The eel snapped the scroll between his jaws, then vanished, fading into a mini puff of smoke.

“Whoa—” That scroll must have had at least a hundred tiny punctures in it now from the eel’s teeth.

The sea wizard tilted back to look at me, then closed his eyes, a soft sigh escaping his lips. “Don’t worry, princess. Magic scrolls are tougher than you think.” His fingers absently clenched and unclenched around his quill, as if he’d endured great discomfort toiling away over the rocks outside my chamber.

A magic scroll.It looked like a normal scroll to me, like something I’d see one of King Eamon’s scribes carrying around.

“You have a desk where you keep magic scrolls underwater?” I asked, unable to help my curiosity. “How official.”

“Indeed.” One of his eyes flickered open, and a faint smirk tugged at his lips. “Since you’re having trouble sleeping, would it interest you to see it?”

* * *

When the teleportation magic faded,I found myself in a chamber overrun with wrapped scrolls and leather-bound tomes. Despite the space’s suffocatingly narrow size, it was meticulously designed, with shelves carved into every available inch.

“Careful,” the sea wizard warned, gracefully lowering his head to navigate the jagged ceiling. “I’m afraid this chamber isn’t as luxurious as yours,” he said with a wry laugh, “but it serves its purpose.”

“Is this your office?” I asked as my gaze wandered aimlessly. The sheer volume of reading material was overwhelming, with scrolls and tomes visible from every conceivable angle.

“I suppose you could say that. I was assigned this chamber when I came under the queen’s service.” Gliding forward, he held me securely against his chest, drawing me toward a secluded desk nestled against the back wall.

What a mess.Barren would have lost his mind if he were here to see it.

The desk held an abundance of scrolls, forming enough haphazard stacks to rival an entire wall of bookshelves. A flat stone sat alongside it, the only vacant surface in the entire chamber, leaving me to wonder if it served as his bed.

The sea wizard released me, gently setting me down in front of the desk so he could search through a stack of scrolls. Interesting. It wasn’t just scrolls—there were also shells littered among the piles. All types and sizes; some even decorated the shelves, shoved in the space between scrolls, or sitting on top of tomes.

“Excuse me a moment,” the sea wizard muttered, leaning over the tallest pile. Even his tentacles joined in as he rifled through it. “Feel free to indulge your curiosity and look around.” His tone was laced with dry sarcasm. “I know how curious you can be.”

I snorted, unable to deny it. “Well, if you’re offering,” I muttered back, using the uneven floor to pull myself over to one of the more interesting-looking shelves. But as soon as I perused the first row of tomes, my eyes began to glaze.

There were so many glyphs etched into leather and scrawled over scrolls, none of which I could make any sense out of.

“This is quite the library you have,” I said, selecting a thick tome to examine. “Do you let others come in and use it?”

“Never.” The sea wizard’s voice startled me, and I whipped around to find him back at my side, a new scroll in hand. “I don’t typically entertain guests,” he said stiffly.

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