Page 125 of Cruel Tides

Wait—

A knot of dread tightened in my gut. “If this is about the tridents…”

Queen Sagari cut me off with a laugh. “Poseidon’s relics?” Then she scoffed. “What good are they to me?”

“I overheard your soldiers. They were searching for the other kingdoms. Why, if not for the tridents?”

“The oceans were empty, not a single shimmery mer in sight,” the queen said with a shrug. “Can you blame us for exploring territories that had once been beyond our reach?”

She was lying—the tridents were the most useful objects in the entire ocean, and the Rook had proven that cecaelia could use their magic. It would be foolish of her not to want a trident’s power.

My teeth grit as I remembered the way King Eamon’s trident had looked wrapped in the Rook’s tentacles. The cecaelia’s presence had left the palace in utter ruin. “You were doing more than exploring,” I accused. “The gems, the corals. Your soldiers, they stripped the palace walls down to nothing. And your Rook, he…” My voice broke away as she waved a hand, as if to clear the air of all my grievances.

“Believe me when I say that our actions were not motivated by ill will, child. We were searching, yes. Can you imagine how frightened and confused we were to wake one morning and find the oceans empty? We scoured the waters for a sign of what happened to our dear neighbors, those glittery merfolk. You see, it was vital to determine whether their misfortune might one day drift down to the Undersea. And do you know what we found?” She released my chin with a flourish and spun around, her swimsuit slapping against her wet thighs as she swayed back over to her desk. “Turns out, they hadn’t vanished. They’d simply abandoned their place in the sea.”

She grabbed a trinket—a brass globe that rotated on its axis—and ran a long nail over its tarnished surface, causing it to spin. “So, did I permit my soldiers to salvage anything they deemed valuable from the merfolk’s former riches? Yes. Indeed, I did. But is scavenging really so terrible, child? The merfolk had abandoned it, after all.”

“You know they didn’t mean to leave those things behind. Those kingdoms were their homes,” I cut in, but my retort seemed to bounce right off her neatly shrugged shoulders.

“Did I know that?” She drew out the question, her eyebrows soundly raised. “As you may have observed, our kingdoms are not currently on speaking terms.”

Sighing, she dropped the globe back on her desk. “Sure, here on land, we work merely a tentacle’s curl away from the merfolk. Hidden right underneath their upturned noses,” she said, bitterness punctuating every word. “But only for as long as they believe us to be nothing more than pathetic humans entranced by their glamour. If they knew of our true nature, child, they would not permit us to stay on this island, which I might add, was inhabited by our kind well before the merfolk came to use it.”

“Poseidon’s little followers think they’re so clever,” one of the queen’s pawns spat out, his voice as abrasive as a shard of sea glass. The rest of the men around the hot tub jeered along with him.

Ugh.I would have really appreciated it if they’d found some clothes before calling my attention over to them again.

Instead of reprimanding them for their outburst, a shrewd look passed over Queen Sagari’s face. “Clever enough to get themselves cursed,” she added, causing them to howl with laughter. “And what a pity that was. But some good did come from this dreadful curse.”

She fixed her excited gaze on me. “An opportunity to gain the merfolk’s trust.”

“Do you really believe King Eamon would ever trust you?” I asked dryly. “Or did you forget you gave the order that destroyed his palace?”

“Once we cure the merfolk’s blight,” she sang back to me, “they will trust us without hesitation.”

The cecaelia wanted tocurethe merfolk? Nope. I wasn’t buying it.

“And now our long search for a cure has finally found its end.” Her smile seemed almost crazed as she returned to seize my chin again. “A day of glory awaits. Soon they will acknowledge us.”

This time, I jerked away from her touch. “I’m failing to see how you think you’ve found a cure or what I have to do with any of this.”

“Dear child…” Unconcerned by my rejection, she raked a long nail across my cheekbone. “You are unaffected by their blight, are you not?” A thread of terror slithered through me when she sauntered over to the hot tub to swirl that same nail over the water’s bubbling surface. “Shall we test it and see?”

Was she going to make me transform in front of everyone here to prove it?Dammit. In my panic, my eyes snapped over to the sea wizard.

“There’s no need,” he spoke up almost immediately. Although he stood tall, his voice was strained with pain, revealing the extent of his injury.

Rather than showing remorse for his condition, the queen’s eyes narrowed. Her pawn’s earlier interjection might have been well-received, but the sea wizard’s disruption was not. “I do not recall giving you permission to speak freely,puppet.”

His eyes were growing increasingly hollow as blood continued to seep down the front of his suit. “I reported all that I saw of her tail. She remains unaffected by the merfolk’s curse. You have my word.”

Slinging the salt water from her fingers, the queen moved back over to me to further scrutinize my legs. “How fortunate for us that the blight spared her,” she mumbled.

“You think I could somehow… help with a cure?” My head shook—sure, my touch had an effect on the curse, but that didn’t mean I could break it for good.

… Could I?

“It’s not possible,” I asserted. The cecaelia didn’t know me—didn’t know how I lacked the magic normal mermaids possessed. Once they found out, they would realize I was no use to them at all.

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