Page 157 of Cruel Tides

He snorted a laugh, clearly unconvinced. “Of course you have.”

So Barren had been right—I did have a concussion. Damn.Now I felt even worse for leaving. What would he think when he woke up and didn’t find me next to him?

“If you teleport us down there and I get a headache, can your magic cure it?”

“Hm.” Ghostly white eyes veered up in thought. “Yes, I suppose it could.”

I stopped him right there. “Butwillyou cure it?”

That seemed to catch his attention. “I’d be delighted to help, but I will require compensation.”

Ugh. My teeth ground together. “How about you agree to relieve me of any headaches, and I kindly refrain from impaling you with this seashell?” I pressed the shell’s ridges into his chest, focusing on the tattoo-like marks. “How’s that for compensation?” I murmured, letting the shell scrape along the thickest mark. Yes, they were the perfect lines to trace if I needed to carve him up.

My hand holding the shell wavered because,damn, that was a dark thought. I wasn’t quite at the point of wanting to wish him harm—not yet. But I was dangerously close.

I could see the heat rising in his icy stare as my threat sank in. “If you insist.”

All at once, magic erupted around us. I was suddenly crushed against the sea wizard’s chest, the pressure of a humpback whale bearing down on my head and shoulders.

“Easy,” he muttered, his hands firm on my shoulders, steadying me. “We’re halfway there.”

“Halfway?” I croaked. The change in the water was immense, and I could feel it in every bone and scale. My head spun as I fought to collect my bearings. Silt and sediment formed in layers around us, a depressingly desolate seascape void of the coral and grass I was used to. This had to be the bottom of the ocean. “It doesn’t get lower than this—does it?”

“There’s a reason it’s called the Undersea.” Despite the strange pressure, the sea wizard’s tentacles floated effortlessly, his demeanor unchanged. “You’ll acclimate soon enough.”

The touch of a tentacle on the back of my head seemed to steady me, and I had the sneaking suspicion he was up to more magic.

“Ready?” he asked, and no, I wasn’t ready. But would I ever be?

“Go ahead,” I groaned, squeezing his ribs as I braced myself.

The water crackled with dark magic, and the layers of sediment disappeared.

“Careful,” he said as I lurched forward, the pressure dragging my head to the stony seafloor. “The feeling will pass.” It took a tentacle wrapping around the back of my neck for the dizziness to subside enough for me to crawl my way back upright and get a look around.

Huh—what do you know?Bowels was a strangely appropriate assessment.

We’d materialized in the middle of a long channel lined with smooth stone and skeletal streams of kelp, as well as cryptic holes wide enough for a body to pass through. Although I had no idea of the scope of these tunnels, an unshakeable sense lingered that I’d found myself in the heart of a winding labyrinth carved directly into the ocean floor.

There were so many holes leading in different directions, yet there was not a single carved mark or sign telling where exactly they might lead. I was so immersed in trying to work out how someone would navigate through them that the sea wizard’s voice barely registered when he asked, “How’s your head?”

“No pain so far,” I said, although everything down to my eyeballs was feeling the foreignness that was the Undersea. The water here almost felt like a new element entirely. Intensely cold and stagnant, not a current to be felt. “I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got my night vision,” I muttered, craning my neck to see down one of the tunnels. “Does your kind really live here?”

“Indeed,” he said, pulling us down the channel. His limber tentacles skillfully guided us through the water, making sure that my tail didn’t scrape against the rocks below. The ceiling lowered, and his tentacles stretched to find it, using the grooves between the smooth rock faces to pull us along.

With every movement, the channel narrowed further, until the rocky walls seemed to squeeze around us. “This is where your queen holds court?” I asked, even my water-filled lungs feeling constricted.

“These are the servant’s corridors,” he muttered softly, his gaze briefly flicking down to my tail. “The crown bid me to keep your arrival… discreet.”

“I see.” Following his lead, I kept my voice to a whisper. “I take it mermaids aren’t frequent visitors?”

“A mermaid wouldn’t survive the Undersea,” he said coldly. That wasn’t surprising, considering the rocky relationship between the merfolk and the cecaelia. My spine shimmied at the thought of coming across the dark spawn I’d faced back in the Atlantic. They’d want me dead, for sure.

“Be still,” he hissed, and we turned an abrupt corner. He pulled us into a tight crevice in the rocky wall, our bodies forced together. But before I could question his motives, a shadow emerged, and eyes as dark as obsidian were blinking in my face.

“What did you bring with you, puppet?” a nasally voice asked. “You’ll share her, yes?”

Pale, branch-like arms grabbed for me without remorse, and one of the sea wizard’s tentacles whipped. It was a remarkably seamless motion, his trident materializing at the tendril’s curled end.

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