Page 158 of Cruel Tides

The sharp sound of my gasp mixed with the stranger’s grunt as the trident pierced his bony chest.

“You…”

“You shouldn’t have tried to touch what’s not yours,” the sea wizard finished for him, much too calmly, considering the dark cloud of blood forming in the water around us.

He’dimpaledhim. Without hesitation or a second thought.

The sea wizard pulled back on his weapon, and I almost felt the crack of the cecaelia’s bones as the dark prongs yanked free. The stranger’s limbs seemed to shrivel away, his obsidian eyes emptying as he sank to the corridor’s bottom.

“You—you just—” I couldn’t even say it. The touch of the cold, bloody water against my skin made my stomach turn with disgust.

The sea wizard held a single finger to his lips. “As I said, we’re to be discreet.”

He drew us out of the crevice, laying dark magic over the stranger’s body as we passed. I watched in horror as both flesh and bones appeared to liquefy into a repulsive, dark substance that penetrated the water. When I turned back to the sea wizard, and it was like looking at him for the first time.

Holy crap—Poseidon help me.

Merfolk could do monstrous things, but they couldn’tmeltpeople. No, the sea wizard was a monster of a different level. A literal sea demon.

This was why Queen Sagari had made such a show of demonstrating her control over him, saying that he couldn’t harm me.

“It had to be done,” he said. Not a hint of regret.

“Sure,” I croaked, nodding along. Barren had been right—the cecaelia were ruthless, even to their own kind. I was vaguely aware that I was shaking when we descended through a hole that dropped into a much larger corridor below.

My eyes widened as I took in the vastness of this new space. “Whoa.” It made the servant’s corridors look like ant tunnels.

The walls were alive with decorative rock carvings painted over in subtle gray hues. I paused, my eyes catching on the colossal figures. “What thehell?”

Yeah, the carvings were something, all right.

Great octopus-like figures spanned floor to ceiling, their tentacles sprawling like unbridled tempests set upon the ocean. Miniature carvings sat under them—architecture suspiciously similar to merfolk dwellings—with each building and its inhabitants crushed underneath a massive appendage.

Five kingdoms, each with an octopus creature set above it, and it was painfully obvious what these carvings were meant to symbolize.

Fuck.

“Um.” My voice quaked. I clutched my shell, realizing with painful clarity it wouldn’t be enough to keep me safe. “About this cure your queen promised for the merfolk…”

The sea wizard’s smoky voice only added to the already eerie atmosphere of the hall. “Quite the deception, wasn’t it?” he said with a sigh. “The queen isn’t usually so clever, but she went to great lengths to bring you here.”

To bring me here?I swallowed thickly, failing to steady my trembling hands.

“Take me back.” The words slipped out, but I knew even before the sea wizard’s head shook that it was an impossible request.

“There’s no going back now, little captive.” He spoke with a strained, miserable voice, as if he weren’t enjoying his part in this deception. “The only way now is forward.”

The sea wizard’s magic overtook us, and the next thing I knew, we were at the mouth of a cavernous entryway framed with intricate carvings. Depictions of masked creatures twisted up the rocks, their faces contorted in anguish… or was it ecstasy?

Shit—I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

“Now, what do we have here?” Two cecaelian men flanked the entrance, yet I wasn’t certain which of them had spoken. They clung to the rocky sides upside-down, and I gnawed at my lip, waiting to see if the sea wizard would use his magic to melt them, too. To my relief, he disregarded their presence, choosing instead to sweep me into the passage.

My relief didnotlast long.

Because inside of the entrance, men of every size lounged on jagged rocks, and even more seemed to emerge from every crevice we passed by. While some were built like warriors and others had lean frames, they all shared one thing in common: a hunger in their eyes that made my skin crawl.

So, the expressions on the carvings outside had been ones of ecstasy. Fantastic.

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