I mustered a nod.
His finger glided down my leg as he wrote never give up.
~
I dreamed a dozen dreams, but they weren’t mine.
I was Treygan as a child, playing games with other children, climbing a glacier with a teenage version of Rownan, sharing a sundae with him and Vienna, extreme jet-skiing with Delmar, even watching myself as a child build sandcastles on the beach at Uncle Lloyd’s house. I was full of happiness and hope. I hardly had a care in the world.
A wave of water crashed over me. Or I was sinking. I opened my eyes and discovered both of my assumptions were wrong. Treygan had shoved me under a waterfall.
“Snap out of it,” he shouted, pulling me out of the downpour. “We’re here.”
I shook my head, trying to reorient myself. “Were you sharing your memories with me?”
“You were in a very dark place. Your soul needed some positive emotions poured into it.”
I did feel better. Not completely like myself, and I was still dismally aware that we were in Harte and would probably never get out, but I wasn’t feeling suicidal like when we were on the raft.
“This is it.” Treygan pointed at a towering rock cliff.
“Rownan is up there?”
“And Vienna.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
I wanted to contribute something to this rescue. Since my wings had been ripped off and Sage was killed, I felt useless. The least I could do was control water and lift us up the cliff.
“I’ve got this one,” I told Treygan.
I held my hands to my sides, wiggling my fingers and trying to summon the power to make the waterfall reverse its flow upward, but nothing happened.
Treygan watched me for a minute then tried helping me. Neither of us caused even a tug in the waterfall.
I slapped the falls in frustration. “Our powers aren’t working in this hellhole!”
“We’ll climb it,” Treygan said.
“Climb it? How?”
“Use your selkie claws. They’re as strong as picks.”
I tried unsheathing my claws, but nothing happened. “My claws aren’t working either.”
He faced the steep rocks and started climbing. “Then we use pure strength and determination.”
Great. Two things I had hardly any of. I planted one foot on a rock and heaved myself up. Each advance upward made my muscles burn. By the time we had reached the halfway point, the skin on my hands felt like it had been ripped off. If only we still had our gloves.
After a while I made the mistake of looking down. We were up so high the ground beneath us swayed. I stared at the rocks in front of my face, trying to push away the dizziness rushing through me.
“We’re almost there,” Treygan assured me. He was beside me, looking much more comfortable and confident than I felt.
I nodded and watched him climb higher. His muscles visibly trembled from overexertion. Worried, I called out to him. “Be careful!”
His foot slipped. Pieces of rock crumbled around my head, and in what felt like slow motion, Treygan’s body fell past me.
I reached out just in time, catching his forearm and squeezing for dear life. My hand slipped down his wet skin until our hands connected. With my other hand, I clung to a rock ledge so hard my fingers felt like they were breaking.
“Don’t let go!” I grunted, trying to swing him closer to the wall.
A familiar screeching from the sky sent shivers down my spine. Please no, not now, I mentally begged, clamping my eyes shut tight. I knew it was a soul sucker. I couldn’t look at it or fear would make me weaker.
“Swing me one more time,” Treygan yelled. “Just a little closer and I can grab the wall.”
Sweat poured down my face and back. My hand felt more slippery the longer I held on to him. My muscles burned ferociously, but I dug deep, summoning the last bit of strength I didn’t have. I swung him one more time.
I screamed bloody murder when he slipped out of my grasp.
Yara waded out of the water and onto the beach, gasping for breath. “Thank goodness, I found you.” She desperately hugged me then tried to kiss me, but I turned my face and her lips caught my chin. “Treygan is dead.”
I held her at arm’s length, still in shock from the sight of her. “I thought both of you were dead.”
“No, but Treygan’s gone and we need to get out of here.”
Treygan really was gone. I felt the pain of losing him all over again. Yara’s focus was locked on me. After all we had risked coming to Harte to find Vienna, Yara didn’t even glance in her direction. “Yara, this is Vienna.”
Vienna wrapped her arms around herself, watching us.
Yara still didn’t acknowledge her. “Did you tell her about us?”
“What?”
“Did you tell Vienna it’s over between the two of you and that you love me?”
I stepped away from her. “What the hell are you talking about?” I turned to Vienna, but she was already walking away. “Vienna, she’s lying.” I gaped at Yara. “Why would you say something like that?”
Yara grabbed my hand. “You know how much I love you. You said you wanted to be with me.”
“You’re crazy!” I yanked free from her grip. “V, she’s lying. She loves Treygan. They were a couple.”
“What?” Yara gasped, acting appalled. “I would never be with a merman. I’m a selkie.”
Vienna sat beside her driftwood, petting it as she watched us.
“You’re mer and selkie,” I reminded Yara. “And siren, and gorgon, and human.”
“Both of you get off my beach!” Vienna shouted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Yara, get the hell away from us. This place has made you crazy. My brother hasn’t even been dead for a day and you’re claiming you never loved him?”
“We’re running out of time.” Yara gripped my hand so tight I flinched. “The third sunset is happening in a couple of hours. We’ll be trapped here if we don’t leave right now.”
Could that be true? Had three days passed already? Or was this another trick?
Trick. My chin jutted forward, realizing what I was dealing with. “You aren’t Yara. There’s no way Yara would ever act this way or say that about Treygan.”
Yara’s imposter sprang forward, but I was ready. In one swift move I pierced her through the heart with the claws of my free hand. She laughed, hanging from my hand, kicking like a crazed doll. She spit black dust into my face. The sand below her dangling feet parted and sucked her away.
I stepped back, watching the sand shift and seal the opening. “I knew that wasn’t her,” I told Vienna. “The real Yara and Treygan died.”
“The real Yara and Treygan,” Vienna snickered.
A blood-curdling scream rang through the air. I ran to the other side of the beach where it dropped off into a deep canyon.
For a moment I could only make out a head of white hair, but then a dark blue speck came into view. Imposters of Treygan and Yara were climbing the steep rock wall below us.
“Not again,” I muttered.
“Who is it this time?” Vienna asked.
“More demons.”
They struggled with every move as they climbed up the cliff. I stood back a safe distance as they pulled themselves over the edge and onto our flat beach.
“Really?” Treygan gasped, sprawling onto his back. “Couldn’t lend us a hand?”
Yara was on her hands and knees, looking up at us. “Vienna,” she said through her pained breaths. She swayed and stammered as she struggled to stand. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“Don’t be fooled,” I warned Vienna. “Keep your distance.”
Yara cocked her head. “What?”
The fake Treygan managed to stand up. “Fooled? By us?”
“I know what you are,” I snarled at them. “My brother and Yara are dead.”
“Oh no.” Treygan’s head dropped back, lifting to th
e sky. “Son of a—”
“I hate this place!” Yara punched the air. “Hate it, hate it, hate it!” She looked like a child throwing a tantrum. “Who knows how much time we have left before we’re stuck here for eternity with sand-breathing demons, rain that melts our skin off, and sex-crazed krakens, and now he,” Yara pointed at me, “thinks we’re dead.”
“Calm down,” Treygan told Yara.
“Calm down?” She laughed like a deranged bird. “Why? Rownan is probably going to kill us because he thinks we’re evil phonies, and clearly this mission to rejoin the happy couple wasn’t successful, because look at them.” She swiped her hand at me and Vienna. “They won’t go within five feet of each other, and Vienna looks at all of us,” she glared pointedly at me, “and I do mean all of us, like we’re going to burn her at the stake. This story has no sunshine ending. This is it, boys. Welcome to hell. You know what the song says. You can never check out or leave.”
Treygan shook his head. “That’s not what the song says.”
“What?” Yara snapped. “The gorgon merman is correcting the human about human song lyrics?”
“You’re only one-fifth human now,” Treygan reminded her. “And are you certain all those band members are human?”
Yara gaped at him silently.
In spite of the insane scene taking place, I chuckled. Vienna shot me a scathing look, but I shrugged. “Don’t you see? It’s really them. No demons would be this unhinged.”
I walked over to Treygan and squeezed his shoulders. “I saw you. Both of you were dead in the cave.”
“Illusions,” Treygan said. “But we did lose Sage to the soul suckers in the sky.”
I glanced up. The sky was black but clear. “Those toothy beasts Lloyd warned us about?”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No.”
“We have to get out of here,” Yara insisted. “Now.”
“How?” I asked her. “You can’t fly.”
“We’ll retrace our steps and go back the way we came. We’ll figure out how to pass through the gate when we get there.”
“Past the soul suckers? And, I do believe you mentioned something about a kraken? Doesn’t sound like the best plan.”
“So, we’re just going to camp out here on this carcass-infested beach? Lovely.”
Treygan stepped toward Vienna, but she backed away. “Vienna,” he said gently. “Come home with us. You don’t belong here.”
Vienna stared at him coldly without uttering a word.
Treygan looked at me questioningly. I lowered my eyes, unsure of what else to do or say.
He gripped my arm. “Rownan, it’s now or never. We have to leave immediately or we’ll be trapped here. Forever.”
I felt as if I had lost my heart in the years of living without Vienna. Now, after only a short time in Harte, I worried I had lost my mind too. I had to make a decision.
I crouched in front of Vienna. “Please, V, I’m begging you. Come home with me.” She shook her head, digging her feet deeper in the sand. “Nothing I can do or say will make you change your mind?”
She whispered two simple but impossible words. “The shell.”
I sighed. She thought a piece of driftwood was “the real Rownan.” Who knows what the shell could be. I would never remember something she had created in her own Harte-infested mind. “Okay, then. I have to accept that I can’t make you leave this place.”
A tear streamed down her cheek. I slowly reached up and wiped it away. She’d never let me kiss her, so I kissed my finger that had just touched her cheek, and turned away from her.
Defeated, I walked over to Treygan and Yara. “Harte has warped her mind. She’ll never believe I’m really me. She doesn’t believe it’s possible that I’m still alive. This is her fate. To stay here.”
“I’m so sorry, Rownan,” Yara whispered.
I nodded, gritting my teeth and flaring my nostrils to try to breathe normally. How had we come so far and failed? I clenched my fists, wanting to punch something, but it wouldn’t change anything. This was how it had to end. We were out of time.
“Time to go,” I said.
Treygan stared at Vienna over my shoulder. “Vienna, please?”
I glanced back at her as she put her hands over her ears and hummed loudly so she couldn’t hear him. “Like I said, it’s hopeless.”
“You did all you could,” Treygan told me. “And then some.”
“I know.”
Yara reached for my hand and I took it, walking between her and Treygan to the edge of the cliff. We all stared down the steep drop-off.
“How long will it take to climb down?” I asked.
“We can jump,” Yara said. “Aim for this side and we’ll land in the water.”
I nodded, cracking my knuckles. Still denying I was actually making this decision. Hating myself for failing. For dragging so many people I loved into such an awful place.
“Thank you,” I told Yara and Treygan. “For coming here and trying. For continuing to search for me after I left you. I’m sorry you had to suffer. I love both of you and I always will.”
I shoved Yara off first.
Her arms windmilled, trying to grab on to me as she disappeared over the edge. Treygan’s head whipped back and forth between me and Yara as she plummeted, screaming the whole way until she splashed into the water below.
“Why did you do that?” Treygan shouted.
“Go,” I told him.
He cocked his chin. His eyes were wide. “You’re staying?”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t. She’s not herself anymore. I can tell just by looking at her. She lost her sanity. It doesn’t mean you have to.”
“Without her, I lose everything.”
“You’d rather stay here in hell for eternity?”
“It will be an eternity with her, so yes.”
“Rownan, no. You can’t do this.”
I tried shoving him off the cliff, but he moved too quickly. We wrestled, grunting and swiping at each other, but a broken heart will overpower a solid one every time. Broken-hearted souls are desperate and reckless because they have nothing to lose.
I muscled Treygan to the ledge. His feet moved in place as pieces of rock broke away beneath him. “I’m not letting go, Rownan.”
“I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“I’m not. Love you, bro.” I extended my claws deep into his arms. His one second of shock was all I needed. I pushed him hard to make sure he would clear the cliff during his fall. I watched—more pieces of my heart crumbling into oblivion—as he fell, flailing, then splashed into the water far below me.
When I turned around, Vienna’s eyes were wide. “You said that was really them.”
“It was.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?”
“I’m not leaving you. You want to stay here and be insane, then I’ll stay and be insane with you.” I flopped onto the sand beside her, resolved to stay. The smelly, wretched beach was where we would spend the rest of eternity. Together. Being together was the only thing that mattered to me. “You never really lost me, you know. In my heart, we were never apart. I promised you I’d always find you. And I did. You’re stuck with me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re stuck with me.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “Before that. About your promise.”
“You were always afraid of losing me. Ever since Gran warned you about our love being so powerful that it would be tested by awful fate. Well, I promised you we would always be together. I made that promise when we were teenagers, and I meant it.”
Slowly, she crawled closer to me. She lifted my face with her hands and stared into my eyes. “If it’s really you, why can’t you tell me what the shell means?”
It hit me like a ton of sand. Vienna crawling toward me like that, and holding my face in her hands, it was the same
thing Nixie had done the night I was wasted out of my mind.
“Nixie,” I whispered. Vienna flinched, but I held her hands tighter against my face. “I asked Nixie to drain my memories of you.”
“What?” Vienna gasped.
“When I thought I couldn’t enter Harte, when I thought I’d lost you forever, I drowned myself with liquor then begged Nixie to steal all my memories of you so I wouldn’t have to miss you anymore. That must be it! She must have taken my memories of the shell.”
“But you remember other things.”
“Yes.” I nodded fiercely. “She stopped when she felt how much I loved you. She said I had to find you. She refused to devour all trace of a love as rare as ours.”
“No siren would be that sentimental.”
“Nixie would.” I scrambled to my knees. “V, you have to believe me. Nixie took those memories. That’s the only reason I don’t remember the shell.”
She looked skeptical, but then, “Say it. Say your promise the way you always said it.”
Something had changed in her. Would my promise be what she needed to hear to make her believe I wasn’t an imposter?
I inhaled shakily and stared deep into her eyes, so deep that only she and I existed. Harte and all its ugliness disappeared. “You won’t lose me. Even if you do, I’ll always find you again.”
She pressed her hands to my face as if she was seeing me for the first time. She pawed at me gently, but with so much passion. Every time any part of her hand touched my lips, I kissed it.
“It’s you.” She smiled as a tear ran down her cheek. “It’s really you.”
Cradling her head in my hand, I moved her backward until I was lying on top of her. She gazed up at me with so much love I could have died right there and been eternally happy. Her light had returned. I knew without a doubt she was truly seeing me. “For the love of gods, I’ve been waiting for this for nearly two decades. May I please kiss you now?”
She nodded enthusiastically. My lips closed over hers.
It didn’t matter that we were in Harte. I was home.
I didn’t cry when I told the sprites I was going to Harte.
Dangerous Depths (The Sea Monster Memoirs) Page 24
