Gwen!”
She won’t look me in the eye. Like inside the reef house. Like before and after she tried kissing me on the beach. “Gwen, look at me.”
She doesn’t.
But Layla does. Her lips are trembling. I can smell it on her, anger like kerosene, like the blue fire eating away at the ship now that the rain is settling.
I ready myself to jump off.
“You stay put.” Nieve wags her finger at me, and my body feels like it’s wading against the current. I grip my scepter tighter, fighting against the force of her magic.
“Don’t look surprised, Tristan,” Gwen says, finally meeting my eyes for a second before looking back down at Layla.
That’s the thing. “I am. How can you do this?”
“I don’t understand,” Nieve says, “how you can pass over my Gwenivere for this creature. When Gwenivere told me her advances were futile against your human, I pictured something a little more—lush.”
“You fought alongside me—”
“No.” Gwen’s eyes, the gray eyes that stared right into mine as she helped me find Shelly, are shadowed. “I fought against you. You were just too blind to see it.”
Everything crashes over me. The way Archer tried to save her when the merrows attacked us in Florida. The way she helped me find Eternity. One step closer to finding it for Nieve. Nieve, always one step ahead. “It wasn’t Sarabell who killed the avians. It was you.”
“Oh no, that was Sarabell,” Nieve says. “I told her I’d spare her dear cousin if she did as I asked. Foolish girl.”
“Then you let in Jesse,” I say. “Look at me, Gwen.”
Finally, she does. One, two, three seconds go by and she turns away again. “You mean nothing to me, Tristan.”
But she’s wrong. I know the way she looked at me, sitting on the beach, laughing. She wasn’t faking our friendship.
“Why?” I ask her. Even in the dark I can see the sad grimace on her face. “Because your husband sliced you up so now you hate the world?”
Her laugh makes me shiver. “Elias didn’t give me any scars. In fact, he was afraid of me. He wanted to marry me thinking I’d serve him, be his private witch. Instead, I made him hide in the dark. I made his nightmares come to life.”
“But you said—”
“No, you said Elias did this to me. I let you believe it. Every scar I have I wear proudly because it reminds me of what I am and where I come from.”
“And where do you come from?”
This time, Nieve answers. “From me.”
I think of every time I’d see Gwen in the corner of my eyes. The white of her hair. They don’t have the same faces, but the haughtiness is there. With them side by side, I can see it now.
“My brother made me throw her away. The king, my brother, made me leave her. She was deformed in their eyes. Merrows, we call them. We leave them to die in bottomless holes in the sea. Then he locked me away and I healed her. I loved her and I fixed everything so that she could return to court where she belonged. And I did it for all my children. Never as good as Gwenivere, but Archer is the beginning of something new. Together we will make a better kingdom. Without fear of living on the outside. And you will give me what I want, Tristan Hart, or you will watch your human die.”
I hold the Scepter of the Earth in my hands. The quartz glows so brightly that I fear I’ve lost control. Layla tries to shake her head, even with a knife at her neck. She doesn’t want me to do it. But I’ll find another way to fix it, to make this right.
I hold the scepter by its base.
The quartz faces the silver witch.
Her eager hands rise from the wave, ready to snatch it.
The blast comes from the pier, behind Gwen.
“No.”
Nieve loses her balance and falls into the water with a splash.
I hop over the deck onto the mast, which forms a bridge between the ship and the pier. My eyes are locked on Layla, who struggles against Gwen’s grip. Gwen throws the knife to the ground and puts a hand over Layla’s nose and mouth. “No!”
They dive.
On the pier, Kurt shoots another bolt of lightning to where Nieve floats. It blasts hard and hits the ship. The mast spins beneath my feet and I fall, hitting the back of my head on the wood before crashing in the water.
I swim, screaming in the sea with every bit of breath I have. She’s gone.
They’re gone.
The night is black and the storm is gone too.
Water dries against the heat of my skin. I think I’m burning from the inside out. I run back onto the pier, holding onto my scepter like a baseball bat, and swing with all my strength. Kurt with his big, stupid violet eyes. How did I not see it? He’s got an inch on me, maybe two, but the similarity is there. His face, familiar in the way my own is. Right now, I want to bash it into the back of his skull.
He moves side to side, avoiding my swings, but he doesn’t swing back. “I had to!”
“No, you didn’t!”
“Would you have given your power away to the sea witch?
Would you have let her be the end of us? All for—”
“Say it!” I shove him with all of my weight. “For a human? In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the way I was raised!”
“Are you finished?”
I laugh, bitter and ugly and hateful. “I’m not even close to finished.” He raises his trident at the same time I raise my scepter. The metals clash, sparking at every turn. I bet he didn’t think I paid attention during our lessons. But I did. I mirror his every move.
Side shuffle, three o’clock, turn, and six o’clock.
It pisses him off, Mr. Predictable. He sucks in the air around us and blasts me with his trident. My quartz absorbs the blow, taking the force deep into the crystal. I have to hold the scepter hard so it doesn’t shake out of my hands.
From the corner of my eye, I see that the battle is coming toward us. The Sea Guard clusters on the beach and kneels in Kurt’s direction. They hold their swords up. One of them says, “Sire—”
“This is between us.” Kurt holds his hand up to stop them. And I want to laugh, because I know I had the same look on my face the first time Kurt called me “sire.”
Then there are the others, Frederik leading his Alliance, Penny, and Kai. In the back of my head, I can hear Shelly saying, “And in darkness we will remain.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kurt says.
I hold out my arms. “It’s too late for that.”
We both extend our weapons and fire again. The light of my quartz and the lightning sparks of his tridents are white-hot beams clashing at the center. This whole time, he’s underestimated me. As a man. As a friend. As an opponent.
“Stop!” The scream comes from the left. Thalia is going to walk right in the middle of our fire. “Stop it!”
I pull away first and a spark of the trident hits my chest. I fly back and hit the balcony of the pier, cleaving the wood in half.
“Tristan was going to trade his scepter for Layla,” Kurt shouts. “I had to do it.”
“Where is she?”
I gesture at the black water. “Gwen and Nieve took her.”
“We will figure this out,” he says.
“In case he forgot,” I get up and thunder back to him, “Layla can’t breathe underwater. She might already be—”
“Nieve wouldn’t,” Thalia says, pleading back and forth to both of us. “Not knowing what she means to you.”
“You never even wanted to be here, Kurt,” I say. “Why don’t you go back to your cougar girlfriend and have her read you some more bedtime stories about your new father.”
Kurt’s fist slams into my cheekbone. Thalia’s shaking, putting her arms between us. I can feel it. The one thing that held us together is dissolving. Kurt is no longer my guardian. He’s my opponent.
“Oh, of course you’d never get mad at Tristan.” Kurt turns away from Thalia. “Forgive me! Why would you have any sympathy
for your bastard brother when Lord Tristan is going to make you human? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I have never been ashamed of you.” She points her finger in his face like a dagger. “Not now, not ever. But I see now that you will never love me if I do what makes me happy.”
She turns away, running off the pier and into the shadows of the boardwalk.
“Way to go,” I say.
“Oh, shut up,” he says, and I know he’s wanted to say that to me for a long, long time.
“I don’t want to see you again.”
“Neither do I.” Without looking back, Kurt runs off the pier. He shifts in the air. The violet of his scales catches the moonlight, and in the swiftness of a dive, he’s gone.
The Sea Guard is gone.
The Thorne Hill Alliance has brought all of their wounded into the Wreck. They turn the dinner tables into emergency stations. I’m lying across the bar top with my dagger on my chest and my scepter in hand. I make it turn on and off like a light switch.
Rachel walks past. “You fought well.”
“I think I’m dead and I’ve gone to hell,” I say. “Because you’re being nice to me.”
She nods at Marty and keeps going to tend to the others.
“You saved my life,” Marty tells me. “I thought I was dead. I saw a big light at the end of the rainbow, and it was Santa Claus holding a ball of light. He doesn’t really wear red. He wears brown leather, because when the reindeers get old, he uses them to make clothes.”
Kai comes around and takes the bottle from Marty’s hands. They shake and she has to pry away his fingers. I think I hear her whisper, “It’s okay.” But there are so many whispers I can’t be sure. I can hear alcohol poured over wounds and the howl of pain that comes after.
When I close my eyes, I feel like I’m lying on the beach. The sun is shining. The tide is coming to get me. Rising and falling. My mouth is numb. I can’t feel my legs.
“I can’t go home,” I say.
“That’s what they say,” Marty says.
“My parents are having a new baby.”
Frederik passes by. I grab his hand. “I trusted her.”
“Sleep, Sea Prince.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.” He holds a dropper over my lips. The liquid is neon and blue like the flowers in his library. I want to ask what it is. But I don’t. It coats my tongue like honey. My eyelids are heavy, and when I close my eyes, the scream is caught in my throat. I can only see her face.
•••
There are hands touching me.
Shaking me.
I open my eyes.
My head is pulsing. I say, “I know you. Bro.”
“Thanks, Cousin,” he says. “I know you too. Easy does it.” My cousin Brendan lifts me up. That’s what family is for. Unlike Kurt. He’s the worst family ever.
Part of me wants to complain and say this is totally emasculating. The other part of me, the part that can’t even move, is totally fine with being carried. I can hear voices. Frederik and Brendan. I can hear hands clasping and lots of yes I understands and I can’t believe its.
Soft hands push my hair back.
“Where are we going?” I don’t like the way I sound. Like I’m five and we’re taking a long trip and we aren’t even there yet.
“Just leave that up to me,” says my cousin Brendan.
There’s more movement. Some lifting. Another set of arms grabs hold of me. Someone smacks my face with an open palm. “Drink this.”
I shut my lips to it. It smells like my underwear.
“Drink, Master Tristan,” Blue says.
I’m like, “Did you just smack me?”
No one answers.
I drink. The liquid warms my insides. It banishes the sleep. I can feel my legs again. That’s the problem. I can feel everything again. All of it. I choke on my own whimper. Real mermen don’t whimper. It’s the alcohol. It’s the smelly tea.
“Rest, Master Tristan,” Arion says.
“Where did you guys come from?”
I’m lying on the deck of Arion’s ship. Brendan is modeling a very black and blue eye.
“We arrived too late, it seems.” Arion hovers over me. The morning sun hits his scales and their reflection blinds me. “Princess Kai conch-called me. She’s below deck. I’m told we have a new rebellion on our hands.”
“Everything is gone,” I say. I tell them about Kurt’s oracle. Gwen’s betrayal. Archer and Frederik. I don’t spare any of it, because I’ve been holding it all back and I can’t take it anymore.
After they let me vent, I don’t want to talk about me. So I ask, “I thought you were off chasing adventure’s ass?”
“It sort of bit me.” Brendan points to his black and blue eye. “That’s a different story, though. I felt terrible for abandoning you while I was needed. I haven’t got many cousins, so I swam back to make it up to you.”
“Oh yeah, and how’s that?”
He stands, and the wind blows his red curls all over the place. I know that smile. I’ve worn that smile. That smile gets guys like us in trouble.
“If you want your girl back and the sea witch gone, we have to get you real power, the oldest known in all the seas.” He leans back and rests his hands behind his head, admiring the blood-red sun.
“I thought that happens when we piece the trident back together.”
“There is another way.” Brendan shakes his head conspiratorially and says, “We’re going to awaken the sleeping giants.”
It takes a village to raise a debut novelist. Among the residents of this village whom I’d like to thank are:
Adrienne Rosado, my agent, once again for many things. You deserve a prize (my first born?) (no really, I insist) for all that you’ve done for me. For listening to all my doubts and complaints without judgment. For always offering words of encouragement. But most importantly, for sharing my love of bourbon and fried foods. Cheers, my friend.
Miss Kelly Skillen, for letting me borrow you as the vampire Madame of the Second Circle. Though it scares you, you are my hero.
To all of my wonderful Sourcebooks family, especially Aubrey Poole and Leah Hultenschmidt. You’ve transformed this book, draft to draft. Tristan and the gang are better for it. Derry Wilkens, the best publicist a girl could ask for. Jillian Bergsma and the amazing production and art teams for creating the sexiest merman books ever. Tony Sahara, once again, for the epic covers, and my publisher, Dominique Raccah.
Dharampaul Gopal, my oldest friend and partner in crime. (This is not a confession if the FBI is reading.) Thank you for teaching Tristan to play poker.
#1 Steven DeSiena. I pulled some of the epigraphs in this series from the mermaid book you gave me!
My Ecuadorian tribe: the Medinas, the Guerreros, the Sterns, the Córdovas, the Vescusos, the Laucellas, and the Ruscittos.
All of my old friends, new friends, and family who attended my book events and supported me in this endeavor. I can’t thank you enough.
To the fans who read these books. Tristan is a very happy merman because of you.
The YA community of writers and bloggers I’ve met on the publishing road. Especially the Apocalypsies for making this journey less scary.
To the end of the world, and beyond.
Zoraida Córdova was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and grew up in Hollis, Queens. Her favorite things are merdudes, Montana, and the New York City skyline. Visit her at www.zoraidacordova.com.
The Savage Blue Page 29
