Breezing past Kevin at the Marine Center and yelling out that I’m taking the boat, I don’t even bother to change. I kick my shoes off at the bottom of the pier, let my toes sink into the sand and haul breath by cleansing breath into my lungs. And then I’m in the boat, speeding out to sea with spray on my face and freedom like salt on my tongue. For the first time that I can remember, I don’t want to be on land. I want to be down there—in the deep water, where I belong.
Where everything makes sense, even with the rivalry between the courts. At least there I am wholly me...not some creature pretending to be human and forced into a double life I’ve nearly grown out of. Now I understand why the Aquarathi aren’t meant to live with humans more than necessary. They drain us. I can’t play the catty games with Cara. I can’t try to be a flirt to make Lo fall in love with me. I can’t win. Not this time.
The boat veers past San Clemente Island. Out here, the water is so blue it’s nearly black. I have to force myself not to think that it’s the exact color of Lo’s eyes. I close mine, not even sure what I’m running away from. There’s no way I can leave him behind while I return to Waterfell. Releasing the throttle on the boat, I drop anchor and let it sway gently in the wide rolling waves of the open sea.
The breadth of the ocean is unbroken, the deeper blue of the water nearly merging into the lighter blue of the sky in the distance. I hold my breath, turning my face to the sun. Golden shimmers of air dance across the top of the glasslike surface of the sea, and for a second not a drop of wind stirs. I am suspended between my worlds—the ever-reaching deep below me and the endless stretching sky above.
Where do I belong?
A shimmery glitter catches my eye as a school of dolphins breaks the surface, swimming nearer as if drawn to me. They circle the boat like playful children, their sounds happy and light. Leaning over the side of the boat, I let my hand drift through the rippling waves lapping against the side. Several dolphins pass below me, bouncing upward barely enough to let the slick rubber of their skins graze the human fuzz of mine. A trickle of golden light ignites at the electric tingle of their bodies, firing along the length of my palms. The water inside me surges to the surface in desperate response.
There’s only one place I can be at peace.
Bands of dewy green light shimmer along my bare arms as I strip off my clothing and somersault into the ocean, letting my body sink as it begins the transformation from girl to monster. The dolphins scatter, their shrieks turning fretful as I go from friend to foe. Bones crack and lengthen, pushing outward through soft skin as fiery green lights explode like fireworks along my entire span. I am something immense erupting from something insignificant. Hardened golden scales shimmer over fragile human tissue as a ridge of fins emerges from my spine, fanning into sharp, iridescent existence to the barbed tip of my tail. Fingers curl into talons and feet extend into claws as a crown of coral thorns sprouts in a fierce semicircle on my forehead—my glorious crown of bones—the final mark of what I am.
No longer a girl, I am every inch an Aquarathi queen.
The ocean ripples beneath me, holding me close as I cleave through it, swimming down and down until there is nothing but a streak of green in a river of black. Within seconds, I am surrounded. My change has called them to me—the predators of the deep—circling just out of sight, large and terrifying, but none more monstrous than me. I pulse outward, barely a soft warning hiss, but one that makes them scatter as quickly as the dolphins did up top.
With single-minded purpose, I swim the several thousand miles to my kingdom in a few hours, until I’m surrounded by a different kind of creature, ones more like myself and loyal to me. My Queen’s Guard.
“Convene the High Council and the courts. Everyone,” I click to them. They obey in swift silence.
Entering Waterfell, I swim deep into the fortress, the jeweled walls firing off the light of my body. Aquarathi disperse from the great hall, pulsing softly in my wake at my unexpected return. But I’m not concerned with them—not yet, anyway. Instead I brave the darkest part of Waterfell, my father’s burial chamber.
“Father,” I call out. He guided me before when I faced Ehmora in a head-to-head battle to the death. Perhaps he will now, too. “I need you.”
For a second, the water around me floods hotter, pulsing with something ethereal, something of the spirit, maybe. And then I feel him. I can feel his gentle smile, the fronds of his tail pulling me close. The sound of daughter echoes along the water and sinks into me with delicate strength.
“I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost.”
Trust yourself.
I clutch my father’s headstone, the rock warm beneath my nails. “How? I can’t choose between him and my people. How can I? It’s an impossible choice. And he’s nearly lost to me already. I’m so torn, Father.”
My father’s voice is faint. Look to your heart.
“My heart says to save him.”
Then trust it.
“But what about the Aquarathi? What about Waterfell? My duty?”
I can feel the water around me getting cooler. My father’s essence is retreating, heading back to its rest once more. Your duty is to be a worthy queen.
The water settles into its previous state, not a single eddy marring its perfect, ghostly silence.
I exit the chamber, nodding to the guards stationed there, and the rest of the Queen’s Guard falls into line behind me.
One of them swims forward, extending his neck toward me, as is our custom. His waters have already made him known to me—water calls to water—but I appreciate the loyal gesture nonetheless. Doras. Gold Court. Head Guard. I acknowledge him with a nod as he faces me.
“Doras,” I say. “What is it?”
“The courts are waiting, as you have commanded. In the great hall.”
“Good.”
The lower courts—Gold, Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire—are amassed on either side of the hall, bowing with extended necks as I pass them. I take my place on the giant dais at the end of the room, stepping onto a throne made of ebony volcanic glass. Razor-sharp spindles extend from its base, making me look quite fearsome on it, I imagine.
“I am your queen, am I not?” I say into the space. Already, I can feel their bodies responding to the sheathed fury in mine. “And yet I’ve been advised by my Handlers of dissent and questions about my loyalty. I am loyal to the Aquarathi. Yes, I have bonded to one who is not only Aquarathi, but also human. A hybrid.” I survey Keil, standing arrogantly in front of the Ruby Court, his eyes calculating. “The son of Ehmora of the Ruby Court, no less. Your old queen,” I say to them. “And yet you would hold me accountable for something that she has machinated and continues to maneuver from the grave. Now your king is dying because of her.”
“That’s because he’s not Aquarathi,” a small voice says. The entire room falls into suspended silence.
“Who speaks?” I ask, but no one answers. I close my eyes and glimmer outward through the slow-beating hearts of my people to find the one who spoke. I shimmer through the Ruby Court first, expecting the insurgent to be one of theirs. But I move past them to the Emerald Court before I find him. Broad-shouldered, he is but a child—barely my age—but he has passed through Dvija already and is an adult in our eyes. I went through our coming-of-age transition just before my seventeenth birthday. I fall back into myself with a sigh.
“Speak, then, Carden of the Emerald Court.”
The entire Emerald Court ripples anxiously around him, but Castia’s stance at the forefront is fiercely proud. She never would have voiced those words herself. I can feel the approval seething through the Ruby Court. One insubordinate court I can handle, but not if it grows into a full-scale mutiny across many courts. Before the boy can answer, a small, turquoise-finned female swims to his side—his mother, I presume—and drags him out of sight.
I let him go. He’s Castia’s pawn, nothing more. My gaze spans the cavern, falling on Soren and Echlios near the entrance. They would have known the minute I changed to Aquarathi form. I incline my neck to them slightly, acknowledging their presence. I take a breath. This is no time to be weak, to show leniency. I must be ruthless.
“I am your queen, and you are oath-bound to me.”
“One who brings death to Waterfell,” Castia challenges, and a wave of unease makes its way across the hall. “Our warriors found two of your hybrid abominations skulking in our waters. We dismembered them.”
Shock silences me for a second—hybrids this far from La Jolla? And how would they have even been able to find Waterfell? Only a true Aquarathi could have led them here, which means there’s a traitor in our midst. I bare my teeth at Castia and turn to Miral. “Why wasn’t I told of this? They needed to be interrogated.”
“My queen, the Council—”
“You weren’t here,” Castia interrupts silkily and glances at Keil, something unspoken passing between them before she addresses everyone else. “Can you not see for yourselves? Our queen would have kept the scum alive. She would have welcomed the spawn as she did the regent—”
“Enough!” My roar shakes the cavern walls, my fury causing even Keil to flinch. “My duty is to the regent, just as much as it is to the Aquarathi within these walls. The High Council has given me a time frame in which to rectify the situation.” I signal to the two guards standing at the side, waiting as they escort Castia to the front. Her glittering eyes are unrepentant. “I left Miral in charge, and yet you take it upon yourself to challenge my authority? I am your queen, by birth and blood, and yes, I am bonded to a hybrid, but my word is law. You will be imprisoned for treason, Castia of the Emerald Court, and punished for your crimes.”
The shocked murmurs in the hall fade into hushed silence as Castia is led away. To her credit, she doesn’t say a word, her fiery gaze boring into mine until the last second. She must hate me—and Lo—with every fiber of her being. Regardless of his ties to Ehmora, Lo is not one of us, and some of the Aquarathi are afraid, understandably so. Because of him, they will always question me as queen, more so because I am bonded to him. Perhaps that was Ehmora’s plan all along—she couldn’t undermine my birth, but with Lo, she could undermine our people’s trust. Naturally, if she were alive, she would have stepped in to calm their fears.
I meet the king of the Ruby Court’s eyes, and Keil inclines his head slightly as if to say, Well played. I ignore him. I’ll bet anything that Keil’s been the one whispering in Castia’s ear to challenge Miral, even though I can’t prove it, and she just took the fall for him.
“Let’s go,” I say to Echlios and Soren. “We have a prince to save.” My face is grim. “And, Echlios, either those hybrids were very lucky or they had help from someone on the inside.” His gaze hardens as he takes my meaning. I nod. “There’s a traitor in Waterfell.”
10
Water and Blood
Hours later and back on land, I’m lying in my room with Jenna. I have no idea if my actions will create peace or more chaos in Waterfell, but based on Echlios’s reports, I couldn’t remain blind to what Castia was doing, or Keil, for that matter, regardless of the loyalties it would cost me. On top of that, the existence of a possible Aquarathi spy working with Cano makes things a thousand times more deadly, because we have no idea what he’s planning...or who the traitor is. Time is running out, and if we don’t figure out a way to save Lo, there may not be a throne—or a home—to go back to.
“Okay,” Jenna tells me with a wink. “Mission Memory Reboot, operational. Too bad you can’t just hypnotize Lo—that’d be the easy way,” she adds with a laugh. Lying on my bed, she counts off her fingers. “Surfing, check. Crab Shack, check. Next stop, got to stir up those deep blue memories with some...scuba!”
“Scuba?” I repeat dumbly.
“How hard can that be?” She studies me up and down, turning over to prop her chin atop her hands. “Romantic undersea paradise, no one around to bother you, just two ocean gods frolicking in the deep. Could work. Just be...not the old you.”
“What does that even mean?” I say. “I haven’t changed.”
“Be likable,” she says in an affected voice, flinging one hand in the air dramatically. “Flirty. Engage him. Find your inner goddess. Think The Bachelor.”
“The what?”
She huffs at me and rolls her eyes. “The TV show with the guy who has to pick his wife from a bunch of girls. They all compete? Where have you been? Under a rock?”
“As a matter of fact, I have been. That sounds archaic.”
“Survival of the fittest, my dear,” she shouts, jumping out of bed and standing beside me. She grabs my shoulders and turns me to face the floor-length mirror behind the door. “Come on, let those animal instincts of yours take over. You’re an ocean predator, top of the aquatic food chain. Now act like it!”
I stare at her and shake my head, meeting her laughing blue eyes in the reflection. “You would make such a badass Aquarathi—you have no idea.” It’s not the first time I’ve thought that.
Jenna’s arms slip around me in a hug from behind, her chin resting on my shoulder. I clasp my arms over hers. In the mirror, we look like two ordinary girls—one with wild, reddish-blond hair and the other, a deep auburn. We could be sisters. But it’s so far from the truth, it’s not funny.
“What are you thinking?” Jenna says softly.
My mouth twists in a half smile. “That in another world, we could be related. See? We’re the same height. We’re both redheads. We’re twins.”
“You are so not a redhead.” Jenna snorts and studies our reflections. “You’re a blonde with a smidge of ginger. I’ve got blue eyes, and yours are hazel. But yeah, we totally could be fraternal twins.”
“My eyes look greenish-blue if I wear purple.”
Jenna grins. “Which ones? Your fake human eyes, or the crazy psychedelic alien ones? Come on, let’s see them!”
Giving in to her demands, I slip back the protective film, and my eyes’ multihued, jewel-toned colors become almost blinding. Jenna’s heartbeat quickens against my back, but she doesn’t pull her arms away from around me.
“So cool,” she whispers.
“Guess we’re not even a related species,” I say, slipping the human eye cover into place.
“We’re still sisters,” she says, and squeezes her arms. “Just in here. In our hearts.”
“I really missed you,” I tell her, leaning my temple against hers. “When I was back there.”
“I missed you, too, more than you know. What’s it like?” Jenna asks, spinning away to fall on the bed and stare up at the multicolored sea-glass coating the ceiling. “Waterfell? Does it really look like this?”
I glance around my room, watching the sun sparkle through the stained glass windows and stream down in patterned hues over the blue walls. It’s pretty close as far as replicas go, but nothing could ever match the real thing.
I nod, a catch in my throat. “A little,” I say. “Just all underwater. There are huge caverns connecting the different areas, bigger than you can imagine. In some of them, you can’t even see the tops. In others, you can’t see the bottom. There are stalactites everywhere, some as slim as needles, and others as wide as your giant sequoia trees.” My voice drifts into near silence, but Jenna is hanging on to every word. “Everything is in constant movement, shifting and shimmering with each swirl of the currents. One day it looks one way, the next it’s entirely different.
“People think it’s freezing cold, but there are some parts that are as warm as hot springs, deep down near the planet’s core. Those are some of my favorite spots. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine lying out there on the sand with the sun roasting my body.”
“Hydrothermal vents,” Jen
na breathes, nodding. “That would make sense...shifting tectonic plates. I read up about it after you told me where you were from last spring,” she adds at my look. Shaking my head, I’m amazed at her thirst for knowledge—she’s like a sponge, sucking up all kinds of bits and bytes. She stares at me with wide eyes. “I read that it can get up to five hundred degrees near the vents. That’s hot.”
“It mixes with the colder water,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, we can take it. Alien proteins and all. But the temps are not half as bad as the pressure. Imagine ten thousand tons lying on top of you. That’s enough to liquefy human bones.”
“But not you,” Jenna says.
“Not us,” I agree. “Our scales are an extra layer of exoskeleton above our tissue, and in Aquarathi form we have a similar high internal pressure.”
Jenna studies me, shaking her head. “You know, even though I’ve known about the real you for months, it’s still inconceivable. I just can’t imagine you—my best friend—becoming this other creature and living a thousand miles beneath the surface. It’s insane.” She takes a steadying breath. “So, besides you guys, what other things live down there?”
“Mostly muddy bacteria,” I say, grinning at the look on her face. “Crustaceans and tubeworms. Some other bioluminescent fish like eels, octopi and jellyfish. Cute sea pigs. Had a couple of them for pets growing up. Further up, there’re nastier things like goblin sharks, anglers and viperfish. Oh, and frilled sharks. Vicious little things,” I say with a shudder.
Contrary to what’s known about frilled sharks, they aren’t solitary creatures, and they often attack in pods. Though only about six feet long with over three hundred rows of razor-sharp teeth, they are fierce and deadly. My father once ran into a dozen of the beasts, and he bore the sharp marks of their bites on his underbelly until his death. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy.
Oceanborn Page 12
