“What’s the catch?” She asks and I opt for a half truth.
“You go to your father, you leave Orion miserable and the Occulta Mirum without a Queen. What more motivation do I need than that?” She looks suspicious but shrugs.
“Fine, I’ll play. But I don’t want any of your Psiren buddies bothering me,” she says with a cocked brow and I laugh internally. If she really does have the power to inflict pain like I think she does, she shouldn’t worry.
“Fine. I’ll issue the order but I can’t promise you anything,” I bend and watch her play with the scythe, passing it between her hands. She throws it to one side and it clatters to the ashen, bone strewn floor of the throne room. I give her a questioning look.
“Not really my style anymore. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.” I wonder what she means by this, but am glad I won’t have to take the weapon from her.
“There are caves on the outer walls of the city, you can choose one that’s empty and stay there. Just keep out of the way of my men, I won’t be held responsible for whatever reactions you provoke out of them. We are no honourable breed,” I bark at her, this isn’t a hotel and she isn’t a guest. There’s no room service here.
“Fine, but hurry. I don’t plan on staying down here for longer than I have to. Besides, who knows what Orion will do if he finds out where I am. As you may recall he can be VERY protective and I won’t be the one stopping him from destroying the lot of you with a tsunami,” she looks cocky but shudders at the chill in the water. I don’t even feel it anymore.
“It’ll take as long as I want it to. You have no power here, so don’t try threatening me. It won’t end well for you. Or the other mer. Need I remind you that we outnumber you quite substantially?” I remind her of our enormity, looking at the scythe out of the corner of my eye.
I need to work out how to unleash the power within. If it does have something to do with Callie, then my window is closing fast with the girl’s naïve and grating impatience. She moves away from me and I relax ever so slightly.
She looks back over her shoulder and the darkness of her eyes crackles with aquamarine lightning sparking in their depths.
“Fine. It’s your funeral.”
CALLIE
I exit the Necrocazar through the many blackened rock corridors within its ancient looking construct. I think back to my negotiations with Solustus and wonder why he was so willing to help someone he would have happily killed a few months ago. I know he said that sending me off to my father would be detrimental to the Occulta Mirum’s hierarchy, but I can’t help but consider the fact that his motivations for keeping me here probably run deeper. Still, what was I going to do about it? It isn’t like I could just waltz out of here. I know that my threatening Solustus with Orion’s powers and The Knights of Atargatis is empty. I mean even if Orion knows where I am and cares enough to come after me, which at this point I highly doubt, how would he even find this place? I’m pretty sure if Azure wasn’t telling me then she wasn’t going to tell her brother, but then again what do I even know about Azure? Not a lot, and by attacking her in a red-mist fuelled rage, I am pretty sure that I’d slammed that door abruptly shut.
I sigh out, bubbles cloudy in the dark depths of the vents that make up the palace. I wonder what it must have been like when these main vents were active, I look at the walls as I pass through the narrow and winding passages, blood coloured tubules and mussels cling to them, encrusted and grimy.
I manage to find my way back out into the courtyard where the Psirens had been training, but once I get here I realise I don’t have anywhere to go. I suppose there is the cave that Solustus had so generously offered, but I don’t really fancy being alone with my own thoughts.
I hover for a second, too bright in the surrounding dim, my scales causing me to stick out like a sore and very sparkly thumb. I turn around, swirling my body in the water and come eye to eye with another Psiren, Caedes.
I had always been too alarmed whenever I had been around him to take in the details of his form. His tail is that of a Lionfish. I had never looked closely enough before, but now the resemblance is clear to me. He has long spines that he holds close to his body and the tail is cream, marred with bloody red stripes.
“Poor little lamb. Lied down in a bed of thorns and now her wool’s all bloody,” he exhales, almost dreamily, his blackened wide pupils crackling with scarlet lightning. He is terrifying and I’m not sure he’s psychologically stable at this moment. He reaches up with a sharp, jagged fingernail to touch my cheek. I flinch backward, smelling the blood on his breath as my stomach heaves.
“Caedes,” I breathe, trying to look stern but feeling like a small, lost child.
“That’s my name, little lamb. Not yours,” he smiles deep, his too dark lips pulling back over jagged teeth. His white skin is so pale I swear I can see and feel his veins beneath as I move away from him, afraid.
He moves closer, the spines fanning out from his body in a way that implies his arousal at the challenge I present. I’ve been in battle with him before, been clouded by his inky illusions and I don’t really want to provoke him again.
I’m not in the mood for a fight, I feel vulnerable, not surprising seeing as how I’ve been resting in soft beds and surrounded by guards for months now. I move once more and he extends out his hands, ready to clutch them around my windpipe and rip me apart. His jagged teeth part into a sneer.
I’m turning to flee as I hear a crack, like that of bone on bone. My head snaps back around, blonde hair cascading around me. I’m expecting to see the one person who I relate with such an exertion of manly protection, Orion, but it isn’t.
“Oi! Mate! Why don’t you go crawl back into that hole you slithered out of? The lady’s mine,” the voice comes from a Psiren. Or at least I think he’s a Psiren. I’ve been wondering about these Octomen, about when the Psirens started sprouting tentacles. As if they couldn’t get any more repulsive. I look away from the undulating mass of black things, their undersides a slimy lilac, stemming from a waist of ripped abdominals and wide but stocky pectorals, pale as sin. I look up into his face and instantly recognise him.
“Hey! I know you!” I blurt, unable to stop myself. Smooth. You look like a real badass now. I snarl internally.
“Well, yeah!” He looks at me as Caedes rises from the crushed bones that line the city’s floor, looking pissed. He rights himself again, spines fanned out, his black eyes scouring the body of his opponent. I try to think of his name….
Vex? Yes! That’s it, I remember, realising that I had thought it sounded like sex at the time.
Vex sucks in air and I call to Caedes, not wanting to see the two scrap over me. I can defend myself, I don’t need a white knight. I am already fleeing the so-called ‘protection’ of another.
“Hey. I don’t need you to save me. If the creepy guy wants to tussle, I’m game!” I yell and Caedes looks at me surprised, no longer the poor innocent lamb led to the slaughter he keeps claiming me to be. I’m not playing anymore, I am a lion.
Vex looks at me, surprised as he hears me pipe up. His eyebrow cocks and I watch as his lips contort into a smirk.
What are you looking at? I snap internally as I watch the will of my words act itself out. Caedes turns away from Vex and towards me.
Vex folds his arms across his chest and floats back, nodding to me. He’s going to let me take on this psycho? I think to myself flabbergasted. Then it hits me, He’s going to let me take on this psycho!
Isn’t that what I’ve been wanting, someone to let me prove myself? Even if Vex doesn’t care if I am torn limb from limb, at least he is happy to let me do it on my own terms.
Finally! Someone without an egotistical, misogynistic complex.
I smile at him and he points, laughing slightly, reminding me I’ve now got to take down Caedes. I grit my teeth and clench my fists. I want to summon the ability I hadn’t known I had, but I don’t know how to control it. The only thing I know is what brought it out
in me, and that was uncontrollable rage.
Caedes turns, twitching from side to side and then launches at me. I see Vex out of the corner of my eye, watching us with amusement as I move too, pushing myself through the water, hands outstretched. They land on Caedes skull and I watch as agony passes behind the blacks of his eyes. His mouth contorts into a little ‘o’ shape and I feel him falter a few seconds before he begins to smile.
“Lamby thinks she can play with my nerves and make me squirm? Little Lamby clearly hasn’t harnessed the rage of her victim,” he spits out the words and lunges for my throat, pushing me backward into the floor. I feel the bones and spines of dead things pushing into the back of my head and watch the fanned, spiny tail of Caedes flick as he prepares to strike. Before he can get his clawed nails around my gills something large and metallic smashes him across the back of the head. He collapses in a heap and Vex moves in from the shadows behind him.
Whilst I’d been trying to inflict pain Vex had moved in behind Caedes, taking the opportunity to use his tentacles to strike from afar. I wonder about being in a fight with Vex, those tentacles must be hard to get a handle on to say the least.
“Need a hand?” He asks me, offering me his. It has stubby, rough pale fingers and a wide palm. I move backward.
“NO! Why did you do that?! I had him!” I yell out and he smirks again.
“Yeah, looked like you were just about to rip out his heart and eat it for breakfast,” he cocks his slashed eyebrow and his violet eyes bare into mine. The sleek silver hair is no longer sleek, but floating innocuous against the glow of overhead jelly clouds.
“God! What is it with you?” I exclaim.
“Me? We only just met?” He looks confused and that only stirs my anger further.
“Not you, idiot! MEN! Why is it you can’t just let a girl…”
“Get herself killed?” He cocks his brow again and purses his pale lips in an amused scowl.
“Yes! If I want to get myself killed, why I can’t I? What damn business is it of yours? With your stupid ripped abs and giant bulging arms. Why can’t you just let a girl be in distress?”
“You seem pretty distressed, Love. If that was the aim, I’d say keeping you alive was definitely the right way to go. Though I can’t say I’m not regretting it after realising that means I have to continue to listen to you whine.”
“Well maybe you should have butt the hell out then!” I look at him.
“Well maybe I should have!” He counters coming in close to me.
“Fine!” I yell, unable to think of a witty retort.
“Fine!” He says, looking exasperated. I can’t help but notice the look of hilarity behind his lilac irises. God he makes me furious.
“So, do you wanna go to a party?” He looks me in the eyes and I bust out laughing.
“Oh my God! I just told you to butt out. Are you deaf? What are you like two hundred? Your hearing going, grandpa tentacles??” I blurt out, feeling a catharsis I didn’t know I’d needed at bantering with him…and as of now, winning.
“I’m actually twenty-one and my hearing is just fine,” he snorts and my mouth pops open a little.
“You’re twenty-one?” I look up at him shocked. I thought all the Psiren’s were old.
“Yeah. So?”
“I thought all the Psiren’s were old. How long have you been like this?” I ask him and he shrugs.
“Couple of months, Love. No big deal.” I look at him, surprised. His tentacles move slowly, eerily in the water.
I still can’t get my head around how odd it must feel for him. He is just like me in a way, from the modern world, ripped out of his normal life.
Suddenly the thought of finding someone to relate to has great appeal, even if he is evil. I scrunch up my forehead in thought.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” he jokes and I look at him and roll my eyes.
“Oh shut up. You said there was a party?” I ask him and he nods.
“Yeah. A rave.”
“Okay. I’ll go, but only because I want to de-stress. Not because you asked,” I snap.
“Fine by me, Love, and don’t worry, if you get tackled to the ground by Cthulhu himself I’ll let him suck your face off and kill you. Won’t be making the mistake of saving you again.”
ORION
I wake up slowly, bringing myself back to consciousness willingly. None the less, I can’t deny that I’m feeling less than inclined to deal with what is waiting for me outside the confines of the clamshell bed.
I reach over for her, wanting so badly to run my fingers over her lithe back and pull her close to me. I want to wrap myself up in her skin, her scent, in that way that calms me. I want to run my fingers through her cascades of blonde hair. I move my hands further across in the darkness, provided by the closed hood of the bed, realising she isn’t there.
I meet the feel of velvet beneath my fingers from the white blankets, but no skin, no scent, no blonde curtain of hair. No Callie. My eyes widen as I remember that she’s gone. I told her to go. Go and not come back.
I push the lid up from the bed suddenly with both my palms, the sprung mechanism responding as the clam opens, revealing the emptiness of our suite in the too bright light of sunset. I get up from the mattress, feeling panic clutch at my gut.
What the hell have I done? I think momentarily.
Starlet was right. What was I thinking? I take a few breaths before musing that I am probably panicking for nothing, Callie is probably back by now, she’s probably sorted through her feelings and come back, just like she always does. I accused her of fleeing too often, but it is a fact that she always returns.
I calm myself, straightening my spine and slowing the tense movement of my tailfin, before descending through the porthole entrance to the royal suite and down into the Alcazar in search of my Queen.
She’s not in the throne room, she’s not in the entrance hall either, or the library. I feel my heart turn icy every time I round a corner and don’t find her there. I wonder if I’ve gone too far. No of course not. It was just a misunderstanding, wasn’t it?
Callie has to want to marry me, because I know she feels the same way I do. After all, our souls are one. How can she not?
I breathe out again, huffing and puffing like a whale coming up from great depth. I wonder if it is too optimistic for me to believe she would be in the palace at all. I know she has friends, mermaids who she can go and have a chat to if she needs it. I hope, in a way, that she is with another mermaid, because I know that the mermaids would be all for her marrying me. I decide to go and see the one mermaid I know she’s closest to, above anyone else.
With the idea immediately striking me as the best course of action, I move from the Alcazar quickly and head across the courtyard and into the city, searching for the thing I need most.
I knock on the door of the apartment, remembering myself leaving here stunned a few months ago. I was with Callie then and she had in her hands the scythe that would prove to be the judge, jury, and executioner of her story.
The door falls back and a pale face and wide chocolate brown eyes look surprised to see me hovering in the doorway.
“Your Highness. What are you doing here?” Sophia asks me, bowing her head slightly.
“I need to talk to you,” I announce, using my regal claim to force myself past her and into the room full of old fashioned looking furniture and stacked with books on weaponry. The room that holds Oscar’s anvil, and his workspace is curtained off. “Is Oscar here?” I ask her impatiently.
“No, he’s at the forge. I just like to come here sometimes. It’s quieter than our other place. The couple downstairs have a tendency to serenade one another,” she smiles shyly and I want to remove it from her lips. I want to make everyone feel the pain I’m feeling, make them realise how important finding my soulmate truly is.
“Is Callie here?” I ask her, my pectorals rising and falling dramatically.
“No. I haven’t seen her,” Sophia replies, closi
ng the door slowly. “What’s this about Orion?” She looks at me suspiciously, having dropped the formalities as she can clearly see that I’m distressed.
“She’s gone. We had a fight about getting married… I proposed after the coronation and then she ran off. She came back and told me she didn’t want to get married, that it was too soon and that I was doing it for the wrong reasons and…” I stop, feeling out of breath, which is ridiculous considering how fit I am physically. It’s like my chest has constricted at the loss of my girl. “I told her to leave and never come back.” Sophia, at these words, looks at me and frowns.
“Well, then why are you looking for her here?” She looks confused.
“You two, well, I know she comes to you for advice and to talk sometimes. I was hoping she hadn’t listened to me and come to you instead,” I look at her and she looks back at me, I can tell she’s almost disappointed.
“I can’t speak for Callie, but I can say that if I had just become a Queen at eighteen years old, after only having been a part of this world for a few months, I’d probably be wondering why that wasn’t enough of a commitment for you? Becoming a sovereign is slightly more of a legal bind than marriage, Orion.” I look at her dumbly. She’s right, but that’s so not the point of this conversation. I don’t want a scolding. I want to know where Callie is.
“That’s not the point. We’re destined. She should want to marry me,” I say it like a small child and Sophia suddenly looks bolder than I have ever seen her before.
“Marriage to Callie isn’t like marriage to you. We come from a different world Orion. Marriage when we were alive, becoming a wife wasn’t a choice. It was circumstance. If you didn’t get married you couldn’t survive, you ended up on the streets. Women can work now. Everything is different. Callie loves you. But she also comes from a place where marriage is a choice. If you ask me, it’s something she feels is a big choice. She wants to know more about you before she commits to, let’s be honest, what is slightly longer than the average nuptials.”
The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) Page 14
