by Starla Night
“How? I just met him a day ago.”
King Kadir frowned. He did not understand.
She turned to Zoan. “You seem nice. But I don’t think we’re meant to be.”
“No,” he agreed, floating to put a greater distance between them to lessen any more misunderstandings. “After I betrayed my brother, I swore never to pursue a bride. This includes you.”
“To be fair, you didn’t pursue me, so your vow is safe.”
“You are resonating again,” First Lieutenant Soren growled.
“No, we’re not,” Nora denied, even as the two kicked farther apart and Nora fluttered her hands in the water between them to swish away any more misunderstandings, as if their resonance was dirt motes or algae.
“You must marry Pelan right away,” Nilun insisted. “Before you resonate with any other warriors. He is the warrior you vowed to be faithful to.”
“He can’t even say ‘I do,’” Nora snapped, brightening even more at Nilun than she had with Zoan moments ago. “And are you listening? You’re the ones who decided Pelan was it for me. I don’t understand why I’m resonating with anyone else any more than you do.”
Queen Elyssa floated forward to mediate. “Don’t you feel something extra for Pelan?”
“No more than I felt for Zoan. You’re both nice and friendly and I like you. Are you my soul mate? I have no idea.”
The calmed warriors rumbled again. Mutiny. The ones who had no brides might try to woo her, Nilun would fight off any who tried, and Nora’s seductive resonance enthralled all warriors.
“Perhaps Nora resonates with the sea,” Queen Lucy mentioned to Queen Aya. “Everyone wanted Kadir to marry you even though it was obvious you were destined for Soren.”
“Less obvious to him,” Queen Aya said, digging her elbow into the first lieutenant’s side.
He captured her elbow and placed a quelling kiss on her forehead.
“How could you kiss Pelan if your feelings were a lie?” Nilun demanded, furious with Nora and edging closer to her.
“He kissed me,” Nora pointed out.
“You drank the elixir. You accepted his mating jewel.”
“Actually I never did. It’s still in a pressurized vat in your hospital. And I only kissed Pelan because Balim told me to.”
Everyone swung to him.
He faced their attention, heating as the mistake pierced his chest. Had he caused this danger on top of an already volatile situation?
“Balim.” King Kadir focused. “Did you force a female to kiss a male who was not her husband?”
He stiffened. “Her resonance calmed and restored Pelan when he was dying from the chest wound. Perhaps healing is her primary queen power.”
King Kadir accepted his answer, but the furrow on his brow filled Balim with another pang of unease. If King Kadir knew the darkness in his past as Bella did, then how would he look at Balim?
Nora snorted.
“You find this funny?” Nilun demanded. “Torturing and now failing to heal Pelan is a joke?”
“Healing’s my power. Your doc just said so.” She stared down Nilun, unyielding, her soul light bright once more. “I’d kiss anyone if I could heal them the way I helped Pelan after he got shot.”
Nilun’s chest flared as if she had just offered to kiss him.
Truly, she had a dangerous resonance.
Zoan pulled Nilun back. “Calm yourself, Nilun, before you injure the inside of your head. Healer Balim is busy with Pelan.”
“How can you brag of your infidelity?” Nilun shouted at Nora, taking no heed of her boiling rage.
Before she could shred him to pieces, the other warriors erupted into disagreement.
“What is the point of surface matchmaking if you do not meet your bride?” a warrior grumbled.
“If you are not a bride, do not shine your bright light on Zoan or Pelan. They are not yours!”
The Life Tree sanctuary chimed a warning.
Pelan spasmed.
Balim held him down, watching the blue rings track across his chest. He had succumbed to this sickness because he was injured. Because he had no bride. Because Balim had made a mistake.
Was Pelan to be the first patient he lost?
King Kadir bellowed for silence. His vibration echoed. The warriors stiffened, and the sanctuary quieted once more.
A mistake. Balim had made a mistake…
“Everyone leave here.” King Kadir motioned to the warriors to exit. His judgment rested on Balim. “Even you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bella wiggled out of the sanctuary after Balim.
She couldn’t read soul lights the way the mermen could, but his shoulders drooped. He was devastated. All mer respected their kings. He’d just been disciplined by his. And he had to feel bad.
“Balim.” She wiggled, irritated that her fins wouldn’t work, but he was swimming slowly enough that she reached him and clasped his chiseled forearm. “I’m here.”
He tugged her into his arms and buried his face in her neck.
They rotated in the opening to the sanctuary. Light shone out through the battered holes in the petals. Bedraggled, the tree, and even the sanctuary, was stronger because it had survived the long-ago attacks. Because now two seeds twined together instead of spinning on alone.
She rubbed his shoulders. “You will figure this out.”
“Nora resonated with Pelan once. She was his bride.” He vibrated, chest to chest, as he mused over his error.
Bella had meant that he would figure out how Blue Ring spread from a cursed battlefield to the tank at his makeshift hospital, but this also must bother him. “What changed?”
“Perhaps outside the ambulance, I, like other warriors here, mistook the strength of Nora’s own resonance to synchronize with Pelan’s. Perhaps even Pelan mistook this and reacted. But he did heal at our hospital. His soul glowed with the nearness of his bride. He did synchronize with someone…”
“So now you believe me?” Nora floated outside the sanctuary. Soren and Aya were escorting her out.
Balim rested Bella’s shoulder against his and faced the others. “I believe you are not Pelan’s bride. Forgive my mistake.”
She shrugged. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s fine. I mean, I can understand how it happened. Soren just told me I have a ‘dangerous’ resonance because I’m not guarded like Aya.”
Aya elbowed Soren for the second time. “That’s not necessarily a strength.”
“Yeah, well, it must make it a heck of a lot easier to figure out who your actual soul mate is if you don’t have guys throwing themselves at you.”
Aya straightened. “Yes, that was never my problem.”
“To tell you the truth, I was excited to meet my soul mate, and it’s disappointing it turns out I haven’t.” Nora jerked her chin over her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s worse off because of it than I am. But I get that no one set us up.”
Balim stiffened. He did not tolerate mistakes well, and he needed to concentrate. He had to heal Pelan and prevent mass hysteria against mermen—or worse, hysteria accompanied by a deadly health crisis.
Bella smoothed a hand over his taut shoulders, enjoying the muscle. “Don’t give up hope. You’re not here for your health.”
Nora cocked a brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that not just anyone can transform into a mer. Everyone told me I couldn’t just give Jonah elixir and expect him to transform. I had to resonate with Balim before I could transform.”
Nora’s gaze fixed on the open ocean. “So there’s still hope…”
“For you to find your soul mate? Of course. It’s possible you’ve met in passing without realizing it.”
Her lips puckered in thought. “Sure, they say that a one-in-a-million chance happens eight times a day in New York, right? So how do you know your soul mate if you resonate with everyone?”
“You’ll know.”
&n
bsp; “But these guys are certain—”
“No, Nora. You’ll know.”
Her natural skepticism faded to grudging belief. “I guess you’re right. I knew I wasn’t Pelan’s soul mate, right? So I’ll know it when I meet my soul mate. Somehow…”
Balim focused on Nora as if she’d said the missing piece of the puzzle he needed. “When did you know you were not Pelan’s soul mate?”
“I’ve kind of felt that way ever since Pelan went to that tank in your hospital,” she said. “That week he had to be out of the water, I spent a lot of time organizing my life in between times sleeping on the bunk next to him, and every time I left the room I’d come back and find Roxanne in there comforting him.”
“Roxanne?” Balim repeated. A new urgency filled his tone. “Our hospital coordinator?”
She nodded. “If I centered him during the operation to remove the bullet even though I wasn’t his bride, maybe Roxanne could help him through this illness even if she’s also not his bride.”
“Or maybe she is his bride.” Balim turned to Soren. “Summon her to Atlantis.”
The massive first lieutenant raised a brow, but he respected Balim’s expertise. “Zoan. Swim to the ancient city and send our request.”
Zoan kicked past.
“I’d be a great relief if his bride was Roxanne.” Nora wiggled her stubby feet as she tried to keep up with Aya. “Then maybe I could master these fins.”
“Oh, sure, I’ll show you a little trick.” Aya took Nora’s hand and flew toward her castle. The other warriors cleared out, and soon, only Balim and Bella floated in the sanctuary's mouth. King Kadir and Elyssa tended Pelan, while the other warriors clustered in groups nearby, but they had a pocket of privacy.
Bella felt the fire in Balim, and a tendril of hope curled around her heart. She rubbed his shoulders, encouraging him. “One mystery solved. You’ll figure out the rest. Like, how long can Nora avoid drinking the nectar before she collapses?”
“Perhaps a long time,” Balim mused and fixed Bella with a hard stare. “She is not conflicted like you.”
His accusation slashed into her heart.
She could barely suck in a breath—no, a mouthful—of water. “Because I can’t—that vial, Balim.”
“Not the vial.”
“Yes. My conflict is all about the—”
“Your conflict is about me.” He spat the words, bitter and hurt, as if he’d looked into a well and found only brackish water and it left him reeling. “Are we soul mates?”
She swallowed. “I can’t deny the compulsion.”
“But we do not resonate as the others do. We do not reflect each other’s souls with the strength of a thousand.”
“How can I help that? You know I can’t see soul lights like the mer.”
“But you can feel when we are not in harmony.” He glared. “All this time, I accepted that you could not reflect my soul because your son is first in your heart.”
“How dare you—”
“But that is not your reason for turning away from me. You cannot develop your queen powers, you cannot discover your fins, you cannot embrace the Atlantis Life Tree with your whole heart and soul because you cannot embrace me.”
She didn’t know how to answer him. He was only making half sense.
“I warned you once that my soul was darker than you could ever know.” Balim’s hurt sharpened like a blade honed beyond the edge so it was twisted, nicked, and hard. “When I issued that warning, I believed you would someday synchronize enough with me it would not matter. But that will never happen. Like Nora, who I mistook for Pelan’s bride, I have now mistaken you for mine.”
Her heart cracked. “I’m a mistake for you now?”
“You are,” he snarled, ruthless with pain. “Why else are you so conflicted? Your body rejected the elixir and it rejected Atlantis and it rejects me.”
“How can I ‘embrace’ a city I’m doomed to destroy?” she demanded, fighting to lower her vibrations to keep their argument from leaking to the clusters of warriors across the city. “Of course I feel like splitting in half. And I’ve decided, Balim. I can’t do it. We have to get rid of it.”
“It?”
“The vial.”
His face closed.
She forced him to understand. “How can I live in this beautiful city, make friends with these wonderful people, wave at their adorable children while holding on to something that could hurt—no, kill them?”
“Have you given up on Jonah?”
“How dare you,” she hissed.
“Have you?”
“Never.”
“Then where is your faith, Bella? Where is your determination? Your devotion? Or are you just as confused and manipulated as Nora?”
“How dare you use my child against me?” She jerked back, throwing the most hateful accusations back at him. “This decision is agonizing.”
“Not so agonizing. You have made it.”
“Yes, I have. I can’t wreck a city. I can’t murder people. Orphan children. Even when I was acting as a double agent, I had a backup plan if you were at risk. Plus I was a crap informant. I didn’t feed the Sons of Hercules anything they didn’t already know. Starr made so much progress. But I can’t.”
“Bella, for your son—”
“I would give my own life,” she affirmed. “But not yours. Not anyone else’s. That’s not in me. I have too much humanity. I can’t destroy a city. I can’t kill anyone.”
Behind Balim, in the distance, a strange “pop” echoed across the city as if contents under the intense pressures of the deep sea had burst. Thick glass shattered.
A high-pitched sound emerged. It sounded like screaming.
Like the screaming in her heart. The truth came out. Balim thought she’d abandoned her child. She disgusted even Balim. She horrified herself and him.
Except… Wait a minute…
“Was that…?” Bella clutched her hand to the throat. “The vial?”
He looked back at her with dark eyes ringed black with horror. “It exploded?”
“I don’t know. I mean, anything’s possible. Maybe.”
Elyssa flew out of the sanctuary. “Who’s attacking? Why is the Life Tree screaming?”
“The Life Tree is screaming?”
“Well, it’s a castle, actually.” She searched the city for the source while rallying the rest of the warriors for a fight. “It’s the sound it makes when it’s under attack.”
“There.” Balim pointed grimly at the castle, which shuddered with black streaks of poison. “The castle under attack is mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Balim flew after the other warriors to his castle.
“I can’t destroy a city. I can’t kill anyone.”
Bella’s words echoed in his head. He’d collected her instinctively at the sound of danger and now they both flew behind Queen Elyssa and also King Kadir to Balim’s screaming castle.
Bella couldn’t destroy a city or kill anyone.
But he had. He’d done those things.
“I could never live with myself if anyone got hurt because of me,” she moaned, rubbing her chest.
Ice frosted his heart as she drove needle wedges between them with her panicked words. He swallowed the lump of sharp coral.
They hovered in a circle around the shrieking castle. No one knew how to proceed. The entrance was closed up tight.
“Who is inside?” First Lieutenant Soren demanded. “Warriors, to me! Whoever emerges will face their death!”
“But no one’s inside. Just my mistake.” Bella’s face constricted, and she clutched her hands to her chest. “I am death to everyone.”
Her words slapped his heart once more and stung. She was horrified by a murderer.
But Balim was a murderer.
The castle darkened. Black lines spread across the sphere.
Ciran shouted from the back of the sphere. “What is it? What is this attack?”
Balim’s h
eart thudded hard. Sickness built in his throat. He had to hold it together. Losing his castle and Bella was only the punishment he deserved. He should not feel so tormented.
To speak would be to incriminate Bella. But not to speak would endanger the entire city.
“It is not an attack.” He looked King Kadir right in the eye as he pronounced his own exile. “It is a substance from the surface. A poison.”
King Kadir’s eyes widened. He kicked back from the darkening monstrosity. “What have you done?”
“What I must,” Balim said.
“What substance is this? How do we combat it? How do we heal it?”
Most likely they could not.
King Kadir’s fingers clenched his trident. He wanted to shake Balim until an answer tumbled out.
“We cannot stop it.”
“We must!” King Kadir flew to the black streaks and stabbed them.
The castle continued shrieking. Although his trident punctured and cut, the thick walls puckered away from his attacks. He could not gain entry, and he did not stop the poison.
It would destroy Balim’s castle.
“Is it going to stop?” Queen Elyssa vibrated the question tightly beside them. “We have to cut it off here. The city is interconnected. If that poison kills the roots, it will destroy the other castles and the Life Tree.”
“Sever the stalk,” Balim ordered.
Queen Elyssa looked at him long and hard. “There’s no way to save it?”
He shook his head. Perhaps there was a way, but he could not figure it out before it endangered the entire city.
Queen Elyssa turned and vibrated with a decisive shout. “Cut the anchor!”
Warriors attacked the base where the bulb connected to the stalk.
“Farther down. Down!”
They detached from the base and descended toward the ocean floor to attack the monstrous stalk with daggers. Two warriors flew in with longer serrated swords.
The castle collapsed in on itself like a rotted pumpkin with no interior structure. Black poison lines pooled at the base of the deflated bulb.
The warriors’ sawing made a creaking, shrieking sound as the massive tree-like anchor yawned. Queen Elyssa put her hands on the cut. It glowed as did her hands.
