by Amy McNulty
My fingers hit two bandages, and poking harder, I felt the outline of punctures at my throat, like an animal had bitten me.
She’d almost seemed like one in that moment.
“Is it over then?” I asked quietly. My mind raced over the day’s events, a sudden thickness in my throat overpowering me as I loathed myself for not seeing it all sooner.
Calder.
Laguna, Llyr, Cascade, Bay… The little innocent merchildren.
I hadn’t wanted them to die, even after I’d realized what letting them win would do.
“Are you dead?” asked Orin.
I snapped back to the moment. “Excuse me?”
“Wager not, since you answered me. Though you could argue a vampire is dead and could have answered me too, yeah? But they’d be honest and say they were dead. Why not? Bit of pride never hurt a vampire.” Orin put the poker down beside the fire with a clang. “You’re not a vampire—not a full one. Just had your first experience as a bloodbag, all right? Ember stopped short on purpose. Then again, she is a fledgling, part-time vampire. Might not have known what she was doing, how much venom to send through your veins to stop your heart.”
My hand moved instinctively to my chest, and I didn’t know whether the sharpness I found there was from anxiety over all that had happened or if I was feeling the poison burn me up from the inside.
“Did you surrender then?” continued Orin.
“Huh?” I asked, letting my hand fall to the blanket. My limbs felt weak.
“Do you remember surrendering?”
“No,” I said, clutching the quilt tightly.
He stood and shrugged. “Then nothing’s changed, has it?”
My grip on the blanket slipped. For a moment, a feeling like joy soared across me—the merfolk I cared about, mad as I was at them, were alive.
But then I found myself swallowing over and over as I filled with dread. But they would have to die. They would have to. Or… Or I could drop out, make it so there weren’t two champions, and the war would be delayed until one day when there could be.
As if I could live the rest of my life knowing the potential danger that awaited humankind one day if this war started again.
A sour taste hit my mouth as my chest went cold. Autumn. And Noelle was pregnant…
It could happen again. And much sooner than I’d initially thought.
“So I gather a dozen things are flooding your mind right now,” said Orin, meandering closer to the bed and gripping one of the small bedposts at my feet. “Should you surrender, then? It’d save your life and the lives of everyone you care about, yeah? The world and all that?” He casually strode around and sat at the foot of my bed. “Other than those pesky little merfolk who wormed their way into your heart. But you’ve only known them weeks, right? And besides, it’s them or a total nearing eight billion other people, all right?”
I flinched backward, pulling the quilt up. It was green and seemed worn, but somehow it was comforting, like I was a tree and the quilt was the sea of moss at my roots, cushioning the tender parts from the footsteps of nearby creatures. “I thought you were neutral,” I said, though I didn’t really believe it.
He raised both hands and lifted them up and down like a representation of scales. “Eh, I suppose. When it comes to vampires versus merfolk anyway. Couldn’t care less which side won, though I’d have to be honest and say I’d miss my films if the merfolk won. Can’t picture them putting underwater cameras to good use like that.” His face wrinkled. “Too busy scraping coral off the sea floor and chugging down mussels or whatever is they all do down there.”
My heart beat faster at the memory of doing the latter—whatever nonsense the former example might have been. It was gross, now that I wasn’t in the moment, living as a mermaid did.
“But I’m just laying your options out here. Let’s see… What else? Using that orb to drop out as champion, thinking then you’d save everyone, yeah? Sure, history would be doomed to repeat itself, but maybe you’d be super old by then. Maybe you’d prefer to live on beaches in your old age—never mind that it’d be on the wrong side of the beach. The wet side. The side where you can’t breathe.” He waggled an eyebrow at me.
I took a deep breath, not sure whether or not to bring up my fears about Autumn and the baby on its way. It wasn’t his place to know my mind.
Besides, there was… The thing Nerida had said. She’d been angry at Orin. At the “observer.”
“Then there’s the option of killing Ember—let’s be real, she’s not going to surrender peacefully, all right? But you don’t want that for many reasons.” The corner of his lip twitched as he took a good, long look at my neck. “Ask her to drop out and you’re back to the problem of this whole thing repeating someday anyway. Maybe the two of you would be gone by then—maybe it’d be another hundred or more years. But then I hope you better not have kids or grandkids you care about or just, like, you know, care about humanity in general.”
“Do you have a point you’re getting to?” I snapped.
Orin lifted one finger up beside his head, his mouth opening, then shutting. Then opening again. I wanted to throttle him.
“There are some things I’m sure you’re not considering,” he said. “And I’m just wondering if I need to spell them out…?”
I pushed my back up against the headboard now. My own mouth fell open, the green light on the orb immediately jumping to mind. “No,” I said quietly.
“What are you on about?” said Orin, cupping his ear as he leaned toward me.
“You… Who…?”
Orin chuckled and leaned back. “I’m Orin, prince of the faefolk,” he said, doing a mockingly showy half-bow as best he could from where he was seated. “So yes, the green light on the orb means I’ve had a champion pledge to fight for me.”
“What?” I shrieked. “But you’re—!”
“The observer,” he said, shrugging. “But the faefolk are tired of observing, all right? Tired of all this water and blood tosh. We were a part of it right from the start. It’s just most of us don’t interact much with human society.” He turned and looked out the cabin’s small window. “Doesn’t mean we’re not here—observing. Get it?” He grinned as he turned to me.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
His laughter was childlike, airy and full of mirth. And somehow untrustworthy. “Why would I tell you? I didn’t tell anyone.”
“So why are you telling me now?” My heartrate was out of control, my ears ringing in my head.
“Well, the merqueen seems to have figured it out and whatever. Time to come out of the shadows, I suppose.” He gave me a stern look. “Granted, I recognize I can’t be impartial when it comes to my own actions, but think of me more as a referee anyway, yeah? I step in when things get unbalanced, but it’s the magic more than me. The magic of these consummate lands requires a champion to make other champions surrender or the champion to kill other champions with her own hands for there to be a victory. That’s why there hasn’t been a proper winner yet, not even a millennia ago.”
“But now you’re telling me there are three…” My words died. Three young women from Dad’s house.
Autumn fascinated with my hand—with her own. Trying to get me to go to the golf outing. Her new book expert “friend.” She was the only other girl it could be. “Autumn!” I shrieked.
Orin leaned back. “Yeah, well, sorry about that—the ceremony was just a quick peck, not a proper kiss. She’s too young to be my ty—” But he didn’t get to finish because I had launched across the bed at him, wrapping my hands around his throat, pushing him back on the bed.
Orin made choking sounds and I just clenched tighter. “You all said Autumn was too young—that it was only Ember and I who could do this!”
Orin continued to spurt and spurt, his eyes bulging exaggeratedly, and then he just laughed. Laughed without having any trouble breathing, even as my fingers were wrapped
around his throat. He’d been acting before. “Didn’t mean they couldn’t use Autumn, just the other two princes weren’t keen on the idea. Having a child for a champion makes this whole thing significantly harder, I must tell you. Kind of have to keep up the charade that it’s just one happy-go-lucky game.”
My fingers were having no effect on him. I let him go and leaned back on my hands on the bed, surprised at my bloodlust, even if that didn’t mean it was fading away.
I wanted to kill him.
“Right,” said Orin, getting back up. “I’ll let that game-losing penalty go since your weak little fingers couldn’t really harm me.”
“You’re not the observer,” I spat. “Not if you’re in the game. So no game-losing penalty.”
He held his palms up as if to say it was out of his hands. “I don’t make the rules. The consummate lands do. And I’m telling you, you lose if you hurt me. Even if I have a champion in the race.”
“That’s not balanced,” I said. “Not fair.”
“Yeah, well, it is what it is.” He scratched his cheek. “So let me alert you to another thing you hadn’t been thinking about. You drop out or by some miracle get Ember to, and the war isn’t over. It’s Autumn against whoever’s left standing.”
“No,” I hissed.
“Yes,” said Orin.
I slammed my fists against the bed. “Then how does anyone win, you traitorous little—”
“You have to get both champions to surrender,” he said. “Or you can kill them both, but I don’t think you want that, do you?” He yawned. “Seems the blood and the water forgot about the bloom after all these years for some reason. Forgot that neither side could truly win unless there were three champions in the game, unless their side vanquished them both. But if anyone drops out instead of surrendering all proper like, the battle is still on between the other two. Even if no one can really win without that third champion.” He got up and stretched. “So I don’t know if you really want to drop out as the champion of water, you know? Then you can’t really help protect your little sister from the bloodsuckers. You’ll lose your ice powers, plus your ability to turn into a mermaid, though I can’t honestly say the latter will come in handy again, considering the vampires’ little clever show back there.” He lowered his arms and stared down at me. “Though they wouldn’t have gotten the upper hand without you, so who can say?”
I blinked hard—again and again. Trying to make sense of everything he’d told me. Trying to think of the best course of action.
Lose. Stay the champion of water and surrender. It would be the end of Calder and all his people, but…
It was the only way.
But I still had to convince Autumn or Ember to surrender instead of killing one another.
And for that, I’d need to keep my powers as long as possible.
Orin hitched a thumb over his shoulder at the door. “So your merman prince has been out there—with my permission, not crossing the threshold—waiting for you to wake up. Says he’s got something for you. Should I fetch him?”
I bit down on my tongue hard, the taste of copper hitting my mouth, a strange and ravenous hunger flooding me as it did. “What does he have?” I asked at last.
“Let’s invite him in and see, shall we?” he asked.
He opened the door and shouted out. “’Kay, you can come in. She’s up. Don’t know if you figured that out from all the yelling and shuffling and such.” He rubbed his throat exaggeratedly. “Your champion almost broke the rules and pasted me—practically snapped my neck, all right? Rein her in, maybe?”
I glowered at Orin, almost missing Calder entirely as a figure walked past him. Orin shivered as he shut the door and then cradled his arms. “Oh! Bollocks-bursting cold out there. Must be pretty darn devoted to wait outside in that frosty air, yeah?”
Calder sat at the foot of my bed, the colorful orb between his fingers. One arm was bulky beneath his letterman jacket sleeve, bandages probably covering his wound there. “Here,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry. Drop out. Just hold it and…” He glanced over his shoulder at Orin, as if to ask if he were doing it correctly. “Say you don’t want to be champion. Tell it you don’t love me.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. I’d considered myself his girlfriend for a few weeks, but it had hardly been Romeo and Juliet.
“I don’t,” I said, glowering at both Orin and Calder. But only Orin met my eyes, his green irises twinkling as he went to pick up the poker and stab at the fire once more. “But I’m not dropping out.”
That got Calder’s attention. “You’re not?”
I shoved his arm away from me, careful not to touch the orb. “No,” I said hoarsely, my heart thundering as I turned the opportunity away.
“Ivy, you could have died back there helping out the vampires—”
“But I didn’t.” I rubbed my bandage again. “Because Ember doesn’t want to kill me, either.”
“She may have to at this rate, yeah?” said Orin. He tsked. “Such a pity. Sister against sister against sister.”
Calder stared down at the orb in his hands. “Mom said… She wanted me to take this to you. Wanted you to drop out. Said you’d never kill your sister, and I thought she meant…”
“Autumn,” I said. Orin tittered at that, but I ignored him. “But I won’t kill Ember, either. Just so you know. You’re not going to win. But you’re stuck with me because you can’t force me to drop out.”
Calder let go of the orb and reached a gentle hand to my cheek. I flinched but didn’t recoil.
“You have to do what you have to do,” he said. “For your family. Just like I will for mine.” He pulled back and stood. “So for now… Let’s compromise.”
As those childlike chuckles filled the cabin between the snapping and crackling of the fire, I went absolutely still, a dizziness overtaking me even as my body was overcome with chills.
I was surrounded by enemies. But I had no choice but to keep fighting alongside them.
The Battle Continues in Iron & Aqua
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About the Author
Amy McNulty is an editor and author of books that run the gamut from YA speculative fiction to contemporary romance. A lifelong fiction fanatic, she fangirls over books, anime, manga, comics, movies, games, and TV shows from her home state of Wisconsin. When not reviewing anime professionally or editing her clients’ novels, she’s busy fulfilling her dream by crafting fantastical worlds of her own.
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