His brows rose high. “Royals are such fucking bastards.”
“Hey,” I elbowed him in the ribs and chuckled, quite forgetting my irritation of just seconds ago in the ease of our banter. “It’s much more useful than simply spying on someone. With this I could even find Hook, I’ve merely to—” I started to place the glass to my eyes, but Crowley gently shoved it away and shook his head.
“Put it back, Detective. We’ve no need of it.”
“What? But I need to find him, Crowley. I’ve told you that since getting here. I need to know that he’s okay.”
He chuckled below his breath, plucked the glass out of my hand and replaced it, covering it back up with the sheaves just as it had been when I’d found it. “Just follow me, Fish,” he said.
“I think you love bossing me around. Sadist,” I teased, but with an edge of annoyance in there now too.
He only snorted, but didn’t bother denying it either.
Considering that I was absolutely useless with my magick and wanted to do anything other than think about the fact that my sister’s song was only a mere hour away, I finally capitulated. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do right now.
I’d managed to keep myself occupied today by doing stupid work, helping in the kitchen, though my services hadn’t been appreciated in the slightest, the constant gossip that none of them tried to censor around me about me let me know soon enough I should go. But I’d gone from that to then forcing myself to go through the rituals of bathing and becoming the castle’s gilded lily once again. At one point, I’d even caught sight of my middle sister, Adella.
She was a great artist, so I shouldn’t have been too shocked to see her in such an ostentatious, over-the-top ball gown, but I was. She literally looked as though she wore the waves of Undine wrapped around her body. There were even deep-sea fish trapped within its folds, swimming and jockeying for each other’s positions. Sea kelp in strategically placed locations covered her important bits. I’d felt a moment of aching, desperate sadness when I caught sight of her lavender-and-teal tail—I missed my own golden one desperately.
I’d stood there like a guppy, watching her, knowing eventually I’d be spotted. And I had been. I’d raised a hand in greeting, but she’d never returned it. She’d only glared at me and if it looks could kill, well… there’d have been no need for a tribunal.
With a snarl she’d turned, never having said one word to me but the look was enough to let me know she blamed me for all that happened to Aquata. Possibly even to father. Once, she might have been happy to see me, but I knew I could not expect a warm welcome from any of my sisters after that. Not even my beloved Anahita had time for me anymore.
Tonight was going to be the death of me. I just knew it.
I frowned when Crowley suddenly turned down yet another one of our secret stairwells, shocked to see one I’d never even known about. It must have been constructed after I’d been expelled.
I blinked, staring at his back. “And where are we going? Did you say?”
He chuckled darkly. “You know damned well I didn’t say, and just keep quiet, Fish, if you know what’s good for you.”
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms, but I was curious, so I would play the game. The stairwell twisted and turned, going down and down and down into what felt like the very bowels of Hel itself. Every so often, Crowley would stop and flick aside a trick stone in the wall that would open up a small looking hole for us to see through. But just as quickly, he would growl, shake his head, and move on.
“Forgotten already?” I couldn’t help but goad him after the fifth time.
His eyes glowed like ruby fire in the darkness when he turned to me. With a low growl, he said, “They keep moving things around. But I can smell it, so I know we’re close.”
“That sounds disgusting. Smell what, by the way?” I asked curiously.
He snapped his teeth at me, and I knew the big bad wolf would give me no more.
I didn’t have to wait long, though. Not even ten minutes later, he peeked once more, and then a low, rumble of approval vibrated through his chest. “C’mon then, Fish. Come see your surprise.”
Honestly curious all of a sudden, I tossed him a furrowed glance, and he shook his head, merely pointing to the peeking hole.
Deciding to trust him, I walked over, noticing how close beside me he stayed—so close, in fact, that his head and my own seemed to merge into one. My flesh prickled from the contact when I finally placed my eye to the hole and looked through.
When I did it felt as if all the breath left my body and I’d been sucker punched.
“Hook,” I said breathily, gripping the walls with suddenly nerveless fingers as my breathing trembled from out my lungs.
I caressed the walls with the pads of my fingers, imagining it was his face I held. The stairwell stood well above where he was floating below us. He was in a room full of brightly glowing coral and flickering blue phosphorescent lights.
He didn’t have any scratches on him anymore. His eyes were tightly shut, but his jaw was relaxed, as though he was sleeping. They’d changed his clothes—he was in his black leathers. I don’t know who’d found them, or where they’d come from, but seeing him was like a punch to the gut. He looked just like my old Hook, the one I’d fallen in love with back when I’d still been a child, when I hadn’t been so jaded and bitter.
“What is this?” I breathed, my voice cracking as I fought the sudden swell of powerful emotions rising up in me.
“I’d hoped you’d enlighten me with that answer. Doesn’t look like any holding cell I’ve ever seen.” Crowley’s voice was hard and gritty and seemed too close to me all of a sudden.
I shook my head, shifting on my heels just enough to make me feel like he wasn’t caging me in. “No. It doesn’t.”
His look was knowing and his lips tight, but he said nothing. The air felt charged with static. He glanced over my shoulder, toward the peephole I knew he couldn’t look through with my body in his line of sight.
Swallowing hard, I turned back to the hole, focusing on Hook and how it was that he was suspended that way. There were no wires, no pulleys. It was magick, pure and simple. Even though I’d lived here all my young life, I couldn’t think of a single moment I’d had cause to find my way into this part of the castle, and now it was Crowley showing it to me for the first time.
I looked at Hook’s face. His chest rose and fell in repetitive fashion. I felt the energy that surrounded him on a visceral, almost tangible level. My skin tingled with the rush of his invisible energy, as if someone had driven a spear of light through me. “It’s definitely magick.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he snapped, but there was an edge of dark humor to it.
I rolled my eyes, fighting a grin. Crowley was like no one I’d worked with before. Ich had always been diplomatic in his responses to me, and Hatter always had a gentle way of saying and conveying everything. It took a lot to make him snap. Crowley, on the other hand, seemed to thrive on calling bullshit on just about everything I said or did. It made him both frustrating and surprisingly refreshing. “You’re such an arsehole, Agent. What I meant was that I don’t think the magick is simply there to suspend him in air. It’s doing something to him.”
I didn’t know if the magick was forcefully keeping him alive—he hadn’t been breathing when he’d floated with me on the Never Sea—or if they’d figured out another way to keep his vital organs going.
He looked peaceful, though. My fingers dug into the naturally pitted grooves of the stone wall, and I wished I could touch him again, hold him, and reassure him even in his sleep that I was there and not going anywhere ever again.
I placed my forehead against the cold stone. “Is there a way in from here?”
“I’ve found a section of wall that moves. But it’s only large enough to fit a small child, which means”—I felt his hard look—“you should have no problem fitting through.”
I snorted but chose to ignore h
is taunt. “Show me.” I started to move, but he grabbed my elbow as I made to glide past, stopping me in my tracks.
“I don’t think it’s safe to go traipsing around down there, Detective. I’ve seen nurses and doctors come in and out at random. If you get caught— ”
Shoving away from the wall, I turned and glared up at him. The prick didn’t have the sense to back up. My nose practically crashed into his stupidly square jaw. “I’m a princess.”
“Which means you’re a dipshit!” he snapped, straightening to his full height, towering over me.
If he thought that was enough to intimidate me, he had another think coming. I snarled.
So did he, taking a menacing step toward me, and I wasn’t sure, but it seemed that his muscles might be literally swelling right before my very eyes. I almost laughed. I had to be pissing him off something terrible to make his shifter side flare so brightly and so quickly.
“Considering,” he said, in a deep, raspy growl, “the fact that you weren’t granted access to see him yet, you might want to ask yourself why, Fish. Why is that, huh?” His eyes gleamed like hell fire. “Well?” he snapped when I didn’t answer. “C’mon, use that head for something other than a hat rack. Show me that you’re more than just tits and ass.”
I raised my hand, offended to my very depths by his sudden highhandedness. “You sonofabit— ”
He grabbed my wrist in a steely grip, and his eyes glowed the red of heated magma as he glared back at me. “Don’t even think it.”
Our chests brushed together, our breaths were heavy and hard, his eyes still burned, and I could feel my own sirens markings start to glow. I would kill him for daring to touch me. And no, it wasn’t the darkness whispering that to me—it was me alone. The old hate and animosity between us came rising up like an angry kraken from its cave. My smile was nothing but teeth, and neither was his. I opened my mouth to speak, but the hushed tone of someone new broke through our standoff.
“How is he?”
With a small rush of air, I yanked my elbow from Crowley’s grip and turned. I stared back through the peephole, and my mind instantly went blank when I saw the faces of the woman and the man below us.
It was Anahita, dressed in royal funeral garb, all in indigo with veins of glittering mother-of-pearl throughout. She wore armor plating upon her shoulders and across her chest. On her head she wore not a crown, but a plated helmet. Some of the many falsehoods perpetuated about my kind included that we were soft, lazy, and simple. But none of those were true. We were a warring people. Most of us trained from our infancy to learn how to fight with a staff or trident. She looked like a knight of old, dressed in her most ceremonial garb to finally lay my sister to rest.
Beside her stood Jacamoe. His dark, stormy gaze rested on Hook’s comatose form.
My jaw opened, and the air suddenly felt thick and soupy. I couldn’t breathe correctly. What are they doing together? My sister could barely spare a moment for me, and my friend had promised that the second he found Hook’s whereabouts, he would let me know about it. It made no sense.
“No change,” he said softly. “Not even any activity. He lives, but he is not there.”
I rubbed at my chest, feeling Hook’s soul burning with the heat of a candle’s flame within me.
Anahita turned her electric-blue eyes toward my one-time lover, and my heart squelched as I saw her swim nearer to Hook. She reached out with a hand, looking as if she would caress his temple.
“No,” I whimpered, hating to see her hand on him. I knew her deep-seated hatred toward him.
Beside me, Crowley growled and knocked his hip into mine, causing me almost to trip. Hissing, I glared at him. But he merely placed a finger over his mouth and shook his head, giving me a silent reminder that I needed to keep quiet.
Pissed as hells at him but also realizing he was right—the bastard—I scrubbed a hand down my face and shuddered as she began to speak.
“Daddy warned me about him. He warned me, and still I did nothing. I said nothing to her until it was too late and she’d already screwed her life up to hells. I will not make that mistake again. I don’t care what you have to do to activate him, Jacamoe, you do it. He knows what that murderous bitch was up to, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get those answers soon. I fear this nightmare has only just begun.”
I frowned, wondering why she would imagine that Hook knew anything. Grimm Central had only just learned that truth a few days before, and so far as I knew, Anahita wasn’t privy to anything Grimm Central knew. Right?
“As my queen wishes.” My friend bowed deeply, almost reverently, before unstoppering a vial that had suddenly appeared in his hand. I almost gasped but at the last second remembered the need for silence.
I would recognize the smoky black power anywhere. It was what he’d taken from me in the practice room. Why does he have my essence?
I shook my head as a fog bank surrounded Hook. Then I trembled as I saw his flesh begin to absorb it.
“That sonofabitch.” It wasn’t me who said it. “Fucking prick. Of course.” Crowley snarled softly beside me but with enough heat that it made my ears burn.
I knew instantly what Crowley was thinking, that Jacamoe must have taken my power purposefully for this very reason. But Crowley was a jaded bastard. I was looking toward my sister, the pleased smirk on her face, and the way her eyes glittered.
It was completely her doing. But I didn’t know why. Hook was no witch, and he wouldn’t be able to tap into that wellspring of dark magick. I had no clue what it would do to him, though I very much wished I did. I looked back at Jacamoe in confusion, unsure what I was seeing.
“How much longer?” Anahita asked, glancing over her tense, tight shoulder. She looked almost as if she was worried about getting caught, which made no sense—she was the acting regent, and her word was the law, at least for the time being. Maybe what they were doing broke a sacred pact.
My heart squeezed, and I gripped the stone tightly, feeling impotent and annoyed that I couldn’t go down there and stop them.
“Not much longer now, my Queen,” Jac said.
“Good. The sooner I can learn what needs learning, the sooner I can make use of his newfound loyalty.”
“Yes, my Queen.”
I cocked my head, wondering why he seemed so deferential to her when I knew how much he secretly despised his role in this castle.
Maybe I had been wrong, and he had never hated my family. Maybe it had just been me who he’d feigned an interest in. And I couldn’t figure out what exactly Anahita meant, the bitch, or if she was speaking of the Sea Witch. I couldn’t understand any of it, least of all where the witch had gone. She must have passed through there—Anahita had so much as said that the Sea Witch had been responsible for Aquata’s death and Father’s state of stupor, and Jacamoe had basically corroborated her story. But he had also added the not-so-insignificant detail of her being weakened after she’d killed my sister and nearly murdered my father, which meant she couldn’t have gone far. She had to be lurking in Undine somewhere, at least until she gathered enough strength to leave.
Right? Again, I felt myself asking that question over and over. Why does nothing make sense anymore? Why do I have a sick feeling that I’m overlooking something vitally important? It felt as though the pieces of the puzzle were lying right in front of me, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.
“I will check on Daddy now,” she said, beginning to swim off before pausing and glancing at Jacamoe over her shoulder. “How goes Elle’s training?”
My heart lurched, and I leaned up on tiptoe.
He shook his head. “She is weak. There is nothing of significance in her now, my Queen. She poses no threat to the kingdom. She is a waste of our time. Our focus lies elsewhere.”
My sister flinched, and I clutched at my breast, my ears ringing at the stinging criticism from a man I’d once idolized. I was nothing. I had no real power. And I was a waste of his time.
That
was why he’d never told me about Hook—it had to be. I’d only been a pawn to them. And Jacamoe had been their trusted ally, a man my sister would have known I trusted enough to let my guard down with.
I pushed away from the wall, feeling as though I was sinking into an existential quagmire. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to train me today. No wonder he hadn’t told me the truth of Hook.
Hugging myself, I swallowed hard, trying to suck down the ball of bitter bile that’d suddenly come flooding up the back of my tongue. All the shite I’d been through for the past few days was suddenly surging up in me: the trauma of losing my sirens magick, of losing my Hook, of knowing I might never again see the upper lands, of never again feeling Hatter’s warm arms around me. I felt sick.
I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about how pointless and stupid and useless the entirety of my life had been. Crowley had so much as told me that I was nothing. All these wasted years, and for what? An ignoble death at the end of it all? Crowley had been right all along. He’d been the only one honest enough to at least tell me that.
He breathed, and I heard the shiver of the beast in his tone. “Hey.”
I looked up, suddenly feeling cold all over and frowning because I’d not even heard him move toward me.
“Hey,” he said again more gently. He placed his warm palm on my elbow and squeezed. “Look at me.”
I blinked but did as he commanded.
His other hand was on my jaw, and he was tenderly holding my face in his. “He’s full of shit.”
My brows furrowed.
Crowley shook his head. His eyes were a mixture of the darkness of night and fiery embers. “He’s full of shit, Elle. You hear me?”
I licked my lips, still feeling numb all over and like I wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep forever. I was fooling myself, imagining that anything I did down here could actually help my cause. I was imprisoned. And the tribunal were going to do whatever it took to rid themselves of me once and for all. It was their chance to pay me back in full for all the hells I’d caused them years ago.
“I feel it. I smell it. You’re the real thing, Elle.”
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