“The last time a Beltiamatu king tried to understand more, love more, and forgive more, he got himself killed, and the Beltiamatu empire ended up going to war with Atlantis.” Zamir closed the distance until he and Badur were no more than inches apart. “You were a prince, but you abandoned your family and your people on the whims of love. You made that decision, so live with it, as you have forced all of us to live with it. Do not come back now pretending to care for the child you decided wasn’t important enough to you, the child you and Thaleia chose to abandon—”
“Grandfather…” Kai’s voice, weak from exhaustion and pain, cut through Zamir’s fury.
Zamir turned and took Kai’s outstretched hand in his.
“Please, stop,” Kai murmured. “There is nothing to be gained in arguing about the past. It is done. Decisions made. Prices paid. And we have all—every one of us—made terrible decisions.”
“Don’t be taken in by his pretended affection, Kai. He cares nothing for you. There isn’t enough space in his heart for anyone except himself and Thaleia.”
“Maybe so,” Kai said simply. “But he is still my father, and your son. Without him, we wouldn’t have each other. And I need you now.”
The direct plea in Kai’s voice refocused Zamir immediately. “What do you need?”
“We have to find more adamantine to build a stronger regulator.”
Zamir shook his head. “What you need to do is to pull that aether core back into yourself.”
“The aether core does no good in me.”
“You mean besides keeping you alive and in good health?” Zamir replied sardonically.
“In me, it accomplishes no greater good. My people need that aether core as a power source to rebuild a city, and an empire.”
“A city without a lord? An empire without a king?” Zamir retorted. “Your death will make it impossible for the Beltiamatu to advance beyond where they are now—aether or no aether.”
“They have Badur and Thaleia,” Kai said.
“And you would trust them to rebuild the empire? No, Kai. I would not leave the fate of the Beltiamatu to Badur and Thaleia.”
“The Beltiamatu are your people too, grandfather, whatever body you wear. Would you lead them?”
“My time is done. I have led them astray too many times. It is for you now, Kai, to lead your people. I would trust the fate of the Beltiamatu people to no other.”
“Then help me find adamantine for the regulator. If we can build a stronger regulator, it will fully contain the aether core. And if there is no stray aether in the environment, my transformations will stop.” Kai’s gaze—his eyes so weary—fixed on Zamir. “You know it’s the only way to rebuild the empire and save my life.”
A muscle twitched in Zamir’s cheek. “And where do you expect to find the adamantine we need? Most of the adamantine in the world is buried in the ruins of Atlantis. You won’t survive a trip back there. You are in no condition to challenge the still-active defenses of Atlantis.”
“We don’t have to,” Kai said. “We have enough adamantine nearby.”
Zamir’s thoughts raced, then recoiled. He drew his breath in sharply. “At Shulim.”
Kai nodded. “Adamantine automatically separates from rock and from metal. We just have to dig deep, where the aether core used to be, to find the regulator that held it there. If we can retrieve it, we may be able to repair it, or use what remnants we find to expand the regulator here.”
Zamir shook his head. “Kai, what do you think we’ll find in the depths of the earth devastated by the Dirga Tiamatu?”
“I don’t know.” Kai met Zamir’s gaze. “And if the rumors are true, we don’t want to know, but there is no other way.”
Chapter 6
“You cannot go,” Badur’s voice, thinned by anxiety, lacked force and authority. He hovered at the entrance of the caves, Thaleia beside him. His tail was still, but his fins swished incessantly, betraying his nerves, or lack thereof.
Zamir’s upper lip curled into a sneer, but he did not know if he were mocking Badur or his expectations and hopes for Badur. How quickly they had plummeted from the moment atop the titan, when Badur had seemingly offered his life in exchange for Kai’s.
Now, in hindsight, Zamir realized that Badur’s heroic self-sacrifice existed only in the face of near certain death. It was easy, then, for Badur to have wanted his death to mean something.
But when there was still a chance at life, Badur’s courage waned, and he always chose the safer, surer path.
The coward’s path.
Kai glanced at Zamir, and Zamir wondered if Kai had sensed it too. Kai’s feelings toward his parents had hardened considerably after he realized that they had taken him from the Endling and left Naia behind—to die, if the case should be.
As far as Zamir was concerned, Kai had far more conviction and courage than both his parents added together. In truth, it was a relief to leave them both behind.
“Kai, you have to stay, please,” Badur pleaded. His voice quavered. “You are the one on whom we pin all our hopes. Let—” His voice caught on the names. “—the others go. They can find and retrieve the adamantine.”
“This isn’t Ginny’s problem. And it isn’t even my grandfather’s problem anymore. It’s mine—and I’m not going to let them bear the risks and pay the price.” A muscle twitched in Kai’s cheek. “Take care of Naia.”
“We will,” Thaleia murmured. “She’s one of us. You don’t have to tell us that.”
Kai shook his head sharply. “Don’t I?”
Behind Kai, Ginny sighed. No doubt, she too had noticed that Badur and Thaleia’s decision to leave Naia behind had damaged Kai’s opinion of them. Her gaze flicked to the stricken expression on Thaleia’s face, and the equally devastated one on Badur’s. “Let’s go,” she said quietly. She grasped Zamir and Kai’s wrist and drew them away from the Beltiamatu caves. “You are asses, both of you,” she murmured, her voice low.
“What?” Zamir snapped.
“It’s one thing to have an opinion about someone. It’s something else entirely to make that person feel like a jerk about it.”
“Badur’s worried that Kai’s swimming away with the aether core in him,” Zamir shot back.
“Where else would it be? The regulator wasn’t any good to begin with, and the aether core will stabilize Kai’s condition while we’re rummaging through Shulim,” Ginny said.
“Meanwhile, Badur has no aether core, and no son. His grip on the colony must feel especially fragile right now.”
Ginny glared at Zamir. “Why are you so hard on your son? Can’t you think for a second about what they are going through?”
Zamir snarled. “If you’re going to be so tender about how Thaleia and Badur are feeling, how about giving some thought to what Kai is feeling?”
“Really?” Ginny glared at Zamir before turning to Kai. “What are you feeling?”
The mer-prince shook his head. His dark blue hair, streaked with gleaming highlights, swayed in the currents. His tail was as magnificent as ever, the iridescent scales more beautiful than black pearls. Thin kelp bandages wound around his chest and back plastered the healing herb gisthil against his burnt flesh. His injuries were healing quickly, just as all Beltiamatu healed quickly, but Zamir was certain that Kai was far from well. He gripped the platinum spear, his biceps cording from the tension in his shoulders as he braced against the spasms in his back. He concealed his fatigue and pain from all but the most observant, but the faint furrow in his brow and the twitching muscles in his cheek gave him away. “I don’t want to talk about them,” he said simply.
“They are your parents, Kai,” Ginny said.
“I’m not denying that, but I’ve also managed well enough without parents for a hundred years. Once I got over the shock of realizing they were alive, I’m not sure what, if anything, I actually need from them.”
Ginny sighed. “People make decisions—sometimes bad decisions—in a panic. It wasn’t kind—
it was actually flat out cruel for Zamir to imply that they hadn’t loved you, that they had abandoned you.”
“Didn’t they?” Kai replied before Zamir could manage to string together his indignant reply. “They did choose each other instead of me, and perhaps that decision was for the best. It returned me to my grandfather, to the responsibilities endowed upon me with my birth.”
“You let it weigh too heavily on you.”
Kai turned to Ginny. His voice was steady, but his eyes were bleak. “Not all of us have the privilege of being what we want, when we want. Those without choices learn to live the best life they possibly can under those conditions. And in the end, who’s to say that we’ve lived lives any less rich, any less valuable, any less fulfilling than those who chose to live life their way?”
Ginny seemed to turn the words over in her head for several moments. “I guess…you’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interfered. It wasn’t any of my business.”
“Maybe not, but interfering is the right of friends.” Kai offered Ginny a faint smile.
She stared at him. “Sometimes, I wonder about you. I’m the source of all your uncontrolled transformations, your pain, and you still look upon me as a friend. Your capacity for forgiveness—”
“It’s not as high as you think. I am obligated to you, Ginny, not the reverse. I’m not unaware that if not for what I did to you, you would be back at your university, teaching your students, happy with your life. I was desperate to keep the aether core from falling into the hands of the cult, and I never realized the core would bind, irretrievably, to you. I’m amazed—and grateful—you are still here, helping me work through the terrible disaster that I created.” Kai extended his hand to her, and when she offered it to him, he brought it up to his lips and breathed the whisper of a kiss upon it. The lightest current of water caressed the back of her hand. He raised his head enough to meet her eyes through the fall of his hair. “Thank you.”
Zamir watched in silence, the line of his jaw tight and his stomach clenching against—
What?
Jealousy?
No, it couldn’t be.
Not of Kai. And certainly not over Ginny.
He refused to even consider the idea.
“We’re a long way from Shulim,” Zamir snapped out the words.
“Only a few hours,” Kai said.
“Multiplied by five for me,” Ginny muttered.
Kai grinned. “Not if you swim between us.” He gripped her waist, then glanced over at Zamir.
Zamir knew exactly what Kai was thinking—that they would swim on either side of Ginny, holding her, carrying her along. In that moment, his instinct was to retreat emotionally and physically, not tie himself even tighter to…Ginny.
He couldn’t even be considering it. She was human, and he was…he wasn’t sure what, exactly, but human wasn’t on the shortlist. No, it couldn’t possibly work. It was all wrong.
“Grandfather?” Kai asked, apparently oblivious to what Zamir was thinking.
Zamir grimaced. Kai was right on one point, at least. They would all be much faster if he and Zamir would carry Ginny between them.
Zamir positioned himself on Ginny’s other side, his arm crossing over Kai’s to grip the far side of Ginny’s waist. “Let’s go.”
And then he tried not to stare at the terrified, awestruck delight on Ginny’s face as she was propelled through the water faster than any human had ever swum. Her eyes squeezed into tiny slits, and her shoulders hunched against the swiftness of the current they cut through together, but there was a broad grin on her face.
As humans went, she wasn’t even pretty. She was too short. Too skinny—bony instead of curvy. Her wispy blond hair plastered against her head, instead of flowing lush and full. She was a terrible swimmer, and truth be told, not much of an athlete on land either. She considered reading an occupation instead of merely a hobby, and she possessed a wondrous imagination that turned her haphazard control of aether into the most fantastical display of dark energy anywhere in the universe.
If that wasn’t magical, nothing was.
If that didn’t make her magical—Zamir snapped down on that stray thought. No, Aether didn’t make Ginny magical. She was the one who had transformed aether from a mundane power source into breathtaking magic.
What made Ginny magical—
He shook his head sharply. No. He wasn’t going too head down that path. He couldn’t head down that path.
Ginny squirmed slightly, and he realized his grip had tightened—painfully—on her. With effort, his muscle twitching in his cheek, he forced himself to relax. He glanced sideways, taking in Kai’s familiar profile and Ginny’s too. Kai, for the first time in a long time, seemed to be enjoying the moment just for the sheer pleasure of swimming. These were familiar waters, after all, scarcely fifty leagues from Shulim.
They covered the distance effortlessly. Kai’s greater strength and endurance in the water propelled them through without any need to stop for rest, and when his speed slowed, barely perceptibly, Zamir understood why without being told.
They were approaching Shulim.
It would be Kai’s first glimpse of Shulim after it had been destroyed by the Dirga Tiamatu.
Ginny’s gaze flicked to Kai and then to Zamir. Their eyes met and there was a clear demand in hers. What did she expect from him? There were no words he could offer, no consolation that Kai would accept.
The flattened seabed seemed unremarkable, except for the gleaming spread of a silvery substance stretching for miles.
“What is it?” Ginny asked.
“Platinum,” Kai answered quietly. “Shulim was made from platinum.”
She blinked hard. “The entire city?”
He nodded. “It nestled between sea shelves. The four towers of the Oceans Court spanned the entire space between the shelves, connecting them, and the city sprawled outward. The tallest, most magnificent buildings were located closest to the Ocean Court. From a distance, the height seemed to cascade down, almost perfectly symmetrical on all sides.”
“It sounds amazing. Will you draw me a picture one day?”
“I could try, though I’ve never had any need—or talent—for drawing.”
Ginny squeezed Kai’s hand lightly. “Drawing may help you remember Shulim as it used to be.”
He pulled his hand from hers. “I don’t think I can ever forget.”
Kai swam away from Ginny and Zamir. “Let him go.” Zamir held Ginny back when she would have gone after Kai. “He needs time to reframe his mental image of Shulim.”
“But he’s alone,” Ginny protested.
“Sometimes, alone is when most of our growth happens.”
From a distance, they watched as Kai approached the center of that platinum-strewn seabed. A large hole, a perfectly shaped circle four feet in diameter, extended deep into the Earth. The side of the circle was precisely cut and smooth. The Dirga Tiamatu had cut through granite with as much ease as a scissors through paper.
Something rose from the hole in the ocean floor. Gray and wispy, almost like smoke. A second tendril rose, and then a third. But instead of vanishing in the currents that flowed steadily through the area, the smoky tendrils solidified, taking shape.
Breathtakingly beautiful women with long gowns that trailed in the current, displayed neither a tail nor legs. They extended their arms to Kai who stared at the one closest to him, as if he were in a daze.
Zamir snarled. He grabbed Ginny’s hand and swam forward, cutting through the water with haste.
“What are those things?” Ginny asked.
“Rusalki,” Zamir ground out that word.
Ginny blinked. She drew in her breath sharply. “Water demons.”
Chapter 7
Badur found a quiet place, as he often did, far from the hubbub in the colony, where he could listen to the noises of life around him without feeling compelled to be a part of it. This time, his hiding place was on the far side of the rise in the se
abed. The slight incline provided a comfortable recline for his back, and it was almost possible to imagine himself anywhere but here, a mere fifty leagues from Shulim.
When he had left Shulim almost a hundred years earlier, with Thaleia—then Taraneh—at his side, her body swelling with their child, he had sworn that he would never return, that he would never set eyes on Shulim again.
And it was true. His lips twisted into an ironic smile. He had never seen Shulim again. He had not expected it to be as literal, though. He might have preferred almost any other definition.
The currents shifted, warning him of her approach. “I’d wondered where you were hiding,” Thaleia said, the lightness in her tone forced. “I prepared some food. Won’t you come in to join the meal?”
Badur shook his head. “I want to be alone for a while.”
“The others are eager to talk to you.”
Not even willpower could keep the ironic bitterness out of Badur’s voice. “Of course they are. Now that they know I am Zamir’s son, Kai’s father—the missing link between the mer-king and the mer-prince—I am not just Badur, the blind merman who is a burden to the colony.”
“You were never a burden to the colony. You were—are—our leader. Everyone recognizes it.”
He chuckled, the sound cynical. “Even you can’t deny that I became a great deal more interesting to those who never gave a damn about me before.”
Thaleia sighed and fell silent. She was still there, though. He knew it by the subtle sway of the current against her fins—the tiny, scarcely perceptible ripple that always seemed close by. After a long moment, she broke the silence with, “The healers are still working with Naia. They’re…not making much progress. They managed to slow—but not stop—the spread of the irukandji venom.”
“There’s nothing that can be done for her? So we need not feel guilty about leaving her on the ship while we took off with Kai?”
The current tightened into a snap. Thaleia had heard, as he had, the self-mocking hate in his voice.
Cursed Legacy: Lord of the Ocean #3 Page 4
