Or not find.
Ginny’s head popped over the bottom rim of the tunnel. Her eyes were bright; her cheeks were flushed. “The internet needs more videos on shoal training.”
Zamir stared at Ginny as she pulled herself into the tunnel. He looked her over. She did not seem hurt or injured in any way. “By definition, a shoal can’t be trained,” he murmured. He didn’t know what else to say except to respond to the banter. He couldn’t think past the mind-blanking relief flooding him. “The sharks. What did you—?”
A shark jammed its mouth into the four-foot opening of the tunnel, its jaws revealing multiple rows of serrated teeth. Ginny’s glare was infinitely more annoyed than frightened. She kicked it on the long, broad proboscis. “Shoo!”
Shoo?
Ginny flipped her wrist at the shark. “Get out of here before I turn you into Nemo too.”
“What is a Nemo?” Zamir asked.
She flushed. “Nothing, really.” She glanced up at Kai, who floated motionless next to them. She stiffened, a shudder shivering across her shoulders. “Is he…?”
“Unconscious. Transformed at least twice. And the duration between transformations is getting shorter.”
Ginny stared at the aether regulator in Zamir’s hand. “So that’s broken too?”
Zamir turned the regulator over his hand and examined it closely beneath aether’s purple glow. “No, it’s not,” he said finally. “It’s fine. It’s working perfectly.”
“But the regulator was supposed to keep the aether from affecting Kai, right?” Ginny voiced the thought on Zamir’s mind. “Why isn’t it?”
Chapter 11
Marduk was correct, Badur reflected bitterly. The aether regulator did not do what he and everyone had hoped it would do: contain the aether and prevent it from affecting Kai.
The aether regulator Zamir brought back from Shulim had been installed in one of the outer caves, as far as possible from the deep, underground chambers where Kai rested on a bed of kelp. Kai’s injuries had been tended to and were healing well, but they were the least of his issues. The blood loss and the soul-draining fatigue of the repeated transformations were infinitely harder to shake off.
Badur sat by Kai’s side. One of his hands held Thaleia’s; the other gripped Kai’s shoulder. They had been waiting when Zamir, Ginny, and Kai returned from the caves beneath Shulim. Ginny had held the aether regulator as far away from her body as possible, while Zamir carried Kai. Ginny and Zamir had looked exhausted; Kai was so deeply unconscious that he could not be roused except briefly, by the agony of another transformation.
“Are you sure the regulator isn’t cracked or damaged in some way that allows aether to leak?” Badur demanded, revisiting questions that had been asked repeatedly for hours. His hand tightened on Kai’s shoulder, as if he could reinforce his son’s fragile tether on life.
“I’m certain.” Zamir’s deep voice was instantly recognizable. “I checked it, as did others. The regulator is intact, and it’s large enough for the aether core—larger, in fact, than it needs to be.”
“So why is aether leaking out? Why is it still affecting Kai?” Badur demanded.
“I don’t know,” Zamir said, from the far side of the cave.
“Something in Kai changed, didn’t it, when he carried the aether core from Shulim?”
“Possibly,” Zamir conceded. “More than likely.”
Badur’s hands folded into fists. Turmoil churned with him; choices—all of them terrible. “Yes or no? Did the aether change him?”
Silence met his outraged question and raised voice.
Scarcely perceptible currents swirled around Badur, but his acute sensitivity, born out of necessity, told him that Zamir had moved to stand directly by Kai’s side.
In between Kai and Badur.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zamir stated, his voice calm, his authority unshakeable. “You have the aether regulator now. Everyone knows you are the lost mer-prince. You can rebuild the Beltiamatu empire.”
“And you?” Badur sneered. “Aren’t you just waiting for your chance to be king again?”
“I was king and I am done. I have no desire for the Beltiamatu throne. I care for only two things: to restore Kai to the throne, and to stop the Atlantean influence on the humans. Those two goals aren’t related. I can accomplish one without the other. And now, I wonder if the throne is cursed. If our legacy is cursed. For generations, centuries, we have done little but unleash pain on ourselves.” The current swayed as Zamir shook his head. “Take the aether regulator. Take the Beltiamatu back to Shulim and rebuild the city as you choose. Be prince. Be king. Kai…” Pain, and something Badur never expected to hear—love—choked Zamir’s voice. “Kai is…dying. We both know it. He knows it too.” Zamir’s breath shuddered out of him. “Take the aether and go. Build the life you should have had as prince of the Beltiamatu, and do so with Thaleia at your side. I will stay with Kai until his body returns to the sea, then I will stop the Atlanteans. You will have nothing to fear from them, or the humans.”
“And you think that’s what I want?” Badur snapped. “To be king of the Beltiamatu?”
“It was your birthright. You set it aside, but now it’s time to take it up. I will not, and Kai cannot.”
“I’m not leaving my son,” Badur said. “Not now, when he needs me.”
“I raised him. I loved him. He is more my son than yours,” Zamir said simply. His voice broke. “Our people need you, and he needs me. Go, Badur.”
Go?
Go where?
Badur straightened, tugging Thaleia with him even though she would have lingered by Kai’s side.
“Just a little longer,” she pleaded. “We don’t have to leave right now. It will not hurt the Beltiamatu to wait a little longer to rebuild Shulim. Kai…Kai will not live through the night. We can wait. We should wait.”
Kai will not live through the night…
“You…” Badur’s breath sagged out of him, his decision made. “Stay with him. If he regains consciousness, it will give him comfort to see you there, with him.”
“But what about you?”
“As my father says, he is more Kai’s father than I am, and he is right.” Badur’s voice twisted with self-mocking irony. “There is family here.” But I am not a part of it. “Where is the human woman Ginny?”
“With Naia,” Thaleia said.
“Is she better?” Badur asked.
“No, she is not.”
“She’s dying too?”
The currents swayed, but Badur could not tell if Thaleia was nodding or shaking her head, until she spoke. “Yes, Naia’s dying too. The humans may have medical technology that could help her, but not on the little ship that accompanies Zamir and Ginny, and anywhere else would risk terrible discovery.” Her voice cracked. “The healers don’t think she will regain consciousness. She will slip quietly away within the next day or two.”
“The young die; the old linger,” Badur murmured. He tightened his grip on Thaleia’s arm. “Stay with Kai.” He fell silent. There was much left to be said, but nothing he could say in his father’s hearing. Nothing to say to Thaleia that he hoped she could understand.
Badur swam down the narrow tunnels, his fingers trailing along the cave walls, to the large cavern that housed the aether regulator. His tail trembled beneath him as he swam forward to rest his hands on the cool adamantine.
“My lord?” a merman asked.
Ever since Badur had returned with Thaleia and Kai—and the truth of who Kai was to them—the Beltiamatu had started calling him my lord—a title reserved only for the royal family.
A title he had given up voluntarily, and done nothing to deserve since.
His father was right.
The truth twisted bitterly in his gut. Badur had no right to his son, no right to crave the way Kai spoke to Zamir, with that compelling blend of a son’s respect and affection for his father. Even when Kai was frustrated or angry, there was love in his voice.
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Who could have imagined that Zamir, his miserable childhood notwithstanding, would raise an orphaned child to embody all that was best about the Beltiamatu royal lineage?
“My lord?” the merman repeated, obviously concerned about Badur’s long silence.
“I’m fine. I want to be alone. Go away. All of you.”
He waited until the currents weakened to a mere trickle. He waited until even that faded away.
He was alone in the perpetual darkness that surrounded him.
Marduk’s voice whispered through his mind—all the more powerful because of its quiet certainty. What is it worth to you to save your only son?
Chapter 12
Zamir stopped counting the seconds, the minutes, and the hours as time melted into a slow, tremulous exhalation.
Kai’s final breath.
Zamir didn’t know when it would end, but he knew that it would.
He wasn’t ready for it.
Not Kai.
Zamir had been an indifferent father to Badur, too young then to realize that his child needed him as much as his underwater empire needed him. But it had been different with Kai.
When his elite guards returned with only a newborn—a newborn marked with the eyes of the royal family—Zamir had received the infant with trembling hands and tearless eyes. Shock left him spinning, speechless.
Kai was all he had left of Badur. The child had lost his father, and he had lost his son. Kai was too young to grieve, so Zamir grieved for them both.
And as Kai grew, joy took the place of grief as slowly as the blooming of corals, yet as hardy as the bedrock of the Earth. Kai had been enough—Kai had been everything—sustaining Zamir as he continued his search for a way to free his mother from her servitude to the Daughters of Air.
How wrong he had been—a misguided fool—but that mistake was done and paid for—
Almost paid for.
Kai was dying because of what Zamir had done, first in the name of love, then for the sake of revenge.
Zamir squeezed his eyes shut. If he had known from the start what it was going to cost him, he would never have embarked upon that fool’s mission. The price was higher than he could afford.
He would never have bargained with Kai’s life.
He should have known that Kai—raised to have better sense than he—would have intervened to stop the madness, whatever the cost.
Zamir grasped Kai’s hand and gently squeezed it. “I should have listened to you when you told me to stop. You were wiser. You would have made a far better king—the kind of king our people deserved.” He touched his forehead to their joined hands. “I’m sorry I failed you, and our people, but you have done the one thing only you could do. You brought hope to your people; you found the aether core. Now, we will salvage what we can. I will eliminate the threat of Atlantis. Your father will rule where you should have.”
And the royal line will die with your death.
Thaleia curled on the other side of Kai’s bed, her hand loosely placed over her son’s. Her eyes, brimming with tears, fixed on Kai’s face, on each weak breath—too shallow, too erratic to fill his lungs.
Zamir waited, because there was nothing left for him to do but wait. There was much left to be done, but it could all wait until Kai no longer needed him.
Until he knew he could do nothing more for Kai.
Zamir counted the seconds between each breath. They transitioned so slowly, so gradually that he did not realize when exactly Kai’s breathing smoothed into the slower, steady rhythm of deep breaths, of deep rest.
Zamir’s brow furrowed. What was going on?
The swirl of currents drew his attention to the doorway. Ginny appeared, her face pale, pinched.
“Naia?” Thaleia asked immediately.
“She’s still hanging in there,” Ginny assured them. Her gaze flicked to Kai.
“He’s…better,” Zamir said, hearing the bewilderment in his own voice.
“I know,” Ginny said. Her lips pressed together. “He’s gone.”
Her proclamation snapped Zamir to attention. His gaze jerked up to meet hers. Then only did he see the dread and anger in her eyes.
“Badur’s gone,” Ginny continued. “And he took the aether core with him.”
* * *
Thaleia floated in the center of the largest cave, beside the now-empty regulator. Her silvery fins snapped at the water, twisting the current into confusion. Her white-rimmed eyes flicked from side to side, as if trying to keep all her enemies within sight. She wrung her fingers together. “He said nothing to me. Nothing at all,” she insisted. “He’s blind. I’m his only guide. Where would he go without me?”
Thaleia’s distress seemed real enough, the panic of a mermaid who was losing both her mate and her son.
“And you’re certain he took it?” Zamir turned to one of Beltiamatu.
“Yes, my lord.” The merman bowed his head. “We—” He gestured to the three others surrounding him. “We were on guard here, protecting the aether core as ordered, should the Atlanteans surprise and overwhelm the guards at the cave entrance. Badur swam in, straight up to the regulator, and placed his hands on it.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Not for a long time. He placed his hands on the regulator, then said he wanted to be alone. He ordered us to leave.”
“And you left?” Zamir snarled. “Your orders were to protect the regulator!”
The mer-warrior’s face blanched. “But…he’s the prince, and—”
“When did you realize the aether was gone?”
“About an hour later. The guards at the entrance said that Badur swam out, alone. And he wasn’t carrying anything. Not the aether—”
“Of course the guards wouldn’t have seen the aether. He’s the carrier. Like Kai, like any of royal blood, he can carry the aether within him. Which way did he go?”
“Toward the rocks where he often goes to be alone, but we immediately searched the area and he wasn’t there. And there…”
“What?”
“Someone else had been there. There were faint imprints in the seabed.”
“Someone with feet?”
The Beltiamatu warrior nodded slowly. His throat worked. “Possibly.”
Zamir glanced at Ginny. “Jacob, perhaps. Or even Ondine or Marduk. They can all breathe underwater.”
“But Ondine’s not interested in the aether core,” Ginny said. “And Jacob wants to kill all the Beltiamatu as much as he wants the aether core. If Badur had carried it out to him, Jacob would have just killed him and absorbed the aether core himself—if that’s even possible. And then he would have attacked the colony and slaughtered all of us.”
Zamir frowned. “Then…Marduk. He wants to return the aether core to Aldebaran.”
“Like Aldebaran, the planet?” Ginny’s eyes widened. “Good luck. Does he have a plan for getting off Earth? Somehow, I don’t think any nation is going to lend him a rocket.”
“He must have a plan or he wouldn’t have taken it—”
“My lord,” a voice cut in. A brawny mer-warrior, one of the few who looked capable of holding his own in a fight, swam into the cave, with a slender mermaid beside him. “The scout you ordered to linger by the Endling has just returned with news.” He glanced at the mermaid, who quailed from all the attention focused on her.
Zamir swallowed the snarl in his tone. “What is it?”
“My lord, the two men on the Endling said that a large ship arrived in the area several hours earlier and a diver went down into the water. About an hour ago, two came up from the water—and from that distance, it seemed as if one had a tail.”
“Badur… And where is that ship now?”
“It has departed. The Endling hauled anchor to follow it. The men on the Endling sent me back to tell you that they will follow the ship from a distance. The ship turned west to cross the Atlantic. Preliminary coordinates appear pointed toward Latin America.”
Zamir frowned.
“But why Latin America—?”
“The Panama Canal?” Ginny asked. “Could they be headed for the western seaboard of the United States?”
“Then we will follow.”
Zamir twisted around at the familiar voice.
Kai appeared at the edge of the cavern. He leaned heavily against the cave wall, the deep fatigue and pain evident in the slump of his shoulders and the taut muscles of his back, but his voice was strong. The mermaid who had been ordered to watch him while the others convened over the missing aether hovered beside him, her face stricken with anxiety. Clearly, he had ignored her insistence to stay in bed.
And instead of a tail, he had human legs.
Zamir gritted his teeth against the stabbing ache in his chest. The agonizing transformation had obviously roused Kai from his deep sleep. The chamber where he slept was almost certainly murky with his blood and shreds of flesh.
And yet, he had managed to drag himself out to rejoin the problem.
To be part of the solution.
Zamir met Kai’s eyes across the room. Can you do this?
The question passed, unvoiced, between them.
Kai gave his answer simply. “Let’s go. We have to catch up with the Endling.”
Kai turned toward the cave exit, but as he passed through the cave, Thaleia reached out to him. “Please, let me come with you.” She shrank as he glanced back at her, but continued speaking. “I don’t know why Badur took the aether core. I don’t know why he’s working with those who would harm our people, but I know he would not have done so carelessly or cruelly. Let me come with you, and when we find him, let me speak with him, please. He’ll talk to me; I’m his only companion, the only person he trusts.”
Kai hesitated, but before he could turn to look at his grandfather, Zamir said quietly, “It’s your decision, Kai.”
Cursed Legacy: Lord of the Ocean #3 Page 7
