As I swam towards the right quadrant Conlan had sent to me, I fought to push the past back where it belonged—in the box where all my other treacheries lived. But it was no use. The past would no longer be silenced.
I made my way back towards Aiseiri, my teeth grinding together. This was the biggest waste of time, and I was getting sick and tired of being an errand boy. I had a higher rank than most. My skill set was better served doing instead of sitting.
Seahorse?
Who is this? I asked. Cursing the mages who couldn’t figure out how to make this seem more natural, I kept swimming towards home.
Mesmer, boss. We just got a spike. If you’re where you should be, you’re going to be the closest from the Tops.
Give me the coords.
Beta seven-three-two, Delta one-eight-nine.
Show me as going. I angled to intersect the location.
Copy that, Seahorse. Happy hunting.
My brain was silent once again. The mages were good—hades, they were some of the best our kind had. But I would never tell them that. They were already too full of themselves as it was. At least we actually got to have full conversations now instead of one word questions and answers. I was almost looking forward to what the next few years brought us in upgrades.
Slowing as I reached the spot Mesmer had given me, I kept a wary eye out. Deep ocean dwelling marine life could get a little territorial. We were the top of the food chain, but that didn’t mean everyone else below us didn’t have teeth.
But not only were the waters quiet, they were empty. Eerily empty. I could see for fathoms without obstruction. And that didn’t bode well.
Something jerked and quaked on the ocean floor, drawing my eye. Sand and sediment plumed up into the water. I came to a halt. Allowed myself to become one with the water around me. Much like my handle, I moved as the tides moved.
As I drifted closer, the water around me grew heavier. Thicker. Denser. It was like trying to swim through sand.
Whatever was on the ocean floor continued to thrash, making the water cloudy and opaque. But I heard no sound. Not even the glide of fins through the water. There were no telltale bubbles or faint swishes. Just the sand being disturbed.
Which was disturbing on its own.
Angling down towards the ocean floor, I kept all of my senses heightened. Every grain of sand against my scales, every atom of pressure that pushed on my flesh. I was cataloguing every tiny change in the world around me.
Just as I was about to reach the ocean floor, a burst of multi-hued color shot from the sand. Blues—from darkest midnight to palest human sky—raced towards me.
I pulled my weapon and aimed at the unknown projectile. My finger squeezed the trigger. Less than a hair’s breadth from firing, I stilled.
That was a mer. A female mer.
Shifting slightly, I angled my weapon away and caught her against me. We tumbled fin over head until we landed in a pile of tails and arms some distance away. Her blue hair nothing but a scrim around us.
Her golden red eyes were wide and blind. Her lush mouth open in a silent scream. She was terrified. Shuddering in my arms, the muscles on either side of her neck were distended as her head was wrenched back.
She was the female who claimed to hear voices during the Tribunal. Ser-something.
I set her away from me with great effort. She was so much heavier than she should be. Much heavier than any mer I’d been in contact with.
“Hello?” I tapped a hand to her cheek.
She flinched away but still said nothing. Her eyes were wheeling around in her head as if she could see something I couldn’t.
With a groan at the strain on my muscles, I looked around. We were still alone out here. And slowly being crushed by the sea that birthed us.
Something at the edge of my vision caught my attention. Shifting just my gaze, I tried to zero in on it. But as soon as I purposely looked for it, it disappeared. I tried to find it a handful of times, but each time that soft visual vibration smoothed out.
I gritted my teeth as I tried to sit up, the female still in my arms. It felt like we were stuck under the carcass of a blue whale. Every gain was accompanied by muscle fatigue and exhaustion.
By the time I got us up off our backs, I was sweating and in desperate need of a good rinsing. And mers don’t typically sweat, but here we were. The pressure was still forcing us down and back, but I held us up under it. Barely.
Hello? I called out mentally to my team. Trying to find the right pathways in my brain felt like I was trying to swim through ice.
There was no answer.
But the strain pushing down on us didn’t let up. Instead, I was pretty sure it increased once again. My vision was going wobbly at the edges and my gills were struggling to bring in water to filter out the oxygen.
The female in my arms jolted against me as if she’d been hit with a weapon stream. The whites of her eyes threaded with crimson as her flesh went bone white.
With nothing else to try, I sealed my mouth over hers. Tried to force some air into her lungs. She wasn’t in the right form for her lungs to work, but I was out of options and ideas.
As soon as our mouths met, the pressure released. The constant strain I’d exerted to stay upright had both of us flinging through the water towards the surface. By the time I got us stabilized, we could see the human sun’s rays filtering down through the water over our heads.
From inches away, she blinked. Her eyes once more full of personality…and fear. She pulled back, putting a couple hand spans between our upper bodies. “Where did they go?”
My brows shot up. “Where did who go?”
“Aibek and Macabee.” She whipped her head back and forth as she searched the seas. When she turned back to me, her cheeks were flushed with color. “Did you kill them?” Her eyes narrowed at me.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” It suddenly dawned on me that I continued to hold her against me. I opened my arms.
“AH!” She sank away from me like she was made of solid iron instead of a being of magic and sea.
I caught her and pulled her back up to me. She no longer felt like she weighed as much as an orca. Which was definitely a blessing. “Who are you?”
She glared at me. “Seren. Formerly lieutenant commander.”
I nodded. “The Tribunal.”
She sneered at me. “Yeah, Mr. One of Little Faith.”
I snorted mentally. She was feisty. I shrugged. “What do you expect? Telepathy is nothing but a myth.”
A fire lit deep in her eyes. “And I suppose you think little, old females just keel over and die, too, right?” She shoved herself from my arms. As she sank, she kicked her tail hard. “I’ll find them on my own, Rear Admiral. Go back to your desk job.”
I wouldn’t say she swam away from me. She was losing too much height for it to be anything but a controlled dive, but she did it with such grace. All I could do was watch her in appreciation.
And while I enjoyed watching her body work, I was a little pissed that she was swimming away from me. I was the one who’d helped her. Shouldn’t she be a little more appreciative of that? I headed in her direction.
“Not on your life, you monkey faced prickle fish,” she said softly.
“I heard that.” Had she just heard my thoughts?
“Yes. Now who’s the liar?” She kept swimming.
I put some extra kick in my tail to catch up with her. “You can really hear me?”
“Of course I can. It’s not like you’re trying to hide it.”
I shook my head in wonder. My mind travelled back to the Incident. If she could truly hear me, then she could have heard the sc—
“Screams. Yes. I did. They woke me up. Now shut up so I can concentrate.” She pulled up to an abrupt stop. One of her hands held out like a youngling education instructor in a noisy class.
Going still beside her, I waited to see what she would do. If she could actually do anything.
She turned her head, glared at me. One of her dark blue eyebrows raised high on her face. “If?” She waved me to silence before I could respond. Closing her eyes, she bobbed in the water.
I guess she was no longer heavy like a whale. Probably a good thing. I wasn’t sure I was in any condition to try to save her again.
Keep calling me fat and we’re going to have issues. And shut the masu up! I’m concentrating here. Her voice drilled through my mind like a harpoon.
Reaching out, I grabbed her arm, jerked her around to face me. “You can ta—”
Her eyes opened, and they were no longer a pretty golden red. Now they were fully black. No whites, no crimson threads. Just full midnight sky. “Touch me again and I’ll feed you to the deep.”
I let her go, hands up in front of my body. What the masu was going on? How did her eyes change like that?
I would listen to the female, if I were you, a male voice spoke into my mind.
Whirling around in a tight circle, I saw no one. Other than Seren, and she was still glaring at me.
She can’t hear us. She might be a Forgotten, but we are beyond her.
A forgotten? Masu hades. What the gourami was going on? Once again, I sought out the speaker. The male actually sounded male. Not some stilted version of a voice that we usually dealt with in our gifts. I could even discern inflection in this male’s tone. Who are you?
You can stop your spinning and frantic search. You will not find us unless we want it to be so. We have been watching you, Rear Admiral Neron of Aiseiri. You are on the right path, but you are taking much too long. This time, it was a female voice. Husky and warm that reminded me of long nights and silken flesh.
Much too long for what?
The water around us burst into intense bright white light.
Seren sank like a stone and crashed into the ocean floor once more. Her body twitched and jerked. But she didn’t get back up again.
A trio of beings hung suspended in the water around me. More fish than mer, they had huge fins on their heads. Their eyes were situated closer to the sides of their heads like fish as well. They had long bodies that looked like they were covered in scales that glistened from an unknown light source. Two arms, no legs. I doubted these beings had legs.
“You would be correct, Rear Admiral. We are not dual natured, like your kind.” The being in the middle moved forward. Blues and greens decorated the creature in a pattern that was both pleasing to the eye and made my stomach curl.
The mouth stretched wide, revealing hard, blunt teeth. “We have been waiting for over a millennia for your kind to join us.”
With a quick, practiced motion, I had my weapon up and aimed at the center creature. “I don’t know who you are, but you can just keep on waiting.” I bumped the weapon’s power level up to kill. “You’re invading the territory of King Sylol. Return to your dwelling and there won’t be any issues.”
All three creatures chuckled as if I were a child and they were amused by my dramatics. The creature on the right made an odd motion with his hand.
My weapon disappeared as if it had never been. Masu.
“You are speaking to Raen, leader of the Cyraeni. Disrespect her again and you will not live through this gathering.” Male on the Right swam back to his original position.
Raen smiled once more. “My males are protective.”
I nodded. “I can see that.” I blew out a breath. “What do you want?”
The male on the right bristled again, as if I’d rubbed a hand over his scales backwards.
Raen patted a hand in his direction. “As I said, we’ve been waiting for your kind to join us.”
I shook my head. “I have no idea what that means.”
Raen swam forward. From less than a tail’s width away, she stopped. A low melody filled the space between us. It was haunting and beautiful. It danced over my skin and shimmered in the water like a prism of color. “You speak the truth; you do not know.”
Nodding, I fought off the last echoes of the tune. “Like I said.”
Raen nodded and beckoned her guards to her. “Let us provide some information.”
The three creatures linked hands. The guards on either side of her reached out and settled their free hands on my temples. Before I could bolt away or defend myself, my mind was swept to somewhere else.
Masu.