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Liam hadn’t realised how difficult keeping up the appearance of being bewitched would be. Beneath the haze that he welcomed to sustain his ability to stay alive out here, his mind surged with thoughts. Thoughts of the treasure. Of how to get away from his two Nemaro companions, with Gina and without drowning. Of how to find his way back to land if he got away. He was in danger more than once of letting his control go. When he came close to that, the sea darkened, and tendrils of familiar fear and anxiety nudged the feeling of delight. When that happened, the two Nemaro girls would slow, and frown at each other, looking at him as if bemused. Then he reached within himself for those threads Gina had sent trailing through his mind, and pull them close around his thoughts until the ocean rippled with light, and elation spilled through him again. Then the two girls would smile and continue to lead them closer to shore.
He was so wrapped up in his struggle that he didn’t register what he was seeing at first. To begin with, he didn’t see the speck growing closer and closer ahead of them in the ocean’s depths. But it was growing swiftly nearer, and at last even his half-dazed wits focused on it. His companions had drawn closer together, slowing as it approached, muttering to each other, their voices like soft whispers through his mind, cautious but also curious. It was a person.
Then his mind seemed to explode with his companions’ fear as they shrieked and scattered. They swerved aside and sped off into the distance like torpedoes to the sound of frighteningly familiar laughter.
Ahead of him, the figure drifted to a halt, her chocolate brown eyes gleaming, and her long auburn hair shifting like a silken mist about her beautiful face.
“Hello, Liam,” Thea purred. “You can’t imagine how pleased I am to find you. We have so much to talk about. I want to know everything that has happened since you abandoned me to my clan’s vengeance.”
