Page 123 of Curse the Fae

In a fit of violence, Scorpio recovers. Webbed hands capture my knees, intent of finishing what they’d started.

I thrash, squint into the tempest, and locate Elixir’s murderous profile as he propels toward the merman—then drives a forked dagger into the Fae’s thigh. My attacker releases me, and a scream knots in my throat as shawls of blood pool into the river.

Elixir balances the merman like a speared fish. At which point, the water lord’s eyes flash, two beams of gold stabbing through the water and incinerating the merman’s orbs.

As his victim flounders, Elixir yanks the weapon from the Fae’s body. Then it happens in a single heartbeat. Amidst his hysteria, the merman’s fingers sweep across my hips, and in a final bout of outrage, Scorpio clamps on and hurtles me toward a spinning funnel, the eddies certain to suffocate me.

Just before the whirlwind devours me, another pair of arms intercepts. Muscled limbs catch me, scoop up my form, and send me gliding into a pocket of freshwater.

My eyes flutter open, but the merman is gone. For a moment, so is Elixir.

Then I spot him just outside the vortex, his body suspended in saltwater. Like the merman, his tail has shuddered and split into naked limbs. Yet unlike the merman, he’s sinking.

My heart stalls. I charge forth, putting every ounce I have left into the swim, but now Elixir appears so far away, too far away. Across the distance, his body convulses. His limbs paddle like those of a youth, clumsy and wayward, toiling to stay afloat.

It comes to me, rising from a dormant place, a memory cracking open like a clamshell. The way he’s struggling. The way he’s sinking. It harkens to nine years ago in that stream, when I tried to stop him from escaping.

It had been the only saltwater route in my village. Finally, I remember a detail that had been too fuzzy to recall. When I’d crashed with him into that stream, his tail hadn’t materialized—because it hadn’t been able to. Instead, he’d still had his legs.

That’s why Scorpio’s tail had shifted. That’s why Elixir’s own tail has done the same. Saltwater makes them sprout limbs.

In his den, he’d been so apprehensive, so cautious about handling the vial, as if it might shatter in his hand. That’s because he had feared it.

Elixir had nearly sunk that fateful night for the same reason he’s sinking now. He can’t inhale saltwater, and he doesn’t know how to use his limbs down here, because he’s never needed to.

Without freshwater, the river ruler can’t breathe under the surface.

And without his viper tail, the river ruler doesn’t know how to swim.

He’s drowning.

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He’s too weak, I realize. He’s far too weak to try.

My pulse escalates to a frantic drum, and my lungs disappear so I can’t feel them working, and there are only my limbs pumping. I stroke fast and fierce while the maddened flood wallops around me, the water lunging to and fro.

I push through, push around, push under and over.

Elixir writhes against the current. He thrashes and twists, to no avail. His glazed eyes jump left and right, searching but not seeing. He’d known. He had known he was swimming into a deathtrap, that saving me would damn him.

With his connection to nature, why can’t he swim instinctively? Why isn’t he beseeching the river to help him? Had Scorpio taken the mixture from Elixir’s den for this purpose?

I pitch myself down, down, down. All the while, I think about enchanted souls and cursed souls. The seelie Fae’s counter spell ripples in my head.

Change comes only from the bewitcher, who must see, feel, enact the opposite of old truths and past deeds.

Years ago, I stared into golden eyes and saw evil. Because I saw evil, I felt hatred. Because I felt hatred, I sought to drown that evil, to save my people.

I will drown you.

Not if I drown you first!

Here and now, I see him once again beneath the surface. Here and now, I see layers and hidden crevices, a multitude of levels burrowing deeper, like the underground itself. And within those layers, I see goodness. And amidst that goodness, I feel something greater, eternal, and unconditional.

I feel love. I love this viper, this monster, this Fae.

I love him.

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