Page 15 of Between Fear and Favor

“We thought perhaps your parents would need the bone of someone who was a bane to whichever god they sought to summon. But the person we found, well, it complicates our theory,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well, the person who did the summoning was Hanwen and Rhia’s daughter. Shika’s husband, if you remember—Wait, did you have lessons on this?” At my glare, he cleared his throat. “Well, he was the one who had stripped their daughter’s immortality. So, he was a villain in her story as well.”

To view Shika’s grief-stricken husband as the bane to anyone felt almost absurd.

“But Hanwen killed his wife! Of course, he sought revenge. How is he?—”

“I don’t disagree,min viltasma.” This time when he said it, Cyran didn’t turn red, but he averted his eyes. I crossed my arms, annoyed and sad and full of so many emotions I couldn’t pinpoint which one was strongest. “But to the gods, to their child, he was?—”

“The gods are theworst.”

Cyran’s boisterous laugh chased away most of the negative emotions I was holding inside, and I wondered if I should have suggested a fresh start far sooner.

Chapter 10

LAVENIA

We sank.

Into the deep. Into the dark. Into the quiet.

I blinked, trying to keep my eyes open despite the sting of the saltwater, and I struggled in Estri’s arms as a dark shade moved over my eyes. I knew immediately what it was. Same as the film which had gone down over Mairin’s eyes, this blackness was like a second eyelid. Grasping at my neck, I searched for the scratch from her fingertip, horrified over my imagination of what I would find.

Because I did not drown.

As we plummeted into the ocean depths, I didn’t yearn for air. My lungs moved, and my body did not die as the Sea Queen’s magick protected me. With a simple slice of a sharpened nail, she had cut into my flesh and changed my body. Carefully, I traced my finger over the frill of skin in my neck, suddenly remembering how delicate a fish’s gills were.

“I hope you do not find it too intolerable,” she said, Estri’s words coming to her easier than before. They shouldn’t have sounded so clear in the water, and yet I could understand her completely. Her magick had changed me into something unsettling. “Perhaps, if you find you enjoy it, I might give you fins.” She chuckled, and my stomach sloshed.

I shuddered in her grasp, and I wished to be anywhere else. Though mysterious—rarely seen and even more rarely heard—I had no qualms with the merrows. Well, not in general. One merrow in particular could drown, as far as I was concerned. But I had no desire to become one. But for Estri to have that kind of power? It was impossible. I decided it must have been a jest.

“Can you not see past your nose, Princess?” Irritated, the Sea Queen used the tip of a tentacle to tilt my head downward. ”The first landwalker I’ve allowed within my domain in an age, and you do not care for its splendor?”

When I tried to speak, to tell her I couldn’t see for shit, only bubbles drifted out of my open mouth. I’d expected to choke on the water, but relief filled me alongside disbelief when I didn’t. How was any of this possible?

Willing my eyes to focus, to make out more than dark shadows in the distant water, I found if I looked straight ahead, there was a certain transparency to the film which covered my eye. Though we had to be closer to the bottom of the sea than the surface, some sunlight must have filtered down. Or perhaps the Sea Queen’s wicked fingertip had done more than I imagined. Had she somehow improved my eyesight to be useful underwater? Using her tentacles to turn my body, she tilted me downward as we sank lower, and I finally realized what lay before me.

Twisting spirals of rock jutted from the ground, far more massive than anything I’d seen before. Some stood on underwater cliffs, some down in a deep trench, but most were scattered on the rocky ocean floor—more than I could fathom counting. There was no pattern to their placement, and I didn’t understand what they were until I saw the windows carved from them. They were huge, each one easily taller than the palace in Astana, if my depth perception were to be believed. Was she bringing me into the seafloor’s gaping maw? Or were the spires fingertips—reaching for the surface?

Blinking, I wished the film over my eyes was gone so I could see detail. Following the curve of the rock, there were tiny pinpricks of light—white, like Emma’s divine fire. Could Estri’s magick preserve that kind of fire under the weight of the sea?

It wasn’t nearly as quiet as I imagined, this far below. To my left, I heard an incessant clicking, and I strained my neck, trying to find its source. The deeper she brought us, approaching the tops of the reaching rock spires, the sounds grew louder. Popping and squeaking joined the clicking noises. I tried to turn in her grasp, but her tentacles only twisted tighter around me. One wrapped around my thigh and down my leg, another across my stomach and over my breast. I was completely exposed, save for where she held me, but I didn’t bother to cover myself.

Making the rest of the sounds seem negligible, a rasping groan made me jerk in the queen’s grasp. It was loud, and the noise trembled in my bones.

Estri made a disapproving sound, and when she sighed, a large bubble escaped her mouth. “Stalivir has gorged himself on that fall. He will make himself sick,” she murmured, and I had no idea what she meant. Quickly, she used her free tentacles to propel us down, veering to the left of the towering rock formations. Shooting past one and wending down between two others, she headed toward a deeper trench, spiraling in the water as she went. For the first time since I’d woken, I was glad my stomach was empty.

“Stalivir, go home,” she said, and I twisted in her grip to see who or what she spoke to, but it did me no good as she wrapped me up even tighter. Her face was all I could see. There were none of those glowing spots of white, but I could see the Sea Queen clearly. It was almost as if her skin glowed. It reminded me of the sand dollars Rainier used to collect for Emma. Delicate but rough. Sharpened angles and hollowed cheeks carved her face, and I could only stare. I’d seen nothing like her before. She was horrifying in her strange beauty.

With an unnerving chill that slid up my spine, I sensed something in the water nearby. Massive, I could tell whatever it was would be a terrifying sight. Perhaps she held me closer to block me from seeing it. I wondered if it was Stalivir, the seaborn she’d rushed to reprimand.

Estri didn’t move, her eyes slowly sliding toward the massive creature I couldn’t see.

“Do not argue with me. If you find yourself here again, Stalivir, there will be consequences.” I didn’t know what she meant about an argument, because no one else had spoken. After a moment, she moved, using her tentacles to pull us up the side of a rock face rather than propelling us through the water. My stomach was grateful for it.

“I think your presence will be eye-opening for me. Perhaps more so than it is for you,” she said, and for a moment, I could have sworn I heard her haunting song once more. “I have lingered within my palace far too long. They do not think the rocks and the kelp whisper to me. That the anemones do not speak of their dishonor. I see all, and they would benefit from the memory. The sea sings, and no one else hears it but me.”

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