Page 32 of The Ocean's Heart
“I heard you had alliances?”
“Yes, with the Rootborn of Thyraelis. At least for a while. We provided workers for their mines, and they furnished us with grain. But they are in the grip of civil war, and we have not received a shipment of grain for…a long time.”
“And your workers?”
“Have not come home.”
She lapses into silence again, and something stirs at the back of my mind. An awareness that is followed by the scent of the sea.
We are not alone here.
I keep my stride easy and relaxed and my gaze ahead, and when I speak, my voice is low and intimate so that only Thalia may hear it. “Princess, do not react, but we are being followed.”
I expect her to stiffen or look back, as is a natural reflex for most people, even when given instruction to the contrary, but she remains at ease by my side.
“I thought I sensed something,” she says. “And I saw a shadow in my periphery a few moments ago, to our left, high up.”
“There is a ledge up there. Narrow but passable.”
“What are we dealing with?”
“I fear that the Obsidian Pearl is tracking us.”
“Why aren’t they attacking?”
“I believe they wish to find our vessel.”
“Shit.”
“Precisely.”
“So what’s the plan? We stop and fight?”
I can’t help but smile at her willingness to shed blood. It calls to the primal beast inside me, but now that I’ve taken a moment, I can scent several signatures, too many to risk a skirmish. Her life is too valuable. I must get her to safety, and there is only one way to do that. A way that will require the bulk of my reserved power. But it will be worth it.
“Vaarin?” She looks up at me with a frown. “What’s the plan?”
I call to the moisture in the air, and it answers, rushing to surround us and create a vortex. My insides tremble with the expenditure of power, but I hold firm, dragging more and more toward me.
I grab hold of her and pull her to me.
“Vaarin?”
Oh, how I love the sound of my name on her lips. “I’m getting us out of here.”
A bellow rises beyond the roar of water. Our trackers know what I’m about to do, and I sense them hurtling toward me.
Too late.
The vortex forms and rushes toward us, swallowing us whole.
* * *
We emerge inside the cavern,which opens out onto the cove. TheYarissarocks gently on the waves, anchored and moored to keep it hidden. The vessel is the largest of its kind, built to house a small town of people, to transport them to safer seas if the undersea becomes hostile.
This is my promise to my people, and now the Obsidian Pearl is about to discover it. I can’t allow any of them to live to tell the tale.
Thalia stares in shock at the ship then back at me. “What did you do?”
