Page 64 of Oceansong
Angie wedged her feet against the roughshod edge by the door and put both hands on the handle. Kicking off with both feet and giving the handle a hard push, it opened. She swam out with a slow, cautious breaststroke and flutter kicks, listening for aberrant sounds.
Only the gentle rustling of water in her ears surrounded her. Angie thought back to the directions.
Turn left at the corner. Keep going against the wall, then make a right.
She followed the directions, or so she thought. When she made the last right, there was no glass pane with air bubbles. Only a solid wall greeted her.
Shit. Where was she? This place disoriented the crap out of her. The hallways all looked the same, reminding her of when she became vertically disoriented during a wreck dive in college, and couldn’t tell which way was up. She had a group to help her then.
She was alone now. Knowing up from down wouldn’t help here. The space enclosed her.
Her heart raced, and she breathed in, slow and controlled.
Stay calm.
She retraced her paddles, going back to Kaden’s room, and tried again, swimming slower and against the wall.
The soreness in her chest became a sharp pain. Her surroundings grew blurrier.
She was going to make it. She had to. This couldn’t be how she was going to die, not after having the night that she did.
This time, she found the room she searched for. Angie reached the glass pane with the bubbles behind it and felt around the edges, her finger curling around a notch at the sides. The door slid open easily, and she made for the first bubble she could find. More water shot to the back of her throat when she tried to take a breath. She put her lips around an air bubble and breathed it in, and then another, larger one. Angie made a U-turn and made her way out of the cavern, back toward the palace.
The tip of a maroon fishtail appeared in her field of vision, and she let out a sigh of relief. About to ask Kaden just where in the Hells he had been, she looked up at him.
Fear seized her entire body.
The merman in front of her was decidedly not Kaden. The angles on his face were sharper, his whiskey-gold eyes hard and unblinking as they focused on her.
Her eyes trailed to the white-gold bracelet around his wrist.
It was Cyrus. Kaden’s older brother.
The look on his face twisted from utter confusion to positively murderous.
“Landwalker!” Cyrus’ voice sounded of thunder booming through open skies. “A spy?”
Tian-fucking-damn-it to the eighteen levels of Hell!
Her heart all but stopped. She could still hear his words, though they remained dulled. Whatever mer magic remained in her and with her newfound oxygen, she had to take advantage.
He lunged for her, a venomous sea snake about to strike at its prey.
Angie scrambled for the nearest rock face, banging her knee against a large stalagmite-like sea erosion pillar below her. Shooting pain burst at the area of impact, and she grimaced, her teeth clenched together so hard that her gums hurt. She continued swimming, fluttering her legs as fast as she could, and clung to the corals with trembling hands, climbing them to the top.
She had no plan and didn’t know where she was going, only that she couldn’t let him reach her. Angie didn’t stand a chance against Cyrus. He was bigger, faster, and in his element, but she did have the advantage of a head start, and she intended to use it. She would never outswim him, and had a better chance if she traversed the rock walls.
“How did you get in here?” He approached her quickly.
She didn’t answer, and kept crawling along the cave, gripping onto rock protrusions and ledges. Where the walls were smooth, she latched onto sea stars, and after a brief hesitation, she used soft, smooth corals. Angie didn’t want to damage the corals’ health, but she had no choice if she wanted to keep moving.
Her arms and legs were growing sore from her constant moving, and fighting the water’s resistance.
Stalactite-like erosion pillars hung above her, and her breath hitching, she grabbed for the closest one, burying herself in between a grouping of them.
His fingers grazed her ankle, and she drew her knee up to her chest, barely out of his grasp.
Angie’s breathing came out quick and shallow, and she curled herselfinto a ball in the gap between the rocky icicles. A pillar piece broke off when she pressed her feet against it, and she grabbed it, holding it in front of her like a makeshift weapon.
