Page 113 of Oceansong
“I can, and I will. I am the ruler of this queendom, and you are still my subordinate.” Serapha’s expression hardened.
Angie pounded on the cell door to protest, but the mer ignored her.
“Get out.” Serapha pumped her tail and swam in a circle around him.
Kaden didn’t move, and something in his face snapped, shock giving way to defiance as he stared her down. Serapha met his gaze, inching closer. In turn, Kaden moved toward Angie’s direction, his back to her.
Angie pressed her palms to the cell door. Kaden kept his eyes on Serapha and the sentinels.
As soon as he made for Angie’s cell, hand outstretched, the sentinels grabbed him by his arms. Kaden escaped their grasp. She didn’t know what he had been planning. Get her out, and then leave her to her own devices while he dealt the Queen and her sentinels? Attempt to escape with her?
One sentinel with a sapphire tail clutched Kaden’s, violently pulling Kaden toward him. The other sentinel, with a golden tail, approached him from the front. Serapha’s steely gaze tracked them, never making a move to help either the sentinels or Kaden, or stop them.
Kaden twisted his upper body and contracted his tail, wrestling his way out of the grasp of the sapphire-tailed sentinel. Their scuffle and resulting chase were a dizzying dance to Angie’s eyes while her stomach fluttered and arm muscles twitched. He slithered away each time the sentinels attempted to grab him. Then he fought back, striking at the sapphire-tailed sentinel like a venomous snake, causing the sentinel to flex and wiggle backward, clutching his abdomen in pain, and Kaden took his lance, holding it to his chest with a clenched jaw and wildfire in his eyes.
Angie shouted Kaden’s name, but only Serapha acknowledged her with a glare like winter’s ice.
Finally, another sentinel, this one with a prismatic tail, arrived from outside Angie’s immediate vision. Together, the three restrained Kaden, one holding fast on his tail, another clutching his upper body, and they swam him back to Serapha.
Serapha gave her order once they were close enough. “See him out. I don’t care where he goes, as long as it’s not anywhere in this vicinity.”
She left, and the sentinels, one keeping her trident pointed at his head, led Kaden away and out of Angie’s sight, taking with them any hope of escape or seeing him again.
“And as for you.” Her words pierced Angie’s very being, as cold as the deep sea. “One of my messengers is drafting a missive to your landwalkers. If they do not give me an answer when the next low noontide comes, I will have you executed and thrown ashore.”
Angie wanted to shrink into a ball at Serapha’s commanding presence.
The Queen turned to leave, stopping short when a group of sentinels sprinted into her and Angie’s presence.
“My Queen.” One sentinel paused, pointing toward the prisons’ exits. “Landwalkers have been spotted!”
Forty-Five
Angie spun around and bangedinto the narrow walls, and she flinched. The mer swimming guard outside moved into formation and darted out, leaving her with Serapha and the group of sentinels.
One sentinel’s voice drifted to Angie. “We must keep the Queen safe!”
Angie struggled to make a U-turn in the cell so she faced the back window. She was at the palace’s flank, and divers approached in droves, dressed in red scuba outfits effectively camouflaging them in the deep’s darkness. Mer approached from the left, right, above, and beneath them. Spears, lances, and tridents struck. Blood flowed and formed sanguineous clouds around them until Angie couldn’t differentiate between tail, blood, human, or mer.
She hoped one of the divers wasn’t Stefan or Ken.
When the blood dissipated, it revealed the dead. Their bodies sank to become food for the sea’s scavengers, littering the ocean floor around the palace. The cell blocked out much of the sound, so she watched the goings-on outside with rising terror, a silent, deep-sea horror movie.
Tian, if one of the mer was Kaden—
Her cell door burst open, and a pair of hands grabbed her ankles, pulling her out. The blood-curdling noises came. Screams from the mer as they were impaled. The divers too, with their mouths free of regulators with the mer magic in them. Screams, yells, and battle cries rang through her skull.
The sentinels escorted her out with Serapha at the helm.
They fled from the carnage outside.
This time, it wasn’t only the sight of blood striking at her. It was the stench. Even diluted, the thick, ferrous odor assailed her nostrils and made her want to heave had she anything in her stomach to throw up.
The mer and humans were still fighting around her.
Fighting, fighting, fighting. Tian, she wanted this to end. Wanted to gohome. Wanted to be with Kaden in peace.
A brief thought of escaping their grasp crossed Angie’s mind. Anything was better than what the mer-queen and her group of armed sentinels had in mind for her. Yes, Serapha had said she would use Angie to make the humans surrender, but she didn’t say how, or whether Angie would live or not.
