Page 84 of Oceansong
Minutes passed, and nothing. Not a glint of a mer tail, or a head poking out of the water.
Tamade. Where was he?
She knew when they had last parted ways, it wasn’t on favorable terms. Still, she held onto a strand of hope. That he realized she was honest about the cameras, remembered the usual time she was off work, and would be waiting so they could clear this misunderstanding.
What if he was the merman who was captured and was now left to rot in a facility while they poked and prodded at him? Maybe he was caught after their meeting yesterday?
She tightened her jaw and rushed back to the divers. There was one dive boat left, the captain waving at her. “Hey! Are you the last diver? Because if you are, you should have been here fifteen minutes ago. The others already left!”
“Y-yes. Give me a minute to suit up!”
Angie booked it back to her storage room to get her gear. There was one black-and-bronze camo suit left, and she donned her outfit as quickly as her hands would work. Stefan and Ken’s tank carts were still there with twotanks of Heliox left, and she grabbed one, hauling it over to the boat. Then she settled in with her fins in hand and out of breath.
She put the diving mask on her forehead and gave him a thumbs up. The captain pulled away from the dock.
Angie stared out toward the calm seas, unable to stop fidgeting with the things closest to her: the pressure gauge and the air valve on her BCD. In her mind, she willed the captain to hurry. She didn’t want to be too late.
Thirty-Three
The boat stopped, and Angieslid her flippers over her booties and pulled her dive hood over her head. She stood and waddled to the dive exit point, and with a giant stride, splashed into the ocean.
The icy waters pricked and stung her exposed cheeks, and her teeth chattered.
Her ears and sinuses filled with pressure after descending two feet, and she equalized.
She certainly missed how graceful, quick, and smooth she felt with the mer magic. As she kicked her feet, her body bobbed up and down with her inhales and exhales.
Angie didn’t have the first clue where the other divers were. If they were looking for mer, they’d likely be going deep, and wearing silent, bubble-free rebreathers. She kept moving toward the direction of the palace.
Without the mer magic, she wouldn’t be able to spot the mer queendom, but she would see the mer coming in and out of there.
Crippling darkness surrounded her, and she turned on her flashlight to help her see. Red illumination shone before her. It wouldn’t startle nearby deep-sea creatures, who couldn’t see red colors.
Twenty more kicks led her to where the palace should be. Only a plain, empty seafloor lay before her, and shining her flashlight into the area revealed small groups of mer swimming and floating around, some armed, some not.
Angie kicked her way to the tall stone formation on the other side, keeping watch, using her hands and heels to grab onto the stones’ uneven edges, looking for Kaden, or even Adrielle or Cyrus.
Ahead of her, across the seafloor, four white lights appeared.
The divers were here, but Angie couldn’t pinpoint where exactly theywere.
The sentinels made a dash for the lights. Spears flew from ahead of her and from her right side, spearing both sentinels.
More sentinels followed, all making for the bright white lights the divers waved around to distract them. The speargun group began firing, and Angie’s stomach dropped further and further toward her feet with each shot.
She kept moving, crawling across the rocks, looking for a maroon or white tail. Going into the palace area would be too dangerous.
Where was Kaden where she actually needed to talk to him?
Angie had made it to the next rock over, where, if she remembered correctly, the princes’ quarters were. She froze.
From the darkness, Mer-King Aqilus emerged, flanked by two sentinels. They moved toward the white lights in front of them.
No. Angie couldn’t let him go down. She had to distract him, get him to turn around and go back inside the palace. So she did the first thing she could think of. Shut off her red flashlight and pulled out her white-light one, which she kept stored in her BCD. Fumbling through her dive gloves to turn it to the brightest setting, she crawled sideways on the rock until she could get a closer view of his front side, and flashed the light directly into his eyes.
He turned and blinked, and she directed the light toward the palace.
To her relief, he followed it.
