Page 28 of I Dream of Dragons
I have to free him, take him up to the surface. So I draw back, pull one of the swords out of the scabbard on his back and swing it through the water. It shouldn’t move so fast, the water resistance should have slowed it, but somehow its blade cuts through water like it cuts through the air—and strikes one of the giant yellow squid’s tentacles.
The tentacles retract a little, but the smaller ones reach for us, wrapping around my ankles, around Jai.
I swing the sword around again, but the tentacles close around my hands, around the hilt. Grunting, I fight them.
I need to give Jai more air.
I need to get him to the surface.
And I need to check if he’s been stung.
If he’s still alive.
The tentacles retract again, releasing us, and I grab Jai and haul him upward, toward the surface, before I see the reason for our good luck.
The mermaids. They are back. I hear their angry screeches as they charge through the sea, nothing like the mellow, hypnotizing songs they usually sing.
They’ve come to our defense.
I slow down and turn to see what they’re doing.
Alys swings a long coral scythe, white and encrusted with barnacles and shells, opening deep cuts into the tentacles. She shears one right off, and the squid thrashes, pulsing black and squirting out ink.
The mermaids slash and cut with their blades, screeching at the squid until it propels itself away and vanishes in a cloud of ink and darkening water.
“Thank you!” I call out to them. “I don’t know why you helped me, but thank you!”
“You are one of us,” one says. “You’re finnfolk.”
“And about to be betrothed to Lord Psamanth,” says another.
The matter of my supposed betrothed-to-be again?
“I choose my mate,” I say, torn between the urge to get Jai out of the water and address this issue. “Nobody tells me who to wed. Not even the Sea Queen.”
The mermaids watch me in silence for long moments, their fishtails thrashing, the only sign of agitation.
“Your magic will return,” Alys says, choosing to ignore my statement. “And we serve the sea.”
“Well, I owe you one,” I mutter, grabbing Jai under the armpits and starting to swim upward. “Help me take him to the surface and I’ll owe you more.”
They giggle as if they think I’m joking, but two of them grab Jai’s arms and launch us both toward the distant surface.
Then, leaving me with an unconscious Jai to float among the waves, they dive once more and vanish in the sea.
CHAPTER TEN
RAE
This isn’t funny.
The platform looms in front of us, a flat-topped mountain in the heaving sea, and huge creatures writhe in the recesses carved in its sides.
Below and around us, the sea monsters amass, readying to devour us.
And Jai is out for the count.
It’s annoying how I’ve come to depend on him, and how worry is eating at my heart like rot. How weak I am when it comes to him.
