It certainly was not normal for a Sensitive to enter the sea kingdom. While there were no salt waters on Tripolis, the Assigner always warned against mixed company. He said that the Sea Sensitives were vicious, inhuman creatures full of spite, hate, and petty grievances against their state of being.
There was nothing they wished more than to walk the earth. How their king was able to get himself a pair of legs and venture onto dry soil completely escaped me, but we had more pressing matters to attend to.
Everyone, it seemed, was vying for the dragon heart on Valorian. And while the baby took to my brother like a beach to a tide, I warned Areilycus against forming an attachment toward something he'd inevitably have to eat to survive.
We descended.
Through velvet darkness, soft silt curtains, until Salacia's underwater realm materialized, lit by corals and medusas.
***
The throne room was more nightmare than court.
Queen Salacia sat upon a throne of living coral and bleached bone. The structure pulsed with algae and spilled golden ichor.
I could feel the slow hush of water being born and dying again, all the creatures she slayed and bled for this throne to be alive.
Her face—if it could still be called a face—was layered in sea life: barnacles where cheeks should bloom, anemones twisting in place of hair. Her eyes were endless caves, darker than the deepest fathoms.
Surrounding her were the sirens: pallid, bloated mimicries of beauty. Their scales hung in patches, lips curled over terrible rows of needle teeth. The water carried their hiss in every echo.
I did not slide into revulsion right away.
Beauty is mortal. Power is older and uglier.
Only our celestial bond kept us breathing. Areilycus and I drew light inward, cloaking ourselves in essence that tricked the sea into letting us stay. But each moment cost us something: fatigue, hunger, the slow burn of distance from the dragon. I felt his strength flicker as we waited for Salacia to speak.
"This is certainly unexpected."
"You pulled us here," I told her, Areilycus placating my tone with a gentle pat on the back. The color from his skin started to fade again now that the dragon was once again clicks away from him.
"Surrender to me Captain Kinsley and his crew, along with the dragon's heart," she boomed, her grotesque visage contorting in greed.
"Captain Kinsley is at your mercy, as are his men. But the heart of the dragon remains with me."
The very little I knew of the sea people from Vectra spoke of their greed and ambivalence. Salacia wanted everything. She was on the warpath, I just didn't know what it was exactly except for hanging Edward upside down by the balls.
Her mouth, a twisted abyss lined with serrated teeth, opened as if ready to swallow worlds whole. The sirens encircling her hissed at me.
"Without the heart, my brother, the Lord of Light, will succumb to the Diamond Storm's poison," I confessed. Her laughter was a slow, wet scroll.
"How the great burn dims. The snake nips. The star-children fade." She spat the words at us.
"You know the Assigner?"
"Only land-bound humans remain ignorant of the divine architect," she spat contemptuously. "Seems like his favorite creations have bored him."
"I trusted that even he would not deny my brother the life the heart offers."
Her eyes narrowed. Barnacles shifted. "If he marked your brother for death… defiance only prolongs the inevitable."
"I will not yield."
"I have no quarrel with the White Snake," she said. "I would rather not start one."
The dimness seemed to gather and clot around the throne where Queen Salacia moved. It was not just darkness that shrouded her; it was the sheer repulsiveness that seemed to warp the very water we moved through. Her tails remained restless, always moving even when she was at rest.
The bloated body, draped in seaweed and carcasses of unrecognizable sea creatures, throbbed with a grotesqueness that defied nature.
What happened to this woman?
"Grant us the boon of keeping the heart, and in return, I shall bless these hallowed seas with the kiss of light," Ari said. A chuckle, wet and gurgling, erupted from Salacia's maw.
"Light?" she rasped. "I am sovereign of shadow, Areilycus of Tripolis. My power is woven in darkness, and my subjects thrive unseen. Your 'blessing' holds no sway here."
My heart sank like a stone. We had come so far, gambled so much, only to be met with refusal. The source of light that Areilycus offered would bring life, would foster growth in these desolate waters – but the queen of the Nereids desired none of it.
Luckily, I knew of one thing she did desire.
I could not let despair win. Gathering the last shreds of my resolve. "There is a yearning that even the Queen of the Twelve Seas cannot deny—the longing for land, for the caress of soil beneath one's feet."
Salacia's grotesque visage twisted in a sneer, her bulbous eyes narrowing with suspicion.
"I made an acquaintance with the Vlachy witch," I continued, taking advantage of her silence, "I will convince her to give you legs."
"Neptune," I pressed on, daring to invoke the name of her consort, "that is how he did it, no? Somehow he convinced the Vlachy witch to give him legs to walk the land."
It was an educated guess at best. Not to mention that revoking her old husband's name did not seem like the brightest of ideas. The water vibrated around the seaweed in her hair.
"Neptune betrayed me," she hissed, her voice laced with venom and torment. "He invaded her slumber, entwined his will with hers, bartered freedom for flesh. Yes, he gained legs—to abandon his queen, to love a wretched human pirate!"
In her confession, I glimpsed the raw wound of betrayal that festered in her soul, an injury that light could never heal. And yet, despite the ugliness, I wished that I could help her.
Ari being Ari, swam forward, his strength slowly dwindling. The sirens closed ranks in front of her until the Queen commanded them to disperse.
Ari slowly outstretched his arm, hesitant at first before she gave a nod, and placed his hand on the bare bone of her breast, closing his eyes.
The lines of anguish that had etched themselves into Salacia's ethereal features slowly ebbed away as Areilycus channeled his healing.
Salacia's chest rose and fell, a syncopated rhythm gradually aligning with the steady beat of the tide. As the pain that Neptune's betrayal had inflicted upon her began to dissipate, a subtle shift occurred within the ocean.
Light from the sun had pierced through. Where there had been heaviness, a lightness began to permeate, wrapping around us like a comforting shawl.
I could almost sense the fragments of her shattered trust beginning to find their way back to one another. For long seconds nothing happened but water and doubt. Then her lines slackened. The face softened. The weight of her years seemed to sag and settle.
Her voice found a new shape. "You… have taken away the pain." She sat up clearer, less monstrous. Pain did not vanish (it need not; grief still lived in wracks), but the shriek of it dulled.
She rose. The water hummed lighter. The Queen seemed to contemplate herself, her feelings, as if she suddenly realized without her lust for revenge, without the pain, she was nothing but an empty vessel.
"Have the witch lift the protection spell from Kinsley and his precious Lioness, and then we can talk further."
***
But the bay was not freely ours.
The ship would move only with her assent; the dragon and its heart still our leverage, our trap, our lifeline.
Food ran thin; water stores would last only so long; sailors already whispered about bleeding out or getting sold to the sea.
Below deck, the dragon nestled warm, cooling Areilycus' tremors. I watched his chest rise more easily. Relief rusted hard inside me.
Edward paced by stern windows, sea-grey light behind him.
Bonnie leaned silent, arms folded.
"Salacia will not let us pass," Edward growled.
The line in his face said he feared not for himself—but for everything else he felt responsible for.
I dabbed sweat and sea salt from Ari's skin. He was speckled in crystalline residue; I wasn't.
"No good deed goes unpunished," I said quietly.
Edward cracked a kind of harsh laugh. "Surprised you still have all your limbs."
I did not correct him.
"But he healed her," Bonnie insisted, half-shocked.
Pain fades. Grievance endures. The Nereid hold onto their desertions.
"Yes, but…" I hesitated, slowly. "That doesn't always mean trust or pardon. She may accept the cure, but she may not release us without promise—and we cannot promise more than we have."
Bonnie kicked the wall once. "So you helped her, got nothing, and now you're weighing how much to give more just to get home?"
"We still have the heart," I reminded her. The dragon cooed. Areilycus stroked it with a gentleness I knew he meant. Edward's eyes were distant, calculating.
"We can't split the heart," he said.
"How do you know?" I asked sharply. His answer was considerately flat. "I don't. But no ritual we've tried makes it divisible without cost that kills more than one. We'll ask the witch again."
I did not say what I feared the cost might truly be. I couldn't tell them the bargain I had made. I still couldn't close the pit that opened in my stomach when I thought of betraying Edward.
"Salacia is a deity," Bonnie said. "They like their sacrifices."
Indeed, they did.