The leash yanked.
The world above blurred all swallowed in a rush of cold and silence.
He plunged downward.
Not through water, not through air, but through a void that had no direction.
Pressure closed around him, immense and smothering.
His lungs refused to scream, his pulse slowed, and the only thing that remained steady was the key at his belt, glowing faintly even as the dark swallowed him.
And then he broke through.
Light rippled over black marble.
Shell-carved pillars stretched into forever.
The air was heavy with salt and incense.
Submareth.
The palace beneath the sea.
She was waiting.
Thalassaria sat on her throne of coral and pearl, her vast coils draped in restless, serpentine curves around the dais.
The chamber echoed with the soft rush of water through hidden channels.
Her eyes locked onto him at once, hungry, possessive, blazing with something far more perilous than wrath: relief.
"You're late," she said, her voice a tremor through the waterless chamber.
