Page 74 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
Even when I did not.
“If you never remember our past, that’s okay, because I want to live it with you again. All over. Every day, every minute, every second. With you.I willremember it forever,” he murmured with aching softness, his hands plastered to the map as if he wanted them to be against something… or someone.
“You didn’t tell me about this one,” I whispered, pointing to a lone circle at the far-right corner of the parchment.
“This one’s waiting for us. Find your way back to me, and when this is all over, I’ll take you there myself. Just us, no more chaos. That’s a threat and a promise.”
I closed my fingers around Noctis’s wrist then turned to walk away, throwing a wink over my shoulder.
“I look forwardto it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
No one wanted to break the silence by saying the goodbyes we all knew were inevitable. By the grace of… well… the gods, Laziel and I would return, and the goodbye we dreaded would, in fact, be temporary.
I looked around at the crew, memorizing their somber, worried faces. My gaze lingered on Noctis, but his only held promise—a reminder of what awaited us on the return.
To have the ability to remember the crew after so many of my memories had been stolen in the past. That was what drove me then. The people on that ship were what gave me purpose. It felt like power.
I used that power to drive myself over the rail and into the ocean.
Laziel followed closely behind, both our bodies transforming into our merfolk forms almost instantly. Waiting for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, we swam in circles, blinking feverishly to cast out the haziness.
“Go get ‘em! Well… getit!” Calvin’s muffled voice ruffled through the water, lazily reaching my ears. A slow smile tilted my lips at my friend. I pocketed his voice in the chest of my mind, saving it for later, right along with the fierceness of my Blood Tie’s face.
I had forgotten how beautiful the depths were in my time out of water, even the parts of them that were not populatedwith sea beings. Schools of shimmering fish swarmed past us, glistening like living jewels. Towering coral formations painted in hues of orange and turquoise gave homes to the fish inhabitants.
The Oceanwrought kingdom drew near, but we needed to sneak in from a distance to avoid being caught.
“The south end will be guarded less. At rotation––twelve minutes exactly––they will switch. Then, we wait,” Laziel replayed the first task, handing me a matching oceanic stopwatch like the one he fisted.
We swam through the kelp, keeping low until the kingdom surged into view.
Luminae jellyfish hung corralled in wire baskets across the castle grounds and villages, working to illuminate the area. Living coral formed caves and alcoves for merfolk to live—homes that grew and changed shape throughout the years, then were molded by the hands of merfolk artisans. The coral’s delicate branches twisted, forming intricate archways into the structures.
Overlooking the beauty towered the scheming Ocean Mother’s castle dwelling, another evil amongst the loveliness. I was accustomed to attracting the brutality of life to myself like it magnetized to my own scales.
The goddess lived within the sunken city of Drathin, known to have fallen beneath the waves of the Pantheorn Sea when a mortal man abandoned the goddess of adoration decades prior. She nearly drowned the entire continent, only talked out of her fit of rage by the son they bore.
Basalt spires held the stone walls of the castle, cracks symmetrically running up the building, bubbles floating upwards as air still seeped from the openings, even decades later. A tattered flag floated peacefully in the currents atop the tallest peak. Except I knew how ironic it was to see beauty and peace in my former homeland then, as the goddess waged war just above the sea’s waves.
We glided past the castle, hiding amongst the shadowed divots in the seafloor on the way to the Abyssal Hold, but every time I propelled my tail my heart rate increased. It would explode straight through my sternum well before we arrived at the prison.
Breathe, Caelyn,I reminded myself, focusing to steady my raging anxiety. At least, I thought, the Ocean Mother and much of the Oceanwrought armies had surged above the waves rather than below, thinning the defenses in the depths and, I hoped, keeping the goddess away from what remained there.However, I wasn’t sure I preferred it that way, not when they were gathering to wreak havoc on the Terraguard Bound above.
The blackened walls of the Abyssal Hold loomed in the distance, nearly unnoticeable in the void of the depths. By design, it lurked, a deadly reminder to stay in the goddess’s favorable graces.
“Are you ready?” Laziel whispered as we got closer, and I caught the way his brows drew in what looked like frustration.
I wasn’t sure how to answer, so instead, I nodded and hoped he understood the lack of words.
Onyx iron-clad spikes protruded from the walls of the prison that stood many times taller than even the kingdom’s castle. Wrapped in metal armor, the merfolk guards circled the structure in unrecognizable, varying patterns. From top to bottom, the Abyssal Hold had patrolling eyes on it at all times.
“Four minutes,” Laziel murmured, glancing at his stopwatch.
We snuck forward, nearly in arms reach of the prison and shuffled into a bramble of sea kelp.
“North,” Laziel whispered.
