Page 46 of A Sea So Cruel
“Who are you?” Asta snarled as she stood. Dyri was barking loudly beside her on the mattress, but backing up with each vocalization.
Cowardly clown.
The slender woman swept her long obsidian locks back behind her shoulder.
“Your presence has been requested for a meeting, Princess Asta,” the woman said. “If you could please come with me, I will escort you.”
Oh sure, walk off with the complete stranger after a man has been abducted by the finfolk queen and a Salendreon princess has been revealed as a spy for said finfolk. This sounds very safe.
Asta scoffed, somewhat toward the woman’s vague request and somewhat toward the cowering Dyri, who had spooked himself by backing his rump into the headboard.
“Why would I go with you? How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
The stunning woman let out a soft chuckle. Her beauty was the kind only seen in paintings, where women’s features had been vastly over-exaggerated.
She stepped forward gesturing to the room in a sweep of her arms. “Do you think one would be so foolish as to enter their enemy’s territory unarmed just to request an audience?”
She has a point, there.Besides, what more did Asta have to lose? She knew the finfolk would never let her live a peaceful life from here on out. She knew too much; had seen too much.
Asta turned back to her massive whimpering canine. “Stay, Dyri. Linnea will be here soon.” She kissed his head and ran her thumb over his velvety ear before turning back to the woman. “Lead me.”
The woman of indescribable beauty sauntered down the castle halls as if she had been within hundreds of times, which made Asta uneasy. None of the guards stopped her or questioned the female because, Asta now noticed, she was wearing a royal maid’s uniform.
Asta was stupid for following this mysterious person. She knew that. But something deep down told her it was okay; that she was to be trusted.
They walked across the eastern terrace and stepped onto the beach. Asta silently followed behind the woman as they strode farther and farther away from the castle, quickly approaching the bend that held the cave she and Kaid had slept in the night everything had changed.
The woman’s pace slowed and she approached a strange spotted lump lying in the sand. At first, Asta had thought it was a seal carcass, but when they got closer, she could see that it was ablanket of seal skin. She shuddered. Who would make a blanket of seal skin?
As the woman lifted the blanket and draped it over her shoulders, she looked back to Asta and gestured to a rock about twenty feet off the coast, “It was nice to meet you, Princess Asta. The queen will see you now.”
Asta didn’t know where to look between the woman silently walking into the water with a seal skin blanket draped over her or the fire-red-haired woman sitting atop a rock.
At first, Asta’s heart skipped a beat when she thought the female was her sister, but when she observed the woman more closely, the similarities were scant. Her hair was a far more vibrant shade of red, like a cooked lobster shell, and her eyes were a shade Asta knew well—a turquoise as bright as the waves crashing around her. Kaid’s eyes.
Asta watched as the obsidian-haired woman disappeared under the waves, no sign of her once she fully submerged herself. The princess’s gaze bounced back to the woman on the rock once more and discovered the female’s gentle smile.
She waved a hand, beckoning Asta closer, so she toed off her slippers and pulled up the skirts of her dress as she stepped into the water, the icy temperatures of the autumn ocean making her toes numb immediately.
From her new angle in the water, Asta could see the female’s royal blue fin containing golden outlines of each scale that matched her gold crown made of coral and crystals. Her elongated torso was covered by a pearly seashell-shaped corset.
Asta went to take a step back, fear roiling through her from the memory of the last finned creature she met on these shores. As she leaned away from the woman, her back collided into something hard.
Chapter 24
Asta felt the breath of something casting a warm breeze atop her head. She let the dagger she had hidden up her sleeve slip down so the hilt was in her palm. Maybe this had been a bad choice.
She whirled toward whatever beast awaited her, ready for battle, but froze at the sight of the massive red dragon standing behind her.
Its large, scaled body glistened with remnants of sea water sliding down its hide. Where a painting would usually depict wings for a dragon held large pectoral fins instead, along with a powerful tail containing a fin at its rear. The beast's talons wereso long that the arches peeked out of the waves, an observation that made Asta swallow loudly.
But the dragon made no effort to attack. It remained still as it stared down at her, as though it were an old friend coming for a visit.
She prayed no one would gaze out a castle window and have a heart attack upon seeing a dragon.
Asta turned back toward the finned female and found that an identical beast in all aspects except color swam behind the crowned woman, its olive green hide the perfect color to camouflage within seaweed.
The female smiled once again, nodding her head slightly as if to sayIt’s okay.
