“Starve, then.” The light snuffed out.
Tallora breathed, the creaking wood of the ship all she had to soothe her troubled mind. “Mother Staella,” she whispered, lest her captor hear. “M-Mother Staella . . .”
The relevance of Silver Fire struck her like a blow to her stomach.
She was a fool to forget that while she called Staella ‘mother,’ for Dauriel and her lineage, it was more literal. Staella was the wife of a feared and ruthless deity—of Neoma, the Moon Goddess, progenitor of the very line of sorcerers Dauriel descended from, and whose callused justice had led the people of Solvira to topple countless kingdoms and dominate the continent. Tallora knew little of history, but the whole world feared Solvira. The world trembled before their tyrants’ power—the mysterious Silver Fire, wielded by Neoma herself and passed on to her descendants.
She shut her eyes, crippled in her tiny bubble, heart sinking from no plan and no hope.
Despite her best efforts, Tallora did sleep. She prayed and wept and slept.
For the third time, light from beyond cast into the room. The princess did not come alone—with her followed the magister and at least two men, though they waited in the hallway. “We’ve made port in Tanill,” she said, as though this might mean anything to Tallora. She gestured with a tilt of her head, power conveyed through a mere flick of her eyebrow. “Adrael.”
The magister—Adrael—held out a hand. Tallora’s prison slowly lowered to the floor. Upon touching the deck, it burst, water draining through invisible holes in the wood. Tallora stared up, surely a pitiful sight. With little ceremony, one of the men scooped her up, taking no caution to avoid groping her nude form. Tallora trembled, exposed and embarrassed as he set her into a worn metal cage, large enough to hold a shark.
Tallora flopped within, cringing at the sensation of rust against her scales and skin. She tried to pull herself up, balancing upon her scaled tail, but when her head breached the open top, the princess’ hand shoved her down—in time for them to swing it shut and lock it. “Take her out,” Dauriel said, and two men hoisted her new prison up.
Tallora’s stomach churned, both from starvation and their unsteady gait. As they climbed the stairs, she blocked her eyes from the offending sunlight, the heat abrasive on her sleek skin.
With care, she blinked, realizing she no longer saw the open sea but a human town.
Upon the ship’s deck, the entire crew had come to gawk at her. Humans found merfolk to be an exotic sort of attractive, or so she’d heard. Unhindered by sweeping rains and winds, they leered at her like some animal in a pen, and Tallora curled her chest against her mighty tail—brilliant pink in the light, and utterly useless out of the water.
The sunlight cast her opalescent skin in glimmering hues of pink and blue and purple across a pale palette. She hid behind the shade of her white hair as tears streamed down her face. Beneath the sea, the water carried them away; here on land, they dried upon her face, leaving her raw and vulnerable.
The sound of their steps changed, the hollow clomping of their feet replaced with sturdy, creaking wood. She dared to glance up, noting the seafaring village, hating its bustling inhabitants. Humans held upperworld shades, from sand to earth to cliffs, and Tallora thought them ugly, like vermin, each of them bearing the face of her captor. Princess Dauriel stood beside her glass prison, imposing in her steps, a true empress in the making.
For the first time, she saw Dauriel in the light and wondered if she were ugly only to Tallora or particularly plain for a human. She held herself like she owned the world, yet there was little femininity in her broad jaw and sharp cheeks. Perhaps on the open sea, she simply gave no care to beauty.
Nevertheless, Tallora wished a curse upon the wretched woman, for Tortalga’s Ocean to eat her whole. Sadly, when they stepped off the dock and onto dry land, the princess remained.
She withdrew some sort of pendant from her leather pocket and tapped it with a gloved finger. It illuminated her face, though Tallora could not see what image it held. “Mother, we’ve returned,” Dauriel said to the pendant. “And with a gift.”
Tallora heard a voice from the pendant but not well enough to decipher. Dauriel set it back into her pocket. “Any minute now. Brace yourselves.”
In Tallora’s heart, she knew some impasse would soon be crossed, that what happened next would seal her fate—whatever horrendous fate that was. Swallowing her pride, she stuck her arm through the metal bars and gently tugged the princess’ tunic.
Dauriel immediately swatted her, perhaps out of instinct given her noticeable shock. “I’ll have you left out in the sun to dry next time you touch me without permission.”
Tallora’s tears had not staunched since she’d been dropped in her new prison. “Princess Dauriel,” she said, her first words in days, “I’m begging you—”
“Good luck with that tactic,” Dauriel interrupted, quirking her eyebrow.
Tallora swallowed a sob. “Please. I don’t know your quest, but I’ve done nothing to hurt you and yours. I don’t know what justice you subscribe to—”
Sudden sickness lurched her stomach. All at once, the world vanished, replaced by a sea of stars. Weightless, Tallora attempted to reach beyond her prison, wondering if it were all in her mind as a nameless force ripped her across the planes.
She suddenly dropped, her cage all that prevented her from rolling along a cold, stone floor. Nauseated, she might have vomited if her stomach had something to process. Instead, she retched. Hardly proper, but what use was groveling now?
“Dauriel, Solvira celebrates your return.”
The world had changed. Tallora dared to look about and saw sweeping walls of finery and great windows showing the sky and mountains far beyond. Dauriel stood beside her, as well as Magister Adrael. Before her was a gilded chair upon a pedestal, and approaching was a woman with Dauriel’s soft eyes and a dress decorated with delicate gold chains and studded with more gems than Tallora had ever seen in her life. While the princess had been tanned by the sun, this woman’s skin bore shades of porcelain.
“Thank you, Mother. I’m happy to be home.”
Tallora knew her name from her studies—this was Empress Vahla of Solvira. The empress stared directly at her, intrigue passing through her breathtaking features. “By the Triage,” she whispered, hardly breathing it.
Behind the wickedness in Dauriel’s grin, Tallora swore she saw relief. “A gift for you. A mermaid from the Tortalgan Sea. But this was found on her person.” The princess pulled Tallora’s beloved necklace from her trouser pocket. “She’s a Priestess of Staella. I think you’ll find a use for her.”
Tallora’s face paled, her limbs numbing in tandem.
Vahla looked to Dauriel, the unspoken words between them indecipherable, then took the offered necklace. When her gaze returned, the empress placed a hand over her mouth. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? Call the council—they must see this.”
Elsewhere, Tallora heard people scatter, unsure if they were of human or angelic descent—the latter of whom were deemed ‘Celestials.’ The empress, she knew, held angelic blood, thus setting her apart from humanity with unearthly beauty and an inborn talent for magic. Descended of Neoma and thus her daughter, Ilune, The Great Necromancer, who it was said handpicked a man to impregnate her—only to slay him in the afterglow of their lovemaking.