Oh god, am I going to live underwater? Even if I won’t drown, surely I’ll freeze over time? Or at least wrinkle into a prune of a person?
I pluck the bracelet from his tentacle before I can think better of it and shove it onto my right wrist. “There. Happy?”
“I’m never happy, human.”
He sounds far too severe for that to be a joke. I don’t get a chance to question further, though, because he moves in a surge. His tentacles twist and squirm around my waist, far more strongly than I expected. I barely have time to gasp when he dives into the canal, taking me with him.
The water closes over my head, but we keep descending. I stare up, watching the light above us blink away. I instinctively hold my breath, but that only lasts until the first time Thane’s tentacles shift around my waist. It feels strange, and I gasp . . . inhaling water.
Or at least I should be inhaling water.
Instead, it feels just like air. Salty air, but breathable all the same. Magic. This whole damned world is magic. There’s no point in fighting Thane’s movements, so I let myself go limp. It’s . . . peaceful. I can’t hear anything but the soft sounds of us cutting through the water, can’t see anything but shadows, am completely buoyed by a strange weightlessness even as I’m dragged along.
I don’t notice the shift in color first; it’s the change in temperature I register before anything else. Warmth starts to seep into my bones until the water around me is almost balmy. The light has morphed as well, going from near black to blue and then turquoise.
Then I see the fish.
I gasp, bubbles erupting from my lips. I’ve never seen fish like this before. They’re bright and strange and don’t seem the least bit bothered by the predator in their midst. They flit and flicker around us in vibrant groups. It’s beautiful.
Thane doesn’t give me the opportunity to revel in the magic of the moment. He tows me up and up and up. My head goes a little funny, but I don’t have a chance to think too hard about it as he surges out of the water and onto a rock platform. He deposits me there, unceremoniously dumping me on the ground.
By the time I get to my hands and knees, he’s already moving toward a wide staircase leading up. I blink blearily. “Hold on.” The sensation in my head gets stronger. What the hell is wrong with me? It’s been a long day, and there is the whole “auctioned to a tentacle-man” that I need to process at some point, but I feel awful.
“Stop wasting time.”
I look up to find him back in front of me. He’s beautiful in the way that glaciers are beautiful. You’ll definitely freeze your ass off if you get too close, but it’s pretty and harsh and unforgiving, which draws you in all the same. The gray-blue of his skin makes him look at home in this rocky place with reflections of the water playing over the walls and ceiling.
The last thing I want is to stand right now, with my ears ringing like I just went three rounds with someone far more proficient at boxing than I am. But I can’t kneel here at his feet while he looks at me like I’m some piece of garbage that washed ashore.
I fight my way to my feet. My stomach threatens to rebel, but I haven’t eaten anything today, so there’s nothing to purge. I look up, up, up into Thane’s inky eyes. “Happy now?”
“No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think so.” I press the heel of my hand to my temple. “You seem like the type who’s happiest when you’re miserable. It’d be charming if it weren’t so annoying.”
“Listen, human—”
But I’m not listening. My brain goes strange, and the room takes a sickening tinge and feels like it’s moving even though my feet are planted on bare stone. “I think I’m going to pass out.” I sound remarkably normal, as if commenting on the weather.
“Excuse me?”
I part my lips to answer, but everything goes gray, and my knees give out. I expect the sharp sensation of my head cracking on the rock—it’s going to hurt like a bitch—but it never comes.
The last thing I feel before darkness takes me is a mass of tentacles creating a soft cradle for my body.
5
THANE
“What were you thinking?”
I cross my arms over my chest and try not to get defensive. It’s nearly impossible when faced with two accusing pairs of eyes pointed in my direction. “It didn’t occur to me that it could be a problem.”
“She’s human, you fool.” Azazel flexes his fists like he wants to slam one into my face. “They aren’t like us. They especially aren’t like you.”
“We don’t have as many humans in our territory as you do,” Embry cuts in. No one looking at us would mistake zir and me for anything other than siblings, for all that Embry inherited our mother’s more green-based tones. Ze and I both got our father’s crooked nose, which ze is looking down right now. “Honestly, Thane, he’s right. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t—”
“I think that is abundantly clear.”
“Enough, Azazel. We both know this wasn’t intentional.” There’s no relief to be had in Embry’s defense, though, because ze points a finger at me. “But you should have asked for more details before bringing her back through the canal.”
“It’s the quickest way home.” That’s the only thing I was thinking about.
No, that’s a lie. It wasn’t the only thing I was thinking about it. I couldn’t get the sight of Brant’s bracelet in Ramanu’s hands out of my head. We may not have many humans, or the like, in our territory these days, but the bracelets were always in high demand before among people who wanted to play tourist in their respective rivers and lakes. Especially parents of children who lived close to bodies of water. The assurance that they wouldn’t drown was worth its weight in gold.
Not that Brant ever charged enough for the bracelets.
Seeing Ramanu holding one of them, knowing the demon possibly even got it from Brant himself, felt like a slap in the face. I couldn’t think beyond the need to reclaim the item and get out of the castle as quickly as possible. The deep path is the fastest, so that’s the one I took.
It never occurred to me that it could hurt Catalina.
I glance at the bed. She levitates over it, wrapped in a bubble of magic that Embry assures me is proven to help humans with this particular sickness.
A sickness I caused with my carelessness.
“They can’t adjust to depth changes as quickly as we can. If you take her deep, you have to ease her back to the surface.” Embry swirls zir fingers through the air, eyes narrowed as ze considers Catalina. “She’ll be fine.”
“This time.” Azazel still looks like he wants to beat my face in. I don’t blame him. I made a mistake—a costly one. He glares. “No one can argue this isn’t harm. I’d be well within my rights to call this contract null and void.”
I tense. If he does that, I’ll lose the territory to him. I’ll lose Embry’s territory to him. The thought leaves me sick to my stomach. “I meant her no harm.”
“Intentions matter less than the result. You caused harm, no matter what you meant to do.”