Breakwater (19 page)

“What? How do you know about the note?” Belladonna leaned forward, rocking the boat.

A sick feeling began to build in my gut.

Cupping his head in his hands, Dolph let out a groan. “Ash intercepted a note meant for Eel.”

I lifted my hands, palms out to slow things down. “Wait, who is Eel?”

Dolph lifted his head, his eyes full of sorrow. “The Undine who stuck the hooks in you.”

“The note was meant for him? I don’t understand.”

“We don’t know who it was from, but it was going to Eel. He was the one who was supposed to ‘drown the flowers.’ Not Ash.”

“Mother goddess have mercy,” I whispered, slumping into the boat, barely feeling the hooks as I leaned into them.

Belladonna sucked in a sharp breath, and then shook her head. “There is nothing to be done for it now. It was a mistake. One we can’t undo no matter how unfortunate.”

I stared at her, horror growing in me until it flowed from my mouth. “A mistake? Ash’s life is on the line and you call it a mistake?”

Blushing, she looked out over the water. “It was not done on purpose. We could not know, and he would not tell us the truth!”

“That is not the worst of it.” Dolph’s voice held a pained note. “Princess, please tell the Terralings what happens on the day of coronation.”

Finley sat up straight in her seat. “On the day of the coronation, blood must be spilled into the water as an offering to the Deep. For protection, for health, for sustenance. The blood must be that of an enemy of the crown. Someone from the cells. An Terraling would make a perfect sacrifice.”

I would have moved forward, but several of the hooks where they had pierced my skin caught the slats of the boat and held me down. Frustration flowed up and through me and I let out a snarl. “Get these hooks out of me!”

Finley leaned over and put her tiny hands on my shoulders. “You have to lay still. The more you wiggle, the deeper the barbs will dive. That is how they are designed.”

It took everything I had to not move, to lie still while Finley worked the hooks out with a miniscule needle-nose tool found in a small first aid bag in the bottom of the boat. She worked the barbs out as carefully as she could, but the pain was excruciating, bringing me to the brink of screaming mindlessly. Each time my body shook and jerked when she pulled a barb, the others dug into my flesh even more. Belladonna reached over and stroked my hair, untangling knots and braiding it gently. “Shh, it will be over soon.”

“You haven’t done that since we were children.”

“You’re my little sister,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly glistening with moisture. “I can braid your hair if I want to.” The moment was one of intense emotion and pain, and I struggled to know which caused my own eyes to fill.

The waves around us picked up, sloshing into the boat. Salt water washed over my legs where the princess had plucked most of the barbs, stinging and cleansing the wounds at the same time. I hissed and fought the urge to yank my legs away.

I touched Finley on the arm, getting her attention. “How many are left?”

“Two. They will be the bad ones,” Finley said.

I stared at her. “The others weren’t bad?”

“These two are deep.” She touched each of them gently, one buried in my left armpit, the other in the back of my left calf. “I will have to yank them, there is no way I can work them to the surface, so they will tear the flesh badly.”

Nausea rolled through me. “Don’t tell me when. Just do it.”

She nodded, blue ringlets bouncing, and I closed my eyes. The feel of the cool metal under my arm made my heart rate skyrocket as she set her tool next to the tip of the first barb. Belladonna stroked my face, her voice a blend of nothing words meant to soothe a child.

I let out a breath and opened my eyes to see what was taking so long when Finley yanked the first hook.

A blaze of fire raced from the wound straight to my spine and an uncontrollable scream ripped from me. Belladonna wrapped her arms around my upper body. “Hush, hush. It’s almost over, just breathe.”

Teeth chattering I stared at Finley. “Why . . . do they hurt so . . . bad?”

Dolph answered. “When they are created, they are imbued with pain. Designed to make the one they hook into a useless ball of screaming flesh. That you have managed this far speaks to your fortitude and high pain threshold. I have seen Enders with two hooks in them laid out on the floor, sobbing.”

Finley nodded. “You had sixteen driven into you. I don’t doubt Eel was afraid you were a chosen one of the mother goddess to see you still standing.”

Before I had a chance to slow my heart or think about how bad the second hook would be, Finley had her tool on it and ripped it out of my calf. Muscle and flesh tore and a second scream would have exploded from me if it weren’t for Bella.

My sister slapped a hand over my mouth, muffling my cries. “Be quiet, Lark, you must hold the pain in and be quiet.”

Whimpering, tears leaking from my eyes, I stared at the sky and waved her hand off. “We are in the middle of the ocean, why does it matter if I’m quiet?”

Dolph looked from me to the ocean in the east and the way his eyes narrowed, the set of his mouth made my stomach clench.

“Because we are being followed.”

pinning around in a boat was not a good idea, but I did it anyway, rocking it hard. Belladonna let out a squawk, but Dolph and Finley were quiet. Far behind us, the ocean was empty. No city wavering in the distance. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Under the water, Lark,” Finley said softly. “Requiem has sent his enforcers after us.”

Belladonna started to cry. “You mean the sharks again?”

Dolph nodded. “Yes. But we are not without our own familiars.”

Finley handed me a small vial. “Drink this, it will numb the pain of the hooks now that they are out, and slow the blood leaching from them.”

Without questioning her, I took the vial and drank it down. The liquid was sweet, thick like syrup and it clung to my mouth and throat. Within seconds, the singing nerve endings quieted and I could think clearly again.

“You just always happen to have a healing potion with you?” I mumbled, my tongue a bit numb from the syrup.

“Yes. There are far too many dangers not to carry a tonic with us at all times. Every aid kit we have has at least one healing potion. Most have two or three.” Dolph said.

I clutched the edge of the boat, the last of the pain from the hooks fading under the realization our situation was about as bad as it could get. We were in a tiny boat, no land in sight, and a pack of sharks were coming.

“Bella, can you reach the earth?”

Her crying eased. “What do you mean?”

I pointed to the bottom of the boat. “Can’t you reach your power? There is sand below us.”

“It’s too far away. Why, can you?” Her eyes still shimmered with tears and something I had never thought to see. She trusted me to get her out of this.

“There is nothing you can do, unless you have a familiar that can kill a shark, and there are not many capable of that.” Dolph leaned over the edge of the boat and dipped his fingers in the water. Blue streaks of light shot from his hands into the water in a pulse. Beat, beat, pause. Beat, beat, pause. He pulled his hand up. “We will have some help, but it may not get here in time.”

Belladonna grabbed my arm, fingers digging into one of the wounds. “Lark, I don’t want to die.”

“You aren’t going to.”

The boat rocked under us with two big bumps that set the small wooden conveyance bouncing back and forth, hard enough to bring the edges to the water’s surface. Dolph reached across and gripped both sides of the boat, using his body to offset the rocking. “This is going to be close, my familiar can help, but she has been kept at bay for so long by the sharks, I’m not sure if she’ll get here in time.”

In time. Before we were all torn apart.

There had to be something we could do. I couldn’t just sit there and let the sharks take us out.

My life for Bella’s; that was the deal. I grabbed my spear and stood. “How many sharks can your familiar take out?”

Dolph glanced at the water, his eyes unfocussed. “Two. Maybe three before she’s killed.” I shivered thinking about what kind of creature could take out two or three sharks.

“And how many of Requiem’s pets are out there?”

“Six, maybe seven, from what I sense.”

Ice slid down my spine as I contemplated what I was going to do. Knowing it was the only chance my sister and Finley had. “Bella, tell Father I did what I was supposed to.”

“Wait, you can’t go in the water!”

Dolph stood with me. “Lark is right. We are Enders, and your lives come before ours. Lark, aim for the eyes if they come at you. And if you can get under them—”

“I’ll open them up like an overripe fruit.” I curled my hand into a fist and held it out to him. He did the same, bumping his fist against mine.

“Dive deep, they will not follow us. They are focused on the boat,” Dolph said. I nodded, breathing in and out in big gulps prepping my lungs. Triangular fins cut through the water toward us, not huge, certainly not the biggest I’d seen.

“Bull sharks. They’re aggressive, and fast,” he said.

“Awesome,” I whispered. Dolph leapt from the boat, rocking it hard. Belladonna let out a groan.

“Please, Lark, don’t leave me up here.”

I stared at her for a moment, then looked to Finley. “Princess, you need to be the one to fight if Dolph and I don’t come back. Can you do that? Can you keep the both of you safe?”

She straightened in her seat. “No one has ever asked me to fight before. Is it allowed?”

“You have to or you won’t survive. None of us will. Use your power, use everything you’ve got. Do you understand?”

Her face solemn, she placed her hand over her heart and nodded.

I took one last deep breath and dove from the boat. Hands out in front of me, spear clutched tight under my arm, I kicked hard to get as deep as I could as fast as I could—to get past the sharks. Dolph was below me, floating. I swam to him, my lungs not yet burning. With a puzzled expression, he reached out, pulled me close, and I thought he was going to kiss me, giving me air. But he touched the metal hook Niah had pierced my upper ear cartilage with. His eyes held surprise and he mouthed one word:
breathe
.

I shook my head before realizing he held me there, keeping me from going to the surface. He mouthed the word again, touching the earring.
Breathe
.

Niah’s words came back to me. “You’ll need this going to the Deep. Bunch of mouth breathers there.”

Every instinct I had screamed at me to keep my mouth shut, and the air in my lungs where it belonged. There was no time to question if she had been telling me the truth. I sucked in a mouthful of water . . . and it didn’t choke me. No time to think about how Niah had known, Dolph pointed up and I looked.

The bright blue water hid nothing; no need to wonder if the sharks were on us. They swayed lazily around the boat. I counted eight. Eight, ten-foot-long sharks with bad attitudes and insatiable appetites. Thank the mother goddess for the syrup Finley had given me. The wounds from the hooks weren’t even bleeding—I could only imagine the sharks frenzy if I still had been oozing blood.