“That is how I must prove myself?” I gasped. “Fuck.”
Her eyebrows rose at my curse. “Or rather, no fuck. Not until you show you’ve got what it takes. Unless you’ve changed your mind? Aren’t I worthy of such a sacrifice?” She wrinkled her nose at my continued silence. “Maybe you don’t deserve me after all.”
GORAN
“Maybe I never deserved her,” I whispered, the cold sea wind whipping the words from my lips as the memory faded. “But I sacrificed for her. And I loved her, even if we didn’t talk about everything we should have.”
“Or talk much at all,” Alexios agreed.
Dustin whispered just loud enough for me to hear, “Yeah, sounds like all they did was f?—”
I bared my teeth. “Don’t finish that sentence, boy, if you want to live.”
He stared at me in horror and said it anyway. “Fuck!”
I wasn’t really going to kill him. Maybe hurt him a little. I took a breath to shout, but Alexios was also staring at me with fear in his expression. No. Staringbehindme.
Without another thought, I threw myself down, my hand closing over the hilt of my sword that I’d placed alongside the inner hull. The scabbard was tied down to a metal bolt with the belt, but the sword swung free, and I turned, ready to face whatever had my companions going pale.
Fuck indeed, I thought as I turned, and my blade caught in the largest tentacle I’d ever seen. A tentacle attached to amonster the size of the largest castle built. It wore a carapace on its back encrusted with shells, barnacles, and stones that gleamed in the sunlight like a hundred dragons’ hoards, fixed to the curved surface.
Before I could say a word, the tentacle closed around my sword and yanked it from my grasp, and another dozen smaller tentacles wrapped themselves around my sailboat, the wood creaking and popping as the thing turned its head so it could stare down at me with one gigantic, swirling eye. I’d seen an enormous whirlpool once, and this did the same thing, drawing my attention into its deep center inexorably, mesmerizing me.
Trapping me, then abruptly letting me go. The tentacle loosened, and I fell gasping where I’d stood. The appendage picked up Alexios next, who stayed motionless while he was inspected. He still had the obsidian blade in his hand, but didn’t use it, not even when the monster shouted, “Where is my Empress?” A trickle of warmth began in one ear, as the sound burst my eardrum.
“Softer, Emperor,” Alexios said quietly. “We are only human. Please be merciful. We will tell you everything we know. We welcome your assistance in finding her and keeping her safe.”
Alexios was put down far more gently than I had been, and he gave a deep bow once he’d regained his balance. Dustin was still crouched in the bottom of the boat, looking sick for the first time all day as he stared at the kraken that had ambushed us.
I’d seen a kraken before, though only seven existed in the world, as far as I knew. Wren’s mate, Leviathan, was large, but this one was terrifyingly massive. It could only be his eldest brother, the one they called the Emperor of Emperors, Lusca.
“I apologize,” the monster said, his beaklike mouth somehow forming human speech. His Starlakian was perfect, his accent unremarkable. “May I come aboard?”
He spoke to Alexios, but I answered. “If you shift into your human form, Emperor Lusca.”
That baleful eye moved to me again. He didn’t answer me, but one of his tentacles shifted into a human leg. In one step, as if the edge of the hull was a magical portal that changed him as he moved over it, his massive form transformed into a body. No one seeing him up close would make the mistake of believing he was human, though. He was ten feet tall at least, and his presence was almost overwhelming, the sheer force of his personality making me blink and move back. My mind insisted that he was still every bit as large as he had been before, though my eyes could take him in, more or less.
I’d heard about Lusca from the selkies, but nothing they’d said could’ve prepared me for the reality of him. He was majestic, like a mountain or the night sky, and as hard to describe. His hair was the same color as the deep ocean, blacks and blues with hints of luminescence among the strands. His eyes were a mix of every blue and green of the seas.
He also felt like a storm about to erupt, and standing next to him I could almost hear thunder as he replied to Alexios with a few words in what I assumed was the priest’s language.
Almosthear, because he’d burst my damn eardrum.
Dustin was there with a square of cloth. “Warlord, for the blood.”
The Emperor turned to me and reached out a hand. “May I?”
I did not want him touching me, but Alexios was smirking and Dustin watching. “Of course.” His fingers brushed my ear, there was a painful pop, and then I could hear again. It wasn’t perfect, but it felt like the rupture had happened a week ago, rather than moments.
“How?”
The kraken’s smile may have been intended to seem friendly, but his tone was patronizing. “Human bodies are made of mostlysalt and water. I am the Emperor of Emperors. I’ve had a long time to learn how to rule what is mine.”
“I am not yours,” I said, wondering if I was imagining the rancor rolling off him in invisible waves.
“No? And yet I know everything about you that I would want to.” He brushed past me and leaned down to Alexios’s discarded wet robe. With one touch, he pulled the seawater out of it and out of the Beta’s hair as well. “May I borrow your cloth?”
Alexios handed it over, pulling his pale robes on as the kraken took the sheet. With a few quick movements, the Emperor fashioned it into a toga, wrapping the cloth around his waist and over one shoulder. The difference in size when he stood next to Alexios was jarring to witness, and made it even more obvious that this creature was only playing at being human. But the disdain in his expression when he finally turned toward me was even more discomfiting.
