Finn extended his tattooed right arm, and I took his hand in mine. AsI cut, I flashed a wicked grin, but he didn’t flinch, even as crimson blood, laced with silver, spilled across his skin.
I winced as I sliced my own palm, but I pressed it against his like Peisinoe had shown me. “Do you swear that the memory you offer me as a dream is uncorrupted and true?”
Finn nodded, his eyes were intent on mine.
“Say it,” I growled.
“I swear a blood oath that the memory I give you is uncorrupted and the absolute truth.” He kept his bleeding palm against mine, and a finely hewn heart tattoo appeared on our hands.
Finn held my gaze as I forced his bloodstained palm to his forehead. Just as it had with Peisinoe, a faint light bloomed from the contact.
“Please, Agápe, grant me a dream of the memory Finn has chosen for me.” I pressed his hands on either side of my temples, taking one last look into his eyes.
Morgana’s marble chambers blurred and swam out of focus, replaced by a blinding flash of brightness. Shapes emerged out of the luminosity and sharpened as the dream vision took hold.
King Neptunus, Glacies, Pisceon, and two guards were passed out, floating motionless in the water around a stone table, beneath a wall adorned with a stained-glass mosaic glinting with filtered light. Finn hovered nearby, his fist unclenched and poised above his father’s throat. But after a tense beat, he let it fall, turned, and drifted from the room.
“Aigéan,” King Neptunus bellowed, waking up from his stupor and righting himself with a swish of his golden tail.
Finn reappeared in the doorway, and his father’s dark eyes narrowed on him.
“That little shifter bitch.” Pisceon rubbed his temple, chuckling as he righted himself.
With a beat of her tail, Glacies spiraled upward, smoothing her hair before crossing her arms, pale eyes flashing. “Did that seal girl just stun us?” Her brows flickered as she looked at the king.
“Get out!” King Neptunus roared, his voice laced with venom. “I need to speak to my son.”
Finn squared his shoulders and straightened, holding the king’s gaze.
Pisceon and Glacies glided from the room, and as he passed, Pisceon brushed Finn’s shoulder and mouthed, “Sorry.”
“Father...” Finn began. He seemed to be pulling himself together and mastering some kind of neutral expression.
“Where is the girl?” the king snarled.
“She escaped with the Drowned boy while we were unconscious.”
“So you’ve fallen in love with the half-breed.” King Neptunus rubbed his chin, casting a scornful gaze over his son.
“N-no.” Finn stumbled over his words, but then he braced himself. “I am doing my duty to you—to the realm. I only want to use her to help us find the prophecy.”
The flush in his cheeks and the tremble in his hands made it clear he was acting, and the king noticed. “Lies!” he hissed. “I saw the way you looked at each other.” He moved closer, eyes gleaming, aureate tail flicking. “What if I told you that touseher, she would have to die? Would you still be so eager then, Aigéan?” The king arched a dark brow and then let out a low, cruel laugh.
“No.” The reply slipped from Finn’s lips in a whisper.
His father’s malicious smile grew as he took in the shock and grief distorting his son’s handsome face. “Perhaps you need a reminder of where your loyalties lie.” The king’s lip curled, and his eyes grewferal. In a crack like a splitting sky, lightning shot from his wrists, pinning Finn against the stone wall. His mouth parted to speak, but his body was jolted with its force.
“You’re pathetic, boy,” the king spat. “I thought you could fight me off by now. How can I pass my throne on to you when you can’t even withstand a bit of lightning?”
With that, he struck Finn again. The fire of it zigzagged up his body, forming blistering welts as it receded and hit again.
Finn seemed to be trying to summon his power, to strike back, but the force of his father’s lightning trident kept his magic suppressed, held at bay like a storm sealed behind glass.
“I send you to do a simple task of gathering information, and you fall in love with the girl. Pathetic weakling... you will hang in the cells until you remember your duty to the realm. Guards, take him to the place where he used to hang as a boy!”
The king’s expression was void of emotion as two pearl-tailed guards surged in, seizing the now barely conscious Finn and hooking their arms beneath his limp frame. They dragged his welt-covered body down to the lowest level of the castle, along a murky, narrow passage that led to the dungeons. There, they shackled him to the slick, sea-worn walls.
The cells were dark, lit only by the pale light of a small lantern. Without a word to Finn, the guards vanished up the gloomy corridor, leaving him suspended, his skin scorched in a jagged network of blisters from his father’s lightning.
