After hours of silence and darkness, Finn’s head lolling as he drifted in and out of consciousness, a figure appeared at the bottom of the stairs: an older merman with a weathered face and a lilac tail that glinted in the lamplight. Mr. Inegar.
“Just like old times, huh, Inegar?” Finn croaked, cracking open a bloodshot eye to meet the man’s gaze.
The old merman drifted forward, kelp coil in one hand, a whiskey decanter and a glass in the other. He poured a measure of amber liquid, then set the decanter on the stone floor.
Finn sipped from the glass Inegar held to his cracked lips, then blinked his eyes open as the older merman brushed back Finn’s hair and touched his forehead.
“What did I tell you? The girl is making you reckless,” Inegar grumbled as he wiped the kelp coil across Finn’s blistered chest.
Finn spat silvery crimson blood, which twisted in the water like a ribbon. “I will never help him. I am done doing his duty.”
“It’s true. She has to die, you know...”
An echoing silence passed between them, Finn’s chest rising and falling quickly. “What does that mean?” he said finally, opening a bruised eye.
“The girl has to die to fulfill the prophecy, and she needs to diewillingly.”
“You’re lying,” Finn hissed. “Father told you to tell me this.”
“I wish I were,” Inegar said, shaking his head sadly. “We found another line of the prophecy. We planned to recapture the girl and keep her in the dungeons until we could persuade her to give herself up, but then you two had to act out... and now the king’s keeping you down here until he can use you to convince her to sacrifice herself. He wants to leverage the feelings you have for each other.”
“I will never do that!”
“Suit yourself, but he will hang you here until you do or until you die. Then he will find another way to pursue her. The girl’s got a soft heart.” Inegar sighed. “It won’t be hard to get her to give herself up tosave others.”
Finn spat more silver-stained blood. Inegar only observed him sadly, before drifting back up the dark stairwell, leaving Finn shackled to the slick dungeon wall, tears tracing down his cheeks before the ocean claimed them.
“Please,” he whispered into the empty cell. “Please... I’ll do anything.”
But Inegar was gone, and there was only darkness, and the weak light of the single lamp. Shadows festered in the slick corners of the dungeon, gathering mass and creeping along the floor. They coiled around Finn, whispering as they moved, snaking over his body like they had a mind of their own. He whipped his head around, eyes scanning the growing blackness as if questioning whether he was losing his grip on reality.
“Little prince.” A voice echoed through the chamber.
Finn moved his head from side to side, squinting into the darkness through bloodshot eyes, but no one was there. Only shadows. Only the silence of the dark.
The voice sounded again—male, smooth and seductive, laced with a hint of mischief.“Why are we so sad, little prince?”
Finn scanned the cell, but nothing was there.
“You cannot see me, but you can feel me.” The shadows caressed his torso, his shackled wrists, and wrapped around his tail as a shiver of cold rippled through the water.
“Who are you?” Finn demanded.
“Why, I am you . . .”
“Show yourself!”
“That now nameless and timeless cannot be seen, but I know the prophecy’s words, and the herald tells it true.”
Finn blinked and blinked, shaking his head as if worried the same madness consumed him as his father. The darkness crept closer, its icypresence seeping into every corner of the chamber. Its breath, cold as the deep, brushed against him as it whispered the complete prophecy:
“Evil begets evil. Sin begets sin. All love will be lost, and you’ll know no peace.
In shadowed depths where silence reigns, a curse was cast, eternal chains.
The spirits of Manannán and Siana must return, for only then shall the clans truly learn.
The blood of both Drowned and Selkie line is the answer, the curse’s sign.
