“What do you want, fish?” he snaps. He looks crazy and restless.
If he gets to me, if the mermaids hand me over, I’m doomed.
“You were once the king of the gulf, the Mermaid’s Gulf,” Elae accuses.
“What of it?”
Elae snarls as if she got her answer. “We have honored you with jewels and gifts for centuries, but you destroyed our home!”
Zaeyr cants his head, his hair falling into his face. It’s as if he’s just now realizing the mermaids are here at all. I tug again, trying to escape Jye’s grip.
“Your home?” he spits. “My home. You were allowed to live in my domain, to be protected by my presence. I have kept the beasts of the open ocean from your waters. It is because of me you prospered with peace. And what did you do to repay me? Jewels and shells to pretty up my caves? When they were already mine to begin with? No, you repay me by trapping me when I roused. To bury me alive!”
Startled, I stop fighting Jye to glance between the mermaids.
“Roused, dragon king? You did not merely rouse—you trembled the seafloor and frightened all that dwelled away! Our homes crashed down around us. So the conchs blared, calling us forth, and we thought the red comet’s glow had touched you and sought to stop it, to allow you to slumber,” Elae says, pushing the tips of her weapon harder to Zaeyr’s chest.
“Stop!” I yell when I see a trickle of blood.
Their eyes snap to mine. Zaeyr takes that moment to swipe Elae’s weapon from her hand. He grabs her tail as she flips, darting under the water.
Jye releases me and rushes forward but stops when Zaeyr raises Elae’s weapon and points it at her.
I scurry onto the beach.
“You seek vengeance against me now!” Zaeyr screams, curdling my blood, making the mermaids cower. “If you had let me answer the femdragon and not closed off my cave, your precious home and mine would still exist. You brought this upon yourself!”
The mermaids duck their heads.
“Tell your kindred, if they want to live, to leave me be and accept the blame for their actions and yours. You will no longer have a dragon to contend with under your home, and for that, you should be very afraid. I have shown you mercy today. Remember this. I will not show it again.” He throws Elae’s tail away and she vanishes under the water. Jye follows.
His glowing gaze meets mine and I swallow. He takes a step toward me, and I jolt back. His body is awash in the red comet glow, and it makes him look monstrous, untamed.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him under the comet’s light. He’s the same but somehow different… frighteningly so. Like the comet’s glow has pierced through his flesh and taken over, birthing a creature not of this tropical world.
And the red… The bright, potent red is like hot lava, steamed water, glowing ruby embers between us. A burning sensation surges through me, wrapping around my limbs.
“Do not run from me, Aida,” he warns. My spine stiffens. “I will eventually catch you. There is no place on Venys you can go where our bond will not connect us.”
“You do not know my tenacity,” I whisper. “Or how far I will go to keep my pride.”
His brow furrows but he steps closer. Moving back, my hands fist in the sand at my sides.
“Mate—”
“Do not call me that!” I yell, rising to my feet.
The wrinkles of his brow deepen. I don’t like the sudden concern on his face. “Youare my mate,” he says.
“In my culture, a mate does not touch another for release! And to do so right next to me? How dare you. How dare you! And with my sister no less.”
Concern eases his brow. “Is that why you ran?” his voice lowers.
Opening my hands, I let the sand I collected drop. I want to run; I want him to come after me. I want him to hurt for the hurt I feel.
But most of all I want him to understand. Understand that I am worth everything, that I won’t accept betrayal, that if he seeks to punish me in such a way, I will fight him every day for the rest of my life and make my punishmenthis.
“Yes, that’s why I ran.” I inhale.
