I freeze at the sight of my father’s likeness, this one eerily accurate. “I’m a cuttlefish sprite, adept at glamours that mimic other people. I can be anyone you want me to be.” Her face shifts again, this time looking only slightly similar to the boy I rescued—Brother Dorian. It seems to me her impersonations are only as good as her familiarity with the person she’s mimicking. Does that mean she’s seen Dorian in person? Or has she only spied his black-and-white photograph on the sign outside the church while stalking me on my mother’s behalf? If the latter is the case, she’s somehow managed to glean an accurate shade of flesh and hair.
“You’re pathetic,” Zara says under her breath, bringing her face—now back to her own—uncomfortably close to mine. “You couldn’t kill me if you tried.”
“Youwantme to kill you?”
“No, I want to crawl from the sea and slither ashore near your little lagoon, wearing your face. From there, I want to find each of your brothers and slit them throat to root and peel the skin from their bones. Then I want to make a cape of their sealskins, parade around in their flesh, and march right up to your pathetic, boneless, brainless father and—”
With a rage coursing through my blood, I surge forward and press my lips to hers. I do nothing else to make it a kiss, just press my mouth as hard as I can on hers to halt her vile words. Then I lurch back, placing several feet between us. She stands in place, lips curling into a smirk as she shakes her head. “You’re—” The next word gets caught on a choke. Her smile dissolves in an instant as her hands fly to her throat. Her skin turns a shade paler.
I glance from her to Nimue and her assassins. All watch with curiosity, not a single one revealing an ounce of concern for their Sister.
Zara falls to the ground, and I find myself frozen in place, trembling as I watch another person die by my poisonous lips.
10
Idon’t notice Nimue when she rises from her throne, only when she lays a hand on my shoulder. “You did well,” she whispers, then gently pushes me aside. I expect her to lift the dead body in her arms but instead, she stands before it.
And closes her eyes.
A familiar sensation fills my bones, one that tugs me forward, inward. It offers peace and tranquility, a way to stop time and escape who I am. What I’ve done. So I close my eyes too.
When I open them, the world has turned to violet.
My dread lessens by half as the magic of the Twelfth Court surrounds me. For once, though, I’m not alone. I suppose I’m never actually alone when I visit this realm, but normally, I’m the only one moving freely about it. This time, there’s someone else here.
Nimue.
Her body is composed of purple particles like everything else, but unlike the bright violet figures of the frozen assassins and the waning purple hue that comprises the body on the floor, she seems aware of her surroundings. She slithers around Zara and heads toward a form I hadn’t noticed at first, one a little more shapeless than the rest as it floats and undulates a few feet away from Zara. Nimue approaches the light-being and offers a hand. “Come child,” Nimue whispers in a voice that sounds both too loud and too quiet in this strange world. “It is not your time yet.”
The violet form ripples once. Twice. Then something like an arm extends from it, allowing Nimue to take hold. With one hand grasping that of the light-being and the other propped behind it, Nimue turns around and gently ushers it forward. When they reach Zara’s body, Nimue softly sings to it in what sounds like the same language she cursed me with. The light-form begins to lower, inch by inch, and Nimue lowers with it until the light fills the shape that was Zara’s body. Nimue continues to sing, the tune a haunting wail. When the song ends, she rises back to her full height. Then her face whips toward mine. A ripple of panic runs through me as she tilts her head to the side. “Are you here too, my little pearl?”
The question is enough to snap me out of the Twelfth Court. I open my eyes to find time has returned to normal. I brace myself for the nausea I expect to follow, but it doesn’t come. Not this time. Is it because I wasn’t the one to open the connection to the realm? Did I just piggyback off my mother’s link to the Twelfth Court? More concerning is the fact that she entered the realm at all, which means…that’s another strange power I inherited from her.
I meet her eyes and find she’s watching me through slitted lids, a knowing smile on her lips. “You, my child, are full of surprises,” she says.
I’m saved from replying when Zara stumbles to her feet, gasping for breath. She bares her teeth when she sees me and takes a forbidding step forward, claws extended. “You blubber-headed seal pup—”
“Enough,” Nimue says, voice firm. “You knew what you were getting into, Zara.”
Zara halts her steps but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“Return to the Sisters,” Nimue demands.
A low growl rumbles from Zara’s throat, but she obeys, glaring at me with every step she takes.
“I’m proud of you, daughter.” Nimue grins at me as if I’d just performed my first underwater backflip. “Now, we have much more to discuss.” With that, she slithers to her throne and takes a seat.
“Like how you just made me kill someone?”
She waves a flippant hand at Zara. “She was barely dead. And look, she’s fine now!”
Zara scoffs.
“I have nothing to discuss with you,” I say. “I don’t have to talk to you, listen to you—”
“As a matter of fact, you do. According to my bargain with your father, you serve under my rule now. Your allegiance is to me. Nothing can break that.”
Nothing…except marriage to another court. For the love of the shells, Father knew so much more than he’d let on. If he’d been honest with me from the start, I might have done things differently when he sent me to marry a land prince. Forget worrying about being rejected when my lethal kiss was discovered. I could have threatened the prince with it! Forced him to marry me and keep me safe. Fiery rage courses through my blood but it’s quickly extinguished. Because, at the end of the day, I’m not fire. I’m water. I’m a soft little seal who can’t even handle killing someone I hate, much less threatening an innocent.
