I sigh heavily, sitting next to her on the hard floor, leaning against the bars. “This is not how I pictured this going.”
“How did you picture this?” Moyrie is not condescending when she could be. I have undertaken a task way out of my depth.
“More like how I met you. No snake pit.” A smile pulls back her glimmering skin.
“Silvers are not mers, Seraph.” Turning, she takes my hand in her surprisingly soft, scaled hand. Caught off guard, I let her take it, looking into her eyes—the colour of untouched blue skies.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
The apology startles me. “What?” The word pops out before I can think better of it.
She squeezes my hand. “For trying to bed your male and placing you in the snake pit. We often share bedmates in my home, and the snakes are handled for their venom daily.” The way the skin moves over her eyes and disappears under the place her eyebrows should be leaves me trapped, waiting for her to continue. “We did not thinkhow these situations would harm you. So, I wish to say sorry for our misunderstanding.”
Her words grip me. Once again, I’m reminded of how different we are, as if that isn’t evident enough by the build of our bodies.
“Thank you.” It’s barely audible. I’m a bit shocked by this turn of events. She didn’t strike me as someone who would apologise for the harm they cause others, her awareness more evident than I imagined.
Her widening smile at my thanks is somewhat infectious. I return it.Are we becoming friends?After all this is said and done, maybe Haven and the Silver Sands people can be allies. Perhaps all the Forgotten Lands people can band together.
Sitting silently, we fall into companionable silence.
Truthfully, I’ve come to like Moyrie more and more as rhythm has moved forward. She’s more practical than I thought she was.Perhaps I judged the Silver Sands people too quickly.Which I feel is only fair considering they stuck me in their venomous snake pit, and because Moyrie was trying to claim Rivern as her own.
She stands, pacing the cage, turning over ideas in her mind. Sometimes, Moyrie will clue me in, and other times, she’ll scowl before even letting me in on her discovery. It’s captivating, in an animalistic way.
One thing I’m learning each step of this new adventure through the Forgotten Lands is that humans are just another animal. We were stupid to think we were somehow better. So far, every creature I have met along this journey has been far superior to my basic genetics. It’s humbling, my fragile mortality.
“I think you underestimate the depths of these bars,” she suddenly continues the conversation from earlier.
“They can’t be that deep.” I move over to the closest circles of thick iron—the ones nearest the lapping water. A hint of light moves through a far-off rocky outcrop, illuminating half of our jail and the water ahead.
“We are dealing with mers. They will always be two steps ahead,” she scoffs. Anytime she mentions the mers, her hackles rise. A feud has gone back centuries between her people and theirs.
I wonder, though, if society’s pressures have changed, given how long this feud has lasted.Maybe they can come to a truce. We are here for her people just as much as my own. She wanted to know what was happening to the jewels of their lake. The mers are supposed to have answers.
Lingering on the distant light, I wonder if Gideon and Rivern ended up falling through a different chamber, imprisoned in their own cage. Perhaps they are past the glowing light, over by the jagged rocks. I have to try every possible avenue to reach them. Moyrie will have to put this feud aside.
Kneeling down, I grasp a handful of gritty sand, more coarse than the sand above, and start digging. Moyrie doesn’t utter a word, but I can feel the way her scepticism works its way through my skull.
Taking both hands, I push the sand, creating a hole, digging straight down.
Thud.
My hand makes contact with something hard. “Moyrie, I’ve found something.” A glimmer of excitement comes from my lips. I should know by now it’s misplaced.
Together, we continue digging, unveiling more and more of a flat iron surface, much like the flat metal hovering above us, connecting the iron bars in place.
I sit back on my knees. “Looks like you were right.”
I’m sure Moyrie doesn’t wish she were. We now find ourselves locked away like two birds in a cage, iron caging us in from all sides.
“Fury, any ideas?”I mutter down the bond. It’s a tentative truce. I hate that he’s bonded us, but if I can’t get out of here, then he’s stuck, too. We need each other, whether I like it or not.
“You want my opinion?”I sense the sarcasm. I glower.
“Yesss,”I seethe.
“Wait for them to come to you. You are healed now. When the mers come back,you will be able to talk to them. Tell them if they help you and me, I will grant them any wish they desire. Give them an incentive to let you free, Pet. Give them anything.”His voice is gravelly as he says it.
