“Is that the only reason you want me in your life? You need a balance of love and hate to keep you from going insane?”
“That’s not what I mean.” She hesitated. “I don’t even think hate is the opposite of love anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean … they share too many traits to be opposites. Both are all-consuming, keep you awake at night, give you this crazy feeling in your gut. You know what I mean?”
Maybe it should have been sweet, if she was describing what love did to her—but it wasn’t, because she was putting me on the same plane as Adaro.
“You’re saying it’s all just obsession,” I said.
“I don’t know. Never mind.”
I let it drop, my heart aching too much to continue the conversation.
In the never-ending blackness, I couldn’t tell how much time passed. Stomach pains told me we’d missed several meals. My eyelids grew heavy. I might have dozed off, though there was little difference between closing my eyes and the pressing darkness.
Finally, activity flowed down that spiralling well. I jolted into alertness. A pair of mermen entered.
The water stirred as Meela rushed at her cell door.
“Listen,” she said. “We’re working against Adaro. Our names are Metlaa Gaela and Lysithea—”
“Quiet,” said one of the mermen.
“—and we’ve come here to tell Medusa what we know. We weren’t sent by anyone, and—”
“Mee, shut up!”
She did shut up, but I suspected this was because they’d begun to open her cell door.
A scuffle told me she tried to flee past them. At this, my anxiety reached a point where I thought I might throw up.
“Her Majesty wishes to see you,” said a guard.
“She does?” said Meela.
I let the other guard grab me. They hauled us out of our cells. Medusa wanted to see us? I couldn’t decide whether to be excited or afraid. Had something convinced her to hear us out? Maybe the guards had relayed our purpose to her, after all.
Still, the idea of a public execution floated at the back of my mind. If we were in Adaro’s kingdom, maybe—but I hoped I was right in thinking Medusa was better than that.
We spiralled back up the passage and into the world. The daylight, though dim, was blinding.
Rather than turn back to the entrance, they pulled us towards the palace wall. We passed through a stone door, small and hidden beneath weeds. Two guards flanked the other side. They nodded as we passed.
My heart pounded. We were inside the Atlantic Queen’s palace. Never in my life did I expect to be here. A thrill of excitement ran through me despite the trepidation I felt. I wished I could tell Spio, or my mom and dad, or my brother, or anyone. I committed every detail to memory. If we ever got out of here, I would want to remember it.
The palace was a maze of hand-built stone walls—rough, ancient, impenetrable. Even the outside noise was muffled, so only our movement and the crackling coral on the walls tickled my ears.
We rose two floors through more of those spiral wells. Some were exposed to the daylight above; others were speckled with holes and had tiny jellyfish in the ceiling so we were never plunged into blackness.
We passed by windows, which tapered so they were easy to see through but wouldn’t be obvious from the other side.
Corridors branched off in all directions. I glimpsed vast rooms with dozens of merpeople inside, meeting or working or whatever they were doing. I tried to catch some of their conversations, but we were moving too quickly. We took turn after turn in a pattern I would never remember.
“Let me do the talking,” I whispered to Meela.
“You think I’ll say the wrong thing?”
