An enormous fishing net blocked our path, suspended from the ice floes and fluttering in the current.
“Dinner!” said Gurr.
This confused me, because the net was empty. Then they all turned to me.
I was the only mermaid—the one with the allure. I could catch them the easy meal.
“No,” I said.
Thetis cracked me on the head with the butt of his mace. “We’re hungry. Get us those fishermen and we’ll consider letting you have a bite.”
I opened my mouth to argue. All of them glared at me, shifting their weapons. I huffed.
“You’ll have to untie my hands.”
They traded uneasy looks. Hunger must have won out, because Thetis finally loosened the rope from my hands. He added an extra loop around my neck to be sure.
How was I going to get out of this? I’d never lured a human with the intent to kill. I didn’t want to start now. I wondered if I’d be able to let these people escape and make it seem accidental.
I swam between Nestor and Thetis, refusing to make eye contact with any of them.
The fishermen were inexperienced. I could feel them stomping around loud enough to scare off every fish within a league. Also the ice was barely a hand thick and dangerously cracked. One wrong step and they would fall through. And what were they doing so close to a merman army with everything going on? Something was off.
Surfacing carefully to make sure no one was poised up there with a weapon, I prepared to turn on the charm—and stopped.
It wasn’t fishermen. It was Meela, peeking out from behind a mound of snow.
I nearly shouted in relief.
She waved me over. I hesitated, still processing what was happening. Had she set up the net? Or had she found it here and climbed up? What the heck was her plan?
Meela gestured again, more urgently. I pointed to the ropes around my neck and tried to indicate that they were tied around my waist, too. She nodded in acknowledgement, but kept beckoning me over.
I supposed that even if she helped me sever the ropes, the guys would notice the slackening and come investigate before I could be cut free.
She must have had a plan. Or was this another reckless moment of hers?
I met her wide, green eyes.
She wouldn’t endanger me. I had to trust her.
I hoisted myself onto the ice, doing my best to use the same careful pace I would use in luring a human. As far as the guys below were concerned, I was still hunting their dinner.
“Catch,” whispered Meela, her voice a breath on the wind.
She threw something to me. It was a bag, jammed full of something soft.
What the—?
The stench hit me and I wrinkled my nose. The bag was full of blood and guts. It had begun to freeze, turning thick and slushy. Where did she get this from? What was I supposed to do with it?
Meela mimed shooting a crossbow at me.
Comprehension dawning, I curled my lips in a smirk. Her answering smile was the most wonderful thing I’d seen in days.
Giving her a grim salute, I upended the bag and let out my most blood-curdling scream. The bag’s contents spread across the ice, most of it freezing instantly but some trickling into the cracks.
I imagined the guys below panicking, thinking I’d been shot. If they felt threatened by iron, they wouldn’t surface right away—if at all. It gave me a precious fragment of time.
