“Ask away,” Audrey encouraged, patting the seat next to her for Liam to take.
“First.” I held up one finger. “What the hell do you do in Hyvenmere when you go there?” My question made Liam smirk, and Audrey groan. “Do you just hang out in Liam’s castle all day? Do you play tourist? I mean, a lot of people seemed to recognize you.”
“That’s another loaded question,” Liam muttered with an elbow against Audrey’s arm.
“Why?” I pressed.
“It’s just—ugh.” Audrey scraped a hand down her face as she settled in. “Back when Liam first found me outside the library, originally, I went there so often because I wanted to learn more about my culture. I’m half-fae, after all.” I nodded, because that made sense to me. “Plus, I was able to meet a handful of other halflings who have been secretly traveling there for years. Some halflings have known about their Hyvenmerian lineage their whole lives, but others just stumbled upon it when I did, when powers manifested, or when Liam and Fergus found them. But then rumors about me being Hyvenmerian’s Chosen One started spreading this last year or so, and I’m not sure who started it or why, but it’s caused a lot of contention between Hyvenmerians and halflings like myself. So now when I’m over there, it feels like a lot of shaking hands and political peacekeeping—which Liam and Ada have been able to help me with.”
“We also train over there,” Liam added, as he stretched his legs out to cross his ankles.
“What makes people think you’re the Chosen One?”
“No idea,” Audrey sighed, gently swirling her glass as she watched the liquid slosh around. “I don’t fit the requirements of the prophecy—the details we know of it, anyway. But theSiren King, Ilia,does. So, naturally, I’m not exactly the siren government’s favorite person right now. Thus…” Audrey wiggled her fingers in a flourish. “…weird contention with halflings.”
I considered her words for a moment before saying, “If this Ilia man is actually confident thathe’sthe Chosen One the prophecy talks about, then he shouldn’t be so threatened by you.”
Audrey released a humorless laugh. “Unfortunately, that’s not?—”
Our conversation was interrupted by a loud, guttural, haunting roar.
All three of us froze to turn toward the water. It was one of those noises that felt huge. My ears just knew that whatever was making that sound was massive. It almost sounded like the cry of a whale, if the whale was pissed off and able to amplify the sound by twenty units or so.
“Here?” Audrey whispered in horror. I turned over my shoulder to look at her, and even though Audrey was already incredibly pale, even I could notice the blood drain from her face in the dim light of night.
Liam stood tall and reached behind himself.
When he pulled his hand forward, he was grasping a large sword.
A real one, based on how the steel of the blade reflected the moonlight above.
“Did you just pull a sword out of your ass?” I asked him.
My question was ignored, and instead of replying, Audrey stood to shove me behind her as she stepped toward Liam.
“What do we do?” Her question was followed by another deafening roar, and far out in the water, a large creature emerged, tilting its head back as it released another haunting bellow.
I almost fainted from the sight of it.
It was as if a dragon was crawling out of the ocean. One clawed hand broke the surface of the water, flexing its massive claws. Pale scales glistened against the night sky, and the creature turned its huge reptilian snout toward us, parting its mouth and hissing.
It took every muscle in my body not to soil myself in devastating fear.
“We need to keep it away from civilians,” Liam muttered before he disappeared into thin air.
He was standing there, then he wasn’t. Perhaps he did the not-teleporting thing Audrey mentioned earlier.
“Hide!” Audrey shouted at me, pointing inside the cabin of my mini yacht, before she took off in a sprint, jumping off the boat into the ocean.
I was standing there on my deck, paralyzed with fear, unable to believe what I was seeing.
A masculine shout danced across the water, and the sword Liam held glinted against the moon’s glow when I realized he was jumping onto the long spine of the monster.
A flash of red hair followed him out of the water.
“No!” I shouted to myself. I had no idea what was happening, but I was not about to let some fuck ass guy lead Audrey to her death. Perhaps I was hallucinating, and I wasn’t actually seeing a sea-dragon-like thing emerging from the Pacific Ocean. I was convinced, however, that what was really happening was still dangerous.
Audrey was risking her life to get involved.
