“Trying to break through this wall. Right here,” I gritted out. “Come help me.”
Clive grabbed me around the middle and pulled me down. “Let me.”
I hated to admit it, but there was no way I was getting through that wall. I’d barely scratched it. I pulled out my phone flashlight again.
Clive leapt up, one foot on the pipe, one on the wall, with his left hand holding himself steady. He pointed to where I’d been pushing. “Here?”
“Yes. That’s where Léna showed me.”
Nodding, Clive made a fist and punched the wall. A crack appeared. He shook the blood off his knuckles and punched it again. This time, I heard rock scraping against rock.
Vlad ran back in and scrambled up the wall so he was beside Clive. “Together, then. One. Two. Go.”
They both punched and the wall crumbled under a tidal wave of steaming water. It rushed in and slammed me against the back wall. Submerged, I panicked and kicked off the floor, surfacing a foot from the ceiling. Oh, jeez. Please don’t let me drown on my rescue mission.
As the water spread out through the basement, the level went down a foot or so. Woohoo, imminent death avoided once again. Stuffing the now useless phone in my back pocket, I swam against the rush of water, over the broken wall and into whatever lay beyond.
Blinking my stinging eyes, I searched for Cordelia in the pitch-black. I swam forward with my arms outstretched, wishing I still had a working flashlight. Russell and Godfrey must never learn that I’d trashed another phone. Assuming we made it out before the bombs started, that was.
“Over here,” Vlad said.
A light appeared over the surface of the water. Vlad had an actual flashlight in his hand. Where did he find that?
We appeared to be in some kind of submerged cave. Given what we could see, the rocky ceiling was about ten feet above the water at its highest point and perhaps a foot at its lowest.
I glanced back at the hole in the wall and remembered all the water that had just been displaced, meaning much of this ceiling had actually been underwater. Cordelia had only had a small pocket available to her above the water.
Clive was suddenly beside me, pulling my arms around his neck.
Are you all right? he asked me, mind-to-mind.
Yep. I’m fine. I hit the wall, but it was the other side of my head and—shit! I’m not in Cadmael’s head anymore. I’m not holding the prince.
We’ll deal with it, he said, swimming us over to Vlad, who was hovering beside a rocky outcropping.
When we got closer, I realized the sharp gray rock I’d thought I was looking at was an emaciated, dying mermaid. Oh, no. Poor Cordelia.
Lifting my pinky ring to my lips, I whispered, “We need your help. One of your mermaids has been horribly abused and starved for centuries. Please. She needs help. She’s dying.” It was Gloriana’s ring, but that didn’t guarantee she was listening.
Vlad was speaking to Cordelia in another language, but his eyes were on me as I spoke into the ring. Why did I trust him as I did? No idea. It all had to be done if we were going to help her, so I supposed I just had to hope my trust wasn’t misplaced.
Algar, Gloriana’s captain of the guard, appeared, crouching on the rocks beside Cordelia. He scanned the water, saw me, and nodded. Resting a hand on the mermaid’s head, he appeared to breathe life into her. Skin less gray, scales richer in tone and now adhering to her body, she opened her eyes, gazing adoringly at Algar.
Both Clive and Vlad wore matching blank expressions, which made me want to laugh. Neither wanted to appear surprised by the fae warrior appearing out of thin air and resuscitating Cordelia.
“Algar is the queen’s captain of the guard,” I whispered.
Gloriana herself appeared, her kaleidoscopic eyes swirling in a very angry black and red. Algar picked up Cordelia and cradled her in his arms. Gloriana laid a hand over Cordelia’s heart and the mermaid’s skin returned to the gold hue I remembered in that long-ago memory.
Gloriana leaned over and kissed Cordelia’s forehead, and then Algar and Cordelia disappeared. The queen turned her furious countenance to me. “Who hurt my cherished one?”
“The prince. He’s a cruel man, who imprisoned her in this place centuries ago,” I said.
Vlad, treading water beside Clive and me, looked in the same direction I was pointed, clearly trying to understand who I was talking to. The queen was invisible to all but the fae. And me when she felt like it.
“I think he’s still in this building. I can?—”
“I feel him,” she interrupted, looking up into the rock above her head and then she, too, disappeared, along with my headache.
