“You know a lot for a witch stuck in the water,” Nova cooed. “Don’t suppose you have an informant running around somewhere.”
Ursla’s smile cracked, and tension flickered across her face. Yemi recognized a calming breath when she saw one as the sea witch’s features fluttered back into place to convey something more pleasant.
“You are a formidable thing, aren’t you?” she purred in Nova’s direction. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Ennova Lee Grey.”
“Be quiet then, Ennova.”
“Youdon’t speak to her that way,” Yemi snapped, noticing a knife fidgeting in Nova’s hand and placing herself between them.
“You, I distinctly remember saying, didn’t need me. Never would,” Ursla replied bitterly.
“I couldn’t see the future. Whereas you either can, or you set in motion the events that brought me here. Which would you prefer I believed was the case?”
There was a pause as they each gauged the other’s willpower. For Yemi’s part, she was determined to let the sea witch know that she wasn’t some child with dreams that could be manipulated. Ursla was a conduit to her Mer relatives. Nothing more.
“Either way, you wield a power that you offered me, and I require it. Do you stand by it or not?”
Ursla set about in a lazy drift around the boat as if basking in attention she hadn’t seen in ages. “I don’t know. Depends on what it is you’re asking exactly. I’m older than even these relics. Man’s faith wanes. My power isn’t what it once was.”
Yemi knew she was lying, and the witch’s taunting gaze seemed to dare her to say so. She remembered the sea changing to match her whims on their first meeting. If that was her power diminished, Yemi’s ask was hardly impossible.
“I need an audience with the Mer queen.”
“Your Aunt Helene?” The words came out almost as a chuckle. “Whatever for?”
There was that name.Helene.Selah’s annoyed blink suddenly made sense. Yemi hadn’t known her own aunt’s name. She swallowed her embarrassment and pressed on.
“My mother and our holy order wanted me to reconnect with the Mer, so I intend to do that.”
“And hopefully that connection gives aid to your cause, yes? Exploit the old familial tie and kill all these birds with one stone,” Ursla said with a smile. The smile gave way to a laugh that grew to such intensity that she wrapped her tentacles around the prow to hold herself steady while Yemi and Nova glanced at one another. “Well, I just love it. I’ll tell you what: She’s not coming here, but I can take you to the Mer city of Abyssa and you can make your plea. The queen is there.Have her… I don’t know, wreck your pretender queen’s navy, starve your people into subjugation.”
“This idea sounds even worse when she says it,” Nova muttered.
“Where is it? Abyssa. I’ll commission a ship,” Yemi said.
“Oh, you can’t get to Abyssa from up there. You’ll have to join us down here,” Ursla replied, long fingers twirling small circles in the surface of the water. And for a moment, Yemi thought she saw something like hunger flicker across Ursla’s face. “Merely temporarily, of course,” Ursla added when she saw Yemi’s hesitation. “You’ll have your audience and be returned to this state, right as rain, to go on about your business once it’s completed.”
“In exchange for what?” Nova demanded.
“First one’s free.” Ursla smiled.
“So… what?” Nova puzzled. “We become merfolk, or…”
Ursla shook her head. “There is nowe, dear. She goes alone.”
“No. Absolutely not,” Nova said. Yemi flinched, as it bore the same note of finality as the night when she’d refused her orders in the prison. “You see this is her game, right? She’s splitting us up on purpose.”
“Meet me in Muris,” Yemi told her, trying to match the authority Nova seemed to assume she had. “I’ll meet you there in… How long will this take?”
Ursla shrugged. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days.”
“Yemaya, don’t be fucking stupid.” Nova huffed her frustration through clenched teeth.
“What did Van die for if I don’t go?” Yemi hissed. It came out harsher than she meant it.
Nova stared at her in pain and disbelief, then shook her head, face angled toward the sky as if asking it why it wouldn’t be preferable to maybe just knock Yemi out and drag her away from this.
