His brows pinch in confusion. “A Curse,” he says, like he isn’t sure if they’re the same thing.
The air in the dome grows frigid, but the water’s temperature increases with the shifting landscape. It rises by at least ten degrees, rapidly ticking upward until it feels like I’m swimming through a hot pool in my wetsuit.
Worse is the scene below. The sand changes from grey to pitch-black, broken only by the protruding white bones.
The energy feels all sorts of wrong. The atmosphere is staticky, cloying, like stepping into an abandoned hospital, or standing alone in a forest when all the insects have got silent.
Ordus stops us before it reaches jacuzzi level. I slowly pry myself away from him. The reprieve of moving my aching limbs is instantaneous. One of his tentacles helps me turn to survey the area, still close enough to him that the air dome remains around us.
In the distance, a single boat lies on a pile of animal corpses. It looks like one of those traditional Balinese fishing boats, theold-timey ones that often find their way to the bottom of the ocean, except this one has more color and parts.
Dad’s buddy Marcus would take us out on his boat every summer to go fishing or tubing with his two kids. When I was nineteen, Dad, Marcus, and a couple of their other friends took us snorkeling at Wreck Alley.
Majority of us were way too beginner to check out the Ruby E, but Dad’s biker friend Saul had been snorkeling since birth and showed us the pictures he took after he went down.
The Ruby E looks nothing like the fishing boat in front of us. The photos showed the deck and hull covered in pinks, yellows, and greens from algae, every inch of surface left exposed to the unforgiving elements.
This boat isn’t blanketed in moss. Streams of green aren’t floating off it or winding around the lines. The lines of blues and reds painted on the bow and hull look like they could’ve been done in the past year. It isn’t rusted either.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the boat just went down in the past day.
“What is this place?” I whisper. It doesn’t feel right to talk here.
Sensing my unease, Ordus draws me closer to him. I shouldn’t be breathing a little easier with him near, but nothing about this place is natural.
“Fifty years ago, a kraken killed the daughter of a sailor.” His voice is low. I watch him over my shoulder, listening intently. “He stole her from the ship and killed her before swimming away.”
My lips part as I shift my attention back to the boat. Are there dead people in there? I instinctually move closer to Ordus.
“My mother, the queen—” His mother, thequeen? Excuse me?“—wasn’t aware of what he had done until that very vesselreturned a month later, bringing with it the woman’s mother. A witch. An incredibly powerful one.”
Witches. Queens. Krakens. I clench my jaw and silently urge him to continue.
“And so started the Witch’s tirade for revenge. She didn’t care who the offending kraken was. In her eyes, all kraken-kind was complicit, all suffering for the crimes of one. She sacrificed her crew, used the energy from their souls to kill my mother and cast a Curse over our territory for all plants to wither and die so krakens will starve to death or succumb to the Waste,” he says, like he’s repeating a story out of a kid’s book, not something he’s lived through.
I stare at the boat. His story makes sense. In a way.
It justifies the miles upon miles of desert land we passed. It explains this eerie place, the lack of vegetation on Ordus’ island.
I believe him.
“My sister was agile.” There’s the first inflection in his tone, a dip that says this isn’t just a story for him. “She snapped the Witch’s neck, but it was too late. The damage was done. My mother was dead, and our territory cursed. It is why…” He clears his throat. “Why my kingdom is known as the Dead Lands.”
I’m not sure whether I’m more shocked by the fact that one witch could cause this much destruction, or that Ordus is a fuckingking.
“Forever?” I whisper, turning back to face him. The Earth is already screwed because of human greed. I’m no scientist, but I’m fairly certain the last thing our world needs is for part of the sea to be uninhabitable for all forms of life.
The full weight of his attention falls on me. “No. The Curse can be lifted.”
Ordus’ tentacle squeezes my waist. The blues of his irises have darkened into thunderclouds, the glint of sunlight in thema thunderbolt. The intensity makes me suck in a sharp breath, wanting to turn back around to avoid seeing his gaze.
I wet my dry lips. “How?” Something tells me I don’t want to know.
“By the ruler marrying their destined bride.”
His words slam into me, heavy and suffocating.Me.
I’m his so-called mate. How much moredestinedcan it get?
