Page 39

I’ll read every word she puts in front of me, and I’ll master it just to wipe that look off her face.

Solveig turns away, her black gown sweeping over the floor. She crosses to a pile of heavy ledgers on a nearby pedestal and lifts an ancient volume with effortless kraken strength before carrying it back to the reading table.

The tome lands with a deep thud that reverberates through the cavernous space. A cloud of dry dust rises with the scent of old leather. The blue hide covering the book is almost the same color as Sigurd’s skin.

“You are remarkably calm for a surface-dweller,” Solveig comments.

I hook my fingers over the top edge of the cover and pull the massive volume toward me. It barely moves. I brace my arms against the table and try again, dragging the book across the stone until I finally get it into place. The precise alignment settles something in my chest.

“Like you said, Frawjō, I am a librarian.” I trace my thumb over the embossed title on the leather cover. “I am very good at research. Where should we begin?”

Solveig watches my hands, her open aggression settling into the strict, commanding demeanor of a headmistress. She points the tip of her cane at the center of the book.

“Chapter one,” Solveig commands. “The hierarchy of the clans and the obligations of the matriarch. Pay attention.”

I flip open the heavy cover and settle my hands on the first page. Whatever else the abyss expects from me, this part I know how to do.

12

The Lie of Omission

Sigurd

I swim alone into the contested zone, leaving Valerie safely behind in the dry fortress.

A squad of merfolk guards the perimeter ahead. The erratic green glow of their spears catches the frantic movement of their tails as they turn toward me. Then my shadow passes over them.

“Hold the line,” I rumble into the current, projecting the command through the water.

They retreat anyway, and I can’t entirely blame them. Military discipline only goes so far when a fully shifted kraken is bearing down on you.

I let them scatter and turn my attention to the jagged fissure splitting the bedrock ahead. My limbs uncoil as I approach, and two tentacles curl around the uneven rim. Their suction cups lock against the stone as the downwelling pulls at my bulk.

Every instinct tells me to descend into the ravine and find Lotan myself. Instead, I force myself to wait. The fissure drops vertically beneath me, disappearing into darkness. Cold water surges upward from somewhere far below. Fragments of pale marine growth tumble through the current.

Something shifts beneath them. “Show yourself, leviathan,” I call out into the dark.

The armored ridges of Lotan’s serpentine spine breach the edge of the ravine. His scales grind against the bedrock with a long screech as he rises. He coils just below me, forcing the current outward in heavy pulses. Disturbed flora flashes along the walls of the fissure, throwing brief green light across his snout.

My mother’s treaty gives him leverage. I have something she never offered him.

“Lotan. Come out. I bring an alternative. Rakan al-Rashid is altering an oceanic basin for your brood. When his work is finished, the water will sustain your young. You take the basin. Saltweather remains untouched.”

Lotan rises higher along the ravine wall. The mention of Rakan slows him, but suspicion remains fixed in his slitted eyes.

“You offer me territory that cannot support my young and expect me to surrender a coastline already promised to me.” His voice travels through the water as a rough vibration against my hide. “That is not an alternative, Eiriksson.”

I hold his gaze through the drifting silt. “You’re correct. It is more than that. When Rakan is done, it will be a vastly superior option.”

Lotan’s armored coils shift against the ravine wall, scales grinding slowly over basalt. “You place considerable faith in the djinn.”

“I would not be here if I doubted the outcome. It is a priceless offer, and I’m working with Rakan to accommodate everyone.”

Lotan turns his head away, angling the armor of his neck toward me as he begins to sink back into the fissure.

“I don’t need your accommodations,” he says. “The matriarch and I already have a deal. The coastline is mine. I do not care about the surface-dwellers.”

I’ve spent this entire negotiation knowing exactly what happens when two creatures like us stop pretending territory can be settled politely. Hearing him dismiss Saltweather as though its people don’t matter strips away what remains of my patience.