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Lotan fights harder once he realizes where I am taking him. His claws catch my shoulder as we crash into the chamber, and he drives his forehead into mine when I try to pin one wrist against the metal wall.

The impact blurs my vision.

Valerie shouts my name from the corridor as I throw Lotan across the chamber and strike the cycle control. The inner doors begin to close before he can come back at me.

I see Valerie through the narrowing gap. She’s running toward us with fury and fear written plainly across her face. Lotan slams into me again before I can turn fully toward her. The heavy panels seal between us.

Water erupts from the vents and climbs rapidly around our legs. Lotan comes at me again, but the rising water ruins his footing and gives my tentacles more room to move. We crash against the wall once more as the chamber fills past our waists, neither of us bothering with anything resembling a clean fight.

By the time the water reaches my shoulders, there is no reason to prolong it inside the chamber. I trigger the outer doors and feel the pressure equalize around us as the trench opens beyond them.

Lotan uses the first pull of the open water to break away from me. He surges through the widening gate, abandoning his humanoid form before he is fully outside.

I follow him into the trench and let my own smaller shape go. My body expands into its true proportions, and the cramped limits of the airlock disappear as my tentacles spread through the dark water.

Lotan turns several body lengths away. His body has lengthened into the massive serpentine shape built for these depths, protected by overlapping scales from his head down the length of him.

He swings around and strikes before I can spread far enough to meet him.

His coils close around the center of my body and constrict with brutal speed. The armored plates grind against my skin as he tightens, trapping several tentacles and denying me enough room to turn.

I brace against the seabed and search along his side until I find the edge of one scale. My tentacle hooks beneath it, and I tear hard enough to rip the plate loose.

Lotan convulses. His coils loosen for a fraction of a second, giving me enough space to wrench myself free.

His tail catches the side of my head as I pull away. He circles beneath me and comes back with his jaws open.

His teeth close around one of my lower tentacles.

Pain shoots through the limb, but pulling away would give him room to reposition. I let him drag himself closer instead, then wrap around him and use his momentum to drive us both into the seabed.

The impact shudders through the rock.

Lotan lands beneath me and immediately tries to roll us. I keep his head turned away from the injured limb and pin him against the seabed. He struggles for several seconds before he realizes brute force will not get him free. The movement exposes a damaged scale along the side of his neck, lifted where we struck the seabed.

I tighten my hold until he stops trying to turn.

“If you kill me now, every merfolk in that hall will know exactly what happened,” he projects through the water. “They watched you start this fight. They will know when you chose to turn it into an execution.”

I understand what his death would mean. My mother would be left with a dead leviathan, a hall full of witnesses, and a territorial dispute that could no longer be contained with negotiations.

That knowledge doesn’t make my grip loosen.

Lotan’s body surges beneath mine again, but he no longer has the strength or room to break free.

“Beating me is one thing, Sigurd. Killing me makes this war.”

The warning is clear, and so is the vulnerable flesh beneath the scale I tore away. One clean strike through that opening would end him before he had time to twist aside.

“You should have stayed in the dark, Lotan. You were safer there.”

For the first time in centuries, I intend to kill. And I have no regrets.

17

Into the Trench

Valerie