I held up my hands in a disarming fashion. “Right now, your mother is a prisoner. If she is still alive.”
Arden’s nostrils flared. “All I need is for you to show me where Balor keeps her prisoners, and I will rescue her myself.”
“Why are we even fighting this overgrown seagull?” Cormac feigned a yawn. “All he can do is fly, and there’s nothing special about a pair of wings underwater.”
Rainn put a hand to his chest, acting as if he were offended. “I thought you only insulted me that way. I didn’t know you went around giving everyone that barbed tongue.”
Cormac narrowed his eyes. “Only if they’re fecking eejits.”
Shay cleared his throat, having walked the length of the abyss and back while we had been arguing. “Arden should wait in the city. Balor will only use him as leverage to get Nuada to do as she wishes.”
We all fell silent. He had a point.
A low rumbling sound echoed under our feet, a shower of pebbles, and the creak of the lakebed moving against its will. The abyss parted, revealing a single straight path to Cruinn.
Balor had noticed our arrival.
We walked through the gap in the abyss, and the lump in my throat refused to leave until we had cleared the darkness—feeling eyes on the back of my neck for the several minutes it took to swim through the gloom.
Despite the argument with Arden, he had surged forward into the abyss first. Leaving us all behind to chase after him.
The moment I stepped into Undine territory, my knees buckled and I struggled to stand. Shay Mac Eoin caught me before I fell to the lakebed.
My hands shook. “I can feel him,” I whispered. “Tormalugh.”
Shay glanced at the castle in the distance. “Is he hurt?”
“I don’t know.” No matter how hard my gills worked, I struggled to breathe. My magic seemed to be rearranging myself inside my body to accommodate my Kelpie and our bond.
Tormalugh’s voice was weak.
I startled, and the connection snapped back, leaving my head smarting from the blow. I couldn’t remember the last time Tor and I had shared a conversation without speaking a word. I’d assumed it was a fluke, but perhaps my mother had been right. Balor had done something to our bonds when she had pushed me onto the throne.
I closed my eyes, imagining my hands grabbing the dark threat inside my chest.
He did not answer my question.
I told him.
His words cut off abruptly. I tried to grab the thread again, but it had dispersed into shadow.
I told the others what Tor had said.
“It’s a trap,” Cormac said grimly.
We all agreed, but there was no other option.
One of Balor’s attendants came to get us on the edge of the city limits, but not before it became apparent that the number of Undine in Cruinn had shrunk significantly.
Gouges marked the stone streets, as if Undine had been dragged away, their claws scoring the streets in protest. The unmolested houses were barricaded, and our arrival did not go unnoticed as curtains twitched with more than the lake’s current.
Cruinn had changed. The water was poisoned like iron leaching into every drop. The presence I felt, the playful lake I had grown up with, was gone. Cruinn had been abandoned by the lake’s magic and replaced with Balor’s rage.
Liam showed no fear, although he displayed no particular emotions upon being back in the city. Perhaps it was just that I couldn't read his face as easily as I could with my friends.
Rainn, Cormac, and Shay would have been at the castle already, bursting down the door and into the dungeon if not for the slow gait of the attendant. An Undine with garnet adornments, and a blank expression that unnerved me.
The castle that had been my home for many years, so much so that I could not leave it, felt like nothing more than an old stone tomb.
