While I choke, someone pulls my arms back and binds my wrists

together. Dylan falls beside me. She pokes me with Dylan’s staff.

“If you wanted to tie us up, you just had to ask,” I say.

She hits me again, and this time it hurts too much to speak. Her

warriors laugh. One lights a torch with the flames from our fire.

Another blindfolds us.

“Thank you,” I say to the blindfolder. “I forgot my sunglasses at

home. Damn UV rays, really bad for you.”

That elicits another blow to my back.

“A little lower,” I say. “I have all these kinks from my last

explosion.”

I feel hands pushing me forward and hear the quick feet of Dylan

beside me. “Do you want them to tear you apart?” he asks.

“Can’t make it too easy for them,” I say.

“You guys should try out my weapons,” I shout to the leader. “They

slice through bone really nicely.”

“And have my flesh burned off when I touch one of them?” she asks.

“Keep walking.”

“Damn, there goes my maniacal plan,” I say as hands shove me.

“What’s your plan? My parents are pretty middle class so we don’t have

much in the way of ransom. My college fund won’t get you much in this

economy.”

“Can I put an arrow through his jaw?” A dude’s voice comes from

somewhere in the back. “His babbling offends the river gods.”

“Sorry, river gods!”

“Lord Sea,” Dylan hisses.

For his benefit, I stop talking. Brendan didn’t mention anything

about angry see-through people. What have I gotten myself into?

A hand presses against my chest. We must be at another waterfall

because it sounds like water rushing everywhere. When my blindfold is

cut off, I know I’m right. Here the trees grow thicker and lower to

the ground.

“Where’s your merry band of lost boys and girls?” I ask.

The others have vanished, but Tiger Eyes is beside a wall covered

in ivy.

“You talk much for someone who’s lost the things he loves the

most.”

Her smile grows bigger when I don’t have a comeback.

“I didn’t lose things,” I growl.

“So you can be serious.”

When she stands directly in front of the ivy, it parts like a

curtain.

“A tunnel,” I say. “Of course.”

“You first.”

I hesitate.

“You haven’t spent much time in darkness, have you?”

“Only at the water park,” I say, swinging my feet into the

opening. “The Slip ’N Slide is my favorite.”

“Then slip and slide, Land Prince,” she says.

“Will you untie my hands at least?”

“Of course, Land Prince. But first get in.”

I sit at the mouth of the tunnel. It angles down and off to the

side. She slices through my ropes. Before I can say another word, she

shoves me down the hole.

I must’ve hit my head. The numbness on my skin returns. My temples

throb, and the foggy edges of my vision are back. I instantly

recognize my grandfather’s chambers in Toliss Island. This time I’m

looking at Gwen. Her face is pale and sad. Gray eyes are cast down at

her lap. She’s in human form with white and black scales at her

ankles.

“Gwenivere!”

She snaps her head up and stands. Her hair is gathered into a

braid at the top of her head. Pearls and shells are woven like a

crown. Her dress is an ivory sheath that shows her scales at her

calves. Princess Gwenivere in all her splendor. The daughter of the

silver mermaid.

“Are you listening to us?”

I know that voice anywhere by now. Nieve’s slithering voice fills

the cave of the room.

“Forgive me, Mother.”

Nieve swims in a backlit pool. The Staff of Eternity is in her

hands. She’s not the weak and frail mermaid of weeks ago. A blush

colors her ivory cheekbones, and her pale eyes spark with frenzied

energy. But when she tries to channel her magic through the staff,

nothing happens. Her forehead crinkles with concentration, and I want

to laugh because her third of the trident is failing too.

“Mother, what is it?”

“Something is wrong-the boy must be doing it.”

Gwen shakes her head. “We both know Tristan isn’t capable of

that.”

I resent that.

“Perhaps you exhausted yourself with the battle, taking the

island, keeping La-the girl-conscious. Even you have your limits.”

“I don’t want to have limits,” Nieve seethes. “I want to be

limitless.”

Archer runs into the room. His jaw is bruised where Kurt hit him

the day before, but the rest of him is patched up. He kneels before

Nieve and she strokes his patchwork face, her own creation. “It’s

done, Mother Queen. Anyone who has opposed us is in the cells.”

“And my brother?”

“The king is gone,” he says nervously. “There is no sign of him.”

Nieve reaches into her well of power. It fills me with a rage I’ve

never felt before. Then she releases it at Archer. He slams into the

white stone wall. Gwen stands to tend to him, but after one look at

Nieve, she sits back down.

“What was that, my child?”

“Karanos,” the merrow groans, standing at attention. “The leech

Karanos is gone.”

Nieve holds her hands to her face. “You see what he makes me do?

He makes me hurt my own children.”

Archer comes back for more, this time on both knees, placing his

head on his mother’s lap. He’s so big. He could squeeze the life out

of her with one hand. But despite all of it, she made him. She saved

him when the Sea Court decreed that all children born

deformed-merrows-would be executed or left in caves where they would

not be able to survive in the wilderness.

I try to shake Nieve’s thoughts out of me, but it’s like we’re one

person.

She moves her tail in the pool, as if she sees something in the

water. “I know my brother. I know where he will go. Gwenivere, you

will go after him. As for the girl-”

The girl. The girl. The girl.

“Is she awake yet?”

Archer nods. “Do you want me to break her?”

“No!” Gwen stands. “She’ll be worthless unless she’s untouched.

Tristan-”

“Tristan will do as I say as long as I have her. Her condition

means nothing to me.”

“But-”

“Your infatuation with the boy is clouding your better judgment,”

Archer says.

Gwen steels herself. “I am not infatuated.”

Gwen and Archer are face to face. He’s twice her size, but Gwen is

drawing on her magic. Sparks fly from her fingertips.

“There’s that fire, my darling girl.” Nieve chuckles. “We’ll need

it to bring our people together. For too long we’ve cowered before my

brother and his love of humans. Send out more search parties for

Tristan. He can’t have gone far.”

“What about Kurtomathetis?” Gwen says.

Nieve keeps her hands on the staff, gripping it and searching for

the magic. “My allies tell me he will bow to me before sunrise.”

“What allies?”

Nieve studies Gwen’s beautiful face. The thin, pearly scars that

run down the right side of her face, shoulder to hip bone. “You have

never questioned me before.”

Gwen lowers her head. She takes Nieve’s hand and holds it to her

face, kissing the center of her palm. “I mean no offense, Mother

Queen.”

Nieve looks at Archer and Gwen in a way that makes my skin crawl.

It’s the way that my mother looks at me, like no matter what I do,

she’ll love me forever. I didn’t think the silver mermaid was capable

of feeling. I don’t want to think of her this way. I don’t want to

think of her at all.

“Go now,” Nieve tells Gwen.

And she does, leaving Archer in the glittering room that once was

my grandfather’s chamber.