Dangerous Depths (The Sea Monster Memoirs) (26 page)

Who isn’t?

One of the kraken’s tentacles rose, holding a limp, unconscious body. I tried to recall his name.
Treygan?

The kraken lowered Treygan to his side.
Stay with me. You and I could be the most powerful couple in all the worlds.

I can’t.
My gaze drifted to Treygan, trying to remember something important.
I love him.

Love is an illusion that never lasts. What we have is primal.

His offer shouldn’t have been so tempting, but it was. Why?

I morphed back into sea monster form, trying to focus my bleary thoughts.
No, this is only lust.

His smoldering eyes caused my body to erupt with more tingling.
Lust is more powerful than love.

It took me a minute to force my next sensible thought.
I don’t believe that.

He grinned.
Give it time. You will come back to me.

The kraken might have been sexy as hell—literally—but he was an idiot if he thought I would return to Harte.
Not a chance.

His grip around my waist tightened and we rose to the surface. A small raft that looked like it had been made from pieces of ship wreckage floated inches from us. He released me and nodded at it. “Use the raft to safely find your way. When you’re ready, it will carry you back to me.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“You’ll return.”

I had expected a fight. I had no idea how I would fight a kraken, but I never expected him to just let me go so easily. “I don’t want to lie to you. I won’t come back.”

“We’ve shared ourselves with each other. We’re part of each other now. You won’t be able to resist the memory of me. Someday, you will surrender to your desire and
return to me for eternity.”

My hallmarks swirled through my skin. I missed the kraken already and I hadn’t left him yet. Would I think about him once I was gone from here? No. I loved Treygan.

Good gods, how could I tell Treygan the truth about what happened? Would he ever forgive me? Would I run back to the kraken if Treygan no longer wanted me?

I couldn’t think that way. Treygan and I could survive anything. I did not love this dark, intoxicating creature.

“Will you give him to me?” I asked hesitantly.

The kraken lifted Treygan to the surface then pushed him into my open arms. “He will never be worthy of you.”

The kraken leaned across Treygan’s limp body and kissed me so deeply my head spun. I had to get away from him. I had to stop letting him kiss me and touch me. What was wrong with me? Kissing someone else with Treygan passed out in my arms. I was despicable.

“When you’re ready,” the kraken said, pulling the raft closer, “you know how to find me.”

I lifted Treygan onto the raft and pumped my tail, swimming us away from the kraken as fast as I could.

He whispered, “See you soon,” but I heard his words as if he had breathed them into my ear.

I silently prayed he wasn’t right.

Darkness fell over us like a heavy cloak dropped out of the sky. The waves stopped breaking on the shore. My claws sprang free, ready for anything. I held my hand up in front of my face. Not even a shimmer from my claws—just pure pitch black.

“Vienna?”

She breathed steadily a few feet away. “What?”

“Why is it so dark?”

“It happens frequently. Right before they throw a new scenario at me.”

My hearing had gone into hyper alert mode. I kept turning my head, trying to pick up on any and all sounds. “Scenario?”

“Mm,” she mumbled in acknowledgment.

I stood. “We should stay together. Would it be okay if I came closer to you?”

“Are you scared?”

“Honestly, a little, yes.”

Vienna huffed. “No selkie would be afraid of the dark.”

“In Rathe, that would be true. There, the dark is comforting, calming, and there’s always magic in the air. But this place would scare anyone. The dark makes it worse.”

I sensed her stand up. Her footsteps in the sand grew louder until I felt grains shift beneath my feet.

“Boo.” She was so close to me her breath blew in my face. It didn’t even smell bad. How was that possible?

I didn’t move away. I ached to lean in and kiss her, but I would probably end up getting clawed to shreds if I tried.

She pressed one finger into my chest. “Sometimes it’s better that you can’t see the ghosts and monsters lurking in the dark.”

My heart sped up. I didn’t know if it was from fear of what might happen around us or excitement because of our close proximity to each other. “I always prefer to see what I’m dealing with.”

She laughed quietly, almost menacingly. “You have no idea the horrible things I’ve seen here. The nightmares I’ve had to live through.” She paused. “Actually, you probably do know. You helped create them.”

“I would never.” I reached for her, but then stopped. She still thought I was a demon or imposter. Energy radiated between our hands. I didn’t need to see. I could feel how close I was to touching her.

The ground started vibrating. Vienna pulled back. “And another round begins.”

“Another round of what?”

“You know what.”

The sand turned solid. “I don’t, Vienna. Tell me what’s happening.”

“You should be scared of the light. You want to know what’s happening? I’ll show you,
Rownan
.” I had never heard her speak my name with such venom. A dim light formed in front of her. As it got brighter I realized she was holding a jellyfish the size of my head.

“Where did you—?” I didn’t finish my question. I was silenced by fright.

Black moths swarmed around us so thick they looked like a moving wall. The beach we had been standing on had turned to ice. Huge bugs and snakes slithered beneath the surface, pooling into writhing shadows under our feet.

A much bigger shadow caught my attention a few steps away. I recognized the shape of a selkie tail and ran toward it. I couldn’t make out a face, but it was a male selkie trapped under the ice. I dropped to my knees, placing my hands flat above him. He flipped over and pressed his face to the ice. His eyes were wide and terrified. He
was
me
.

He tried to scream, but water rushed into his mouth. I jerked backward, trembling. “That’s not me.”

Another body floated under my feet. Her long, black hair pressed against the ice first. I shook my head before she flipped over.
She’s not Vienna
, I told myself. She rolled over, clawing at the ice as her pale face smashed against it. Her eyes were bleeding blue blood. I cringed and looked away, focusing on the real Vienna.

She just stood there, holding the glowing jellyfish, watching me with an aloof expression on her face.

“This isn’t real,” I said.

“The fear is real,” she whispered.

I moved toward her. A hole in the ice opened and dozens of snakes and insects skittered onto the ice, forcing me back again. “You don’t seem scared.”

She grinned, but it was a tired, couldn’t-be-bothered grin. “Because nothing changes. I always end up back on the beach of bones. Alone and physically unharmed. Death would be better than this. But death never comes.”

Black snow fell between us. Or so I thought. Until I looked closer and saw it was millions of black moths pelting the ice. The ground below us started cracking.

I shielded my face with my arm as I pushed through the waterfall of moths. They stung my skin like each one was a razorblade. A crack in the ice splintered and spread apart, forming a gap between us. I leaped over the steaming opening and landed near Vienna, but she jumped to the other side.

The two masses of ice drifted farther apart. I jumped again, but barely made it across the gap. My upper body hit the ice ledge, knocking the wind out of me. My lower body hung over the bottomless pit below. My legs felt like they were on fire even though there were no flames. I clawed at the ice, trying to pull myself back onto land.

“V, help me.”

She flinched, but then her face hardened. She backed away and threw the jellyfish into the black abyss below me. I watched it fall, its glowing light fading as it fell farther and farther. Then I lost my grip and slipped, tumbling through the pitch black fire that I was certain would consume my body and soul.

~

I felt the sand against the side of my face before I opened my eyes.

Vienna sat across from me, her arms wrapped around her legs, and her lips pursed and twisted to one side. “It’s almost believable.”

I blinked and carefully brushed grains of sand out of my eyelashes before sitting up. We were back on the beach of bones. It was light out. No ice. No bugs or moths. Had I dreamed that entire nightmare? “What’s almost believable?”

“You.” She rested her chin on top of her knees. “That you could really be Rownan.”

Assuring her I was truly me hadn’t worked so far. If I let her talk out her thoughts, maybe she would convince herself. “Why is that?”

“Every other time, after every other scenario, I’ve ended up back here alone. That’s how it started. After the very first Rownan. After I deliberately crashed our boat into that mountain and he was swallowed by those creatures, and I woke up here.”

“Why’d you crash the boat?”

“He said it was the gateway home, but it wasn’t. I knew it was some sort of portal to an even worse part of this place.”

“How’d you know?”

“Instinct.”

I nodded. “You’ve always had sharp instincts.”

“You all try to take me deeper into this hell hole, but I won
’t fall for it. I know what the real gate looks like.” She rubbed her shell between her fingers, hugged her knees to her chest, and closed her eyes. “And now I have no reason to leave this beach. Ever.” 

“Tell me about the Rownan you were with for two years.” I glanced at the piece of driftwood a few yards away. At least she had been leaving it for longer periods of time.

“No bad things happened when he was around. That’s how I knew he was real.”

“That didn’t seem strange to you?”

“Did what seem strange?”

I rubbed my hand over my goatee. “That nothing bad ever happened. In hell.”

“That’s how it always was with Rownan. He didn’t let bad things happen to me.” She stared off at the ocean. “To us.”

Guilt knotted my stomach and heart together into one tangled mess of sadness. “Except for the day Rathe’s gate closed.”

She flashed me a smoldering glare. “You don’t know the whole story.”

That was the worst part of it. I did know the whole story. And I hated that Rownan—that part of me—for hurting her, for leaving her alone. I let a horrible thing happen to her. To us. 

We sat silent, watching each other. That was enough for me. Just being near her again was more than I expected when I first heard she had gone to Harte.

This place was evil, but the scenario we had just suffered through didn’t harm us. We were back where we started, physically fine. I could endure any nightmare if I knew I would always end up back at Vienna’s side. I
had no grand plan to get us home to Rathe. No way to convince her I wasn’t a fraud. So I just sat there, enjoying her presence.

But after a long time of listening to nothing but waves, I missed her voice. “Tell me more about the time you and the first Rownan crashed the boat.”