Tempest Unleashed (33 page)

“I’m going to hold you to that.” He jogged the short distance between us, yanked me hard against him, and gave me the kind of kiss that made my head spin and my body melt. “I love you, Tempest Maguire, and you had damn well better come back to me. Or I will find a way to come after you.”

He stepped away, and I took one last look at his beloved face. Turned and had one last glimpse of my house, where my family waited for me. Then I was gone, plunging into the surf and diving deep.

As the ocean closed over my head, I told myself I was doing the right thing. The only thing. Going after Tiamat once and for all was the only way to keep everyone I cared about safe.

Chapter 27

It was a long, hard swim, and I was exhausted by the time I got close to Coral Straits. I’d tried to reach Hailana, tried to reach Kona, but despite the crazy power that seemed to have taken up residence inside of me, I still wasn’t able to communicate over long distances, not unless someone else was holding the bridge for me.

Still, I wanted them to know I was going after Tiamat. That this time she had gone way too far. If she hoped to take me on, that was fine. I was used to it and could take care of myself. But to go after my baby brother … I was done playing around. One way or the other, this thing had to end.

I knew it was dangerous, knew there was a chance I’d end up dying right along with her, but I couldn’t let that matter. If no one else was going to try to end her, I would take on that job. And relish it.

Was this what my mother had felt like when she’d left us to fight for her clan? This burning need for retribution and to keep her family safe? Yesterday I would have said it wasn’t enough to justify leaving us the way she had—nothing was—but as I contemplated the fact that I had just dived into the ocean without so much as a good-bye to anyone but Mark, I finally understood that sometimes, there was no other way. If I’d stopped, if I’d gone back to the house and hugged Moku, I’m not sure I ever would have found the strength to leave.

I would have to talk to Hailana, figure out the best way to go after Tiamat. While normally I wouldn’t trust any advice from the merQueen, on this I had no doubt she would help. She wanted Tiamat gone at least as badly as I did—it was why she put up with my attitude, after all.

I swam into the city, determined to head straight to Hailana and make her see me, no matter how angry she was about my leaving. But the second I zipped out of the trench and into Coral Straits, horror overwhelmed everything else I was feeling.

The city had been destroyed. Most of the buildings were nothing more than rubble, the refugee tents reduced to scraps of material. I slowed down, dived deeper to see if I could figure out what had happened, but it was getting harder to see. And that’s when I realized—the weird, slightly rosy cast to the water wasn’t my imagination. It was blood. Gallons and gallons of blood.

I started to gag, swam higher to get away from the slick feel of it in the water, and as I got closer to the heart of the city I realized where the blood was coming from. There were bodies everywhere. Some intact, some torn into so many bloody pieces that it was nearly impossible to imagine that they had once been mer. Small groups of survivors were slowly carting away the dead, one by one, but their efforts seemed futile. There were so many.

Unsure of what else to do, I swam straight toward the square at the center of the city, where, if the body count was anything to go by, most of the fighting had taken place.

I gasped at the sight of the girl who always brewed my red algae tea. She was lying flat on her back, a gaping hole where her heart used to be.

I whimpered at the sight of Mahina’s uncle, sword still in his hand, facedown in the street. There was an arrow through his neck.

Sobbed at the sight of little Liam curled into a protective ball, a spear protruding from his narrow back.

I swam over to him and lifted his body in my arms. Tried to see if there was some way he had survived, some way he could have—but no. He was dead.

Rage—huge, overwhelming, suffocating—rose up within me as I surveyed the death and destruction. With it came an amazing clarity, one that too late allowed me to understand Hailana’s warnings. She’d told me if I went home it would be the end, but I hadn’t believed her. Hadn’t been able to understand what she was trying to tell me.

I’d thought she’d simply meant she’d punish me, would kick me out, but that hadn’t been it at all. I’d been so arrogant, so blind, so filled with dislike for her that I hadn’t listened. And now all these people had died. I was as responsible for their deaths as Tiamat.

But surely Hailana could have slowed her down? And Sabyn, who had more power than any merman I had ever met? Where had they been when this had happened?

Or had Tiamat somehow managed to kill them as well?

Gently placing Liam back on the ground, I shot forward, winding through the buildings and debris as quickly as I could. It seemed like it took forever, and I encountered more and more dead along the way. Most of my clan had been executed in the streets.

Finally,
finally
, the palace loomed in front of me. It was partially destroyed, the area where I lived reduced to nothing more than rocks, but the merQueen’s quarters looked like they might be intact. I dived through the closest opening and made my way to her rooms.

She wasn’t there.

I searched the whole castle, found it abandoned.

Panic set in then, a wild, rampaging thing that filled me with urgency and horror.

I barreled back outside, into the ocean, looking for someone who might be able to tell me what happened to her. And ran full-on into Mahina, sent us both tumbling head over heels until we managed to right ourselves.

Oh my God, you’re alive!
I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tightly.

She returned my hug, burying her face in my neck. I could tell by the way her shoulders shook that she was sobbing. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, so I just held her and let her cry for long minutes.

When she finally raised her head, her eyes were swollen and painful looking, but she was composed.

What happened?
I demanded.

Tiamat … and Sabyn.

Sabyn?
I asked incredulously.

They’re together. MerQueen Hailana thought that he was her secret weapon, that together you two could do anything, but it turns out he’s been with Tiamat all along. They waited until you were gone and then yesterday, they attacked.

All of Kona’s warnings and accusations came crashing in on me. He’d been right and I hadn’t trusted him, not completely. I’d believed that Sabyn was a jerk, but I hadn’t known how untrustworthy he was. Hadn’t known that he was a traitor.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
It was a poor excuse, but all I had to offer. I couldn’t even look at her while I spoke.

How could you have? They played everyone
. She shuddered.
My uncle …

I felt tears burning my own eyes.
The rest of your family?

They’re okay. Mom and Dad took us out to the plate shelf, to the market there. When we came back, this is what was left. We haven’t found my uncle yet, but he isn’t among the survivors, so—

I saw him. His body, I mean. I can take you to him, if you’d like.

She shuddered.
Yes. Let me get my dad and brothers so they can …
She couldn’t finish.

Within half an hour, we had collected her uncle’s body and brought him to the surface, near Hailana’s castle. Mahina’s mother and sisters organized a small funeral pyre for him, and we had a funeral right then, with none of the pomp and circumstance we’d had for my mother nine months before. But it was better than the mass funeral pyres that were being lit at other places on the island. At least his was personal and his family was there.

When it was over, I left Mahina with her grieving family and walked over to Hailana’s castle. It, like everything else on the surface, was completely intact. Tiamat was a fearsome enemy, but unlike the rest of us, she could never leave the water. She couldn’t shift beyond the mermaid-type shell she usually employed, couldn’t grow legs or lungs. She was tied to the ocean, unable to breathe on land.

Which meant that anyone who had been up here—and who had not rushed into the water at the first distress cries—was alive. This was where the injured had been brought to be tended and this was where Hailana was, according to the rescue personnel I had asked.

I found her in her bedroom, propped up in bed and looking more frail than I had ever seen her. Both of her eyes were swollen almost shut, her left arm was broken, and I didn’t think there was a spot on her body that wasn’t bruised or cut. She had fought hard to save her city and her people. “So, you’ve come back.” Her voice was weak and strained, but unaccusing.

“I have.”

“You saw what happened?”

I wanted to apologize to her as I had to Mahina, to acknowledge my culpability in the situation, but the words stuck in my throat. After everything that had happened between us I had trouble bowing to her, even though she looked like she was one step away from death. At the same time, I didn’t know what else I could have done. If I hadn’t gone home, if Kona hadn’t come with me and brought the healer, Moku might very well be dead now. I knew Hailana expected my loyalty to be completely to her, but it wasn’t and it never would be. My mother had put the clan above her family. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to.

“Yes,” I finally said.

“You must be thrilled to find me so humbled.” A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye.

“No,” I repeated. “You couldn’t have known—”

“I should have. I made some huge miscalculations, Tempest, and they have cost my clan its last chance at survival. We are doomed now.”

“There are survivors. We can rebuild—”

She snorted, the first time I had ever heard such an unelegant sound come from her. “Most of the clan is dead or injured. Who is left to rebuild? After everything I’ve done to keep them safe, I ended up destroying them. I am finished as their queen.”

I didn’t know what to say. She
had
made mistakes and when the deaths were dealt with, when the shock had worn off, people would be furious that she had brought such a powerful enemy right into the heart of the city. She hadn’t meant to, had thought Sabyn was on our side, but it was her job to seek out the truth. Underestimating Tiamat and misreading Sabyn so completely were terrible, terrible mistakes.

Still, I couldn’t leave her like this, miserable and guilty and closer to death than I had ever thought possible. “The clan can survive,” I told her. “We can prepare—”

“Oh,
we
can, can
we
? And where were you today, Tempest? The clan needs a strong leader, one who sticks around when things get tough. If that leader isn’t going to be me, who will it be? You keep running off to play at being human even though you clearly aren’t. How are you going to lead these people?”

“I have no desire to lead your clan, Hailana. I’ve told you that before.”

“
Your
clan, Tempest. Or it would be if you ever chose to accept us. But you run between us and the selkies and the humans like you’re ashamed of what you really are.”

“If being a mermaid means I have to—” I forced myself to stop before I said something that I would regret. She was weak and badly injured, after all.

But Hailana only laughed. “Have to be like me, you mean? Or like your mother?”

Now that she’d said it, I wouldn’t back away from the truth. “Yes,” I answered, agreeing with both parts of her statement.

“Oh, my sweet, naive little Tempest. I didn’t start out this way, you know. No one does. But centuries of fighting Tiamat and a world that can’t accept our existence, centuries of fighting for my clan’s very survival, have changed the way I view things. I once had high principles and a rosy vision of how the world should work. But that vision isn’t practical. Sometimes, when you’re in charge, when people live and die on the decisions you make, you can’t afford to keep your hands clean. Sometimes you do things you know you’ll regret.”

I thought of Cecily, of the way she’d killed those people without a flicker of remorse. “And if you do that often enough, you stop feeling bad about anything. That’s the flipside of moral compromise, isn’t it, Hailana? Pretty soon you can’t tell right from wrong.”

“Look at you, so sure you’d never compromise those pretty principles of yours. But how do you know? You’ve never been tested.” She swallowed with difficulty, tried to push herself up a little more on the pillows, but was too weak.

I moved to help her, but she waved me away. “I think that’s all about to change. Come talk to me in a week or two about your fine, upstanding morality. If you’re still alive, that is.”

Dread filled me at her words. I wanted to turn, to walk away, so badly. Because if I stayed, I would be giving her the satisfaction I had denied her for so long. But at the same time, I couldn’t not know. I couldn’t leave here in ignorance if it meant that people suffered because I wouldn’t play Hailana’s game.