The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) (24 page)

Now?
Doris asks.

Not yet,
I say.

“You’ve got nothing left, you know,” I say. “You killed your own daughter. Kurt is with Archer. The rest—you don’t care about their lives, do you?”

She blasts me with the trident, but I stand sideways behind a spike. The turtle, on the other hand, feels it and moans.

I keep my back pressed to the rough bone. “I told Gwen this is what you were. I told her.”

“She was everything to me,” Nieve said. “Everything I have done was for her.”

“No, it wasn’t. Everything you’ve done was for you.”

“What do you know of our world?” She moves between the spikes, the smack of her feet getting closer, the mist turning into drizzle. “You have never known the wrath of the kings. You have never been on the other side of love.”

“You’re right,” I say. She’s surprised that I agree with her, but she’s right about that. “I have never known. All of my life, I’ve been pretty content not knowing. All of my life, I’ve had everything. Then it was taken away—by my grandfather, by you, by my own choices. But I’m going to get it all back.”

She laughs, a sound that sends the blood running through my veins, a laugh that threatens to swallow the whole world. “You are powerless, Tristan. I have the trident.”

I step out from behind the shell.

Now?
Doris asks.

Nieve holds the trident over her head, and the three prongs reach up to the sky. The quartz crystal is full of light and angled at my face.

Now!

I don’t move out of the way.

Not right away at least. I’m not that crazy.

I don’t move for a breath, the quartz coming straight at me.

I grab it, and the light pulses in tune with my heartbeat. The turtle heaves as Doris crashes into him. Nieve and I tilt toward the sea but I hold on. I have my hands around the Scepter of the Earth and then I twist.

The weapon slides out and the trident breaks.

Nieve slips and falls at my feet, as if I’ve taken the wind out of her. That’s how it felt when I woke up in the Toliss chambers after the sea dragon grabbed me from the cliff. That’s what it felt like when I woke up and the scepter wasn’t there. Like something inside of me was missing, couldn’t be filled.

“This is still mine.”

She pushes herself up, but the turtle giant is unsteady and we both heave. She thrusts the trident to the sky and pulls on the lightning. But I’m faster. I can feel my sea horse’s power inside me. I push the quartz scepter through her heart.

The silver mermaid gasps, tendrils of lightning wrapping around her in bursts. Her bright red blood stains her white skin, and the silver scales dissolve instantly. I hold her wrist. Her flesh hardens beneath my fingers. Her head rolls back in a scream that scares the sky into silence.

When Nieve dies, the coral of her bone solidifies around the crystal of my scepter. Her hand around the rest of the trident.

When I pry the weapons out of her hands, what’s left of her snaps into brittle little pieces. There is no garden outside the Glass Castle; there are no tears of pearl. The sky trembles above me. Waves rise to meet my touch. I slide the quartz piece back into the trident and it’s complete once again. It’s like the world falls apart, like everything is rushing past me all at once, heavy on my shoulders. Is this what Nieve felt? Is this what my grandfather felt? It’s like thousands of voices linked around me. The cries of the sea people, the waves, thunder and lightning, and the deepest ends of the ocean. It’s part of me. For a moment, I can’t breathe.

The turtle giant moans, a long sad noise. I can feel its anger, its confusion. It’s been asleep for so long, and believe me, I know what it’s like to get woken up before I’m ready.

“It’s okay, boy,” I say. “Stop right there.”

Even though I’ve got this awesome trident, I’m not ready for the turtle giant to hit the coast. Its steps shake the ground and I nearly topple over. It kneels forward, lowering its head so I can walk off. Its eye is not as fierce as I saw in the vision of their battle.

“You must be tired.” I press my hand on its nose. The tide washes around us. “We just have one last thing to do, okay? Then you can be free.”

I don’t speak ancient turtle, but he opens his mouth and a deep horn blast rings out.

Behind me is the shore I’ve known forever. Ahead is the open sea that calls to me. When I close my eyes, I can feel the waves listening to me, pulling back from land. I search and search for the thoughts of the kraken. He’s off on the Jersey Shore, plucking out a group of crazy guys who thought it’d be fun to go body surfing into the middle of a storm.

“Alleas,” I tell the kraken, his name like a faint memory in the back of my thoughts. “Come back, we still have work to do.”

“Doris,” I say out loud. “Can you hear me?”

She neighs.

“The merrows. Stop them from coming on land.”

Together the turtle giant—his name pops into my mind, Krios—Krios and Doris dive back into the stretch between Coney and Toliss. But the merrows that don’t make it into their awaiting jaws still make it onto the shore, and I know this is far from over. The line of troops we kept to protect the shore is led by Dylan. Mermen and vampires fight with fang and sword against the intruders.

I take my trident and aim it, one, three, six, twelve. Lightning strikes, breaking the merrows into black, fleshy piles that get pulled in by the waves.

Dylan runs over to me and starts to kneel, and I press my hand on his shoulder.

“No time for that,” I say. “This isn’t over yet.”

•••

Dylan and I swim into the waves. I shift into my tail and this new power is a turbo boost. I reach the Toliss shore in minutes. My legs rip when I break the surface.

After all the pandemonium, the silence on the beach is unnerving. I take in the momentary quiet of the beach, the darkness of the sky. I can feel the giants returning. Their steps shake the earth. All three of them touch my mind with quiet good-byes as they make their way into the ocean, free.

When I hear my name, I smile. Dylan’s finally caught up.

“Tristan, watch out,” he screams, wading out of the water.

Behind me is Leomaris, raising his dagger. I slam my trident at him like a baseball bat and he falls back, blood dripping out of his mouth.

“It’s over,” I tell him.

He spits on the white sand. “As long as you live, we will always fight. Every day, every night, we will come for you.”

I stare at him for a little bit. He doesn’t get up, his amber eyes so pained from losing his son. I was wrong about merpeople. I always thought they didn’t care about death, just because they didn’t leave traces behind. Except they do, and they will remember for ages.

“You will never know the truth of our ways,” he says. “You will never know, and you will die a young king.”

Bodies surround us now.

“I know,” I tell him, taking the trident and piercing his chest. I force myself to look at him, even though what I want to do is close my eyes, just close my eyes for a little while.

He crumbles into coral.

“Report,” I say to Frederik.

Black smudges cover his face. “It seems that when you defeated the silver mermaid, what was left of her army ran away.”

Surrounded by the landlocked, the Alliance, and what’s left of the Sea Court, I know what I have to do. I know that I’ve never been one to believe in prophecies. I believe that my fate is my own. I did this. I chose this. I wanted to fight for these people.

And I have fought.

And I have won.

I hold the power of the trident, the power of the king. Layla takes my hand, and in that moment, I am certain.

“This isn’t a congratulation speech,” I say. “This isn’t a congratulation speech because I’m not the one that’s won anything. Our homes are safe for now, if a little more crunchy than usual. But we will rebuild. We will rebuild the Glass Castle, this time with metal of some sort and hope for the best. We will rebuild the lake here, and the throne, and it’ll be better than it was before.” I turn to Penny. “The landlocked are free of their bindings. I release you and your children.

“For as long as I’ve been a merman, I’ve had other people tell me that ‘the sea people are responsible for their own demise.’ They aren’t wrong. Not from where I’ve been standing. It’s time that we take that back. And the only way to move forward is with a king who truly knows you.”

I turn to Kurt, and he takes a step back. “What are you doing?”

I hold the trident out for him to take. “My grandfather was right. I was meant to change things. To make you see that humans aren’t so bad, that the landlocked can be forgiven. You don’t have to be afraid of the unknown. But the kingship? That was meant for you.”

“Tristan—”

“I’m only going to offer the one time,” I say, the power of the trident pulling me. It’s tempting, it is. I saw how power was a living force that fed Nieve. I never want to be like that.

Kurt takes the trident from me. He stares at it for a long time, and I know in my bones I’ve done the right thing.

“King Kurtomathetis,” I say.

He laughs, taking my arm. “Just call me Kurt.”

For days, I stay on the island.

Along with the Alliance and the landlocked—not so landlocked now—we help rebuild Toliss as much as we can.

Most of it is on Kurt, whose formal awkwardness as my guardian has translated into being a king. Sometimes he forgets that he can smite people if he felt like it, and he bows at the end of conversations.

“Can’t you just whip up a giant statue of me?” I say to him. “I think I’m pretty statue-worthy.”

He’s using the trident to rebuild the wall the Sleeping Giants crushed. Instead of a huge structure that needed to be climbed, it’s now a line of pillars that give a view of the thick forest. Beyond the forest is the white beach.

“I wouldn’t want to scare anyone away,” he says.

“Funny.”

It goes on like that for a few days in preparation for the official coronation. Part of me is all jitters, thinking about the visions I’ve seen—me dying, Kurt and I mortal enemies. Even if I’ve avoided that version of the future, who’s to say something equally violent isn’t going to happen?

Slender hands wrap around me. “Worrying again?”

I sling an arm around Layla’s shoulder. “Me? Never.”

She tilts her head up for a kiss and I take it eagerly.

“Thalia says she needs you in the nursery,” she says.

This is when my heart tightens. I walk into the Toliss chambers where one room hasn’t changed. During the aftermath, I told Kurt about Nieve’s nursery. We decided it was best to raise the baby merrows.

“This has never been done,” he said.

I picked up the one with skin the color of sunset. “The creatures we were fighting didn’t stand a chance. They were literally fed hatred and dark magic three times a day.”

It didn’t go over well with some of the elder mermen, but those who didn’t want to be ruled by the throne had the option of leaving. Our numbers now are small, which I guess makes us an endangered species.

Now in the nursery, Thalia feeds one of the children. “You wanted to see me.”

She nods, her long, greenish hair loose around her body. She wears a tulle skirt. Her scales cover her breasts like a bra. I wonder if I can do that. So I close my eyes and try to make the scales rise, but they don’t. Must be a chick thing.

“Thalia—” I know what she wants to ask me.

“Why didn’t you change me?” she asks, trying to keep her voice down so as not to wake the kids. “You kept your word to everyone else. To the landlocked, to the river people. Everyone except for me.”

“The reason I did that…” I say.

“Is because I asked him to,” Kurt finishes for me. He walks into the chamber. His cheeks are sunburned from a week of pure, unadulterated sun. “I owe this to you.”

Thalia puts the baby down and stands in front of her brother.

He takes her chin and tilts her face so she can look at him. “I wish I hadn’t left you. I wish I’d been a better brother to you. But know that I love you, and if this is what makes you happy, this is what I will do.”

He takes his trident and points it at Thalia. A pulsing blue light hits her chest. Her eyes and mouth open wide as if something inside her is breaking. Her gills disappear, leaving the faint pearly scar. It has to hurt. I know it does. My mom said it did when it happened to her. But when it’s done and Thalia wobbles to take her first step as a human girl, Kurt holds out his arms and catches her.

•••

The coronation is an all-day thing.

With all the elders turned to surf and coral beneath the Glass Castle, Kai is the only one left to fill their shoes. She takes in every detail, from a specific leaf that has to be wreathed around Kurt’s hair to the direction he holds the trident to the sun. It’s like she’s posing a model for a photo shoot. She guides the new members of the Sea Guard, lead by Arion, to flank the new king.

She nicks his finger and holds it over the great lake. Kurt repeats after her, “As blood of the sea, I swear to serve thee.”

Then she pops a crown over his head, the same one my grandfather wore the day I met him.

“Jealous?” Shelly asks beside me.

“Like the new ’do,” I tell her.

She touches her hair self-consciously. It’s long and black, no longer a handful of thin wisps. Now that she’s one of the two remaining oracles, she’s been trying to “get out there” so her line doesn’t die with her.

Shelly struts to the throne where Kurt takes her hand and kisses the back of it. Her fairy handmaidens flit about her, fixing strays from her hair and wrinkles from her dress.

Kai calls my name and the lake gets quiet.

I look around as if there is another Tristan Hart.

Layla gives me a push and I walk to them. When I try to bow, Kurt stops me. Shelly holds a golden box and opens it for me. Nestled on a lining of red velvet is a strange weapon. Seventeen inches or so of glistening platinum with HART etched in a fine cursive, and a sharp piercing white crystal at the end.

“For defeating the sea witch,” Kurt says, “and never forgetting where you come from. Tristan Hart, I declare you Protector of Land and Sea.”

“I forged it myself,” Shelly says with a wink.

I take it and feel the instant connection to the core of the crystal. I turn to the cheering crowd and hold up my weapon to the sky.