TERROR FLOODED THROUGH SERA.
It wasn’t the sight of her own blood that scared her, or the cruel silver spear sunk into her flesh. It was the thin white line trailing from the spear—and the death rider at the other end of it. He grinned evilly, then began to reel in the line.
The pain was excruciating. Sera screamed and thrashed against it, which sank the barbed spearhead even deeper into her flesh.
“Sera, listen to me!” a voice hissed in her ear. “Stop thrashing. Pretend you’re surrendering.”
Sera whipped her head around. It was Sophia’s voice, but there was no Sophia in sight. She must’ve cast her pebble, Sera thought.
“Move closer to him,” Sophia hissed. “I need slack in the line so he can’t feel me cutting it.”
Sera put her hands up and let herself drift. The death rider stopped pulling on the line and started swimming toward her. With his eyes fixed on Sera, he didn’t see a loop form in the line, or see that loop go taut.
“I’ve got one!” he yelled. Two more soldiers rushed toward him.
“Hurry, Soph…oh, gods, hurry,” Sera groaned.
“Trying…it’s thick…wait…Got it!”
Death swims on a fast fin, Tavia, Sera’s nursemaid, used to say. It swam so fast to the soldiers, they never saw it coming.
As the two ends of cut line sank to the seafloor, Sophia’s knife whizzed through the water and buried itself in the chest of the death rider who’d shot Serafina. Sera dove for her dropped crossbow, grabbed it, and fired twice. She’d become an excellent shot; the other two death riders were dead before their bodies hit the silt.
“Let’s go. Before their friends come looking for them,” she said to Sophia.
“You can’t swim with the spear in you.”
Sera knew what Sophia was saying. “Do it,” she said, her voice ragged with pain.
“I’ll be quick, I swear. I’ll—”
“Just do it, Soph.”
Sophia cut the line again, as close to the spear’s shaft as she could. Then she grabbed Sera’s tail with one hand and the shaft with the other. Sera bit back a shriek as Sophia forced the spearhead all the way through her tail and out the other side. The pain bent her double. More blood plumed from the wound. Sophia grabbed Sera’s jacket—tied around Sera’s waist—and wrapped it around her tail.
“You still with me?” she said.
“Barely,” Sera rasped.
“We’ve got to get away from here. They’re pouring out of the Traitors’ Gate. They’ll fan out to search the grounds.”
Sera was aware of voices now, and the glow of lava torches.
“Go, Soph. They can’t see you. Swim back to the hills.”
“Forget it. I’m not leaving you.”
“That’s an ord—”
With a sickening thuk, a spearhead sank into the silt only inches from Serafina.
Invisible hands grabbed her. “Come on!” Sophia yelled.
Before the death rider could shoot again, Sera and Sophia were streaking for cover. They sped over coral and seaweed, zigzagging to confuse him. Spears ricocheted off rocks around them, or buried themselves in kelp. The shooter had been joined by others.
“Follow me!” Sera shouted.
The reggia, Merrow’s ancient palace, was just ahead. Merrow, the first ruler of the merfolk, had built the reggia four thousand years ago. Sera loved the ancient ruins and had often stolen away from her court to explore them. She was hoping to draw the death riders into the ruins after her, lose them in the maze-like interior, then bolt out again.
The shouts behind them grew louder. The spears kept coming. Sera plunged down through the water, shot under a crumbling stone arch, and swam through a passageway.
“Sophia?” she called as loudly as she dared. “Are you there?”
“Right behind you,” came the answer.
Sophia was shimmering. Her transparensea pebble was wearing off. Sera sang a quick illuminata and gathered some moon rays into a ball. She grabbed Sophia’s hand and pulled her down a long hallway just as the death riders swam through the arch.
The two mermaids sped from room to room, through tunnels, and across courts. After five minutes of swimming flat-out, they’d lost their pursuers. Sera stopped, panting, to catch her breath.
“Where are we?” Sophia asked, fully visible now.
“Merrow’s private wing,” Sera replied. “We’ve just come through her apartments. They connect to the stables and an indoor ring that backs onto the kelp forest.”
Merrow had loved to ride, and had gone hunting in the forest almost every morning. The ancient kelp stalks, lovingly tended through the centuries, covered a large swath of seafloor.
“If we can just get into the forest, the kelp will give us cover,” Sera continued. “We’ll be well north of the city by the time we swim out of it.”
“How’s your tail?” Sophia asked.
Sera looked at it, grimacing. The makeshift bandage was soaked with blood.