“I would never do that, Principessa. I swear,” he protested. “I only want to help you.”
Serafina laughed, remembering how, only a few weeks ago, she had trusted a merman named Zeno Piscor and his offer of help. She glanced at the sergeant who’d brought her into the club. He was still out cold.
“The royal treatment,” she said under her breath. “As if. What you got, lumpsucker, was the royal flush.”
She put the speargun down on the bar. It was too dangerous to carry. If she was stopped by another death rider, she wouldn’t be able to explain how she got it.
Moving quickly, she threw open the double doors. “Go, all of you! Get out of here before the soldiers wake up!”
The stargazer and half a dozen turtles swam by her, struggling against the effects of the potion. They were followed by three octopuses.
“Thank you, Principessa!” the one who’d helped her called out. “We won’t forget this!”
Sera was just about to leave when she saw a flag hanging on the wall behind the bar. It was not Miromara’s.
“Whose banner is that?” she demanded of the barman.
“The invaders’,” he replied.
“That can’t be right,” she murmured. The flag was not Ondalina’s—a black and white orca against a red background; it was merely a black circle on a red background. What if Astrid had been telling her the truth back when they were with the Iele? What if the Arctic realm wasn’t behind the invasion of Cerulea?
It’s probably a regimental flag, Sera thought.
She tore it off the wall and threw it on the floor. Then she took a bottle of wine from the bar and doused the flag, ruining it. She pulled the lipstick Filomena had given her out of her bag and scrawled Merrovingia regere hic on the wall. She used Latin, the language of history. Because she was determined to make some.
“When the sea scum come to, translate for them,” she said to the barman. “Tell them what this says: the Merrovingia rule here.”
And then she was gone, out of the club and down the dark current, swimming fast for the open waters of the Adriatic. For Cerulea.
For home.
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Serafina reached the walls of her city—or what was left of them. The route had been difficult to navigate because familiar landmarks had been destroyed or obscured and lava globes had been broken. She’d taken a back current and swum low to avoid detection. She hadn’t seen another soul on the way.
Only a few globes sputtered weakly above the East Gate now. Sera swam through the archway and stopped dead. She took a few more stumbling strokes then slowly sank through the water until she was sitting in the silt.
“No,” she said, unable to believe her eyes. “No.”
Her beloved city was in ruins.
Serafina had fled when Cerulea first fell under attack. She hadn’t witnessed the full force of the invaders’ destruction. All that remained of the thicket of Devil’s Tail that once floated protectively above the city were stumps where the vines had been hacked away. Huge sections of the wall that surrounded Cerulea had caved in. The ancient stone houses that once lined the Corrente Regina were now piles of rubble. Temples to the sea gods and goddesses had been pulled down. Worst of all, a terrible silence had descended. Serafina knew that the heart of a city was its people, and Cerulea’s were gone.
Tears threatened, but she held them back. Grief was a luxury she could no longer afford. The sun would be up in only a few hours and the waters would lighten. She remembered the duca’s warning not to be seen, to find a safe house. She had come here to find the locations of the talismans. That’s what would defeat her enemies. That’s what would help her people. Not sitting in the silt, crying.
She started up the Corrente Regina. There were only a few lava globes left to light her way. In their flickering half-light she could see the broken windows of looted shops and the remains of hippokamps killed in the fighting. Wild dogfish roamed in packs, feasting on carrion, or growling from the shadows.
Sera swam across a deserted intersection, turned a bend, and saw the royal palace, high on its hill. It was the only building that was still illuminated. Some of the damage inflicted by the Blackclaws had been repaired, but not all of it. A large chunk of the east outer wall was still missing. Sera remembered how the dragons had battered their way through it and into her mother’s stateroom.