“Careful. Go easy. On three…”
The weight was removed. Water flowed into her lungs. She could breathe easily again.
“Get her up!” That was Becca.
Sera felt hands on her. Becca’s hands. Neela’s. They lifted her up off the floor.
The room swam as she struggled for her balance. Her head throbbed. Her thoughts were scattered and jumbled. She struggled against the confusion. Trying to clear her mind. To think.
“Sera? Sera, can you hear me?” Neela asked.
“I—I’m bleeding…” she replied, looking down at the crimson stains on her clothing.
Hands opened her jacket. They felt for wounds.
“You’re all right. You’re not hit,” said Ling, relief in her voice.
“I—I’m not?” Sera stammered. It seemed the blood she was covered in wasn’t her own. But that made no sense. She pressed a hand to her aching temple. “But then how…who…” Her words trailed away as her eyes came to rest on two medics who’d swum into the room. They were working feverishly on a motionless figure stretched out on the floor.
It was a merman dressed in green. Emerald green.
Sera’s eyes widened. Suddenly, it all made sickening sense. The blur in the water. The weight. The blood.
“No,” she said, shaking her head wildly. “No, no, no!” The last word came out in a long, tearing shriek.
A spear was sticking out of the merman’s back. On the left side. Where his heart was. His face was turned away from Sera’s, but still she knew him.
It was Mahdi.
THE PAIN WAS like nothing he’d ever known.
Every breath he took seared his lungs. Blood poured from his torn flesh, over his shattered ribs.
Through the red haze of agony, he could hear something. It was pounding, slow and labored. It was the sound of his own heart, struggling to beat.
Time slowed. The images before his eyes blurred. Urgent words, spoken and shouted, stretched out forever. He couldn’t understand them.
Hands lifted him, bringing fresh pain. Shouts echoed around him. Lights blazed from the ceiling above.
And then a face came into view, blurry at first, then clear.
Sera. She was alive.
Relief washed over him like a gentle wave, lapping his pain away. He’d gotten between her and Lucia’s speargun. He’d saved her; that was all that mattered.
He felt her take his hand in hers and squeeze it. He squeezed back. She was crying, but trying to smile. “Hang on, Mahdi. Please, hang on,” she sobbed.
There was so much he wanted to say, but he couldn’t make the words come. He wanted to tell her that she would be all right. That she was brave and strong. He wanted her to know how much he loved her.
The pounding in his ears grew softer. His vision blurred again.
“No!” Sera screamed. She looked up, at somebody else. There were mer he didn’t know in the room with them. They were wearing masks and gloves. “Help him! Do something!” she shouted.
She turned back to him, terror in her eyes. “Mahdi, no,” she begged frantically. “Don’t go. Please, please don’t go….”
The pounding slowed. His eyes fluttered closed.
“Mērē dila, mērī ātmā,” he whispered. “Always….”
The beat of Mahdi’s brave heart faltered, and then finally, it stopped.
PALE AND DRAWN, seated on a high throne of black marble, Serafina gazed out over the Courtyard of the Condemned.
A gold crown studded with pearls, emeralds, and red coral—Merrow’s crown—graced her head. Gold chains of office hung from her shoulders, set off by the deep black of her high-necked sea-silk gown. Alítheia, her bodyguard, stood just behind the throne, her eyes alert for any threat.
Lucia’s brief reign was over. Sera was her realm’s regina now. She was honored to take her mother’s place upon Miromara’s throne, relieved that her uncle had been defeated, and happy to be overseeing the reconstruction of her realm. Yet her victory was bittersweet. Her crown had been won back, but its price had been high.
She had not set fin in this courtyard once in her entire life. Even her mother had not. The Courtyard of the Condemned had not been used since her grandmother Artemesia’s time.
Her eyes took in the court’s high stone walls now, the armed guards lining them, and the block of wood, hewn from the mizzenmast of some ship wrecked centuries ago, that stood in the courtyard’s center. The block was about two feet high, and a foot and a half wide. A smooth, ellipitical depression had been carved into its top.
Sera knew what that block was for, and vowed that if it were to be used today, she would not look away.