“Oh, I’m scared,” I tell her. “Just not of you. Whoever brought me here—your mother, I presume, and Balekin—has a use for me. I am afraid of what that is, but not of you, an inept torturer who is irrelevant to everyone’s plans.”
Nicasia says a word, and suffocating pain crashes in on my lungs. I can’t breathe. I open my mouth, and the agony only intensifies.
Better it’s over fast, I tell myself. But it’s not fast enough.
The next time I wake, I am alone.
I lie there, water flowing around me, lungs clear. Although the bed is still beneath me, I am aware of floating above it.
My head hurts, and I am aware of a pain in my stomach that is some combination of hunger and soreness after being punched. The water is cold, a deep chill that seeps into my veins, making my blood sluggish. I am not sure how long I’ve been unconscious, not sure how long it’s been since I was taken from the Tower. As time slips by and fish come to pluck at my feet and hair, at the stitches around my wound, anger drains away and despair fills me. Despair and regrets.
I wish I’d kissed Taryn’s cheek before I left. I wish I’d made sure Vivi understood that if she loved a mortal, she had to be more careful with her. I wish I’d told Madoc that I always intended for Oak to have the throne.
I wish I’d planned more plans. I wish I’d left more instructions. I wish I had never trusted the Ghost.
I hope Cardan misses me.
I am not sure how long I float like that, how many times I panic and pull against my chains, how many times the weight of the water over me feels oppressive and I choke on it. A merman swims into the room. He moves with immense grace through the water. His hair is a kind of striped green, and the same stripes continue down his body. His large eyes flash in the indifferent light.
He moves his hands and makes a few sounds I don’t understand. Then, obviously adjusting his expectations, he speaks again. “I am here to prepare you to join Queen Orlagh for dinner. If you give me any trouble, I can render you equally easily unconscious. That’s how I’d hoped to find you.”
I nod my head. “No trouble. Got it.”
More merfolk come into the room, ones with green tails and yellow tails and black-tipped tails. They swim around me, staring with their large, shining eyes.
One unshackles me from the bed, and another guides my body upright. I have almost no weight in the water. My body goes where it is pushed.
When they begin undressing me, I panic again, a kind of animal response. I twist in their arms, but they hold me firm and pull a diaphanous gown on over my head. It is both short and thin, barely a garment at all. It flows around me, and I am sure most of my body is visible through it. I try not to look down, for fear that I will blush.
Then I am wrapped in ropes of pearls, my hair pulled back with a crown of shells and a net of kelp. The wound on my leg is dressed with a bandage of sea grass. Finally, I am guided through the vast coral palace, its dim light punctuated by glowing jellyfish.
The merfolk lead me into a banquet room without a ceiling, so that when I look up, I see schools of fish and even a shark above me, and above that, the glimmering light of what must be the surface.
I guess it’s daytime.
Queen Orlagh sits on an enormous throne-like chair at one end of the table, the body of it encased with barnacles and shells, crabs and live starfish crawling over it, fanlike coral and bright anemone moving in the current.
She herself looks impossibly regal. Her black eyes rake over me, and I flinch, knowing that I am looking at someone who has ruled longer than the span of generations of mortal lives.
Beside her sits Nicasia, in an only slightly less impressive chair. And at the other end of the table is Balekin, in a chair much diminished from either of theirs.
“Jude Duarte,” he says. “Now you know how it feels to be a prisoner. How is it to rot in a cell? To think you will die there?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I always knew I was getting out.”
At that, Queen Orlagh tips back her head and laughs. “I suppose you have, in a manner of speaking. Come to me.” I hear the glamour in her voice and remember what Nicasia said about my not remembering whatever she did to me. Truly, I should be glad she didn’t do worse.
My flimsy gown makes it clear I am not wearing any charms. They do not know the geas Dain put on me. They believe I am entirely susceptible to glamours.
I can pretend. I can do this.
I swim over, keeping my face carefully blank. Orlagh gazes deeply into my eyes, and it’s excruciatingly hard not to look away, to keep my face open and sincere.
“We are your friends,” Orlagh says, stroking my cheek with long nails. “You love us very much, but you must never tell anyone how much outside of this room. You are loyal to us and would do absolutely anything for us. Isn’t that right, Jude Duarte?”
“Yes,” I say readily.
“What would you do for me, little minnow?” she asks.
“Anything, my queen,” I tell her.