Of Poseidon 02: Of Triton (20 page)

Tira takes a deep breath. “Okay. Since you put it that way.” She eyes the living wall surrounding the Arena and points. “Those two right there. The two striped sharks.”

Emma smiles. “Excellent choice.” She waves to the tiger sharks. As she opens her mouth to give the command, Galen sees a movement from the corner of his eye. A Loyal Tracker raising his hunting spear.

“Galen, watch out,” Rayna rasps, remnants of her voice coming through in fractured rifts of clarity. The water around them seems to rumble.
Could one of the volcanoes be awakening?
An eruption on the full assembly would be the worst possible thing Galen can imagine.

Apparently startled, Emma moves in front of Galen, poised to shield him—from the spear or the eruption, Galen’s not sure. In a swift motion, he tucks her back behind him.

The weapon leaves the Tracker’s hand. It’s the longest second of Galen’s life, waiting on that spear. Instinctively, he snatches Emma closer to him, covering every inch of her with him. He feels the small wake of the spear as it swipes past them. That was too close.

At first, Rayna’s growl barely gets Galen’s attention. After all, it sounds like mere frustration, the familiar beginning of a normal tantrum. But this growl builds, swelling into a roar. The cracks in her voice seem to meld together again, creating something new. Something that hasn’t been seen in many, many generations.

She draws up, as if collecting some invisible power around her.

And her scream moves the water.

19

ONE SECOND
I’m clinging to Galen for dear life, the next I’m separated from him and pushed back by …
Rayna’s scream
? Is that possible? I look around at the new faces of Syrena surrounding me, eyeing me as if I pulled them back with me. They are all as shocked as I am. Five seconds ago, we were about thirty yards closer to her.

She blew us over like empty aluminum cans in the wind.

And it looks like she’s about to do it again. She turns, takes a big breath of water into her lungs, and screams at a large Syrena male who just tried to spear us, near-hysteria on his face. The momentum of her voice is visible, causing the water in front of her to warp and surge and spread like giant hands reaching toward the Syrena with the weapon.

He doesn’t have a chance to get away. The sound wave slaps him dead-on, carries him up and over the crest of the small valley—are those freaking volcanoes?—and through my wall of sea creatures surrounding us. It even pushes back some of the biggest whales.

The upchurned earth starts to settle around us. It looks like a dust storm in the desert, but the water eases the sand back down instead of all at once. The valley looks freshly swept. All eyes are on Rayna, who is now bordering what looks like a major case of hyperventilation.

“Nobody hurts her, you understand?” she says, her voice now completely intact. “I won’t … I won’t let you.”

Some of them back away from me. Others talk among themselves. “Gift of Triton,” they whisper to one another. Toraf looks like his jaw might fall off.

Rayna has the Gift of Triton
. She’s living proof that the Royals never strayed. And now I’ve blown my cover for nothing.

But there is someone who’s already recovered, someone who has already thought this through and found the result lacking to his satisfaction. And while everyone—including me—is paying attention to Rayna, he sneaks up behind me out of nowhere. Jagen’s pulse hits me just before the sharp jab in my back. I know I’ve been stabbed, but at first it just feels like a pinch. And then the pain consumes me.

“Die, you filthy Half-Breed!” he growls.

And then I do not sense him anymore. In fact, I don’t sense anyone anymore. Not my mother, not Rayna, not Toraf, not Grom.

Not Galen.

Where there used to be a gigantic valley of Syrena pulses hitting me from every direction, there is nothing. The world goes black around me and I can’t tell if my eyes are shut or they just stopped seeing. If I’m losing my sensing abilities, if I can’t see anything, does that mean I’m dying?

I’m not as brave about it as I hoped I would be. It’s one thing to contemplate the possibility of dying. It’s another thing to actually be dying. I’m not brave at all.
Ohmysweetgoodness,
I’m scared.

I don’t want to die.

And all at once, his pulse resuscitates me, brings me back from the ledge.
Galen
. His arms envelop me and we are speeding, speeding, speeding through the water. I can’t even open my eyes—it’s like gravity is forcing them shut. I want to sob into his chest but I don’t have the strength. I try to speak, but our pace snatches the words from my mouth.

We have never gone this fast. Not ever.

The pain in my back is numbed by the water rushing against it, and I hope it’s not tearing the flesh open, and at the same time I hope the salt water is somehow healing it. I know I’m bleeding. I feel warmth gather where the numbness starts. I felt Jagen’s weapon pierce me. I felt it touch bone.

I press my face into Galen’s neck. He stops immediately, cradles my cheeks in his hands. If we were going by expressions alone, I’d say he was in more pain than me. “Angelfish,” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry this happened. We’re almost to land. No one can hurt you now. Stay with me, Emma. Oh, please stay with me.”

He kisses me all over my face and all I know is that everything up until this point was worth it. The hassle of getting Toraf through security. The terrifying jump from the helicopter. Even the argument I know Galen and I will have about all this later. The agony in my back. The terrifying moment I thought I would die.

He cradles me in his arms princess-style, then picks up the pace again. For a second, it looks like Galen’s fin has more than doubled in size. That’s when I know I’m hallucinating. I don’t know if it’s the pain or the loss of blood or both, but I lose consciousness.

* * *

Right away, I recognize the scent of Galen’s house, of the lemon-scented air fresheners Rachel places strategically throughout. Of the clean linen scent of freshly washed sheets. Of the aroma of fish baking in the oven.

The light of morning creeps into Galen’s bedroom window, casting the start of a new day on the white furniture and cool blue-painted walls. I feel him beside me, hear the even sound of his breathing, smell the delicious saltiness of his skin.

I have missed him.

I move to face him, and that’s when the pain reminds me that I’ve recently been stabbed. I bury my face in the pillow, but it doesn’t quite muffle my yelp.

“Emma?” Galen says groggily. I feel his hand in my hair, stroking the length of it. “Don’t move, angelfish. Stay on your stomach. I’ll go tell Rachel you’re ready for more pain medicine.”

Immediately I disobey and turn my face up to him. He shakes his head. “I’ve recently learned where your stubbornness comes from.”

I grimace/smile. “My mom?”

“Worse. King Antonis. The resemblance is uncanny.” He leans down and presses his lips to mine and all too quickly springs back up. “Now, be a good little deviant and stay put while I go get more pain meds.”

“Galen,” I say.

“Hmmm?”

“How bad am I hurt?”

He caresses the outline of my cheek. His touch could disintegrate me. “Hurt at
all
is bad enough for me.”

“Yeah, but you’ve always been a baby about this stuff.” I grin at his faux offense.

“Your mother says it’s only a flesh wound. She’s been treating it.”

“Mom is here?”

“She’s downstairs. Uh … You should know that Grom is here, too.”

Grom left the tribunal and headed for land? Did that mean it all ended badly? Well, even
worse
than my getting impaled? An urgent need to know everything about everything shimmies through me. “Whoa. Sit. Talk. Now.”

He laughs. “I will, I promise. But I want to make you comfortable first.”

“Well, then, you need to come over here and switch places with the bed.” A blush fills my cheeks, but I don’t care. I need him. All of him. It feels like forever since we’ve talked like this, just me and him. But talking usually doesn’t last long. Lips were made for other things, too. And Galen is especially good at the other things.

He walks back and squats by the bed. “You have no idea how tempting that is.” It seems like the violet of his eyes gets darker. It’s the color they get when he has to pull away from me, when we’re about to violate a bunch of Syrena laws if we don’t stop. “But you’re not well enough to…” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll go get Rachel. Then we can talk.”

I’m a little surprised that his argument didn’t begin with “But the law…” That is what has stopped us in the past. Now the only thing that appears to be stopping us is my stabby condition.

What’s changed?

And why am I not excited about it? I used to get so frustrated when he would pull away. But a small part of me loved that about him, his respect for the law and for the tradition of his people. His respect for
me.
Respect is a hard thing to come by when picking from among human boys. Is that respect gone?

And is it my fault?

After a few minutes both Mom and Rachel come to my aid. They give me pain medication and water. Then Mom announces that it’s time for a shower and fresh pajamas. She helps me to the bathroom, helps me wash, then helps me put a gazillion tangles in my hair while she shampoos it. And she actually thinks we’re going to leave it that way.

“I’m not going downstairs looking like a hobo,” I tell her. “We have to comb it.”

“That thick mess will break this flimsy comb. Can’t you just run your fingers through it?”

It’s weird to be arguing about my hair when we still haven’t discussed my wound, how I got it, and how I came to be snoring in Galen’s bed. We both seem to appreciate the bizarreness at the same time. Mom raises a brow. “Don’t think you get special treatment just because you can make a whale do the tango. I’m still your mother.”

We both laugh so hard I think I feel a tiny rip in my newly dressed wound. Without warning, Mom throws her arms around me, careful to avoid touching it. “I’m so proud of you, Emma. And I know your father would be, too. Your grandfather can’t stop talking about it. You were amazing.”

Ah, the bonding power of tangled hair and dancing whales.

She releases me the second before it gets awkward. “Let’s get you dressed. We have a lot to discuss. And I bet you’re starving. Rachel made you … uh … Upchuck Eggs.”

“She gets an A for effort.”

Mom hands me my clothes.

* * *

We find Galen and Grom sitting in the formal dining room, talking quietly to each other across the gigantic mahogany table. Steam billows up from several pots spread across it, polluting the air with the smell of seafood. Out of the sixteen glossy high-back chairs, I take the one next to Galen.

He stops his conversation with Grom and leans over to kiss my forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Hungry.”

Rachel sets a plate full of eggs, jalapeños, bacon, cheese, and a bunch of other ingredients that a less-famished person might care about. I don’t even blow on it before I spoon it into my mouth. As soon as I do, of course, Grom says, “Good morning, Emma.”

I nod politely. “Goo monig,” I tell him around my food.

Galen winks at me, then takes a bite of his own breakfast, which looks like a crab cake the size of his face. Also, it smells like dirty socks and sauerkraut.

“Emma, we were just discussing our plans,” Grom continues. “I’m glad you could join us.”

I take a sip of orange juice. “Plans for what?”

Mom sits next to Grom with a cup of coffee. “Plans for living on land.”

“We already live on land.”

“We do,” she agrees. “But it looks like we’ll need to make room for a few additions to our lives.” She doesn’t have to look at Grom for me to know she’s talking about him.

Which means everything I did was for nothing. If Grom is living on land, that means he can’t return back to his territory. “They didn’t believe me, then,” I say. “They still took Jagen’s side?”

“We don’t know,” Grom says. “We left right after you did, during the chaos that followed Jagen’s attack. What happened after that doesn’t matter. I would rather live among humans than see the ones I care about put in danger like that again.”

“Me, too,” Mom says, fury glinting in her eyes. “You were hurt, and I wasn’t waiting around for them to throw us in the Ice Caverns for the next eternity. Idiots.”

Galen places a hand on my thigh under the table and gives it a gentle squeeze. It’s not meant to be sensual at all, but I’ve been going through Galen-withdrawals and I can’t help but acknowledge the sensation of lava flowing through my veins. I try, try, try to respect that it’s meant to comfort me. Galen must see it on my face because his eyes widen before he moves his hand away from me. “There’s nothing for us to go back to, Emma,” Galen says, clearing his throat. “That tribunal should have never happened. The Syrena world we once knew doesn’t exist anymore.”

So I was right. The only thing stopping him in the bedroom earlier was my wound. Not Syrena law. Not Syrena tradition.

“It just seems that way right now,” I tell him. “Give it some time, then go back.”

“No,” he says. “I gave it enough time. Day after day, they didn’t listen to reason. All they want is change. They don’t care if it’s good or bad. Now they can have it. Without the Royals.”

The Syrena might need time, but Galen needs time, too. It’s too soon for him to be making judgment calls like that. He’s been too loyal to his kind for too long to cut them off cold-turkey. But he wouldn’t appreciate me telling him so in front of his brother. Or in front of my mom. I change the subject. “Speaking of Royals, where are Rayna and Toraf? Sleeping in?”

Galen’s jaw tightens. “Toraf is not welcome here. Rayna has chosen the company of her traitorous mate over the company of her family.”

“Galen, Toraf isn’t a traitor,” I tell him gently. “He did what he did to save Rayna. To save
you
. What would have happened if I hadn’t come?” But I can’t convince myself that the outcome would have been different if I had opted to stay on the cozy shore. Rayna still could have—would have—saved the day.