Tempest Revealed (28 page)

“My top priority is regaining my throne!”

“At the expense of your people,” Kona countered. “And if that’s what you really want to do, I can’t do anything to stop you. But I’ll be damned if I’ll sacrifice my own people so that you can call yourself king again.”

“You make it sound so frivolous. Do you know what Tiamat is doing to my people right now?”

“No, and neither do you.” Kona ran a hand through his hair in what I had come to recognize as his major tell. He did it only when his frustration level was at a boiling point. “But no matter
what is going on, leading more people into the slaughter is a stupid idea.”

Kenji lunged at him, fist raised. “Who are you to call me stupid?”

Kona stood to meet the attack. But Kenji bypassed him completely, lashing out with his foot and delivering a solid blow to my still very tender ribs.

I went flying.

Chapter 22

I hit the rocks, hard, my bare back skidding across them for a few feet before I finally came to a stop.

“What the hell?” Kona yelled, throwing a punch straight at Kenji’s jaw. Kenji ducked it, landing a solid blow on Kona’s ribs instead. It was obvious he’d been preparing for this fight for some time, while Kona was completely blindsided.

Kona bellowed in rage, went for Kenji again. But I had had more than enough of being knocked around by men and I wanted in on the action. Rising onto my knees, I sent a shaky blast of power straight at Kenji. He dodged, deflected most of it, but enough got through that he staggered back a couple of steps.

I climbed to my feet, threw another, steadier blast at him. This time he did a backflip to avoid the energy pulse, but I was waiting for him and followed up with a stream of electricity that set his choppy blue hair on fire.

He howled, ran for the water. While he ducked his head in the Pacific, Kona and I turned toward Vikram and Dimitri,
hands raised preemptively. If they were going to attack, I would be ready. There were days, weeks, even, when I worried about how much power I had and what it was doing to me …

This was not one of those days.

I was fed up with being beaten by jerks. No one else was going to mess with me. Not today.

But Vikram just grinned as he put his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. Dimitri, on the other hand, threw back his head and laughed. “Got more than you bargained for that time, didn’t you?” he called down the beach to Kenji, who stopped smoothing his hands through his singed hair long enough to flip off the other selkie.

“Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” Kona demanded, still looking like he wanted to break every bone in Kenji’s body.

Kenji, finally satisfied that his hair was no longer in imminent danger, pushed to his feet and headed back up the beach to us. “Hey, no hard feelings, Tempest,” he said, hand extended. “I just wanted to test out your girl, Kona, see what she’s made of.”

Kona knocked his hand away. “So you hit her? When Sabyn’s already beat the crap out of her?”

“That was my point. If she fell to Sabyn, I wasn’t sure how much juice she was actually going to have when it came to fighting Tiamat.” He nodded at Vikram and Dimitri. “They may think she’s the new savior, but I’ve been a little more skeptical. I wanted to see for myself what she could do.”

“That’s none of your business!” Kona told him sharply.

“It is if you want us to fight with you,” Kenji asserted. “If I’m going to unite against Tiamat, I need reassurance that you won’t
leave me hanging out there. I know what you can do, Kona, and the others, but Tempest is an unknown quantity.”

“So you kick me in the ribs? A little warning might have been nice.”

“I didn’t think I’d connect.”

There was a note of censure in his response that I couldn’t miss, and it ticked me off all over again. “Well, excuse me for not being super-mermaid, but I’ve spent the last three weeks as a prisoner of one of the biggest sociopaths in the Pacific. If I don’t live up to your expectations less than twenty-four hours after escaping from him, I don’t actually care. I’ve never been very good at the trained seal act anyway.”

With that as my parting shot, I turned and stalked up the beach. I had better things to do than deal with these jerks. Like getting a root canal.

I was halfway up the beach and moving fast when Mahina came over the crest of the hill, a backpack slung on her shoulder and a fully laden food cart in front of her. Behind her were two more mermaids, each also pushing a cart.

“Breakfast is here!” my best friend sang out. Though she was pretending to be oblivious to the tension in the air, I knew she was concerned—when she looked me over, her gaze seemed to linger on my ribs. I really hoped it wasn’t because Kenji had made the bruising worse. Kona might have freaked out a little about the kick, but I had a feeling Zarek and Mahina would make his freak-out look like nothing.

Deciding to brazen my way through, I nodded at her backpack. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m taking the subbloon for supplies. The kitchen is out of a
bunch of stuff, and I volunteered to run over to the closest settled island. I figured it would give me a chance to get the lay of the land.” She glanced over at the kings, then arched an eyebrow at me. “You want to come?”

I kind of did, actually, but the way Kona stiffened at the suggestion dissuaded me. Though I couldn’t decide if that was because he wanted me here to talk strategy or if he thought the trip was unsafe. I was really hoping it was the former, because if it was the latter and he didn’t speak up about it, I was going to be really upset. Mahina might not be merQueen, but she was my closest friend and one of the very few people I trusted down here. If he thought she was putting herself in danger, than he’d better speak up about it.

Vikram was the first one to breakfast, grabbing a huge platter of fruit off the cart and settling himself on one of the benches. Dimitri was second, followed by Kenji, who was looking warily at the food, almost like he expected us to have poisoned it.

My anger at Kenji slowly drained away. If we were going to defeat Tiamat, we needed to work together, not constantly second-guess each other’s motives. A glance at Kona told me he was still livid, but I just didn’t have the energy or the will to maintain my own anger. Too many other things were going on for me to be spending so much of my time and attention on the selkie king. I’d just be careful around him, and the others, for a while. See where that got me.

Breakfast was a subdued affair. Mahina stuck around; it was obvious she knew something was up. Even though she didn’t know what, she stationed herself right next to me and
refused to move, refused to take her eyes off Kenji or the others. She even seemed a little uncomfortable with the fact that Kona was sitting on my other side. Which I would probably find funny if he wasn’t hemming me in, his leg and shoulder and arm brushing against mine in a subtle signal to the others that I was his.

I should probably be grateful for the protection, but it just left me feeling a little sick. I loved Kona and always would, but not like that. Not now, when my heart was breaking wide open for Mark. I hoped he understood that just because Mark was out of the picture didn’t mean I wanted to get back together with him. I’d certainly made it clear enough on the subbloon. And yet here he was—defending me, touching me, trying to claim me in front of the others. I prayed he was doing it for protection only. I had already hurt him enough. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was hurt him again, in any way.

The interminable meal finally over, I jumped up and started clearing the dishes. I needed something to do with my hands, something that would get me out of Kona’s immediate proximity.

Mahina left in the subbloon a few uncomfortable minutes later. Kona insisted that she bring two of his guards with her—much to my everlasting gratitude—and I watched as the three of them climbed aboard the subbloon and took off. I wanted to call Mahina back, to beg her to take me along too—anything was better than sitting here with these four men, none of whom seemed to think there was anything wrong with staring at me like I was a bug under a microscope.

I gritted my teeth, settled in for a miserable day. But much
to my surprise, we settled into conversation—real conversation—pretty quickly as we debated the merits of different plans. Kenji, big surprise, wanted to go after his lands first. He made a persuasive argument: Tiamat had taken over his people and if we could hit her first, before the others knew to be on alert, we could end this thing early. After all, she was in charge. If we got to her right away, then there was the chance that the others wouldn’t fight.

While I understood where he was coming from, I disagreed. Not necessarily with hitting Tiamat first, but with the idea that when we went for the others, tried to reclaim our territories, things would fall apart for everyone else without Tiamat around to pull the strings. I remembered Sabyn talking about Coral Straits, about how he was settling in, claiming it, with or without Tiamat. He was dug in for the long term, and I didn’t think even his girlfriend’s death would be enough to shake him out.

Which is why, Dimitri said, we needed to hit them all at once. A massive blitz attack that they weren’t prepared for. One that would take out each of our opponents at the same time and allow us to reclaim our territories. I liked that idea a lot, but Vikram was quick to point out that a massive strike like that required a massive amount of soldiers and firepower, something we were definitely lacking. We had approximately two thousand mercreatures on the island with us, but some of them were old, some were too young. A bunch, while the right age and loyal, had never been trained for combat.

“We’d better get to training them, then,” I argued. “I’m not saying we’ll turn them into incredible fighting machines, but no matter what, they should be able to defend themselves, for
no other reason than if Tiamat or one of her minions decides to attack this place.”

“And if Tiamat turns their loyalties?” Kenji demanded.

“If Tiamat turns them,” I said, “then we have bigger problems than taking back our territories. These people came with you. They showed loyalty and courage in fleeing the sea witch or the Leviathan or whoever came for your territory. You do them a disservice by not standing with them now. They trusted you enough to flee with you when it would have been easier, much easier, to stay and swear fealty to a new leader. Trust in that. Trust in them.”

They all looked thoughtful after I spoke, like they agreed with what I was saying. Except for Kenji, who said snidely, “Why should we believe you when your own people don’t? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the only leader here who didn’t bring followers with her? Except, of course, for that sweet little errand girl who just left here.”

“Back off, Kenji,” Kona growled.

I put a hand on his arm in the universal gesture of I-Can-Handle-This. After all, Kenji was right—my people
had
turned against me. They’d chosen Sabyn over me, and more than once today, I’d wondered if I was doing them a disservice by trying to get him out. If they really wanted him, really thought he was the best merleader, then I should step aside. Let them have him. Then again, I was terrified that it was only a matter of time before he turned on them the way he’d turned on me.
That
I couldn’t allow to happen.

But if I wanted to avoid it, I had to be careful. We couldn’t just rush in there and hope for the best, as Dimitri was
suggesting. There could be no test runs, no preliminary attacks like Vikram wanted. Sabyn was more than capable of cutting off his nose to spite his face, and I refused to give him any reason to hurt the people I had come to care for and feel responsible for. Besides, doing that was basically sending people in to be slaughtered. This wasn’t chess. I wasn’t up for sacrificing pawns just to get the king.

Kona, however, refused to listen to caution, or even my determination to do things slowly. He agreed with Dimitri, wanted a full-scale blitz. And no matter how much I talked or reasoned, he wouldn’t back down. It wasn’t long before we were going head to head, each of us determined to get the other to see his or her point of view.

It was Kenji who finally called a halt to the in-fighting. “Look, it’s late. We’re not getting anywhere,” he told us. “Why don’t we call it quits, go get some dinner and come back to this discussion tomorrow when we’ve all had time to think.”

“So that my people can spend another night under the Leviathan’s rule?” Kona demanded.

Kenji just stared him down. “They would anyway. Even if you got your way in this, none of us is jetting off tonight to take care of this. So chill out. If you want to free them, we’ve got to get the right plan together.”

I couldn’t believe that Kenji was the voice of reason here, but I wanted to cheer his little speech. Kona was dangerously close to spinning out of control and Kenji had delivered just the kick in the butt to get him back in line.

But Kona was right about one thing. We were running out of time and running out of options to discuss. Sooner or later
we would have to pick a plan and stick by it. The only problem was, for the first time since I’d met him, I wasn’t sure I could follow Kona. If he chose the wrong plan, I would have to be strong enough to stand against him. To defy him.

Kona had never taken defiance very well and now, in this, I was afraid telling him no would destroy the fragile ties of our friendship once and for all.

But what could I do? Go along with a plan that I believed would get all of us killed, even if it freed his people?