Sea Spell (Waterfire Saga #4)(89)

“I could sense your intention, mina,” Ava said. “I saw your heart. It was shining like the sun. I could feel the courage in it. Coco’s, too.”

“I wanted to stop you,” Sera said to Astrid. “Ava’s the reason I didn’t. She held me back, or I might’ve blown the whole thing.”

Ava smiled proudly.

“Coco was in on it, too?” Becca asked. She’d joined the others. Her waterfire was still burning.

“Yes,” Astrid said. “Orfeo gets mer to do what he wants by threatening to hurt those they love. When the fighting started, I told him there was a child that you all cared for, and that she was probably in the camp. Orfeo told me to find her. I did. Coco knew who I was, and as soon as I told her about my plan, she was in. I tied her up and brought her to the clearing. Orfeo never suspected a thing. She’s very brave.”

“Where is she now?” Neela asked.

“Hiding in a sea cave just east of the camp. She told me about the cave, and I instructed her to stay there with the talismans until I came for her. After both Orfeo and Abbadon were dead.”

“One down, one to go,” Neela said.

All six mermaids looked at the Carceron. Becca’s waterfire was burning low. In a moment, it would be out. The gate was still hanging ajar. A silence fell over them.

Sera was the first to break it. “This is it, merls. This is why Vr?ja summoned us. Why we hunted for the talismans. Why we’re here.”

“Can we do this?” Neela asked.

“Like we have a choice?” Ling said.

“We can do this,” Sera said decisively. “Together.” She turned to Ava. “You thought the gods went silent on you, Ava, but they didn’t. You have the answer you’ve spent your whole life searching for. You’ve always had it. The gods didn’t take your sight just so you could survive the Okwa Naholo; they took it so you’d develop another kind of vision—the kind that lets you see deep down inside someone. If you hadn’t seen inside Astrid just now, who knows what would have happened. When we get inside the Carceron, turn that vision on the monster, daughter of Nyx, and tell us what you see.”

Ava nodded. A determined smile graced her lips.

Sera turned to Ling next. “Ling, Abbadon is surely the noisiest monster ever made. It howls and screams and spews rage. There must be a reason for that rage, and I think it lies not in the monster’s words, but in the silences between them. You’ve broken through other impossible silences, daughter of Sycorax, and you can break through this one. I know you can.”

“Becca,” Sera said, putting her hands on her friend’s shoulders, “you’re the most practical, most strategic thinker of us all. Because of you, we have the right weapons loaded with the right ammo, we have warm clothing, and the right number of tents. If anyone will be able to guess the monster’s next move, it will be you. Daughter of Pyrrha, help us forge our way through the Carceron.”

Sera moved to Neela and took her hands. Neela’s bioluminescent skin had turned sky blue. “Our shining star. Our moon and sun,” she said to her best friend. “You kept me going when I’d lost everything. You keep us going now. You lift our spirits and our hopes. We’re about to swim into the heart of darkness. Daughter of Navi, keep the light before us. Please.”

And then there was only Astrid. Sera looked into her eyes and was silent for a moment. When she finally spoke, Sera’s voice was full of feeling. “You were my enemy when we first met back in the Iele’s caves. Now you’re my friend. We were both afraid—of each other, of ourselves. Now we’ve learned to make fear our ally, to listen to it. I’m listening now, Astrid, and it’s telling me that the greatest mage who ever lived created Abbadon and that it’s so powerful, that one of us, or all of us, might not come back out of the Carceron. But it’s also telling me that we’ve got the daughter of Orfeo at our side. If anyone can understand his creation, it’s you. And if you can understand it, you might be able to defeat it.”

Sera held her hands out. Everyone else did, too. As soon as the last hands had been clasped and the circle closed, Sera felt it—a rush of power as strong and unstoppable as a tidal wave. She looked at her friends, at the brave, stubborn, hopeful mermaids beside her. She remembered Mahdi and Desiderio back home in Miromara, and her heart swelled with love.

She let her eyes linger on each of their faces. Then she took a deep breath and said, “It’s time.”

The six mermaids released one another’s hands and swam to the gate.

Yazeed was there, his tail bandaged. Styg and R?k were with him. “Let us come with you,” he said.

Sera shook her head. “No, Yaz. It started with us; it finishes with us.”

Steeling herself for the biggest battle of her life, she swam inside the prison.





A SCHOOL OF ICEFISH, scaleless and silvery, drifted by the six mermaids as they made their way across the open corridor behind the prison’s high exterior wall.

“This was called the Death Run,” Sera said, gesturing to the passage. “According to the conchs I listened to about Atlantis, there were guards with crossbows patrolling on top of the walls. If a prisoner escaped from his cell, he still had to make it across the Death Run. But no one ever did.”

“I wonder if we’ll make it across the Death Run,” said Astrid.