Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(27)

“No!” Serafina shrilled. “I won’t go without you. I—”

She was cut off by a rumbling crash as the dragon knocked more of the wall down. The creature pulled her head out of the hole she’d made, and dozens of soldiers, all clad in black, swam inside. Their leader pointed toward the throne.

“There they are! Seize them!” he ordered.

Arrows came through the water. Many of the Jani?ari surrounding the princesses and the regina fell.

“Go! Now!” Isabella shouted.

“I can’t leave you!” Serafina sobbed.

Isabella’s tortured eyes sought Neela’s. “Please…” she said.

Neela nodded. She grabbed Serafina’s hand and yanked her away.

Isabella spotted a dagger next to the corpse of a fallen Jani?ari. She conjured a vortex in the water, and sent the knife hurtling at the invaders’ leader. The dagger hit home, knocking him to the floor. His men came to his aid, but he pushed them away. “Get them!” he gurgled, drowning in his own blood. “Take the princesses to Traho!”

But Sera and Neela were already gone.





NEELA HAD NEVER swum so fast. She was a blur in the water, moving like a marlin, her hand gripping Serafina’s like a vise. But the mermen who’d chased them out of the stateroom were gaining on them.

Serafina, in shock, was deadweight. She was slowing Neela down.

“Come on, Sera, snap out of it!” Neela yelled. “I need you to swim!”

They moved through a hallway that twisted and turned. As they rounded a bend, Neela could see that it ended in a T.

“Which way to the vaults?” she shouted.

“To the right!” Serafina shouted back, rallying.

They turned the corner. Ahead of them, in front of the doors to the vaults, were at least thirty enemy soldiers.

Neela wheeled around and headed for the other end of the T, pulling Serafina after her. As they shot past the mouth of the hallway they’d just swum down, she saw the soldiers who’d chased them from the stateroom.

“There they are!” one of them yelled.

Neela sang a velo spell.

Waters blue,

Hear me cast,

Rise behind us,

Make us fast!

The water in the hall rose like a breaker, swiftly pushing the mermaids ahead of it. They’d outpaced their pursuers for the moment but still had to find a room where they could barricade themselves. Neela didn’t live here, and she didn’t know where to go. They were in another hallway now, one filled with portraits of Miromaran nobles. Neela recognized it. Suddenly, she knew where they were.

“Sera, we can make it to my room!”

Her suite was nowhere near as secure as the vaults, but it was all they had. Serafina, roused now, sped ahead and cut left. Neela was right on her tail. They swam down a narrow loggia and then through a coral archway.

Seconds later, they were at the door to Neela’s suite. But it was too late. There was no time to get it open. The soldiers had cast their own velos and had gained on them. In a desperate move, Neela cast a fragor lux spell, hoping to slow the attackers with a small light bomb.

Lava’s light,

Now attack,

Cause my enemies

To fall back!

She’d sung the spell too fast. It was weak. They were done for, she knew it.

But the spell wasn’t weak.

All at once, every globe in the hallway dimmed. The light from each one swirled together into a brilliant, glowing ball. It hurtled through the water, hit the ground a foot away from the soldiers, and exploded, forcing them back. Serafina swung the door open. The two mermaids raced inside and pushed it closed. Neela threw the heavy bolt in the nick of time. Just as it shot home, a body thudded against the door.

“What kind of frag spell was that?” Serafina asked, panting for breath.

“I don’t know,” Neela said. “I’ve never done it before.”

There was another thud. The door shuddered.

“They’re going to break it down,” Serafina said. “We can’t stay here.”

Neela swam to a window. The waters outside were thick with soldiers. “Where can we go?” she asked frantically. “They’re everywhere!”

“We could cast a prax spell and camouflage ourselves against the ceiling,” Serafina said.

“They’ll search every inch of these rooms. They’ll find us.”

A pounding started, rhythmic and loud. The invaders were battering down the door. Neela saw that it was bowing out of its frame with every blow.

“Is there anything here we can use to defend ourselves? A knife? Scissors?” Serafina asked. “I’m not going without a fight.”

Neela rushed to her vanity table and started pawing through the bottles and vials on it, looking for any kind of sharp object. And then she saw it—Yazeed’s whelk shell necklace. She’d taken it from him when she and Serafina had found him and Mahdi in the reggia.

“Sera, over here!” she said. “Hurry!”

“What is it?”

“Yaz’s transparensea pearls.”

Neela shook the pearls out of the shell. The songspell of invisibility used shadow and light and was notoriously difficult to cast. Spellbinders—highly skilled artisans—knew how to insert the spell into pearls that a mermaid could carry with her and deploy in an instant.