Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
“If you’re trying to insult me it’s not working.”
“Insult you? Gracious, no.” She grins at me and small fish dark out of her mouth. The white eels of her hair snap at them as they go, eager for a snack. “But it is the truth. The world up there has been most unkind to you, hasn’t it?”
“I’ve managed,” I reply curtly. I try to straighten myself but it’s impossible when you’re engulfed by a giant tentacle.
She gives the Kraken a nod. “Release her.”
The Kraken lets go of me, the suckers releasing with a pop pop pop. I gasp and sink to the sand, holding onto my aching skin where they had sucked at me.
“So I heard you want me to reverse the spell…” she says.
I struggle to my feet, feeling strangely unbalanced despite being underwater. “Who told you that? Nerissa?”
“My sister? Goodness, no. As if I would ever listen to her. Barely even a sea witch, if you ask me, but every family has to have a black sheep.”
She takes a few steps toward me, her movements smooth and measured. Her black diaphanous gown floats around her like silk and I realize it’s made of Kraken ink. “I’m no fool, dear, though I certainly am curious. I don’t make bargains with Syrens like you and assume that everything has worked out in the end, not with so many variables in life. For I believe in accountability.”
I snort at that and she gives me a steady look as she continues. “I am a fixer, Maren. A life-changer. A wish-maker. I need to know how my…clients…have adjusted to their new lives. You were never truly alone, princess, no, I was always there in some way. I have creatures below the sea and above that checked in on you from time to time. I liked to keep an eye on you to make sure all was well.”
Indignation flares in me. “All was well?” I repeat, the phrase a bitter taste in my mouth. “Then clearly you saw that for the last ten years, nothing has been well!”
“You made your choice, dearie,” she says with a patronizing tone, walking around me, her white eel hair shining like pearls as they swirl in the current. “And it was your choice. You’ve forgotten that you were the one that came to me. You asked me. Begged me. I gave you what you asked for. You’ve rewritten the story to make yourself the victim here but you’re only a victim to your own foolish choices.”
I open my mouth to rebuke that but shut my mouth into a tight line. Because she’s right. She’s pure evil. She was in the wrong, she persuaded me to continue by telling me the lies I most wanted to hear, but I am the one who asked for it. I am the one who made the choice in the end. I’ve known that too, of course I have, and I’ve hated myself for it. That’s why this mistake has weighed so heavily on my soul, because I know that in the end, I am the one to blame.
I close my eyes, remembering Ramsay’s words, that we don’t make mistakes but choices that lead us on a different path. This is the path I chose. But it’s not the one I have to stay on.
“What are you thinking, I wonder?” she muses and I open my eyes to find her gone. A shadow passes over and I look up to see her swimming above me, moving like a shark, the sun a faint glimmer behind her. Before my eyes her legs come together and turn a smooth seamless white, a shark’s tail at the end.
“Are you envious of what I can do?” she says, swimming down now and circling around me. Now she’s no longer Edonia but a great white shark, a ferocious-looking beast with her red eyes. “Do I remind you of your friend?”
She doesn’t. Nill was smaller and a smooth bronze-gray color with long rounded fins, the tips bright white like they’d been dipped in paint.
“Do you wish that you could do as I do?” she asks idly and in a moment she transforms back into herself, though her teeth still look like they belong to a shark. Her eyes go to my necklace. “You kept it throughout the years. Every time you touched it I hope it reminded you of what you lost.”
“What I lost doesn’t exist anymore,” I tell her stiffly. “My sisters are gone, my mother, my father. I don’t know who is left in Limonos.”
“Oh, well I could fill you in on all the gossip,” she says gleefully, placing her hands together. “Asherah went across the Pacific while I believe Larimar might have gone south to the poles. Your sisters left after your father died of a broken heart, all because of you. With them gone, there was no one left to rule the kingdom and they all,” she gestures with her hands, making the eels in her hair twitch, “scattered. All the Syrens left Limonos. Now it’s a barren sea surrounded by barren land. Amazing isn’t it, what one girl’s selfishness can do?”