The Palace Throne Room, Hours after Princess’ Ayalina’s Escape…

“No, your highness, I have no idea where Princess Ayalina might have been taken. The cecaelian who took her certainly wasn’t one of mine.”

Ezra met the steel in the High King’s wrathful glare with bows and curled tentacles—the picture of innocence. It was usually so easy to ease the king’s mind into submission, but tonight—tonight he had never seen the king so angry.

The vast throne room was almost claustrophobic in the darkness of night, its usual grand elegance haunting, which Ezra found quite to his taste—minus one murderous, senile old mer-man. The marble columns looming over the throne cast shadows under High King Titus’s eyes that underlined his fatigue, though a spark had returned to them that Ezra had been working so carefully to dull.

“My currents can no longer reach her! There has to be some spell involved!” Titus bellowed, clanging the bident on the floor. It shot sparks at Ezra’s tentacles, sending them, and himself skittering back. There was accusation in the king’s eyes. Ezra tugged on the chain around his neck, urging the black pendant to reach into the High King’s mind.

This wouldn’t be the first time he would wriggle out from under the king’s temper unscathed; however, with a little good fortune, and a little magic, it might just be the last.

Ezra smiled ever so slightly at that thought, turning his face away from the king to avoid provocation.

“A spell that could circumvent the power of your bident, highness?” Ezra drawled, polishing another of the amulets on his chest so as to not draw attention to the one that mattered. “Such a spell does not exist.”

“Every cecaelian left in this ocean is one of your subjects!” Titus snapped. “My guards say that her kidnapper wasn’t much older than the princess, herself! Who is he?”

Ezra bowed his head, hating every moment of reverence he was forced to show this tyrant. Granted, there were only a few thousand cecaelia left in the oceans, but the High King expected to know them all? By name? The hypocrisy was almost laughable.

“My sources say that he was trying to enter the palace as a citizen of Atlantis, my king. He has no connection to my kingdom.”

Titus growled. “Convenient all this, wouldn’t you say, Ezra? You’ve placed yourself within my palace, and the night my daughter rejects your proposed suitor, she also disappears? With what looked to all of my guards like one of your men.”

Ezra reeled, swallowing a snarl of his own. He of course knew that the princess hadn’t been keen on the prince at dinner—anyone with ears would have known that, but that she was considering rejecting him after the engagement was announced was news to him. If there was anything Ezra hated, it was receiving crucial details too late.

He supposed he should have been more suspicious. He’d sent young prince Ellian to Cirrina as a favor. In his letter, he’d instructed the sea-witch to remove that disgusting blemish from his face, and perhaps pour him a glass of liquid charm. Clearly, Cirrina had succeeded on at least one of those counts. When the engagement was announced, he’d assumed he’d finally followed her instructions. Suspicions piqued, now unfortunately wasn’t the time to speculate. He would have to question the prince, later.

“I was under the impression that the engagement had already been announced, my king,” he said through clenched teeth. For a shining moment, he’d thought that Princess Ayalina had either listened to his advice and gained herself a valuable pawn.

Losing your strategy again, princess?

“The princess rejected the proposal? How can that be?” he asked instead.

“And isn’t that suspicious as well, Ezra?”

Ezra’s eyes widened, noticing that none of the guards in the room dared look his way. He placed a hand on the black amulet on his chest, searching for the magic he’d bargained for. It was still there, pulsing and jittering normally under his palm. He pushed his magic into it, directing it at the king’s ire, at his rage, at his suspicion, but Titus didn’t back into his throne. He didn’t allow the fatigue to take him like before. Instead, he gripped the shaft of the bident, and the temperature in the room rose a few degrees.

It wasn’t working—and this had never happened before. In his desperation to find his missing daughter, the king was fighting the pull of his persuasion, magical and otherwise.

“I am at your service, my king,” said Ezra. “I simply don’t know—”

Chief Pastian entered the room, sparing Ezra from the invention of a weak excuse. For once, Ezra was happy to give way to the noisy soldier.

“My King!” Pastian announced, clanking in his armor as he gave a bowed salute. Three of the night guard followed in his wake, heads held low. By the looks of Pastian’s drooping fins and bedraggled uniforms, they’d been out half the night. Ezra scowled.

Perhaps, he thought disdainfully, if they hadn’t given up so quickly, then they would have succeeded in tracking her down. And perhaps if they’d condescended to ask for help from his own men, they’d have had a chance of catching the princess-thief. Pastian’s incompetence knows no bounds…

“Pastian!” Titus barked, momentarily distracted. “What news?”

Ezra did his best to melt into the shadows as the night guard chief gave his report.

“Since our return, I have rallied a larger search party from the militia, and city watch. Captain Kael is ready to deploy with your permission, my king.”

“Permission given,” said the king. His anger melted into simple intensity as his attention shifted to Pastian and the evident fatigue of his guards. “Any other news? Do we know nothing of her kidnapper?”

“Ah, well…” Pastian said, looking uncomfortable.

“Speak!”

“During the ball, we arrested a cecaelian who seemed to have objections to the Prince Ellian and Princess Aya’s union. He was escorted out of the event, of course, and presumably down to the lockboxes.”

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?” the king demanded, voicing the same question that was on Ezra’s mind.

A cecaelian intruder? Who would have the brainless guts to break into a royal event for so little reward?

“Bring the intruder to me!” Titus ordered, bident glowing in his fist.

Pastian shrunk under the order. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible, my king. The intruder is no longer in the palace.”

“How is that possible? The lockboxes should be inescapable!”

There, Titus shot an accusatory glance at Ezra, who deftly avoided his gaze in favor of glaring at Pastian.

Indeed, how had the prisoner escaped?

“The guard who escorted him, presumably to the prisons, has been missing since the initial chase. I’ve just been informed by the doorguard that the cecaelian in question was never incarcerated.”

Titus’s frustration was starting to boil the water over his crown.

“Release a warrant for him too, then. Where is Marlin?”

Ezra hadn’t noticed his absence before, but now that the king mentioned it, the whole conversation had been devoid of the old turtle’s annoying remarks.

Oh, how much more refreshing he’d be as a soup, Ezra pined briefly.

“Still out searching,” Pastian reported.

It had been reasonable for Pastian to return to the palace for more guards to expand his radius, but while Titus was lucid, his rage was heating up the water in the throne room, degree by uncomfortable degree. When his tentacles began to burn at the ends, Ezra tapped at the pendant again, urging it to calm the king down—to make him more reasonable. Again, no response.

Eris!

“Then follow him!” Titus ordered, the picture of the warring king he’d been so many years ago. It was truly impressive how quickly the guards fled the room at his words. “And you, Ezra! Take your guards and join them! Search every shadowy hidey-hole and under every rock! I don’t care what force you need to use against the one who took her. Find them. Now!”

Ezra tipped the king an ironic bow, and as the king ordered, summoned his own men from the shadows of the throne room. Although the High King knew they were there, it never failed to amuse the way he jumped when they appeared—it was Ezra’s only recompense for the silt mire that this night was turning out to be.

Ezra didn’t waste time getting himself and his men out of the boiling throne room. The moon had set, and the waters around the palace were at their darkest.

“Find the turtle, first,” he ordered the five cecaelian guards he had been able to spare from the retinue at the Kuroshio palace. They spilled first into the cool hallways, quiet, and ready for a hunt. “He’ll know more than Titus’ imbeciles.”

“And you, my king?” There was no ranking system among the cecaelia like Titus’ guards managed. There were no captains, chiefs, generals, and commanders. Hierarchy was determined by power, and by combat. The guard who addressed him was bigger than Ezra, and probably had more natural magic, therefore he felt comfortable questioning his ‘king.’

Ezra scowled. “I have an errand to run.”

“An errand?”

Ezra twisted a finger around the pendant and channeled every scrap of rage, betrayal, and desperation he had left through the little bit of metal. Days, or even hours before, that much effort would have been enough to make his men scuttle away begging for mercy. Now, it only silenced them, leaving the sparks of rebellion and bloodlust in their cold stares entirely intact.

“Find the princess before she gets taken in by Titus’ men, and our kingdom falls to shambles,” he demanded. “Now.”

Ezra’s retinue left him, teeth bared and hissing, but they left.

“Oh my…” whispered a voice from the curtains in the vast hallway. “How the High King has been angered. You seem to have failed, Ezzzra.”

“The only one who has failed is you, Eris.” Ezra whirled away from the shadow and flung himself down the hall, searching for the ambassadors’ quarters.

“So touchy…” the voice laughed at him from a window adjacent to his path. It followed him from under a decorative chair, behind a statue of Titus that decorated the passage, and then the little shades cast by a chandelier, until every nook and shadow was mocking him.

“Are you going to admit to that blatant, petty bit of sabotage in the throne room, Eris?” he snapped at one of the curtains as he billowed past. “Is this how you tell me you’ve reneged on our deal?”

“Your power depends entirely on progress, little king. If it is slipping, mayhaps your plans are as well.”

“Nothing about this slows down my plans,” Ezra growled to the nearest shadow.

“Doesn’t it?” the shadow hissed back. “The little princess is missing, not dead. However will you claim the bident now?”

“I’m working on it,” he promised darkly, and with that, turned the final corridor, and swept himself quietly into his own rooms.

King Ezra ghosted past Adriatta’s sleeping form as he moved through his own accomodations, and into the luxurious private wash room. Between the large, sheeted mirrors and the coral commode, a large claw-footed bathtub waited for him. Lighting a small flameless fire under the bathtub, he began to produce bootlegged ingredients hidden around the room. From under tiles, vanity drawers, and among the many perfume bottles his wife never used, everything he needed was sorted in moments. There were times that having ten arms had its advantages. His solution needed to be brewed before dawn, and there were mere hours left.

As he worked, he had the distinct feeling that he was still being watched. Ezra tracked the slippery shadow’s unnatural movement as it shifted under the sheets and towels, making even innocuous bathware seem sinister.

“I had clearly underestimated the dunderheadedness of my pawn. However, I assure you he is not the only pawn, nor is he crucial to our success,” he said conversationally, careful to keep his voice low enough not to wake Adriatta.

Eventually, the whispering voice that followed him through the hallways spoke to him from a dark stain in the back of the linen cases.

“Our success?” the voice had moved to a shadow behind one of the mirrors, sounding as though it were spitting angrily. “This plan of yours is springing leaks, King Ezra.”

“Are you going to come out so we can speak face to face, or will I be brewing this and talking to my spoon?”

The shadow seemed to deliberate a moment before responding.

“The mirror,” it said at last.

The bathroom mirror immediately flooded with writhing gray and blue shapes, and in them, the image of the sea-devil Eris took form. Her body was a distorted amalgamation of leathery skin that absorbed any trace of light that came near it. Instead of hair, Eris’ head had a mass of tendrils, twisting and writhing as though they had some sinister agenda of their own. Long, spindly fingers gave the nightmarish impression that she was a moving, living fishing lure—the kind designed for nighttime hunts. From a distance she could have passed for a beautiful human woman. Up close, she was an otherworldly nightmare, designed to unsettle and deceive.

“That’s better,” Ezra said, carefully avoiding her eyes as he poured vials and powders into the heated tub. “Having a nice evening, Eris?”

“Don’t play coy with me—not tonight!” Eris raged, her voice no longer a whisper. Her voice slithered through the washroom like a living thing, making the tips of his tentacles stand on end. “The Aegeans are ripe for an uproar. This prince is the last of their hopes for a peaceful alliance. An eclipse is coming that will undo much of the ocean’s magic, and you are not prepared for the chaos. The last white eclipse nearly undid all of the work I’d slaved for in the Kuroshio region. Why do I sense you are about to repeat the mistakes of the first war?”

“I am aware of the eclipse,” Ezra said cooly, reaching for a perfume bottle in which he’d smuggled blue-ring toxin.

“Are you? That is surprising.” Eris actually sounded impressed.

Ayalina’s predictions might be the thing to save him.

Ezra kept his fingers purposefully relaxed on his ladle’s handle, but inside was seething.

The Aegean bordered the Kuroshio territory, and over the years relations with its king had been tense at best, and murderous at worst. It wasn’t until he’d caught Ellian on an unauthorized hunting party in his territory that he’d had any hope for a future with the Aegeans.

The future king of the Aegean sea had proved more malleable than its present ruler. Ezra had stricken a deal. In exchange for rule over all of the Kuroshio territory once Adriatta inherited the Atlantean throne, Ellian would persuade Princess Ayalina to marry him. Princess Ayalina, the last princess unspoken for in Titus’ plans, and the last princess standing between himself, and his wife’s inheritance. With her name siphoned away from the kingdom and bound to another, Adriatta would be the first choice of the ‘bound’ Atlantean daughters to inherit.

Ezra hadn’t just come to the palace to convince High King Titus to allow Ellian to begin a suit for Ayalina. He had come to speed along Adriatta’s inheritance. Two decades had passed of the ‘purges,’ begun by Titus, but only last year had Ezra been informed how many cecaelian lives those purges had claimed.

Titus was killing magic folk at a prodigious rate.

Ezra turned murderous at the thought. After so much sacrifice, it was as though the war had never ended.

Now, instead of witnessing the signing of a marriage contract, he was in the precarious position of convincing a sea-devil that his deal with her was still valid—something that was going to be difficult if his emotions got away from him.

“My purpose was to have the princesses out of the palace before the eclipse. I have done it. I might add that I’ve done it with the added bonus of removing Titus’s protection from the bounds of the inner city,” he said confidently.

Ezra paused to lower the heat burning under the tub’s claw-feet.

“As for repeating the mistakes made during the war, if I had received the Inkthral lance from you as we’d discussed, I’d have taken power much sooner. A broken pendant is hardly a fair trade.”

“The lance belongs to Fate, not I” Eris scolded, twisting around in the mirror. Though she stayed in view, she was clearly restless, moving from one pane of polished glass to the next. “If an heir of Poseidon were to reveal himself with that lance, your people would follow him, it’s true, but the bident is powerful enough to combat it. You can still be the hero of prophecy. You can still claim the throne.”

“You believe in the hero, then.”

“Belief is inconsequential. What is far more important is what people will follow.”

“I fit every description. My blood is royal. My tentacles are black as the abyss itself. When I claim the bident, my people, and every other renegade, outcast, and refugee will rise to follow me. Then, once my people have rallied, the Kingdom of the Depths will be yours.”

“Sweet promises,” Eris said with a saccharine drip to her tone. “But you’ve lost the key to your control.”

“I’ll have it back when you restore the pendant,” Ezra all but snapped.

“No…” Eris enlarged herself to fill all the mirrors, making Ezra nearly drop the stirrer. “You might have married the eldest of Titus’s daughters, but until the last princess ties herself to the Ageans, you will never claim this throne. The pendant is not the key, Ezra. She is! You’ve left a loose end.”

Ezra’s tentacles twitched in annoyance, but beyond that, he was careful not to let his emotion show.

Whether or not the mind-meddle potion was undone by the eclipse, Ayalina would marry the Aegeans. Still, it was such a shame. Even if the eclipse did reverse some of the magic’s effects, Ayalina would never be the same—that was just how mind-potions worked.

Ezra realized he was once more wasting time on his personal concerns. If he was to save his people, and bring about justice for the mer-people who so unjustly had taken Atlantis, the next week was crucial, and he could afford no more mistakes or distractions.

“Restore the amulet, Eris. I am about to send our prince off to correct his mistakes. He will find the princess for us, and cut a few corners in the process. A problem that solves itself.”

There was a long, sickening pause as Eris stroked her nightmarish hands through the tendrils on her head, considering the option.

“You expect the foolish prince to actually find the princess?” she said at last. “Even I cannot enter the Depths since it was sealed.”

Ezra looked up, a trace of surprise slipping through his facade. “You believe she’s going to the Depths? Why?”

Eris sighed the sigh of a sea-devil running out of patience. “Once more, I do not believe. I know. She may even have the bad fortune of running into one of my…old friends on her way.”

After their years of dealing and planning together, Ezra knew Eris too well to ask for information she would not give. Extinguishing the boiler beneath the tub entirely, he heaved a sigh and pulled a light copper sphere from his personal cabinet. He would have to remember to warn Adriatta not to use this washroom until he’d collected the cleared away the potion residue.

“Why not have this friend deliver her back to the palace?” Ezra asked innocently. Wrapping the sphere in one tentacle, he sunk it into the sheets covering the potion, and watched as the solution seeped through the fibers, and sunk into the metal.

Eris only chuckled. “Not that sort of friend, little king. Now…how will you ensure the foolish boy returns successfully?”

“He’s going with my personal guard,” said Ezra, realizing the full extent of what must be done. If Eris was warning him that there was even a modicum of possibility that Aya could undo what he’d been working toward for so long, he would have to make every assurance. Aya had never been susceptible to his magic, nor his pendant, and though Eris would never tell him why—not without demanding some sort of price for the information—he didn’t want any other unpleasant surprises. “And he’s going with this.”

Ezra picked the sphere up from the cloth, every drop of the bathtub having pulled into its surface. Now a dull brown, he held it up to the mirror.

“How very fine,” she purred.

“This won’t take him to the Depths…as you know, the kingdom is magically untraceable. However; it will take him to Aya as far as the twilight market if needed—for a price.”

“The little king does learn…” Eris purred, and though he would never call anything she did approving, this might have come close if there were.

“Indeed. For new information, he must give up one of his own memories. His annoying escapades. Bits and pieces of his childhood. The reason he wants to rule in the first place. All gone one by one. I suspect that by the time he reaches the princess, he will be….much changed—or at least, a merman can hope.” Ezra sneered.

“The boy doesn’t have much depth to lose.”

The king looked up, meeting Eris’s eyes for the first time, noting how their eerie depth seemed to track him without moving. The eel would lose every part of himself that he had tried to take from his own princess.

“Restore the pendant. You know my plan has a chance.”

Eris did nothing. Said nothing. But after a few seconds, Ezra felt a familiar humming warmth return to his chest where the amulet rested. He gave a small, regal bow.

“Marvelous. If you’ll excuse me then,” he glanced from the mirror to the curdled poison at the bottom of his makeshift cauldron, only just starting to stain the tub walls. “I have some questions for my pawn.”