Descending (The Rising Series) (2 page)

Kyros turned to
Azeus. “You do understand, as an elite guard, I outrank everyone in this village—including your father.”

“Yes, sir,” the young lad answered.

“I order you to arrest your father and place him in lockdown until trial.”

“No!” the mayor shouted
. Azeus’s guards surrounded him. “How could you? Son? Will you betray your own father?”

“You betrayed your people by betraying their trust. You let soldiers
die, for your pride’s sake only. I am ashamed to call you father.”

“Azeus, as the mayor’s son,” Kyros continued, “and because you have shown such fierce devotion to this village, I hereby appoint you mayor in your father’s stead. You will remain in position until such a time as elections can be held. Do you accept my appointment?”

Any doubt Kyros might have had appointing a young man to such a high level of responsibility flew from his mind as he saw the weight of responsibility settle over the lad’s countenance.

“I do.”

“I cannot stay longer,” Kyros said. “You have much work to do caring for the survivors and rebuilding the village. I will be checking up on your progress. First of all, I suggest you get rid of this Kraken’s body before a larger creature comes to feed.”

The lad nodded. “Thank you
, sir. You’ve saved us, despite my father’s ignorant pride.”

Kyros nodded back.

As Kyros swam over a mountainous rise, he looked back on the scene of carnage. The town lay in ruins. It would take them a long time to rebuild. Tethered to three blue whales, the body of the Kraken left a scar across the sea floor as they dragged it toward the drop off. The creatures of the deep would have a feast on that carcass.

Kyros didn’t look forward to his new destination. It was even more unappealing than this scene.

Xanthus had summoned him.

Kyros had dreaded this meeting since he’d first heard his best friend was
searching for volunteers—for a mission a hundred times worse than tearing through the digestive system of a Kraken. These volunteers were expected to live among the humans and guard a mermaid. Either of these things alone would be unpleasant enough, but together…

What was
worse, the mermaid was Xanthus’s new wife.

Regardless of being Xanthus’s best friend and most loyal companion, Kyros shrunk from such a
job. He wondered how, in Poseidon’s realm, Xanthus would find others willing to perform this task. Dagonians loathed mermaids—at least, they used to. Sara was the first mermaid to be born since Dagonians killed the last of them two thousand years ago. If the stories were true, all mermaids were cruel, selfish, and self-absorbed creatures. Why Xanthus would want to marry such a thing was beyond Kyros’s understanding. Perhaps the siren had bewitched him. If that were the case, Kyros may just have to figure out how to break the spell and save his friend.

But, to live among humans?
He couldn’t think of anything worse. Word was Xanthus was looking for five soldiers to guard his wife. Perhaps he was finally putting his extensive fortune to use.

Kyros raised
his face. His body shot straight up, racing to the surface. He had one place to go before the dreaded meeting. A place he hadn’t been to in a hundred years. He broke through the waves and flipped two times in the air before slamming his back flat against the water. He relished the pain; this burn was more tolerable than the painful memories he was about to confront. But he needed to face them. He needed a reminder of what the land-walkers had done to him. What they’d taken from him.

The journey took him merely two
hours, swimming at twenty knots—it felt like much longer.

He considered passing his childhood home without a glance, but thought again. He was exhausted from fighting the
Kraken, and even more so from witnessing how one man’s pride could wreak such devastation and destruction. Besides, if his parents knew he’d passed by, he’d never hear the end of it.

Swimming
toward the village at dusk, he frowned when he realized this village probably looked much like the last one—minus the rubble and stench of blood.

His house
stood on the edge of town and looked just like he’d remembered it—a hollowed-out, lumpy dome of multi-colored coral that grew in size every year. His parents were predictably old-fashioned. Where most families were building stone homes, with sea-glass windows and marble floors, his parents were happy with the house they’d found and hollowed out eight hundred years ago.

Kyros had to admit
that it was plenty big. When his parents had first moved in, it had been barely big enough for the two of them. Now it could hold a large family. Too bad he was the only child they had left. Eros, the god of procreation, had not been kind to them—only two children born to them in eight hundred years.

“Kyros! How come you didn’t tell us you were coming?”
asked an excited voice, interrupting his thoughts. His mother swam toward him and wrapped her arms around his chest. Her brown eyes sparkled. He looked down on her loving face, her long, red hair haloed naturally around her head. She’d long given up on keeping up with the latest hairstyles. She said they were far too complicated to braid and a waste of time, anyway.

“I’m not staying long,” he said. “I was just in the area.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Our village is not in danger, is it?”

“Not at all. I was just passing by.”

“Oh good. Come inside. Your father will be happy to see you.”

“Happy to see who?” His father swam in from the reading room. He was a large Dagonian,
longer than Kyros—nearly as long as Xanthus. With genes coming from both his parents, Kyros had ended up somewhere in the middle—about seven and a half feet from head to fin.

“Who is this stranger?”
His father scowled.

“
Oh, stop being silly,” his mother said.

“I’m not being silly. We see so little of him
; he may as well be a stranger.”

“You just saw him five months ago.”

“Five months is far too long. My friends have their sons by their side—helping them fish during the spawning season, helping them clear out the human debris that seems to get into every crack and crevice, and helping their fathers home when they’ve had a bit too much pod juice. Not to mention, their sons get married and give them grandchildren.”

“Dear, stop hounding him. He’ll marry when he’s ready.” His mother fl
itted around the house, batting small fish out the windows and closing the shutters.

“So
, what has brought you here?” his father asked.

“I just needed a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

Kyros
sighed, predicting his parent’s reactions. “Xanthus is going to ask me to accompany him to the surface.”

They both gasped at the same time. “Whatever for?” his mother asked—her face as white as whalebone.

“He recently married a mermaid.”

Their eyes grew wide
r.

“That
is
surprising,” his mother said. “I didn’t realize King Triton had more children. But I still don’t understand. Mermaids don’t usually live on the surface.”

“No, but Xanthus does—at least for a while.
He has it in his head he needs to singlehandedly convince the humans to stop polluting our seas.”

“
Sounds like a fool’s errand,” his father said.

“Yeah, I’ve tried to tell him.”

“So King Triton is worried about his daughter and wants her protected?” his mother asked.

“Ye
s.”

“
Why come home?” his father asked. “What do you hope this trip will accomplish?”

“Dear…”
His mother frowned.

“I’m going to be around humans for a
while, and I don’t want to forget,” Kyros said.

His mother bit down on her lip as his father asked
, “Forget what?”

“How much I loathe them.”

Kyros swam forward. He could still taste his mother’s tears. The memories he’d stirred up were hard on her. She’d never gotten over her daughter’s death. What parent ever did?

He approached the island. If it was as he
remembered, not much more than a sandy peak topped with a mound of seaweed and crabs.

He knew nothing would be left of the crime—not
a clue to what happened that fateful day a hundred years ago. In his mind, he could see it clearly… as if it had happened yesterday.

Kassi
had gone missing—longer than usual. His twin sister had given their parents fits. She was always wandering off, exploring. But she had never stayed away overnight—until that dark day.

The whole village had gone to search for her
the next morning. Everyone else searched the sea, but Kyros had known where to look. He looked on the tiny island.

She’d brought him
there once before, confiding in him that it was her favorite place to be. She’d even pulled herself onto shore—against his protests. But Kassi never listened to him, and that time was no exception. She’d wanted to show him what happened to her hair when it dried. She lifted a mirror to watch her reflection. Her long, black hair blew in the wind. Her eyes sparkled as a smile crept across her face. Her hair curled and puffed over her head like lumpy coral. He couldn’t help but laugh at her. She looked beyond ridiculous. Kassi laughed too, giggling so hard she nearly tipped over. Even now, he smiled at the memory as sadness squeezed his chest.

T
oday, Kyros surfaced again. The island looked different—barren, lifeless—as if a curse were upon it. He approached the atoll and remembered exactly where he’d spotted the keel of the boat—just fifty yards offshore. A familiar sickness twisted his insides as the memories flooded back. No human had ever sailed to the island before. But years ago, on that dark day, there they were.

Kyros hadn’t hesitated to surface. He cared not that the humans would see him
, that he was breaking the law by showing himself to them. The need to find and protect his sister was overwhelming, a desperation.

The smell of blood assaulted his mind as his vision of the past
played from his memory. The humans were shouting—two men. They scrambled around a net. Kyros had no idea what they were saying. One of the men cried out when he saw Kyros, and they both looked at him in horror—their voices now silent. Kyros examined the scene.

H
e couldn’t see his sister, but it was too strange a coincidence that she was missing and humans were there, in her favorite place. A net hung over the side of the boat, jumbled in a tangle of seaweed and flopping fish. The scent of blood saturated the air. Then he saw something that shouldn’t have been in a fishing net. Long, brown hair tangled around the thin, interlocked ropes.

Kyros dove under the water, swimming straight down.
Turning sharp, he shot back toward the surface. He broke through, traveling at top speed, and crashed down on the ship’s deck. The humans screamed and ran inside the craft.

Kyros dragged his body across the
wooden surface, to the motionless lump hidden in the net. The wind blew icy across his skin, the cold penetrating deep into his body, as the reality of the situation speared him through the heart. His sister hung lifeless, her eyes still bright, her head caved in above her temple—her blood fresh. A metal rod lay nearby, smeared with her blood. The former chill he’d felt was burned away by his sudden fury.

At
sixteen years old, he was not yet full-grown, but he was still larger than either of the human murderers. They might have screamed. Kyros had no recollection of it. The only scream he heard was his own—a mixture of pain, anguish, and rage as he mercilessly tore them apart. When they were dead, he returned to his sweet sister, cut the ropes, and carefully pulled her body from the net.

The next few months passed in a blur. The village elders must have disposed of the ship and the bodies. They never mentioned it. No one
ever spoke of the humans or Kassi again, but from that day on, an invisible barrier existed around the island. No one went near it.