Legacy Lost (3 page)

“What are you doing?” he says, feeling foolish for bothering to whisper.

She snickers and knocks again in an unmistakable rhythm. She materializes briefly, and presses her ear against the hull, motioning for Grom to do the same. “She really is insane,” he mutters as he does as he’s told. Inside the vessel, he hears a squall of human commotion. Each time Nalia knocks, the humans chatter in an alarmed tone, in a language Grom doesn’t understand. Then they knock back.

Nalia makes her way down to Grom at the middle of the death ship while Freya maneuvers to a long ladder on the side. He watches as the Tracker wraps her fin into the rungs to give her arms a rest.

“They always knock back,” Nalia says, proud. “Not just this one, but all of them.” Grom smiles at the excitement in her voice. “What does it mean?”

“Not sure. My knocking doesn’t mean a thing, but I think theirs means something to them.”

Grom looks around. “We’re heading into deeper water. How long do we plan on risking our lives? I’m getting hungry.”

Nalia laughs, a genuine, tickled sound, and Grom realizes it could be his new favorite sound in all the ocean.
Get a hold of yourself, idiot. This is your game. Play it.

“Sometimes we can drive them crazy enough to surface,” she says. “Then Freya likes to make faces in their little hole at the top. That really drives them mad.”

“Triton’s trident! How have you not been caught?”

Nalia materializes. “Who says we haven’t?”

“You’ve been caught by the humans? Does your father know?”

“Oh yes, of course he does. Because I tell him of all the illegal things I do.” She rolls her eyes. “No, we’ve never really been caught. Freya came close though. Sometimes she misplaces her intelligence.”

Freya materializes long enough to stick her tongue out at them. Nalia laughs, removing all doubt that it’s his new favorite sound.

Then a loud, foreign pitch startles him, one that seems to promise impending doom. He accidentally releases his tentacle and, in a shaved second, he’s falling behind the vessel. “What’s that sound?” he shouts to Nalia, trying to keep up, not caring if the humans on board can hear him.

“It means there’s another ship somewhere around here. An enemy one.” Her face is full of dread.

Grom’s gut wrenches. “Let go! Don’t be stupid. Please!”

“I can’t! Freya’s stuck on the ladder.”

Indeed, Freya wriggles within the confines of the ladder, as if it’s a living thing keeping her trapped. Nalia is right. Freya really does misplace her intelligence. It would be a simple thing to free herself, if she would just calm down long enough to think it through. But he can see the panic settle in, the calm leave her eyes. She’s working on survival instinct alone.

Then Grom sees it. In the distance, a huge shadow moves toward them. No, toward the human death ship. With speed, with confidence, with purpose, as if the two vessels were connected by a rope and their coming together were as natural as high tide.

Only, the other ship is much, much bigger—and there is nothing natural about this gross imbalance.

Freya sees the shadow too—and loses what little control she has left. She cries out, and her wiggling becomes more frantic, only serving to make her more stuck. Finally, Nalia reaches her, just as the sound of the alarm from the other vessel reaches them through the current. With one sweeping motion, Nalia shoves Freya’s fin through the last rung of the ladder, bending the tip at a painful angle. But even Freya recognizes the necessity of it, and nods her thanks to her friend as she swims from the metal monster.

Then another sound, metal against metal, resonates through the water.
Our death ship is firing
. Grom watches with horror as a cloud of fire lights up the front, then disappears, leaving only a trail of a shadow snaking from the ship. Unable to look away, he holds water in his lungs, not breathing out until he sees that the missile missed the other ship.

Which is worst case scenario.

“They’re going to fire back!” Grom shouts to Nalia and Freya, who are still too close to the ship. “We have to get out of here!”

“Yelling at me won’t help anything!” Nalia points down. Freya’s bent fin is making it impossible for her to keep a steady direction. Nalia bites her lip. “Leave us, Grom. There’s no reason for us all to die.”

He rolls his eyes and swims toward them. Grasping Freya’s other arm, he jerks her forward and gives Nalia a hard look. “Let’s. Go.”

Nalia nods. Grom tamps down a feeling of admiration when her expression changes from hopelessness to determination. Together they drag Freya, one of them on each of her arms, but it feels like slow motion, as if the water has thickened, as if the ocean itself is working against their escape.

A dull thud in the distance lets them know that the other ship has fired. And they are still too close. Freya screams and writhes from Grom’s grasp to turn, to see it launching toward them at the speed of death. Grom considers knocking her unconscious. But there’s no time.

Impact. Heat. Suddenly the whole world seems pushed forward. Even Nalia screams. Grom decides he never wants to hear that sound again. Gritting his teeth, he pulls both of them toward the seafloor. “Get down!” he orders. “Lie flat.”

They do as they’re told. Debris, sharp and heavy, showers down on them like bits of fallen prey. A rush of heat swooshes over them, between them, finding even the smallest spaces to fill. A hand grasps his. He doesn’t need to look down to know it’s Nalia’s.

When the loud ends, and the silence chases behind it, Grom looks up. The ship is gone. Obliterated. As if it never existed. He squeezes Nalia’s hand. “Are you alright?”

She eases up, shaking off the silt like an octopus coming out of hiding. Her lip quivers and she points to the back of her head. Grom tries to swallow his heart. “You’re hurt.”

She shakes her head and reaches around to pull a tangle of hair forward. “My hair,” she says, her eyes bigger than he’s ever seen them. “It’s singed.”

Grom cocks his head, flirting with the idea of strangling her. “Seriously?”

She shrugs, dejected. “I know it sounds petty. It’s just that…well, I really loved my hair.” She dangles it in front of her as if it’s a crispy dead eel.

They both remember Freya’s existence when she groans—apparently something else did the job of knocking her out without Grom’s assistance.

Nalia snaps out of it first and helps her friend, who gasps at the sight of her. “Oh, your hair! What will your father say?”

Grom pinches the bridge of his nose.
Has the entire world gone mad?
“It’s just hair,” he grits out. “It’ll grow back.”

Freya scolds him with a look. “It’s never just hair, Highness.”

“No,” Nalia says quietly. “He’s right. It’s time I let it go.” Throwing Freya’s arm over her shoulder and hoisting her up, she looks at Grom. “My father always said my hair was the exact same color as Mother’s. It felt like keeping a part of her with me, I guess.”

Grom stares at her, stunned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Freya, you simply have to cut it for me,” Nalia says, setting her jaw.

Her friend pulls back, eyes wide. “Oh no. Not me. I’m not doing it. Your father will have me arrested.”

Nalia settles her gaze on Grom. “Will you do it?”

He tries to look away, but the pleading in her eyes softens him. He nods.

She scans the floor, picking up pieces of debris and inspecting them, presumably looking for something with a sharp-enough edge. Grom and Freya can’t bring themselves to help. At least Freya can claim an injury, he thinks to himself.
But how can I cut off her hair if it means that much to her?

Finally, Nalia finds what she’s looking for. She swims over to Grom and hands him a thin piece of metal, disfigured and burnt, but sharp enough on one side to accomplish the task at hand.

He palms it, inspecting its capacity for cutting hair, and doubting his own. “You’re sure?” he says, unable to look at her just yet. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

“Someone’s coming,” Freya says, stiffening into the classic Tracker pose. “Better get on with this.”

Nalia nods. “Do it,” she tells him. “Before anyone sees me like this.” She turns her back to him and offers up her burnt locks.

He turns the metal shard in his hand. “You’re sure?”

“Poseidon’s beard, just do it already!”

Before she’s done yelling, he’s holding her severed hair in his hands. She gasps and whirls around. He hands it to her. “I’m sorry.”

She cradles it in her hands like one of his mother’s human relics. Then, of all things, she laughs. “Can you
believe
that just happened? And we lived through it?”

When he doesn’t immediately respond, she shakes the mangled locks in his face. “Admit it, Triton prince. That’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you. And you’re welcome.”

Grom bites back a smile and swats her hand away, but she persists until he’s forced to grab her wrist and restrain it behind her back. By now, he too senses Yudor, the Tracker trainer, approaching with others he doesn’t recognize. “I saved your life, then cut your hair,” he says, letting her go. “
You’re
welcome.”

The smile fades from her face. She looks back, obviously sensing the party coming to investigate the explosion. She turns back to Grom, hesitant. “About that,” she says, inching closer. The water between them seems to heat up, but that can’t be right, can it? When her nose almost touches his, she says, “Thank you for not leaving us.” Then she presses her lips against his, soft and slow, and he feels an explosion, just like the one from the death ship, only this one is coming from inside, and it feels like a hundred electric eels slithering over him, every part of him, shocking him to life.

There’s no reason to think about pulling her closer; his hands do that all on their own. There’s no reason to worry about who sees; he couldn’t care less. There’s no reason to think about his plan to woo her, then reject her; he knows now that there will never be a time when he will reject these lips.

These lips, this kiss, they’re everything he never knew he wanted.

Nalia pulls away suddenly, looking every bit as stunned as he feels. She clears her throat. “I’d better get going.” But her expression tells him that maybe she’d rather stay, that maybe she’d rather keep kissing.

Grom nods, in agreement with it all. She’d better get going. He wants her to stay. He wants to keep kissing.

She lets the carcass of her hair sink to the mud below them, and for the longest time, she only stares at it, won’t meet his eyes. The Tracker party is close, within sight, Grom knows, but still she stays, immobile and hesitant and stunning.

Then, without another word, without meeting his eyes, she turns and swims away.

He finds her with Freya, sitting on the outer rocks of The Crag, the deep chasm etched into the seafloor, where you could swim down for hours and never touch bottom. They’re both peering over the edge of the cliff, as if they’re actually contemplating going down there.

“Don’t even think about it,” Grom says. “Your lionfish spike won’t work on a giant squid.” He’s amazed how natural it feels to settle down next to Nalia and hang his fin over the ledge.

She smirks up at him. “We waited for you. You’re slow.”

He laughs. Freya would have sensed him for a while before he arrived, but did Nalia?
Can she sense me as strongly as I sense her?
“Some things are worth the wait.”

“You’re slow
and
delusional,” she says without bluster. She peeks back down into The Crag. “I want a tooth from a dangle fish.”

Grom shakes his head. Dangle fish live in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean, where they dangle a light in front of themselves as a lure to attract unsuspecting prey. Their teeth are as long as his hand. The Crag is a good place to hunt for dangle fish. “What could you possibly need that for?”

She scrunches up her face.

Grom raises a brow at Freya, who sighs in defeat. She has gotten used to this game. “She wants it to make a gift for you. For your mating—Ow! Poseidon’s teeth, Nalia, he’s a Royal!”

Nalia points her finger in Grom’s face, almost up his left nostril. “You need to stop bullying her. Sometimes it not your business.”

Grom captures her hand and uses it to pull her closer. Her eyes go wide as she glances at his lips but she doesn’t squirm, doesn’t try to move away. He feels himself melt a little at her touch. His bones feel like the water around him. “You were making me a gift?” He glances at Freya. “Freya, how rude would it be if I asked you to—”

Freya shrugs, then spirals up and over them. “Some Triton Trackers found a new human mine,” she says, winking at Nalia, who flinches as she passes by. “Guess I could go help them set it off.” Freya told Grom that whenever the Trackers come across a mine, they set off the explosion from a distance, using rocks they hurl from the surface. She said when one of the floating metal balls burst, they all do.

“That sounds exceptionally fun,” Grom calls after her. When she’s gone, he grins at Nalia. “Don’t tell me you’re all of a sudden shy, princess. We’ve seen each other every day for the past month.”