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  They curl up around me and in a few minutes I drift asleep in the comfort and safety of my sexy, studly harem.

  Chapter Three

  The men and Jules leave me to sleep but I can’t. I toss and turn, dozing. In the dead of the night, I give up and go down to the kitchen to make myself some toast.

  When I flick on the lights, I leap back with a shriek. Sitting on the counter is Betty, her legs kicking in the air.

  “What are you doing?” I take a step back and she jumps off the counter, approaching me.

  “I was waiting for you.” Her voice is soft and her eyes gleam.

  “Me? Why?”

  “You really don’t remember me? I thought you were pretending, though I don’t know why you would. But this? This is so much better.” She reaches out a hand, brushing the thin cotton sleeve of my nightgown, and I leap back, sending a stool hammering across the floor.

  “Who are you?”

  She sighs. “Let’s not play games. Normally I’d be all in with a game, but right now,” she looks at the clock hanging on the wall, “we’re wasting time.”

  I narrow my eyes and turn to flee but she reaches out, wrapping a hand around my wrist.

  I scream and she’s on top of me, throwing me to the floor, straddling me, her knees on my arms and her hand covering my mouth. She reaches back and pulls the abada horn from the back of her waistband, passing it over me. My limbs grow heavy and when I try to move my legs, I can’t. I’m pinned to the floor by some invisible elephant. Or maybe it’s an invisible abada.

  “Now what’d you make me do that for? I just want to talk.”

  That’s the last thing I can do with her hand covering my mouth, the last thing I want to do even if I were able to. I shake my head beneath her hand and her mouth snakes into a chilling grin.

  “You’re right,” she coos. “You just listen.”

  I give her the dirtiest look I can manage using just my eyes.

  “I don’t expect you to understand but I’m not the bad guy here. I realize that my current position belies that statement but the reality is,” she leans close to my ear, “I’m just like you.”

  I toss my head but I can’t even open my mouth under her punishing hold.

  “I’m in love, just like you, and I’m trying to protect the object of my affection, just like you. It would behoove us to work together.”

  Never. This woman is delusional. A lunatic.

  She shrugs. “The truth is that I need you, Amaya. I don’t want to hurt you. You’re special. More than you know. I’m going to send you back to Tara and I want you to do what you do best.”

  What the hell?

  “Use your diplomacy to talk to the clan leaders. We all want the same thing here. We all want Azotar out of Tara. Isn’t that right? Nod so I know you understand me.”

  Fucking bitch. But I acquiesce. Maybe she’ll let her guard down, remove her hand from my mouth and I can scream. Either Azotar promised her something or it has something on her—why else would she be so eager to help it?

  “Good. Remember, sweetheart,” her voice drips syrup all over me and I shudder, struggling to recoil, “this is all for Tara, for the inhabitants of all the people your boyfriend, the king, loves. And it’s for the rest of your men and even for your little friend Jules too. Because if you don’t do what I ask, I will hurt every. Single. One of them.” The sides of her jaws bulge and she grips me even tighter. She’s using so much force I’ll probably have bruises.

  I strain my head and snap my teeth under her grip, seeking purchase. She grinds her hand over my mouth, flattening my lips against my teeth, and cackles.

  “You don’t think I can?”

  I blink up at her. She brings the abada’s horn toward me with her other hand. “I don’t think you understand, Amaya. I’m not a synergist, I’m a dark witch. A very powerful dark witch.” She flicks the horn over my arm without touching it and I scream into her hand, the pain searing through me. It feels like she’s slicing my skin open, flaying me alive. Her free hand brushes against the area with another sharp sting and then her hand hovers over my face. It’s covered in my blood. “I could kill you, your men and all your friends right now if I wanted to but I’d really rather not. Instead, let’s work together. It’s a win for us all.”

  I growl into her hand.

  “Good, I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I shake my head under her hold.

  Her eyes narrow to slits. “You’re not actually in charge right now. Let me explain how things are going to work. You’re going to go back to Tara and convince the clan leaders, including Katrina, to free Azotar from its monolith.”

  Free Azotar? It was free the last time I was in Tara. Is it contained again or is Betty in the dark? And who is Katrina? Is she the leader of a tribe I have yet to encounter?

  She leans into my face, her warm, cloying breath washing over me. “If you’re unable to convince Katrina, Vasily must retake the throne.”

  Retake it? I thought he was already on it. She sighs and looks away for a fraction of a second. Are those tears?

  Betty sucks in a deep breath and screws her eyes shut. “I’m in love with Azotar and it’s in love with me.”

  Didn’t see that coming.

  She looks back at me and yes, her eyes are moist. She’s telling the truth. “So now you know. I don’t expect you to understand but maybe on some level, you can relate.”

  My body goes limp as my brain struggles to process this new information.

  “After you’ve achieved your first task, we’ll talk again.”

  I shake my head under her grasp. If only she’d let go of my mouth, perhaps we could discuss this . . . but no, I’d scream for help and she knows it.

  Leaning down close to my ear, she whispers, “I will know if you disobey. I wield a crystal ball, as all witches do. I will watch your every move.” A sideways smile creeps across half her mouth, obliterating the lovestruck sadness from only seconds ago. “If you do not hold up your part, everyone you know and love will die.”

  She wouldn’t dare.

  “Wouldn’t I?” she responds as though she can hear my thoughts. “Wouldn’t you kill almost anyone to save the lives of those in your inner circle?” She shrugs. “Can you blame me for doing the same to free my one and only love?”

  Maybe. I chew her words over. I want to say no, I’d never kill anyone to save those I love, but how do I know for sure? Thankfully I’ve never had to make a choice like that.

  “If you don’t believe me, just try and cross me.” I struggle to recoil but she’s holding me too tightly.

  This insane woman is living with my men. She’ll have complete access to them. How can I warn them? I huff a breath out through my nose and go limp in her arms again.

  “Good. Good, good, good. Looks like we’ve come to an agreement.” Her mouth starts moving as though reciting a silent incantation. The air around me warps and shivers. “This is to make sure you aren’t able to get out of Tara until I let you out. Until you’ve got a verbal agreement from all the clan leaders, including Oceane and Katrina, you won’t be able to return to Earth.” She taps the horn against the side of my head. “If you fail to convince everyone, and I mean everyone, to free Azotar, your loves will die.”

  A surge of adrenaline rushes through my arms, which stiffen and grasp—at nothing. I really, truly want to kill this woman, proving that she was right after all. Yes, I would kill her to save my loved ones.

  “Have fun in fairyland.” She winks at me, raises the horn and traces the outline of a door in midair.

  Chapter Four

  My arms and legs pinwheel as I fall through the doorway. That’s never happened before, but I don’t have a moment to think before I splash down in a pool of cold water. Wait, it’s much bigger than a pool, and saltier. The cold stops my heart and I plunge straight down, my nightgown shooting over my head and off my body. My eyes stretch open in terror. The water is as clear as the air, the way I always imagined the tropics to be
—minus the bone-chilling temperature. Not the way our water in San Diego County is by a long shot, where visibility is about a foot on a good day.

  Tiny, colorful fish surround me in shapes, sizes and hues I’ve never before seen on Earth. The ocean bottom is lined with the brightest coral and plants I could ever imagine, blooming flowers of reds, yellows, purples, blues and chartreuse. The sight is almost beautiful enough to distract from the fact that I’m naked, out of air and at the mercy of an ocean on Tara, where the laws of physics rarely play nice.

  I slip through the water, kicking toward the surface . . . except I don’t reach it. I keep swimming up and up and up, away from the coral and the swaying plants, yet I don’t seem to be moving anywhere at all. And that’s when the panic sets in. My body goes numb, whether from the cold or the fright. The fish blink human-looking eyes at me, large and round with colorful, striated irises surrounded by a white sclera, their large black pupils dilated in the center. Their mouths open and close in unison. Creepy. I was able to breathe under water once before in Tara, in the Water Meadow, and soon I won’t have the option not to try.

  Something soft winds around my legs and I look down, expecting a plant, but it’s the mermaid who saved me before. She’s lovely with pale white, almost translucent skin, bright blue hair and a scaled azure tail to match. I’m so tired and scared that the sight of her, no matter how strange, is a blessing. I can’t hold my breath much longer, and I’m starting to get dizzy. I point up, trying to tell her I need to breathe, as if she doesn’t know. She shakes her head, opening and closing her mouth like the fish schooling around us.

  “You have to breathe the water,” she says, her voice melodic and soothing. I have no time to deduce how I can hear her under the water but I shake my head no. “You can fight it,” she croons, “but soon your body will inhale whether you want it to or not.”

  I open my mouth to try and talk but she’s right, my brain no longer controls my autonomic nervous system and I gulp in a huge breath of water. I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the pain, but instead, my lungs fill with the water like it’s air. I dread thinking about what will happen when I’m back on land.

  “Good. Now come.” She motions for me to follow her and I do.

  The last time I sucked in the water here, back in the Water Meadow, I almost drowned. I had to throw myself on a rock to perform the Heimlich maneuver—though Candy, who saved my life for the first time then, kept telling me to do “the hammock.” I laugh at the memory.

  The mermaid glances back and smiles. Did my laughter travel underwater? Her hair, as blue as a starflower, trails along her agile form. Her body glides with ease, cutting through the water like a graceful porpoise. She descends and I follow her through branches of coral, along a trail wide enough for a human body. Her elegance astounds me. She swims like an underwater ballerina, winding her way around and between the underwater depths. In comparison I’m a clumsy loaf, bumping into the living coral and trying not to break off bits and pieces.

  We head toward a dense concentration of plants. It looks like a dead-end. She stops and waits for me to catch up, then points toward the living wall.

  “I know who you are, Amaya. Do you remember me?”

  I nod, my hair buoying around my head.

  “My name is Oceane and I’m the leader of the asrai”

  “Oceane—” I open my mouth to gargle out the word but no sound escapes. She blinks her enormous, round, lime-green eyes at me, nodding.

  “Why are you here?”

  Can you hear me? I mouth.

  She shakes her head. “But I can fix that.” She swims toward me and I drift in the water, paddling my hands to float in place. As her face approaches mine I lean away. Personal bubble much? “Open your mouth,” she commands.

  Shivers run through my body and I force myself to still as I do what she asks. Anger washes through me at being forced into this. Forced to be here against my will, completing Betty’s quest as though I’m nothing but her pawn. If only she’d asked me, been forthright and heartfelt instead of bribing me and leaving me no options. I would have said yes. And maybe I could have met Oceane somewhere a little less panic inducing.

  Oceane’s face hovers in front of mine and she puckers her lips into an O, like she’s whistling. A long stream of bubbles escapes from between her lips. I lean away but she leans closer, shaking her head. I freeze, forcing myself to stay put, opening my mouth so that her bubbles enter and snake down my throat in a tickling frenzy. I gasp, and the air shoots lower and into my lungs, where it settles and burns. I cough, crying out and realize I can now speak underwater and hear my own voice.

  “Good.” She lets the current carry her a few feet away. “Now you can tell me.”

  “I want to set Azotar free.”

  “The fachan monster that’s destroying our world? But why?”

  “So it will leave Tara for good.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I interrupt. “I know it wants to be somewhere else, with someone else. Can I guarantee if it’s freed from its prison, it will leave and never return? No. Am I fairly certain? Yes.”

  “And what if, once set free, it refuses to leave? It already got out once and wreaked even more havoc on our lands.”

  “It doesn’t want to be here but you’re right, I don’t know enough about magic to make this a promise.” I shake my head. “I’m not even here of my own free will.”

  Her eyes widen. “Did the fachan make you do this? Come here and ask me?”

  “No, but someone who’s close to it did.”

  She tosses her long flowing mane in the water as if she doesn’t believe the fachan could have anyone who cared about it. “Do you know how powerful you really are, Amaya?”

  I point to my chest. “What? No. I can planeswalk—unreliably—but that’s about it.”

  “You can do much more than that. If you were to set the fachan free, I have no doubt you could force it from our lands. The more you use your powers to planeswalk, the stronger you become and the closer our worlds become. Tara has been drifting farther from Earth and all other neighboring worlds since King Vasily was banished. Without the return of a planeswalker, we would have eventually become isolated forever. But now you are here. You hold the fate of many planes in your hands.”

  No pressure. What does that even mean?

  “Make me a deal.” She swims closer.

  I cock my head. “What kind of deal?”

  “You need me as one of the clan leaders to unbind it, yes?”

  I nod.

  “Well, if I agree and the monster doesn’t leave, you agree to sacrifice yourself.”

  “What?” I squawk. The sound spooks the fish around us, most of them darting away or fleeing into the coral’s shadowy depths.

  “You have much power, but you have yet to tame it. Right now, if the fachan were freed from the monolith and fought to remain on Tara, it would require your life to force it out. I’ll agree to unbind it if you agree to put your own life on the line in exchange.” Her solemn form is still in the water, except for the pendulous sway of her tail keeping her in place. Gone is the colorful mermaid who teases and plays in the ocean’s depths. In her place is an ancient, regal queen, her gaze heavy with the weight of her realm behind it.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” She tosses her hair again. “Anyway, it’s not a decision I can make without the consent of my people.”

  So she was bluffing. “Fine, let’s go ask them.” I don’t want to wait here without her. Who knows what else inhabits this water, and I don’t have my sword.

  “I will bring you to them so they can hear it from your mouth, but . . .” Her bright green eyes darken to a terrifying jet-black. I backpedal as fast as my ungainly arms will allow me, but she throws out an arm, grabbing me with a vise-like grip that holds me in place. The frigid ice of her grasp combined with her bruising strength causes an ache so deep, it pulses through my bones.
Pure instinct takes over, but the more I struggle, the harder she clenches. My mouth opens on a scream as my arm feels like it’s about to be torn from my shoulder. Fucking Betty and her terrifying threats. If it weren’t for that evil, dark witch, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

  Oceane’s azure hair darkens and her mouth opens to reveal tiny jagged teeth that were not visible before. “Stop your struggling or your arm will come off.”

  I force myself to still, going against every impulse to fight her.

  “If you tell anyone of the location of our city, if you betray us, I will kill you myself.”

  My racing heart thumps so loudly I wouldn’t be surprised if all the creatures in this ocean could hear it. Someone else promising death. Just great. I nod furiously as she narrows those black eyes at me, from saucers to slits. I hold up my other hand, the one not in her icy grip, to show my surrender and force a smile. The smile was probably a bad idea since I’m sure it’s more of a terrified grimace. But her features soften.

  “My magic is powerful enough to command you, but on Earth a powerful witch could break the spell. I need you to verbally agree that you will tell no one on Earth, no matter how much they torture you.”

  Torture me? I wouldn’t put it past Betty to try, she is a powerful dark witch. Shit. What choice do I have though? I do this or everyone I know dies. Not much of an option. “I agree,” I say and she relaxes, her hair changing back to its vibrant blue.

  “Good. Then you may follow me.” She lets me go and I rub my arm, a bruise already blooming where she held me fast.

  The mermaid waves her hand over the colorful, lush foliage and it parts like a curtain to reveal an ominous black tunnel. Great, no problem, who wouldn’t follow the scary lady with shark teeth into her dark underwater lair? Without waiting, she swims through, and after a moment’s hesitation, I follow.

  Chapter Five

  At first I can’t see a thing. What if there are tunnels leading elsewhere and I get lost in one of them? What if I can’t keep up with her? How do I know if I am keeping up with her anyway? The darkness is so complete it’s like my eyes are closed in a pitch-black room. Then her tail sparkles faintly, lighting up the tunnel enough I won’t swim into a wall. The tiny iridescent dots sparkle a pale blue, twinkling and swaying with every beat of her tail. I find myself swaying with them like a cobra mesmerized by a snake charmer. The space far ahead is still too dark but if I swim fast, I can follow her holiday wreath of a tail.