He had grinned. “Not heavily enough, apparently,” he’d said, continuing to his bunk.
“Hold on a minute,” Sera had said, stopping him. “I still have a question for you: the old pipes…How do you know for sure that they’re still there?”
“We checked,” he had admitted with a shrug.
“You checked? The pipes are inside the palace. And there’s a bounty on your head. Just how did you check?”
Yaz had frowned. He’d tapped his chin with his finger. “Hmm. Well, now that I think about it, we might’ve crashed a party. Lucia sure loves parties.”
Sera had pressed a palm to her forehead. “Gods, no. Tell me you didn’t.”
Yaz had cast a quick illusio spell. His hair had lightened to blond. His eyes had turned blue. Tattoos, swirling and ornate, had appeared on his face, neck, and chest. He had affected a vapid look and the voice to match it.
“Bro, that’s Bilge playing! I loooove that band! Hey, did you see the ballast on that merl? It’s time to get jolly, Roger!”
Sera had shaken her head angrily. He’d gone too far. “You could’ve been captured, Yazeed. You, a leader of the Black Fin resistance. Do you have any idea what they would have done to you?”
“But we weren’t. And now we’re going to do some capturing. As in treasure.”
He’d kissed her forehead and flopped into his bunk. As angry as she had been with him, Sera hadn’t been able to suppress a triumphant smile. The resistance needed gold—lots of it, and Yazeed had found a way to get it.
“We’re in!” he called out now.
Sera turned her attention to the gate. Six bars had been cut away to make a space big enough to swim through. She raced back to the tunnel entrance and whistled. Almost instantly, the camoed fighters were at her side, following her into the tunnel.
Yazeed and his mermen—Luca, Silvio, and Franco—were ready at the gate, carrying pickaxes, weapons, and lava torches. Sera saw the determination on the faces of her comrades, and her heart clenched. Their loyalty, their trust, their willingness to die for the cause were what made the resistance strong.
She knew the mission they were about to undertake was insanely risky; she also knew they had no choice. The Black Fins were fighting not only for her realm, but for all the mer realms. Vallerio and Portia had already taken Miromara and Matali. They wanted Atlantica, Ondalina, Qin, and the Freshwaters, too. The vicious human Rafe Mfeme was helping them in their quest.
Someone else was helping, too, though Sera didn’t know who or why. She’d heard this someone else referred to as he, and knew he’d paid for her uncle’s invading mercenaries—the death riders. In return, Vallerio and Portia were aiding him in a search for six talismans—powerful objects that had belonged to the mages of Atlantis. Sera had learned that this person, whoever he was, planned to use the talismans to unleash a great evil submerged in the Southern Sea—Abbadon, a monster created by Orfeo, one of the mages. Who was the mysterious he? And why would her uncle ally with him? Sera didn’t know, but she knew that Vallerio and Portia didn’t care how many mer were killed, as long as they satisfied their desire for power and wealth, but what they didn’t seem to realize is that there would be nothing left to rule, nothing left to plunder, if this shadowy he got his way. She had to stop him, but to do so, she first had to stop her uncle.
Sera cast one last glance at her fighters. Fossegrim, the realm’s liber magus, had been their leader. After his arrest, Sera had taken over. He was dead—Sera was certain of it—but neither she nor his fighters would forget him.
Words her mother had once spoken echoed in her head. A ruler’s greatest power comes from her heart—from the love she bears her subjects, and the love they bear her.
The Black Fins were Sera’s subjects. They were her brothers and sisters, too. Her family. And she loved them fiercely.
Gods, protect them, she prayed now. Keep them safe.
Sera raised her crossbow and addressed her fighters. “Fast and furious, just as we planned,” she said. “Watch your own back. Watch each other’s backs. No fear, no screwups, no prisoners. Let’s go.”
FRANCO WENT FIRST with a lava torch, followed by Serafina, with the others right behind them. They shot through the murky tunnel, its walls furry with algae, not stopping until they entered the palace’s enormous lava chamber.
The cavernous space had been hollowed out of the palace’s rock foundation. In the center of it was the channeler—the main pipe that directed lava from a seam deep below the seafloor. As it neared the ceiling, the pipe branched into four tributary pipes that snaked through tunnels in the rock. Each tributary had about four feet of space around it, allowing workers access for maintenance and repairs.