Aqua Coral's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

Aqua followed Alden down the stone stairs to the gate. Guards stood in a loose ring around the stranger. The man was soaked to the waist, salt drying white on his boots. He held a wrapped bundle against his chest, both arms locked around it. Aqua's scales tightened before she even reached him. Something under that cloth pushed the air wrong, the way a stone pushes water. "You found something in the sea," Alden said. "Show me." The man shook his head. His eyes moved to the guards, then to Aqua's scaled cheeks. "Not in front of them," he said. "For your ears alone, sire. That was the deal." Aqua stepped closer. "I'm from the sea," she said. "Whatever you're holding, I already feel it. Let me see it." "No." The man turned his shoulder to her, shielding the bundle. "The king pays. The king sees." Alden did not raise his voice. "She stays. Speak, or leave." The stranger's jaw worked. He weighed the ring of spears around him. Aqua watched his arms, the white knuckles, the way he leaned back from her as if she carried a fire. He was afraid of her. He knew what she was, and he did not want a sea woman near his prize. So Aqua stopped asking. She closed her eyes and let the background wash fall away, the drip of his boots, the shuffle of the guards. She reached for the one wrong signal under the cloth. It was cold and steady and pulsed like a slow heartbeat. She had felt that pulse once before, on the ocean floor, from the stone she marked and lost. Her eyes opened. "You have a current stone," she said. "You took it off the sea floor. It was mine. I marked it." The man's face went stiff. That told her the truth faster than any answer. "Put it down," Aqua said. "Now. Slow. If you drop it, or turn it wrong, you shift the currents. Whole coasts drown. You included." He froze, arms still crossed over the bundle. "You're lying to steal it." "Set it on the ground," Alden said. He did not move, but the guards stepped in. "Do it, and you keep your hands." The stranger's nerve broke. He crouched and set the bundle on the stones, careful now, hands shaking. Aqua knelt and peeled back the wet cloth. The stone lay there, dull gray, humming against her scales. She did not touch it. She had learned that lesson. "It's real," she told Alden. "And it's active. Someone carried it out of the water it was balancing." She looked up. "The currents are already turning. I can feel the pull." Alden looked at the stone, then at her. "Can you fix it?" "I have to put it back," Aqua said. "Exactly where I found it. And the sea won't wait for me to become your queen."