Chapter 8

KAI

“Cirrina!” Kai bellowed when, panting, he burst through the tangled kelp at the back of the cavern’s throat. “Cirrina, stop your filthy imbibing and get out of that room!”

There was a muffled slamming sound, and what sounded suspiciously like a bottle shattering against the door as Cirrina slithered out of her hole. But if there was one thing that Cirrina loved more than drinking alone, it was the prospect of a fight. She billowed over the railing of her quarters’ balcony and descended into the brewery like a tentacled cloud of malice.

“It has been some time since you’ve dared talk to me like that, boy. Gone for days, and come back thinking you own the place! I should take your entrails for—my—what have we here?”

The creative use of his entrails was interrupted when Cirrina saw the bundle of pale skin and patchy, bleeding limbs in Kai’s arms.

The way Cirrina looked over Krill’s limp form was probably supposed to be her look of motherly concern, but through her fermented brine-touched eyes only managed to look as though she’d just found something rotted in her cupboard. All of those beauty potions she’d imbibed were already wasting under the effects of the horrific absinthe she so loved. She’d been celebrating for some time now.

Though her vision was clearly clouded by the pink that edged her pupils, Cirrina wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see what Kai had. An obvious attack. And Krill, a member of their little enclave, a member of Cirrina’s business, was dying.

Instead of snapping-to, as Krill or Kai would have, Cirrina floated lazily over the body, the picture of unconcern.

Kai growled. “Heal him.”

“Testy,” she chuckled drunkenly.

Kai could practically feel the seconds of Krill’s life slipping through his hands.

“Now!” he yelled, trying to keep the desperation from driving him to do something drastic—like throttling his mistress. “If you don’t save him, you’ll have lost your errand boy, and you won’t see a profit like today for the next century.”

Cirrina put a hand to her head at his noise. Tapping a finger to her temple, and looking distinctly annoyed, she swirled over the cauldrons to reach for something in the cupboards. Kai nearly bit a hole in his lip when he saw her reach for the bottles of hangover cure, instead of the healing ingredients. Though Kai could mend and even regrow his own tentacles, he had no idea how to fix wounds of this severity. That was the sort of information that a potion-master like Cirrina kept closely guarded in order to keep her charges on a leash. He needed her.

“Oh, do stop shouting,” Cirrina chided, taking a deeper swig from one of the crystals than necessary. “He needs a flesh-mender, a blood thickener, and a week of sleep, and he’ll be better than new. Whoever did this clearly doesn’t know how to kill cecaelia. Imbeciles. Probably got him caught in a squid-hunt or something equally frivolous.”

Cirrina waded through the room to Krill’s body, and Kai could see the moment that she saw what he did. Taking in the broken orange spearhead now leaking blue copper poison into the wound, she hissed angrily.

“Not so frivolous, then…” she snarled, raking one curved hand over her rubbery black waist.

Kai winced when she reached down and ripped the hook from Krill’s side. Krill gave a small shudder as a fresh spurt of poisoned blood floated up from his side. Once the weapon was free, Kai realized that he didn’t just know where the weapon was from, but he knew exactly who was responsible.

“The eel,” he whispered.

Cirrina hurled herself back to the cabinet and while examining the spearhead, began throwing detoxifying ingredients into the cauldron.

“That arrogant little snake,” she snarled under her breath, dumping half the contents of the cabinet on the floor. “Cheating me of my errand boy once he’s used us for his own gains…Where are the crab entrails? WHERE!?”

Laying Krill inside a patients’ shell, Kai retrieved the missing entrails from a pile of vials Cirrina had tossed to the floor.

“Just tell me what I have to find,” he said—anything to keep his murderous urges in check. Krill didn’t have time for that.

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“Limpet feet. Selkie fur. And, do I use the gigas pearls? They’re expensive…”

Before she could make up her mind about whether Krill was worth the ingredient cost, Kai had thrown them all into the cauldron. He stirred as Cirrina did the actual magical legwork, and when the chanting began, hoped that she hadn’t drunk so much brine that her power was tainted. When the lumpy mixture of guts and powders began to glow a pure blue, however, he admitted to himself that even at her worst, Cirrina was a master of her craft.

At last, she waded over to Krill, and poured the mixture, still sizzling, into the biggest gash in his middle.

Krill’s reaction wasn’t a conscious one. Every muscle seized. His little body bent impossibly far back and he writhed as Cirrina visited each hole, scratch, and bloody smear on his body. Kai hardly noticed his own tentacles clench and unclench as he watched. Krill was deeply unconscious, and even the pain couldn’t bring him fully back. It was eerie to watch him thrash, all the while without making a single sound.

Once the blue potion ran out, Cirrina produced a bottle of brown sludge that bubbled and oozed around its container. Even Kai wanted to gag as she poured it down Krill’s throat. That potion looked alive. Alive and menacing.

When the potion hit the back of Krill’s mouth, there was a horrifying gurgling sound, as though the potion didn’t want to be swallowed. Krill stopped breathing. Kai actively resisted rushing forward and tipping Krill upside down to clear the stuff out, but Cirrina only tutted at it. With a twist of her curved fingers, she did something with her magic that Kai couldn’t see. A few gut-wrenching heartbeats passed; the potion went down, and Krill breathed again.

All at once, the poisoned flesh started to pull together on its own. Krill didn’t wake, but slowly, a healthy lilac tint returned to his cheeks, and the sticky black and red oozing from his side slowed.

“Now all that’s left to do is wait!” Cirrina said with a satisfied sigh. The anger and use of expensive ingredients seemed to have sobered her somewhat, but there was still a tinge of pink clouding her irises.

“You know who did this to him,” said Kai, bringing her attention back to the source of this trouble before she could forget, or worse, turn on him.

Though it was hard to forget a customer as arrogant as the orange eel the day before, Kai ultimately knew nothing about him, and it would be difficult to find a single merman with that description alone. For once, he wanted to get to him before Cirrina did.

“That slimy little prince! I should have his tail for potions!” Cirrina snarleid. Rage was one emotion that always came easily for her. “King Ezra recommended him personally, so I thought that at least he knew when not to cross a cecaelia…evidently not. I’d have that boy on a hook if he weren’t under Titus’ eye right now. Who knows, maybe his princess will spurn him before he manages to use that potion, and I’ll deal with him quietly.”

The possibility of vengeance put a dull light in her briny gaze, and Kai’s eyes narrowed at her.

As his faculties returned to him through the murk of his earlier panic, he began putting together what she’d said. Bits of information were coming clicking into place. Aya’s odd behavior. The empty kelp beds. The unreasonable excitement over just another royal ball.

The love potion we gave the eel yesterday. It’s intended for one of the princesses?”

“A princess, a mistress, does it really matter?” Cirrina huffed. “With Titus’s protection, he’ll get away with this like the little whelk he is”

“Which princess?” Kai asked, but with a sinking feeling in his gut, but, the conversation he’d heard in the kelp farm flooded back through his thoughts as the final coup de grace.

In place of an answer, Cirrina only raised one of her mottled greenish brows at him. She knew, and she expected him to, as well.

Aya’s anxiousness. She was getting married, and unaware, was going to be stripped of her choice before she had a chance to get to know her future ‘suitor.’ With a horrible pang of guilt, he realized that he’d made the eel the potion to do it—without question. He had brewed the new bit of dark magic to technical perfection—including the solution that would make it last through the eclipse. If anything, the eclipse would make things stronger. Aya could be stripped of herself completely.

“Agh!” he cried aloud.

While he didn’t usually have the power to interfere with Cirrina’s personal work, he tried his best to make sure that deserving clients didn’t get tied into horrible contracts, or that they at least felt as though there were other options. When he was younger, he’d had to turn a blind eye to some of her darker endeavors, but as his skills grew, he knew how to sabotage the worst of the potions she made. However, with the Eel, he hadn’t. Now, Aya, his friend against all odds, was slotted to pick up the tab for his error. Kind Aya, who helped him in more ways than she knew, keeping Krill out of trouble, keeping himself from some of his jaded fatigue, and guarding his existence from becoming too dark with the way she saw the world.

His decision was made before the fullness of the consequences could play themselves out for him.

“I can get into the palace. If I’m caught, I’ll deny any connection with you. You’ll be safe from Titus,” he said quietly, reaching for the bag of basic potions he kept near the door and fastening it to his waist. Making an effort not to bend them, he moved the invitations to the palace ball where they wouldn’t fall out or get further wrinkled. From one of the cupboards, he pulled out his merchant’s vest. It wasn’t anywhere near the sort of finery that would be at the ball, but it was clothing, and it was ink-dyed, which would help his camouflage—or lack thereof—when he needed it.

“You don’t mean to say you’re going after the snake?” A nastily amused crawled its way over Cirrina’s lips. “Is that for justice for your dear family?” She put a hand on her chest, as though proud of his anger. “...or is it for your princess?”

“Don’t let him die.” His blood fizzled uncomfortably, as giving Cirrina an order was very close to a breach of his blood contract with her. If he got any worse, he might forfeit his life—or his soul, depending on how Cirrina felt at the time, and he didn’t want to give her any time to either realize that, or give him an order to stay.

Fisting a hand around the pouch at his waist, he bulleted out of the cavern and toward the palace, praying to Poseidon that he wasn’t already too late.