Viper’s POV
Robert Salvatore had sent me to look for a ghost road.
And the ghost road, because ancient magic had apparently been designed by people with no respect for tailoring, was in Georgia.
Not beneath a polished street.
Not tucked under a city bridge.
Not hidden behind a carved door in some private cellar where respectable secrets belonged.
No.
It was somewhere off a dirt road, near a beach, beneath salt water, dark rocks, and whatever else the coastline had decided to ruin that morning.
Ancient magic had terrible taste.
Robert had given me two places to check.
The road Worthington wanted outsiders to notice.
And the old coastal mouth Atlantis remembered.
Georgia coastline.
A hidden beach.
An underwater tunnel running inland beneath sand, stone, and earth.
A lake near Worth territory.
That was all Robert had given me.
That, and the calm look in his eyes when he said, “Find it.”
So I drove.
And drove.
And drove.
Until the city thinned behind me, the roads narrowed, and the trees started pressing too close to the car as if they had never heard of personal space.
I preferred cities.
Stone streets. Rooftops. Alleys. Windows lit above narrow lanes. Crowds thick enough to hide a knife, a whisper, or a woman who did not wish to be followed.
Cities had corners.
Cities had shadows that knew what they were doing.
This place had dirt.
The road to Worthington’s human-facing entrance stretched ahead in a long, uneven line, half-swallowed by grass on both sides. Pine and oak crowded the edges, their branches tangled overhead in places, breaking the sunlight into green pieces across the hood of the car.
The deeper I drove, the quieter the world became.
Not peaceful.
Quiet.
There was a difference.
Peace had warmth to it.
This place felt like it was holding its breath just to see what I would do wrong.
I slowed when the road bent beneath a heavy line of pine and oak. Beyond that curve, the track continued toward the human-facing entrance Robert had described.
A house.
A border.
Worthington’s lovely little mask for the outside world.
I did not intend to drive up and introduce myself.
I had manners.
Terrible ones, but manners all the same.
I eased the car into a narrow cut half-hidden by brush. The branches scraped faintly along the side, and I made a mental note to be offended later if they marked the paint.
Far enough from the estate not to draw eyes.
Close enough to leave quickly if Fredrick Worth’s magic developed teeth and decided to bite.
I killed the engine.
Silence dropped over the car at once.
No traffic.
No distant voices.
No city hum.
Just insects screaming from the trees, leaves dragging against each other, and somewhere farther off, water moving with the smug confidence of something that knew I would have to step in it eventually.
I sat for one breath with my hands on the wheel.
Then I sighed.
“Charming.”
I stepped out, shut the door without a sound, and looked down.
My heel sank slightly into the soft dirt.
Georgia had greeted me.
I was already unimpressed.
I tucked my phone into the inner pocket of my vest, checked the small blade hidden against my thigh, and walked the rest of the way.
Walking did not bother me.
Walking could be elegant under better circumstances.
Marble halls.
Moonlit balconies.
Narrow city alleys where every step made sense because stone stayed where it belonged.
This was not that.
This was Georgia.
My heel sank deeper on the third step.
I looked down at it.
Georgia, apparently, had taken my judgment personally.
The road curved through the trees, uneven and damp in the shaded places. I kept to the edge, where brush and shadow broke up the shape of me. I moved slowly enough not to disturb the birds, quickly enough not to look like prey.
That was the trick, always.
Never rush.
Rushing made people look.
Stillness made them wonder.
A controlled pace let the world forget you were part of it.
The house came into view after the next bend.
And there it was.
Fredrick Worth’s beautiful lie.
It sat at the end of the long dirt road like a private Southern estate pretending it had nothing to hide. Large, pale, and elegant, with a wide porch, tall windows, dark green shutters, and a front door painted deep enough green to look almost black in the shade. Flowering hedges lined the front walk. Old trees framed the property with branches broad enough to shade half the yard.
A human would have seen money.
Privacy.
A family estate.
Somewhere important people received deliveries, signed papers, drank tea, and told unwanted visitors they had taken the wrong road.
I saw a gate wearing curtains.
The landscaping was too pretty to be harmless. The hedges curved in ways that guided the eye away from the side paths. The gravel near the porch had been raked smooth enough to show footprints if someone crossed where they should not. A detached carriage house sat to the left, large enough for cars, storage, and several things Fredrick Worth would never put on a human property record.
Mail, perhaps.
Packages.
Guests who mattered enough to greet, but not enough to bring into Worthington.
Very polished.
Very expensive.
Very Worth.
I crouched behind a cluster of scrub pine and watched.
Three guards.
One stood near the porch with a tablet in his hand, pretending to review something dull.
Poorly.
His eyes moved too often. Page untouched. Weight balanced on both feet despite the lazy pose. A man trying to look bored was rarely bored.
One moved behind the front window, visible only when the curtain shifted.
Better.
Patient. Still. The sort of person who knew being unseen was more useful than looking impressive.
The third waited near the side garden, where the trees thickened beside the carriage house. Hands loose at his sides. Attention spread across the road instead of fixed on it.
Best of the three.
A pity.
I respected competence more when it was not pointed in my direction.
Beyond the estate, the road continued into the trees, but the air over it bent wrong.
Not dramatically.
That would have been refreshingly honest.
No, this was Worth magic.
Civilized.
Soft.
Manipulative in silk gloves.
The barrier did not shout, stop.
It suggested.
Turn around.
Forget the road.
There is nothing here worth finding.
It slid against the edge of my thoughts like a polite hand guiding me away from a door I had not yet touched.
I smiled despite myself.
Fredrick Worth had not built a wall.
How tasteful.
How smug.
He had built a suggestion with teeth.
A direct approach would be foolish.
Someone louder might have tested it anyway. A soldier, perhaps. Soldiers had a tragic affection for proving doors could be kicked.
I was not a soldier.
I did not kick doors unless I wanted the person inside to waste time looking at the door.
My work lived in hinges, cracks, shadows, the breath between one guard turning his head and another noticing too late.
This entrance was not mine.
Not today.
I withdrew before any of the watchers could feel my attention resting too long against the estate.
The house remained behind me, large and pale and smug at the end of its long dirt road.
Fredrick Worth’s beautiful lie.
Not the way in.
Not for me.
The land entrance was too polished, too guarded, too layered in green magic that smiled while deciding whether to bite. A soldier might have tried it anyway. A fool might have mistaken the pretty porch and flowering hedges for welcome.
I was neither.
---
I headed back to the car without rushing.
The guards did not follow. The barrier did not reach for me again. Worthington’s front door stayed where it was, pretending it had not been noticed.
How sweet of it.
I slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and turned the car around.
The dirt road stretched behind me now, winding away from Fredrick Worth’s beautiful lie. I followed it back toward the main road, leaving the estate and its polite little trap to guard the entrance it wanted outsiders to see.
Robert had told me there was a beach near Worth territory.
A beach.
Because apparently one ruined pair of shoes was not enough for the morning.
“There is a beach near Worth territory,” he had said. “Old records place the coastal mouth there. Get there before humans arrive.”
So I drove toward the sign he had marked on the map.
The sign appeared after a narrow bend in the road, weathered gray by salt air and sun.
Shellbend Beach
A charming name.
I distrusted it immediately.
I turned off the main road and followed the smaller one until the trees thinned and the smell of salt pushed through the vents. Sand gathered along the edges of the cracked pavement. Tall grass bent in the wind. Somewhere ahead, gulls screamed like they had been personally insulted by the morning.
The road ended in a small patch of crushed shell and dry grass.
No cars.
No voices.
No bright towels spread across the sand.
No humans pretending the sea was friendly because it happened to sparkle.
Good.
At least one part of the day had manners.
I parked, cut the engine, and looked through the windshield.
At first glance, the beach looked painfully ordinary.
Pale sand.
Scattered shells.
High grass shifting behind the dunes.
Driftwood lying near the tide line like old bones.
Low waves rolling in and dragging themselves back out again.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
No glowing entrance.
No ancient stone arch.
No convenient sign carved with, Secret tunnel for royal mermaid problems. This way.
Disappointing.
But not surprising.
Ancient routes rarely had the decency to announce themselves.
I stepped out of the car and shut the door. Wind caught my hair and pushed it across my cheek.
Rude.
The air was cool enough near the water, but damp in that clinging coastal way I disliked. Salt touched my lips. Sand shifted beneath my shoes. The whole place smelled like seaweed, shells, and sunlight warming things that should have stayed buried.
I opened the back door and removed my jacket first, folding it neatly across the seat.
Then my shoes.
Then the rest of the clothes I had no intention of dragging into the ocean.
I left them folded in a careful stack inside the car, because I had standards even when surrounded by sand. Beneath them, I kept only the thin black underlayers I could tolerate getting wet.
Not ideal.
Not elegant.
But practical enough for a quick search.
Robert had asked me to find a tunnel.
He had not asked me to ruin every piece of clothing I owned for one.
I tucked the phone into its waterproof case and sealed it tight. The small blade stayed near my things. A knife was useful in alleys, rooms, throats, and negotiations.
Underwater?
Less so.
I stood beside the car for one second, half-dressed, irritated, and alone on a Georgia beach before sunrise had fully warmed the sand.
“This,” I muttered, “had better be worth it.”
The beach did not answer.
Wise of it.
I walked toward the water.
The sand was cold under my feet, packed firmer near the tide line. Tiny shell pieces pressed into my soles. Wind moved through the high grass behind me in long whispers. The waves rolled low and quiet, not dramatic enough to impress me, not still enough to be ignored.
I searched slowly.
That was the important part.
Humans looked at beaches and saw views.
I looked for mistakes.
A change in the waves.
A break in the sandbar.
A place where foam vanished too quickly.
A place where the water held more darkness than it should.
Most of the beach was useless.
Flat water.
Pale shallows.
Sand shifting in soft ridges under the waves.
Then I saw the rocks.
They sat at one end of the beach, dark and out of place, half-buried where the water met the shore. Not a cliff. Not even a grand formation. Just a broken stretch of black stones jutting through the surf as if the coastline had tried to hide them and lost interest halfway through.
Georgia beaches were not supposed to have rocks like that.
Which made them interesting.
I stopped.
The water in front of them was darker than the rest.
Not shadow-dark.
Depth-dark.
The kind of darkness water gets when the bottom drops away.
Around the rocks, the waves changed. They did not simply roll in and slide back. They folded inward, slipping between the stones before thinning out again. Foam gathered in a crooked crescent and disappeared too fast.
My irritation cooled into focus.
“There you are,” I murmured.
I walked closer until the water touched my toes.
The sea decided to be rude immediately.
The sand dipped sharply beyond the first line of waves. From the beach, it looked harmless. Up close, the shallows ended too quickly, dropping into darker water beside the stones.
If there was a mouth beneath the coast, it would be there.
I checked the phone case one last time, then waded in.
Water wrapped around my ankles.
Then my calves.
Then my knees.
I kept my face still, though the cold climbed with insulting confidence. The sea tugged at my legs. Sand pulled away beneath each step. By the time the water reached my waist, my jaw had tightened.
This was not fear.
This was dislike with discipline.
There was a difference.
The bottom vanished under my next step.
I pushed forward and swam.
The beach slid behind me in pale strips of sand and grass. The rocks rose ahead, slick and dark, water breaking against them with hollow little knocks. Up close, they looked older than they should have. Too smooth in places. Too black beneath the morning light.
Magic had touched them once.
Maybe not shaped them.
Maybe not claimed them.
But touched them.
That was enough.
I gripped one rock, drew in a deep breath, and dove.
The world turned green and dim.
Sound vanished into a heavy hush. My hair lifted around my face. Cold slid down my spine and under the thin fabric against my skin. Sand drifted through the water in pale clouds, catching what little light filtered down from above.
I followed the rocks beneath the surface.
They did not end where they should have.
They continued downward, forming a jagged wall along the coast. Sea grass swayed between them in long dark ribbons. Small fish scattered when I moved too close.
Then the water deepened again.
There.
Beneath the lowest stones, half-hidden by shadow and weed, the earth opened.
Not a crack.
Not a shallow pocket.
A tunnel.
It sloped inward beneath the coast, wide enough for a body to swim through. The mouth was rough, natural, uneven, as if the sea had spent centuries worrying at a weakness in the stone until it turned into a secret.
No carved crest.
No pretty Atlantean arch.
No royal nonsense polished into the walls.
Good.
A natural wound in the earth had more dignity.
The water inside the opening did not roll back toward the sea.
It pulled faintly inward.
Inland.
A slow satisfaction curled through me.
Robert had sent me to find a ghost road.
I had found its throat.
I swam into it.
The passage narrowed around me first, close enough for stone to brush near my shoulders, then widened into darkness. The water grew colder. The light from the beach thinned behind me, turning the tunnel ahead into layers of green, black, and stone.
It should not have existed.
Not like this.
A natural underwater passage running inland from the sea, deep beneath sand and rock, toward a hidden lake guarded by one of the Four Families.
Geography would have objected.
Magic, apparently, had won the argument.
I kicked deeper.
The tunnel sloped down, then leveled, then bent in a slow curve away from the coast. My hand grazed the wall to guide myself. The stone was slick under my fingers, cold and uneven.
My lungs held.
For now.
I could hold my breath longer than a human. Longer than any soft beachgoer splashing in the shallows would have believed. Longer than most people deserved to know.
That did not make me a mermaid.
The tunnel stretched on.
Still no air pocket.
Still no break.
Still no end.
Then, far ahead, I felt it.
Faint.
Hidden beneath salt, stone, and distance.
Worth magic.
Not the estate barrier. Not the polite little suggestion from the road.
This was deeper.
Older.
A pull from inland, waiting behind the darkness like a candle behind thick glass.
So Triton’s old route did lead toward Worthington.
The tunnel was real.
Robert would be pleased.
I, however, still required air.
I pushed forward a little farther, enough to make certain the passage did not split or collapse just beyond sight. The dark continued, steady and deep, curving beneath the land.
No air.
No light.
No reason to die proving something already proven.
Robert had asked me to find the tunnel.
Not decorate it with my corpse.
My chest began to burn.
Not badly.
Enough.
I turned back.
The tunnel did not fight me. It did not need to. It had distance, depth, and my lungs working on its behalf.
Practical little monster.
The swim back felt longer. It always did once air became a thing the body wanted to discuss. I kept my movements smooth, refusing panic before it had the poor taste to introduce itself.
Stone on my left.
Dark above.
Green water ahead.
The opening widened.
Light returned in thin, wavering strips.
I slipped out from beneath the rocks and kicked upward.
When I broke the surface, I drew in a sharp breath and refused to let it sound desperate.
Water streamed down my face.
My hair clung to my neck.
The rocks sat beside me in silence, dark and smug beneath the morning light.
I narrowed my eyes at them.
“Do not look pleased.”
They continued being rocks.
Typical.
I swam back to shore, climbed out with as much dignity as cold skin and wet underlayers allowed, and stood for a moment with water dripping from my hair onto my shoulders.
The beach looked exactly as it had before.
Pale.
Empty.
Unbothered.
It had no idea it had just offered Robert Salvatore a way beneath Fredrick Worth’s defenses.
Or perhaps it did know.
Perhaps that was why the waves sounded so smug.
I walked back to the car without hurrying. Hurrying was for prey, messengers, and men who believed speed could hide bad planning.
By the time I reached the crushed shell patch, salt clung to my skin, my hair had become a personal insult, and my patience had thinned to something sharp enough to use.
I opened the car door and reached for the towel I had packed.
Practicality was not glamorous.
It was, however, the reason I was still alive.
I dried my arms, my face, my shoulders, and wrung salt water from my hair as best I could. The towel helped.
Not enough.
I glanced down at the wet fabric clinging to me and sighed.
“This day continues to impress.”
Heat stirred beneath my ribs.
A controlled thread of Salvatore fire answered, low and obedient. Not flame. Not enough to burn. Just heat, carefully leashed beneath my skin.
I was lucky to be blessed with Incenda, even as a familiar.
Steam lifted from my shoulders.
From my hair.
From the black fabric clinging to me.
The cold retreated first. Then the damp. Salt still lingered, but the water thinned and vanished under the steady warmth I pushed outward through my skin.
Starting a fire was easy.
Not starting one took more skill.
A lesser creature would have scorched the towel.
I did not.
By the time I finished, my skin was warm, my underlayers dry enough to tolerate, and my hair merely damp instead of dripping.
Acceptable.
Barely.
I dressed again piece by piece, smoothing every layer into place until the woman reflected faintly in the car window looked composed, sharp, and entirely unbothered by the fact that she had just been half-dressed in the Atlantic like a fool with orders.
Presentation mattered.
Especially when one intended to report success.
I retrieved the phone, wiped my fingers clean, and looked once more toward the rocks.
The water there remained darker than the rest.
Quiet.
Waiting.
The tunnel existed.
It led inland.
And I had found it before the humans woke enough to wander onto the beach with towels, children, and terrible timing.
I smiled.
Then I called Robert.
One ring.
Two.
Then Robert’s voice answered.
“Yes?”
“I found the tunnel, Master.”
Silence met me first.
Not shock.
Robert had sent me to find it. In his mind, that meant the tunnel had been found the moment he gave the order. I was merely catching the world up to him.
“Did you enter?” he asked.
“Far enough to confirm it leads inland.”
“And?”
“And not far enough to die. It is deep, long, and fully underwater.”
“Can you follow it?”
“Not without breathing.”
“Orion will bring a necklace.”
“For breathing?”
“Unless you have recently grown gills.”
My mouth curved.
“Not yet, Master.”
“Then use the necklace.”
“Yes, Master.”
The waves rolled in behind me, low and steady, whispering over the sand as if they were listening.
I leaned against the side of the car and looked toward the rocks.
The water in front of them remained darker than the rest of the beach.
Quiet.
Waiting.
A secret under the surface.
“Orion will most likely arrive with soldiers,” Robert said. “Let them enter first.”
“Gladly.”
There were many things I could do well.
Marching at the front of a royal retrieval party was not one of them.
Soldiers liked to be seen. They liked lines, formations, orders shouted cleanly across open ground. They liked armor polished enough to announce their importance before their mouths did.
I preferred corners.
Shadows.
The space behind someone else’s mistake.
“You will follow after them,” Robert continued. “Watch Aqua.”
“And Steven more closely,” I said.
“Yes.”
There it was.
At first, I had thought this was a retrieval mission.
Find the route.
Let the Atlanteans make themselves useful.
Watch them pull their princess back toward the sea and see whether Robert’s son was foolish enough to burn for her.
Simple.
Messy, perhaps.
But simple.
Now I understood Robert’s real purpose.
He did not merely want Steven found.
He wanted Steven studied.
The boy from the beach had grown beneath Fredrick Worth’s protection. Into what, I did not yet know.
That was the interesting part.
Far more interesting than dragging a hidden heir out by the throat.
Retrievals were for soldiers.
Information was for people with taste.
And I had always preferred the work no one noticed until it was too late.
“And when the soldiers make themselves impossible to miss?” I asked.
“Then you become very easy to miss.”
My smile returned slowly.
That was the part of the work that suited me.
Not the dirt road.
Not the salt.
Not the water trying to decide whether I deserved air.
This.
The quiet place behind someone else’s noise.
“You want me unseen,” I said.
“I want you forgotten until being seen becomes useful.”
“Yes, Master.”
“And Viper?”
“Yes?”
“Do not mistake Orion’s mission for yours. He is there to retrieve a princess. You are there to learn my son.”
I looked toward the dark water, where the tunnel waited beneath the rocks.
“Then I’ll stay in the background.”
“Good.”
My smile sharpened.
“That is where people are easiest to study.”
The call ended.
I lowered the phone and stood beside the car with salt drying on my skin and the taste of deep water still clinging to the back of my throat.
The beach stretched quiet before me.
Too quiet.
The tunnel waited beneath the rocks.
Atlantis was coming through duty and grief.
Robert was coming through me.
And somewhere beyond that dark underwater road, near a quiet lake in a protected town, Steven Salvatore and Princess Aqua had no idea the shore had already opened its mouth.
The water changed before the Atlanteans arrived.
That was the first warning.
The beach had been noisy since I arrived. Gulls screamed overhead. Wind hissed through the high grass. Waves dragged themselves over the sand again and again with a patience I found irritating.
Then, slowly, the sound thinned.
Not vanished.
Thinned.
As if the shore had noticed something older than itself moving underneath it and decided, wisely, to lower its voice.
I straightened.
The dark water near the rocks deepened.
Not in color.
In presence.
A ripple spread from between the stones, smooth and round, pushing foam aside without breaking it. The waves around the rocks folded inward, then stilled for one long breath.
Atlanteans never simply arrived.
They emerged as if the ocean itself felt obligated to introduce them.
Dramatic people.
The first hand broke the surface.
Gloved.
Blue-armored.
Then General Orion rose from the water like the tunnel had lifted him by command.
He did not gasp.
Did not stumble.
Did not look half as offended by the beach as he should have.
Water streamed from dark blue armor fitted close to his body, silver clasps gleaming at his shoulders. His hair was slicked back, damp but neat, as if the water itself respected him more than it had respected me.
Behind him, two soldiers surfaced one by one.
The rest must have been underwater awaiting orders.
Disciplined.
Silent.
Blue armor. Pale shell markings. Weapons strapped close. Eyes forward.
They did not look like men climbing out of the Atlantic.
They looked like a piece of Atlantis had risen through a Georgia beach and refused to acknowledge the insult.
I almost admired it.
Almost.
Orion stepped fully out of the water, boots finding the submerged rocks before he crossed into the shallows. His gaze moved once over the empty beach, the high grass, the road, my car.
Then it found me.
His expression did not change.
His dislike was minimal.
Repressed.
He showed business on his face instead of whatever he was feeling inside.
Interesting.
I could respect a man who put duty first before personal feelings, even if the person in front of him was someone venomous.
“Viper,” he said.
“General Orion.”
His eyes lowered briefly to my freshly dried clothes, then to the sand at my feet, then lifted again.
I smiled.
“Try not to look too disappointed. I did consider drowning before you arrived, but the tunnel seemed unworthy of the effort.”
“I was told you found the entrance.”
“I did.”
“And tested it?”
“Far enough to confirm it reaches inland.”
“You could not finish the route.”
“I enjoy breathing.”
“That means no.”
“That means I had enough sense not to die before your grand entrance.”
One of the soldiers behind him shifted his gaze toward me.
Only his gaze.
Trained, then.
Orion did not take the bait. That was unfortunate. Bait was so much more entertaining when people bit.
“We are not here for games,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You are here for a princess. Very solemn. Very noble. Very wet.”
Sadly, my words barely made a dent in his serious expression.
Apparently, he was not here to play games.
Bummer.
He stepped closer.
The soldiers remained behind him, still as carved things, though I could feel their attention measuring me. Not fear. Suspicion. Disgust, perhaps.
How charming.
The feeling was mutual.
Orion reached beneath the layered collar of his armor and withdrew a chain.
The necklace was smaller than I expected.
A slender loop of pale metal, neither silver nor pearl, with a blue-white stone set at the center. The stone held waterlight inside it, shifting slowly, like a captured bubble under glass.
The moment he lifted it, the air cooled.
So did something beneath my skin.
Atlantean work.
Clean.
Old.
Proud of itself.
Orion held it out, but did not let go when my fingers touched the chain.
“This will let you breathe beneath the water,” he said. “Use it well.”
“How generous.”
“It is not generosity.”
“No? Then I must have mistaken your warm expression.”
His fingers remained closed around the necklace.
For one second, neither of us moved.
His duty stood between us like a drawn blade.
My patience leaned against it and smiled.
Then he released the chain.
The necklace dropped into my palm.
Cold bit into my skin.
Not painful.
More like the magic wanted me to know it had noticed my existence and had several concerns.
I lifted it by the chain and studied the stone.
“Pretty.”
“It is not an ornament.”
“It is now.”
Orion’s expression suggested he regretted several royal decisions that had led us here.
I fastened the necklace around my throat.
The stone settled against my skin.
Cold pressure spread from it immediately, sliding beneath my collarbone and around my ribs. For a heartbeat, the taste of salt filled my mouth so strongly I nearly spat.
I breathed through my nose.
The pressure eased.
Water magic.
Useful, if dramatic.
I smiled at Orion.
“How kind of Atlantis to care whether I drown.”
“If you endanger Princess Aqua, drowning may become the least of your concerns.”
“There it is.” My smile widened. “I was starting to worry you were only handsome and dull.”
One soldier’s mouth tightened.
Orion’s did not.
Pity.
“Formation,” he ordered.
The two men moved at once.
No wasted motion.
No chatter.
No glancing at me again, though I knew some of them wanted to. Soldiers were always curious about snakes until the snake moved too close.
They entered the water first.
One by one, they slipped beneath the surface, blue armor vanishing into the dark place between the rocks. The beach swallowed them without a splash loud enough to carry.
Orion waited until the last soldier disappeared.
Then he looked back at me.
“You follow behind me.”
“How trusting.”
“You are not trusted.”
“Refreshing honesty.”
“You are tolerated for the mission.”
“Less refreshing.”
His gaze did not move.
“You will not interfere when we reach the princess.”
“I have my orders.”
“From Robert Salvatore.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect that to comfort me?”
“No,” I said. “I expect it to inform you.”
For the first time, his eyes narrowed with something like understanding.
Good.
Perhaps the general could think after all.
Orion stepped into the water. It closed around his boots, then his knees, then his waist. The waves curled around him as if recognizing an old road traveler.
Before he sank beneath the surface, he looked back once.
“If you endanger her, snake, I will show you no mercy.”
I touched the blue-white stone at my throat.
“If I endanger her, General, I suspect you will have to stand in line.”
His face stayed hard.
Then the water took him.
I stood alone at the edge of the shore.
For one breath, I listened.
The beach had begun to make noise again, slowly, cautiously, as if it was testing whether the worst had passed.
Poor thing.
The worst had only entered the water.
I looked back once toward the empty road, toward the place where Fredrick Worth’s estate sat hidden beyond the trees, guarding Worthington’s human face.
Then I looked down at the necklace resting against my throat.
The blue-white stone pulsed once.
Cold.
Expectant.
I curled my fingers around it.
“Try not to be dramatic,” I murmured.
It gave no answer.
Atlantean magic had very little sense of humor.
I drew in one slow breath and let my human shape loosen.
The change began beneath my skin.
A familiar pull moved through my spine, clean and sharp, every bone remembering a truer shape. My arms narrowed. My legs folded into one sleek line. Human skin gave way to red scales, smooth and bright even under the dull morning light.
The world lowered.
The sand pressed closer.
Sound sharpened.
Salt.
Stone.
Wet grass.
Old magic beneath the water.
The necklace shrank with the change, its blue-white stone tightening into a cold glint at my throat while its magic folded into the shape of me.
My yellow eyes opened near the sand.
Better.
Human form had its uses. Doors. Faces. Conversations. Knives.
But this body knew how to become a secret.
I slipped forward over the damp sand, silent except for the faint whisper of scales against shell and grit. The first wave reached me and washed cold over my body.
I slid into the sea.
Water closed over my head.
This time, my lungs did not seize.
Interesting.
Breathing underwater was unpleasant.
Cold and thin, like pulling salt and stone through my chest instead of air. Usable, though. And usable was all I required.
The beach vanished above me.
Below, the rocks dropped into darkness.
And there they were.
Twenty Atlantean soldiers waited beneath the surface in disciplined formation, blue armor dimmed by green water, weapons held close to their bodies. The two who had surfaced with Orion had already rejoined the others, slipping back into place as if they had never left it.
Efficient.
Annoyingly so.
Orion hovered at the front, his body steady in the water, one hand lifted in silent command. He did not look back at me immediately.
Perhaps he trusted me to follow.
No.
That would be giving him too much credit.
He expected me to follow because Robert had ordered it, and because men like Orion believed duty was a leash everyone understood.
How precious.
I flicked my tongue once.
Salt.
Armor.
Royal nerves hidden under discipline.
The tunnel yawned beneath the rocks ahead, dark and wide and waiting.
Orion gave a sharp motion with two fingers.
The soldiers moved first.
One by one, they entered the opening, their blue armor swallowed by the old passage. No splashing. No wasted movement. No fear.
They were not beach soldiers.
They were water-born.
This tunnel was not a threat to them.
It was a road.
When Orion finally turned his head, his gaze found me through the dim water.
Even here, he managed to look severe.
Impressive.
I gave him the closest thing a snake could offer to a smile.
His expression did not change.
Pity.
Then he turned and followed his men into the dark.
I waited half a breath longer.
Not out of hesitation.
Out of preference.
Visible threats went first.
Useful ones followed.
Then I slipped into the old tunnel after them, silent as a thought no one wanted to admit having.
Let Orion wear armor.
Let his soldiers carry duty like banners.
Let them enter Worthington as the threat everyone would notice.
I knew how to follow a war without being seen.