Chapter 15 Cetius

Would that incessant beeping just fucking stop already? Ugh.

My head was pounding as badly as it had that time I’d drunk too much juice from a landbound fruit and it had messed up my salt balance. My right shoulder was burning. And I could have done without this strange medicinal scent in the water. I blinked twice and found myself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. A very plain, very unfamiliar ceiling.

Beeep.

I whipped my head around to glare at the offending piece of machinery, only to have the room start to spin around me.

“Easy, Cetius.” My grandsire’s voice brought me fully back to…wherever here was.

I glanced around the room, this time without turning my head so violently. The sterile, soft green walls of a healing facility met my gaze. They’d put me in a private room, and aside from my healing pod, there was only a small table and two chairs. The only natural light came from a tiny circular opening in the wall.

Cetia sat in one of the chairs. The strands of flowers in her head quills looked ragged, as if she’d been clawing at them.

Iravan grinned at me with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall. “Welcome back to the ocean, my friend.”

The image of him, a lot less calm and frantically pulling at me and screaming at me to swim suddenly came rushing back to me. The Selach Swim!

I remembered feeling something hit me and shove me back, then staring in disbelief at the arrow in my shoulder, followed by an overwhelming tiredness. Then Iravan was there, dragging me toward the finish line, the selach close behind.

I looked down at the pulsing pain in my shoulder and found it tightly wrapped. “Iravan, thank you. I remember now.”

Something didn’t add up, though. An arrow in the shoulder wouldn’t account for me being completely immobilized, especially with a selach after me. But Cetia was ready with the answer.

“I can’t believe that stinking pile of selach shit had you shot with a poisoned arrow.” Her nervous energy had turned to anger now. “Nerial is going to rot in lockup for this.”

A poisoned arrow would explain it. But— “ Nerial did this?” I asked.

It was Iravan who replied. “Not personally, but she organized it. They caught the shooter. He killed himself before he could tell us anything, but a quick look into his finances showed that Nerial recently sent him a substantial payment. He also had his conch on him, and there were highly incriminating messages between the two.”

“And all this because you were smart enough to reject the bitch.” Cetia was pacing now, her motion churning up the water in the room.

All this talk about a female I hadn’t wanted in my life had me thinking of the one I did want, but Vera wasn’t here. Had Nerial gone after her? Panic had me trying to get out of my healing pod, which set off another round of frantic beeps that went straight through my head.

“Where is she?” I croaked.

“Nerial? They have her in custody,” Cetia said.

“Not Nerial. Vera.”

The three of them exchanged a look.

“Where is she?”

Iravan held up his conch in front of my healing pod. On the screen was amateur video of the race taken from somewhere in the spectator stands.

“All the official feeds were turned off mid-race. We were lucky that security got a tip-off about someone looking suspicious and carrying a weapon. They wouldn’t have caught the shooter otherwise.”

The video showed Iravan and another competitor struggling to haul me through the cables at the finish line. Then Cetia and Vera were there. Vera held, no, clutched my good arm, her face awash in worry until the emergency healer started loading me into a pod. Algrim was right behind her. The footage showed him grabbing her by the arm and yanking her roughly out of the frame.

“We’ve tried calling her,” Iravan said, “but we’re not getting through. Investigators called Algrim in; he expressed surprise at what happened at the race and claims he has no idea where Vera is now.”

“I should have seen it coming.” Cetion’s voice oozed sadness. “I should have watched him better.”

“It’s not your fault, Grandsire,” Cetia said, embracing the older male. “We all knew he was dangerous.”

Suddenly, the healing pod was much too small for me. I needed to get out and find Vera now. I opened the pod and detached the tubes that connected me to the machine, making it complain loudly.

A nurse rushed in. “No no no. You can’t go yet. You’re very lucky you even made it out alive.”

I ignored her and started toward the door. Iravan stopped me.

“The nurse is right, Cet. I know you want to go find your wife, but it’s not worth your life. The only reason you survived is that you spent that time living with the Jutka tribe.”

“It was jutkaris posion?”

“The very same.”

I’d stayed with the Jutkas for about a twin moon’s cycle. The tribe was known for their ability to eat jutkaris, a tiny but very abundant fish that populated their shallow sea that also happened to be poisonous. They built up a tolerance to it by eating small amounts of it every day almost from birth, until by the time they were only a few years old, they could feed off it without suffering any ill effects.

The tribespeople had treated me like a baby during my stay, putting minute amounts of the poison into my food every day, hoping I’d develop a tolerance even as an adult. I’d left before I could do that entirely. But I guess it was enough to save my life even years later.

“Why don’t I go find her,” Iravan suggested.

“No. She’s my wife. Maybe even my true mate,” I admitted. “I have to go find her.” I turned to the nurse. “Please have my file transferred to healer Lago.”

“I already called him,” said my grandsire. “He’s on his way.”

Which meant I had to be out of this healing facility before he arrived, or else he’d never let me go find Vera. The nurse tried to usher me back into the pod, but I evaded her.

“Where is my conch?”

Iravan handed me my harness.

Before anyone could stop me, I was swimming through the corridors toward my home and checking my conch for the last known location of Vera’s device, glad that she’d opted to share her location with me in case we ever got separated when we were in town.

I was already swimming up over the buildings to take a shortcut to my place when Iravan came up beside me.

“I know I can’t force you to stay in the healing facility, especially if you think Vera could be your true mate. But you can’t stop me from tagging along.”

It was probably for the best. Now that I was exerting more of my energy, I realized just how weak I was. My time with the tribe gave me an advantage, but it didn’t make me immune to the poison. I handed him my conch.

“That’s the last location Vera’s conch had a signal.”

“That’s right at the center of town, close to where the Selach Swim was. If we’re lucky, Vera may still have it on her. If we’re not, Algrim may have disposed of it at the event. Where are you going?”

“Home. I have emergency stims there from my traveling days. I need them right now.” I was weaker than I’d let on back at the healing facility.

I’d used the stims in the past when I found myself in tight spots and needed an extra burst of energy— either to escape large predators or get to safety when I was injured. They gave an instant jolt of life-saving energy.

“I also want to have a weapon on me.”

Iravan grunted. “Good idea.”