Chapter 27

27

T he grotto was just like the last time they had arrived there, and it still gave Hudson the chills. Nothing about magic sat well with her—ever. She wasn’t comfortable with it, with what it could do. But right now, they needed it. Hudson swam forward, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that Kyree was following, because she definitely needed Kyree for this one.

“You’ve found my daughter,” Milan said as way of greeting, opening the door of her home and filling the space.

“Yes,” Hudson said, an unexpected nervous tickle in the back of her throat. “But we can’t get to her. We can’t save her without your help.”

“My help?” Milan’s shoulders curled inward just a fraction as the confusion flashed over her face.

Hudson turned to Kyree, silently begging for her help.

“You can’t reach her. You’re no longer sure if she is unharmed.” Kyree’s voice floated on the water like a lullaby. She moved closer to Milan, their bodies merely inches away from each other.

An overwhelming desire to stand between the two deep sounding mers washed through Hudson, and she understood a little easier the idiot Honour had made of herself the last time they had come to the bog witch’s grotto.

It hadn’t been hatred for Milan. Not entirely at least. It had been jealousy. Honour had already been that much more attached, that much more connected to Kyree.

“What happened to her?” Milan’s voice shook in an unexpected display of weakness Hudson would never have imagined possible for the mer.

“She’s been taken into the sky ship.”

“Disconnected.” Milan nodded. The understanding relaxed her shoulders, and her chest rose in a long breath of water. “But you’ve found her, and she’s unharmed?”

“Relatively unharmed.” Kyree, slowly as though giving Milan all the opportunity in the world to stop her, raised her arm and laid it gently on Milan’s arm. “But we need to get her and the only way we can do that is with your help.”

“How?” Milan didn’t move away from the touch but the strength in her upright form solidified back into the determined mer Hudson found she was more comfortable with than the fragile broken mother she had glimpsed.

“We need your help to enchant us, the way you’ve taught Soulara to.”

“Enchant?” The question filled Milan’s face and then dropped just as quickly as understanding dawned. “Right. Both of you want this?”

“Yes.” Hudson couldn’t stop herself from replying before Kyree could suggest anything else.

“Please, Milan.” Kyree bowed her head and looked down at her own fluke. “Would you grant us the gift of your magic?”

Milan, back to the smirking confident mer Hudson had met on her last visit, turned her eyes to Hudson. She lifted a single eyebrow.

Hudson rolled her eyes before nodding her head forward and mimicking Kyree’s pose. “Please.”

The word was silt on Hudson’s tongue, it grated against who she was, but the hope she had seen in Honour’s eyes as she finally showed her trust and faith in them filled Hudson’s mind. She would beg to ensure that trust and faith had not been given in vain.

“Then we don’t have time to waste.”

The moment happened before Hudson had time to process it, and she couldn’t stop staring at Kyree’s split tail. No, she mentally shook her head. Legs. They were called legs.

“Hudson.” Kyree chuckled as she tucked her fingers beneath Hudson’s chin and lifted her eyes back to her face.

“Yes.” Milan’s approval finally snapped Hudson out of her trance. “She does cut quite the impressive human figure, doesn’t she?”

“All right. My turn.” Hudson’s voice was hard and sharp like broken coral. The sharp look Milan turned on her made her chest tighten enough for her to realize her error. “Please, Milan.”

“Better.” Milan pursed her lips but Hudson could have almost sworn the hint of a smile tugged the corners of Milan’s lips up before she turned back to her potions and things Hudson knew she didn’t want to understand any more than necessary.

“Does it hurt?” Hudson muttered to Kyree as sounds of clattering came from Milan and her bench.

“Not nearly as much as possibly losing Honour.”

“Okay.” Hudson steeled herself for what was to come.

“Once both transformations have been completed, I will move you two onto the beach. But first, we must make it so you can breathe.” Milan turned back around, and the small clam shell was once again filled with the moving rainbow, similar to the one Kyree had ingested moments before her fluke turned into the legs Hudson kept sneaking looks at.

“Breathe?” Hudson asked, forgetting that breathing was the bigger issue, not just walking. She scrunched her nose, but Milan didn’t answer her or even respond to the question. Hudson tried again. “How exactly?”

“Bog magic of course.” Milan smirked.

The woman enjoyed Hudson’s discomfort a little too much. But she knew this was the only way to prove to Honour that killing the Talons would never be all she cared about. Freeing her people of their oppression would always matter, and she would never give up the fight to see her people free. But she didn’t need the praise and the throne of being their savior. She’d found a home and acceptance with Honour and Kyree, and she would happily stay in the shadows of this war, and her own war with the Talons. So long as Honour and Kyree were in those shadows with her.

The pain ripped through her fluke as she focused on Kyree’s hand in her own, and Hudson’s eyes filled with hope and trust.

“We’ve no time to lose,” Milan said quickly as she weaved her hands into an intricate pattern in front of herself and Kyree.

Hudson’s mind couldn’t keep up with the movements though they appeared to linger in the water between her and Milan.

Kyree squeezed her hand, keeping her focused on the task and off of the lingering pain in her fluke.

No.

She looked down to see a pair of her very own legs. Pain raced up to her chest. It moved rapidly in and out as the impossibility of it all overwhelmed her.

“Stay with me, Hudson.” Kyree’s hard voice made Hudson smile.

“Getting all controlling on me now.” Hudson meant it as a tease, but the pain overwhelmed her words and it was impossible to avoid it now.

“If that’s what it takes.”

Hudson turned her head toward Kyree. But the smile fell from her lips as she realized the space behind Kyree was no longer the bog witch’s grotto. Colors were muted, but everything sounded so loud and hard, with edges cutting in to her mind.

“Hudson.” Kyree snapped Hudson back to attention. “Let’s get Princess Soulara back.”

Hudson laughed and couldn’t believe how her life had changed, and just how much she now had to fight for.

“Let’s do this,” Hudson said, and then wondered how the hell they were actually going to get to the sky ship.

“Hold on.” Kyree slipped one hand back into Hudson’s, while her other hand wrapped around the soul stone that now lay on a thin string of braided seaweed around Kyree’s neck.

Hudson had just enough time to look at the sky ship and back to Kyree before the world shimmered around her, and she felt a hard tug behind her stomach, the place where her hardened fluke scales had taken over the softer touch of her upper body.

“Kyree?” A voice Hudson didn’t know asked on a gasp.

“We’re here to save you, Princess.” Hudson heard Kyree say before Kyree joined Hudson as they tumbled to the floor. The floor was cold and hard. Too hard to be coral or sand, and too inflexible to be anything else Hudson could think of.

“More mers?” Another voice Hudson didn’t recognize.

“Yes.” Soulara’s voice carried over to Hudson in a hard and sharp way, but she recognized the authority and power behind the simple word.

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you getting our people together and ready to defend our home?” Soulara wanted all the information she hadn’t been privy to in an instant. Hudson could understand that, but this wasn’t her princess, and Soulara had no clue who she was. She left Kyree to do the talking for them.

“Honour’s taking care of it,” Kyree replied as they continued to balance each other as they pushed up from the ground, their bodies heavy and their legs fighting to go out from under them again.

“Honour?” Soulara’s voice softened, and Hudson understood the feeling all too well. “She didn’t come with you?”

“She had to lead the troops.”

“Of course she did.” Soulara smiled, a sadness filling her eyes.

“But she sent us to make sure you weren’t forgotten in the insanity and bloodshed of war.”

“She’s finally worthy of herself.”

“She was always worthy.” Hudson snapped, and Kyree chuckled beside her, even as they balanced on their strange snapped tailfins.

“Yes. But she’s finally starting to believe it.” Soulara smiled, and Hudson saw the beauty of the princess. The one mers talked about. At least the mers who had little worry or dealings in the grittier life of battle and war.

“We need to get you out of here and back into the water,” Kyree said as she followed Soulara’s directions to find a key and open the cage that had kept Soulara inside of it.

“No.” Soulara shook her head as she stepped out from behind the bars. “I’m not going anywhere without Autumn.”

“Autumn?” Kyree tilted her head and blinked at Soulara.

“That would be me.” A human, an actual human, not a mer with a split fluke, stepped out from behind Soulara as she spoke.

“We don’t have time to worry about humans. We need to leave before they realize we’ve been here. And before they discover you’re no longer their prisoner.” Hudson wasn’t going to let love get in the way of a rescue. She would take Soulara by force if she had to. Her mission was to save Soulara, not Autumn.

“Not without Autumn.” Soulara’s voice was hard and authoritative once more. Hudson watched as Soulara interlocked her fingers with Autumn’s and both squeezed, turning their pink skin pale for a moment.

“All right,” Hudson took charge as Kyree continued to shake her head back and forth. “Autumn comes too. But we don’t have time to argue.”

“We can’t take humans with us,” Kyree argued.

“This one we can.” Hudson insisted, jerking her head toward the pair clutching hands. Autumn would die in the water anyway, so it didn’t really matter, did it?

“But I only have enough connection to get us into the water. She’ll drown.”

“She comes with us,” Hudson spoke with an edge. Her voice in this open air was too hard, harder than she had intended her words to come out. But the point remained, and she didn’t have the time to make Kyree understand. It didn’t matter if Autumn died in the water, so long as Soulara was safe. Even as she thought that, it didn’t settle right in her belly.

“How do the humans get in and out?” Hudson turned to Soulara. She could try to explain later to Kyree. Right now, getting out was the most important part she had to focus on.

“There’s a ladder. It drops down from the bottom,” Autumn answered, and Hudson nodded, curious about how Soulara and Autumn had gotten mixed up together and in the position so similar to her own unexpected one.

“See. We need her with us,” Hudson insisted before Kyree could argue anymore.

“Humans will be guarding every corridor,” Soulara answered.

“Good.” Hudson was itching to try out what these legs could do. “I’m no stranger to getting out of guarded places.”

“I have no doubt of that.” Soulara chuckled as she spoke, running her eyes up and down first Kyree’s and then Hudson’s body. “But if you go out there naked, we’ll have to kill everyone. Clothes will keep us from getting noticed more than we want to be.”

“Naked?” Hudson blinked and finally took note of the coverings that were over both the human and the princess. “Humans are such strange creatures.”

“You’re not wrong.” Autumn surprised her by being the one to respond. “We’ll get you some clothes on our way out. Whoever we kill first.”

“Fine.” Kyree huffed out.

“The things we do for love.” Soulara chuckled.

Kyree’s and Hudson’s eyes met and for a heartbeat, Hudson’s chest tightened until Kyree smiled and gave a small slow nod.

“Time to go save the fucking world?” Hudson asked with a smirk on her lips.

“Absolutely,” Soulara responded with a glance over her shoulder.

With a bark of laughter that was quickly hushed by Autumn and Soulara simultaneously, the four unlikely companions stepped out of the room, prepared to do whatever it took.