I See Faeries

~chapter twenty-two~

Fish-People

~

Everything happened very quickly after that. 

Torrin lunged at me, unsheathing the scimitar he wore at his hip in a quick, fluid motion. I stumbled backward, desperately trying to avoid the razor-sharp blade as it hummed through the air where I'd been standing moments before. 

A guttural roar loosed from Roman's throat as he threw himself into Torrin, and both of them fell to the floor in a tangle of thrashing limbs and snarls. Torrin's flailing blade bit into the faerie's forearm, and Roman howled in pain. The sound squeezed my heart painfully, and, as if he sensed my reaction, he suddenly stilled and looked at me. 

His eyes were all black. I could see the tips of fangs protruding between his parted lips as he panted, chest heaving, and every tightly coiled muscle in his lean body seemed to stand out in stark relief - like a living, breathing, angry Adonis. He's almost more animal than man, I realized with a start. I instinctively took a step back, away from him. 

The world seemed to move in slow motion, suddenly. 

My foot met empty air behind me, and I teetered unsteadily. The pit was behind and beneath me, an endless void I was about to fall into, calling me to it. Come, Cassaundra. I could no longer resist. 

Roman's eyes widened, panicked, as I began to fall. He started to stand, to run to me, but Torrin twisted beneath him, and I watched as if through eyes not my own as the scimitar tore through his breeches and left a trail of blood down his left leg. The faerie hissed, barely seeming to feel the wound, and tried to lunge toward me - to grab me, to keep me from falling, to save me, undoubtedly, as he'd done so many times before. 

But Torrin grabbed him by the ankle, and in that instant he was too late. 

The faerie whirled around with a furious snarl, and I saw a flash of light, like fire, pass between Roman and the man who'd called himself my brother. Then Torrin seemed to suddenly just . . . disappear.

And then I was gone, over the lip of the pit and into the black abyss. 

The last thing I saw was King Silas's horrified face looking over the edge, and Roman's body as he . . . as he . . . 

And then, darkness.

~ ~ ~

I dreamed.

I was swimming through the sea, in a body not my own. Rheithlyn was faintly visible, far in the distance, and I was swimming away from it, toward some other place. 

Another city, I realized, as the tall strands of kelp and seaweed around me shifted with the current, revealing a structure not far ahead. It was something like a castle, made of ancient-looking bluish-gray stone that was covered in a wide assortment of marine life. It was difficult to make out the shape of the building beneath its garb of anemones, sea stars, kelp, barnacles, mussels, algae, and more. 

But maybe that's the point.

I couldn't stop to consider this, though. The body I inhabited didn't answer to me, and whoever it belonged to seemed interested in nothing except getting inside the sea-castle. 

I looked down, suddenly curious, and immediately wished I hadn't. 

I was - or rather, my host was - female, as was evident by my naked breasts. Aside from the nakedness, I appeared fairly normal from the waist up. But, where my my torso met my legs and hips, there were scales. 

Shimmering silver scales, that joined my humanoid upper body to the fish-tail I had instead of legs. 

A mermaid. I was in the body of a bloody mermaid. I had a tail, and gills that I could feel on the sides of my neck, and god-knows what else.