Rook's Palace by Alexa Piper

Author:Alexa Piper [Piper, Alexa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIN 010069-03268
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
Published: 2021-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Lir stroking her head and back brought Emilia back to reality much too soon.

“Your clothes might still be damp,” he said, “but you should go.”

She nodded and kissed his cheek. She didn’t want to go. The arms of this merman were much too comfortable a napping spot, but she also knew she had to get to the tower. “Help me out of the pool?”

“Cruel to let you go, but I will. Mind those feet of yours. The stones are rough.”

With that and a chaste kiss goodbye, Lir lifted her out of the water and onto the other side. Rough flagstones greeted her pruney feet, and Emilia shivered when the cold air hit her skin after Lir let go of her. Emilia hurried to get her clothes back on, what little there was of them.

“I must say,” Lir said. “Getting your clothes off was more entertaining than watching you getting dressed.” He was lounging in the water, all his eight tentacles out above the surface and furling like plumes of midnight blue flames.

Emilia gave him a smile that shook with her chattering teeth. “Liked that better too.”

He nodded. “It should be warmer upstairs. At least I hope so. Best move along.”

Emilia nodded as she laced up her boots. “I’ll see you again,” she told Lir. “Soon.”

Lir nodded. “I would like that, my sweet little nymph.”

Emilia wanted to say more. She wanted to ask Lir a hundred questions, learn everything about him. It wasn’t the biting cold that made her turn toward the door she saw outlined in the lamplight. It was the fear that she might never leave, that she might stand here by the shore and cry for her merman.

So she turned. She forced her eyes to remain focused on the door, forced her feet to take one step and then another.

When the door fell shut behind her, her heart sank, and sadness washed over her like the water Lir hadn’t allowed to get into her lungs.

This game, if it had ever really been a game, was cruel. How anyone could think it up was beyond Emilia. She hoped she would never find out, but she had the gnawing sense that she would.

There was a short hallway here, much more modern than the cave-like basement. The walls were smooth and whitewashed, and fluorescent lights gave everything an ugly brightness.

It took Emilia five steps to get to the next door, and that one opened to what looked like a showroom with fish tanks and hundreds of colorful fish inside them. The tanks were well lit, the room less so, almost as if the eyes were meant to be drawn to the blocks of watery life kept here. It was pretty, just like the flowers in the garden had been, but like those, it all lacked warmth, proper heart.

Emilia was torn between running out of the showroom and looking at the tanks. In the end, her curiosity won, and she looked.

The first tank was about the size of a coffin. It

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