The Mortal Queen | The Cruel Prince / Wicked King Fanfic

Fifteen

Jude

"Vivi!" I shout, walking frantically into the living room.

She turns to look at me from her place on the couch. "What?" She asks, looking bewildered. "What's got your panties in a twist?"

I fight back a snotty remark. "Where's my suit?" I ask her instead.

She gapes at me. "Your suit. What suit?"

This is so annoying. "You know, the flimsy little scrap of material?"

She blinks. "You mean your swimsuit?"

"Of course I mean my swimsuit!" I say quickly and a little too loud.

"You could have started with that. I don't know what just the word 'suit' means. It could be some new thing that Cardan—"

"Ok I get it." I say calmly. "Where is it?"

Vivi points at the door to the garage. "On top of the washing machine." She turns her attention back to the show she's watching on tv.

I let out a very loud sigh and hustle out to the garage where the ridiculous thing is waiting. I snatch up the dark blue fabric and rush back inside for my bag.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" I hear Vivi shout at me as I fly out the front door and into the taxi waiting for me. I didn't even stop to tell her. She should know that answer by now. I've been doing the same thing twice a week—for six weeks now. Six lonely weeks.

After Cardan went back to Faerie, I signed up for a diving class. I must be straight-up crazy because diving from massive heights gives me so much anxiety. Even that dream I had weeks ago, where I dove off a cliff into the Undersea, nearly sent me into a panic attack every time I would think about it. But knowing how to swim well and dive into the water is necessary for what needs to be done. I'm hoping if I can do this one thing really well, I won't be so afraid of it.

One of the many things Cardan and I talked about while he was here in the mortal world, was the legend of the lost treasure of the Undersea. It's a bedtime story even I had been told when I first came to Faerie, and back then everything in Faerie frightened me. But even now, the story gives me chills. It has been told to young children for centuries, but sometimes I would hear the adults in Faerie talk about it as if it were real.

Legends may sound like scary bedtime stories, but because Faerie can't lie, I've always wondered what hard truth was hidden in those legends. The story came about when an old scroll was discovered deep in the catacombs of the library.

Legend says that deep in the Undersea is a treasure so vast that it could bring the end of kingdoms, but the power of the treasure can only be used by someone who is pure in heart, and who will use the power for the good of the people. And the part that gave me nightmares as a child was the part that said if someone tried to use the power without pure intentions, they would turn to dust, and anyone close to them would perish also.

No one knows for sure what the treasure actually is, only that it's powerful.

I couldn't believe it when Cardan said we were going after the treasure. Apparently that legend has some hard evidence that suggests it's as real as the nose on my face. And that evidence has been discovered recently—just a few short weeks before Cardan showed up here.

As the ruler of the Undersea, Orlagh herself doesn't even know the location of the treasure or what it contains, but she wants it. We intend to stop her by intercepting it first. A reliable source seems to think they know where it is, so here I am training up for the task of retrieving it. The task has been lovingly gifted to me because no one would suspect me to be part of such a plot. I've been exiled from Faerie—there's no reason for me to show up on the very soil I've been banished from.