Sleeping Nightmare

Chapter 17: a stolen heart | Tyler

The wrecked pier was deserted when Arya and I arrived, which was good. Because otherwise, we would have to explain why the Queen of Narmia and Kye-Ann's assistant were standing side by side with a suspiciously large bundle of what looked like rugs in the latter's arms.

With our luck, the sirens were all frolicking in the market, celebrating the beginning of Sarah's leadership. It was likely that Tanzeem, Sarah's energetic cousin, was there too.

Gods, what was I going to tell Tanzeem and the rest of her family? It wouldn't be long before they became concerned over Sarah's prolonged absence.

We had encased Sarah's body in the large rug that had been in Arya's room at Varielie to avoid unwanted attention. Arya had tied her hair into a messy ponytail and worn sunglasses over her eyes, which was definitely suspicious given that it was nearing sundown, but it ensured her anonymity - for now, at least.

The Queen of Narmia stared into the ocean's icy depths. "I hate to say this, but we must take her to my brother."

"Prince Tom?" I questioned. Was she suggesting we hide Sarah in her kingdom? It wasn't a bad idea, except that Narmia was a day's swim away, and Kye would definitely notice our absence if we were gone for that long.

"No, not Tom. Bob." Arya set her jaw. "He's closer, and secluded from the world. We can hide her better that way."

I asked carefully, "Can we trust him?"

She hesitated, her gaze distracted. "I'm not sure." She lifted the purple vial, sniffing it once. The strange salty odour was pungent, leaving my eyes watery. "This is one of his potions."

I stiffened. "Then bringing Sarah to him is suicide, isn't it?"

"No, it's not, and this is what puzzles me." Arya's fingers tightened around the neck of the vial, her knuckles gleaming white. "Bob would never hurt another person. Not again. Not after he..." She sighed. "He hurt our sister, and when she died, that killed him. That's why he can't bring himself to come back to Narmia."

I had always assumed that Princess Victoria had died in battle fighting the demons. The cause of her death had always been unclear as Arya had always kept it under wraps. I had thought that she had done this as she had wanted to grieve privately, and not share the royal family's sorrow with the mer-population. Only now did it occur to me that the reason could have been because Arya didn't want to share the truth to the world - that Prince Bob had played a part in his sister's demise.

It would explain why he looked like a wreck now. The realisation only saddened me.

"He isn't the type of person to willingly participate in the killing of another," Arya ended firmly.

I nodded once, before lowering Sarah's body to the floor of the pier, and drawing the rag away from her face so I could pour cyarne essence - a liquid form of the pearl lolly that enabled sirens to breathe underwater for an hour - into her mouth. Kye-Ann had discovered that if powdered cyarne was added to warm water and stirred until the cyarne completely dissolved, it was still effective. However, she had neglected to tell anyone, and so cyarne essence had yet to exist in the siren markets.

I had brought multiple bottles of cyarne essence with me, stolen from Kye's collection, knowing that Sarah would be underwater for longer than an hour. Kye rarely used them, so I doubted she would care much about their disappearance.

I climbed down the ladder that led into the water, swallowing the pearl lolly before diving. Arya downed a potion and did a dolphin-like leap into the sea, her legs fusing together to form her telltale aquamarine tail.

The Queen floated beside me, reaching out to take Sarah's body from me. We'd figured that it was better for her to carry Sarah, since she didn't need to use her arms to propel herself through the water as much as I did. She moved quickly, leaving a steady stream of bubbles in her wake. "Come. We don't have much time."