“What did he say?”
“All he could think about was you, Tempest. I couldn’t get through to him. The most he would give was a promise that he wouldn’t use it unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Where was Kona through all this?” I all but screeched. “I don’t believe for one second that he was willing to allow anything from Tiamat aboard that yacht with him.”
Mahina looked out over the water. “I don’t know that I’m right …”
The dread coalesced into something else. Something … worse. “About what?”
“I was just thinking. What happens to Kona if Mark’s out of the way?”
“What do you mean?”
It was her turn to be exasperated with me. “What do you think I mean? You saw Kona this morning.”
“That was just a fight.”
“I know. But did you see the look on his face during the fight? He would have killed Mark if he could have.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying. You just don’t want to admit it.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You keep forgetting. Kona’s not human, Tempest. He may look like one, but his thinking—especially when threatened—is much more animalistic. And considering the fact that you have chosen Mark over him again and again, it’s not that big a jump to think he took Mark with him—”
“To kill him? Just because I love him? You really think Kona has that inside him?”
“Oh, he won’t kill him. He’ll just make sure the Leviathan or Tiamat or Sabyn does.”
The last cobwebs in my brain finally cleared, and I took off running then, faster than before. Because while I didn’t want to even imagine Kona doing something like that, what Mahina had said made sense. And that scared the hell out of me. I could fight Tiamat, fight Sabyn, even take on the Leviathan if I had to. But Kona? How was I supposed to fight him too?
Chapter 25
I was pretty much panic-stricken by the time we got to the water. I was ready to just dive in, but Mahina—as always—was the brains of our operation. She secured four guards for us, along with food, weapons, and underwater backpacks. Kona and Mark were traveling on the yacht, so if we hurried—and the stars aligned—we could swim to Kona’s territory faster than he and Mark and the others could get there.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded as we filled the backpacks as fast as we could. “I could have stopped this before it ever got to this point—”
“Believe me, I tried. You wouldn’t wake up. I even brought Zarek to check on you. He told me to let you sleep it off.”
“Sleep what off? That doesn’t even make sense! I’m a light sleeper—” I broke off, remembering how groggy and out of it I’d felt earlier when I had finally struggled toward consciousness. Like I was slogging through mud … or sedatives. “He drugged me. After everything I told him, everything I went through with Sabyn, Kona drugged me? Again!”
“It could have been Mark.”
“Where would he have gotten the stuff? It’s not like he has a healer following him around at his beck and call.”
“That’s true.” Mahina looked like she was going to be sick. “Maybe they both did it. You and Mark went back to your cave; then they left the next day and I never saw you. When I went to check on you, I found you drugged.”
“Mark, too?” I asked, horrified.
“It seems like the most logical idea.”
“But why?”
“I assume to keep you safe.”
Ugh. I was so sick of that kind of crap.
“How long have I been out?”
“A day and a half.”
I stared at her in shock. “A day—” I screamed, a long, primal sound that was ripped from the very heart of me. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill Kona when I get my hands on him. I can’t believe he did this. I just can’t believe it.” I finished shoving the last of the supplies in my backpack, then slung it over my shoulder. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”
Mahina was right behind me as I hiked back down to the water. Both of us were on our second energy bar, and I was feeling a little nauseous—though I didn’t know if it was from the sedative or all the calories I was shoveling in.
And then it was go time. Once in the water, I shucked off my bikini bottoms and dove deep. Seconds later, I shifted, my legs changing into my long, purple tail in a haze of sparks and agony-tipped pleasure. I glanced over, saw Mahina’s turquoise tail out of the corner of my eye. Satisfied that things were as they should be, I started to swim.
Though I complain an awful lot about the dark side of being mermaid, I have to admit the tail thing is amazingly cool. While I usually use my legs—even when I’m under the ocean for weeks on end—because I’m more comfortable with them, there’s nothing quite like swimming with a tail. When we’re deep under open water, we can really book it.
Today I swam faster than I ever had before, filled with a grim determination to see this through. We swam through coral reefs, over jellyfish forests, around schools of fish and even the occasional dolphin pod. Usually, I would stop and play—I love dolphins—but not today. Mahina and I were on a mission.
The last time I’d swum with this kind of single-minded determination had also been with Mahina. We’d been rushing to rescue Kona then, not knowing that Tiamat had also captured Mark. That time Kona had begged me to stay away, more than willing to sacrifice himself to save me. Today he was willing to sacrifice Mark instead, though I wasn’t sure what he thought it would get him. Did he think I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t figure out what he had planned? Or did he think that once Mark was out of the way, I would just forgive him? Take him back?
I shuddered at the thought. I had loved Kona when I first became mermaid, and I still did. But I wasn’t in love with him anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I ever had been. I think I’d been more in love with the idea of loving the guy who had helped me become a mermaid. I hadn’t been leading him on—I had wanted to love him, believed I did—but it wasn’t that easy. Not when Mark was still in my heart.
Hey, you okay? Mahina asked sharply.
Yeah. Why?
You’re slowing down.
Crap. I sped up again, blocking thoughts of Mark and Kona from my mind as I did. I couldn’t afford to be distracted, not now. Not when doing so could mean the difference between getting there in time to save Kona and Mark and not. Because while Kona might think he had this all planned out, I knew differently. I’d fought Tiamat, fought Sabyn—more than he had, in fact. I knew how easily a fight with them could change, how you could have all the advantages and then suddenly lose everything.
Kona was going into this at a severe disadvantage already. Though he knew his land better than anyone else, that advantage wasn’t enough to make up for the Leviathan’s power, his stranglehold on Kona’s clan, the time he’d had to shore up his defenses and his friends, all of whom were as evil and terrible as the Leviathan himself. And in Tiamat’s case, even worse.
Mahina dropped back suddenly, and I looked up just in time to stop myself from running into one of the largest great white sharks I had ever seen. I screamed a little in my head and Mahina laughed, like she always did. But for me, it didn’t matter how many times Kona or Mahina told me that sharks wouldn’t hurt me; they were still my greatest phobia—in or out of the water. Usually I was pretty careful, staying away from places that sharks frequented on a regular basis, but when you were swimming huge sections of the ocean at a time, a run-in was inevitable.