arms, how to keep his hair out of his eyes—was escaping him.
I’d been clumsy the first time this had happened, but not that clumsy. Was that another side effect of being Dóchas Sidhe? I was easy to transform, but I also adapted more quickly to the changes? I couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not. I could vanish into another species in an instant, undetectable, concealed.
Like I had when Simon had turned me into a fish and left me in the pond. Panic threatened to overwhelm me again. I was surrounded by water. I had scales and fins and there was water in all directions, pressing down on me, smothering me. This was a trick, this was all a trick, I was never going to go home, I was never going to stand on dry land again, this had all been a trick, I—
Quentin grabbed my shoulder, shocking me out of my spiral. I glanced at him. Concern was written clearly across his face, shining in his blue-and-gold eyes. I offered a wan smile in reply, and flashed a thumbs-up.
He didn’t look like he believed it. Still, he let go of my shoulder—and my panic had had at least one helpful side effect: he was swimming more naturally now, allowing his body’s new instincts to take over and move things where they needed to go.
I wished I had a camera. His parents were never going to believe this one.
The water lightened as we passed out of the shadow of the Duchy’s foundations. We shifted to swim directly downward, descending with a speed that would have been unbelievable if we’d still been in our natural forms, even if we’d been using SCUBA gear to speed the process along. The pressure around us mounted without becoming unpleasant; it was like the entire ocean was taking us in a loving hand, holding us close and keeping us safe.
Fish flashed by, silver and blue and a thousand other colors, a fearless living rainbow that moved with casual nonconcern. I didn’t see anything that looked dangerous. That was probably part of the ducal wards, keeping sharks and other predators at a distance. Did it apply to the more predatory Undersea fae? Merrow could be plenty dangerous when they wanted to be, and clearly the wards let them through. Maybe the wards were keyed to the absence of sentience, which implied some fairly complicated spellwork.
I was concentrating on something irrelevant to keep myself from dwelling on the fact that we were diving deeper and deeper into the literal ocean, moving away from light and air, and doing it while we had a ticking clock counting down the amount of time we had to do this safely. We couldn’t move any faster, but I couldn’t afford to freak out again.
Water and I are not friends. I was respectful of the stuff before I spent fourteen years as a fish, but that turns out to be the sort of thing that leaves a girl with a complex that verges on becoming a phobia. It wasn’t that bad, thank Maeve. It was still bad enough to make me distinctly uncomfortable, and now that I didn’t have Quentin’s struggles to focus on, I needed to keep myself from getting wrapped up in the existential horror of it all.
The seafloor came into view, studded with homes shaped from water-treated wood and living coral. Fae moved in and around them, or tended the farmlands that dotted the open space between the structures. Some crops grew in open water. Others were enclosed in artificial atmospheres—the covered gardens Pete had mentioned before. They were growing everything from apples to potatoes, and they were doing it at the bottom of the sea.
Luna would probably have been fascinated. Then again, that would have required Luna to be speaking to me long enough for me to explain what I wanted her to see, and she hasn’t been speaking to me for a while now. Not since I chose my daughter over hers; not since her daughter chose Daoine Sidhe over Blodynbryd; and certainly not since I’d asked that Sylvester allow me to wake his brother, only to lose him in the process of finding my sister.
Families are complicated. Other people’s families are even more so.
We swam over the farmlands, and the gates Patrick had described began to appear, like giant funhouse mirrors tethered to the bottom of the sea by ropes carved from literal wood; oak and ash and rosewood and elm. Each was