The Current Between Us

Begging.

Chapter 2: The Begging

The silence after the king's question felt heavier than the ocean itself. It pressed down on all of them, seeping into gills and scales alike, until even the current seemed to stop moving. No fish darted through the coral. No drift stirred the sand. The whole reef seemed to be waiting to see who would break first.

Bale dropped lower, tail curling tight against the sand, spine bowed until his forehead nearly touched the seafloor. His voice cracked as he spoke.

"Your Majesty, mercy! I've served you since I was a boy. I'd never betray you—"

He started rambling, words spilling out faster and faster as fear took over, each sentence tripping over the last. His red curls floated around his face, wild and matted, plastered to his cheeks by sweat and salt.

"I was only meeting King Reo to negotiate better trade for your kingdom! Better kelp prices! Stronger nets! I swear on my father's grave, on the Elder's own bones—"

Then it happened.

His gills flared and his whole body spasmed, a full-body shudder that rippled down his tail. A dark cloud bloomed from his cloaca, staining the water around him in ugly black swirls that drifted outward, slow and unmistakable. He'd lost control completely — shame and terror colliding at once, and his body betraying him in front of the one man whose opinion could end his life.

For a second, the king froze, his trident dipping toward the sand. His guards went rigid. Even Alpha's jaw tightened, though nothing in his expression moved.

Then the king burst out laughing.

The sound rolled through the water, deep and brutal, bouncing off the coral walls and coming back doubled, tripled, until it seemed to come from every direction at once. His guards shifted uncomfortably, fins twitching, gazes darting anywhere but at Bale or the king. None of them dared laugh along. Laughter from them, unbidden, uninvited, would be its own kind of death sentence — a presumption of familiarity no t****l or soldier was permitted.

Bale's face went pale with shame, paler than his malnourished skin already was. His tail lashed weakly against the sand, stirring up clouds that did nothing to hide the mess or the humiliation soaking into the water around him. He was forty years old. The son of an elder. A man who had once sat at council tables and worn a sash of rank. And now he knelt in his own filth before a king young enough to be his son, laughed at like a joke told at a feast.

The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started, cut off mid-breath. The king's face went cold, all traces of amusement wiped away in an instant. His eyes flattened, dark and depthless, like water with no bottom, no light, nothing beneath the surface but pressure.

"Alpha."

The leader of the guards stepped forward at once. A scar ran down his jaw, pale and jagged against dark skin, and his trident was already shifting in his grip, the metal points humming faintly with restrained current. He didn't ask what the king wanted. He never had to.

"Torture him until he tells me the truth. Every detail about King Reo. Now."

Bale's eyes went wide, the whites showing all around. He knew exactly what that meant. Alpha didn't threaten. He didn't warn. He didn't ask twice, and in all the years he'd served the crown, he had never once missed. He crossed the distance in a single powerful sweep of his tail, grabbed Bale by the arm, and dragged him back several feet through the sand, the trident's tip pressing into the soft skin beneath his jaw hard enough to draw a thin, bright line of blood that curled away into the water like a ribbon.

"Wait!" Bale choked out, water bubbling from his lips, panic finally cracking his voice wide open. "Wait, Your Majesty! I have something else! Something worth more — far more — than King Reo's little meeting!"

The king raised a single hand. Alpha stopped instantly, muscles coiled, but he didn't lower the trident and he didn't let go. The point stayed exactly where it was, a promise more than a threat.

Bale gulped, his throat working around the fear lodged there. "It's about the silver comb," he said, forcing the words out one by one. "The long-lost comb of the royal line. The one that vanished generations ago. It's here. In this post. Tonight."

Beatrice's blood turned to ice. The comb hidden beneath her tunic felt suddenly enormous, as though the entire reef could see the shape of it through the fabric. Ice first, then fire, then ice again, her skin prickling everywhere the metal touched her.

Mom's fingers dug into her arm, nails sharp enough to bite through skin. Her voice came out barely louder than a breath, angled so only Beatrice would catch it.

"Beatrice... be ready to run."

The king's eyes narrowed to slits, sharp and glittering. "A name. Now."

Bale's whole body shook, but when he spoke again, his voice had steadied, some last reserve of nerve rising to meet the moment. "I— I can't yet, Your Majesty. But give me until nightfall. Just until nightfall. I'll bring you the comb, and the one who holds it. That's worth more than any secret about King Reo, isn't it? Worth more than my blood spilled here on the sand for nothing?"

The king studied him for a long, unbearable moment, his expression a battlefield of greed and suspicion, want and doubt. He wanted the comb — that ancient, storied thing that had been lost to legend for longer than most of his subjects had been alive. He wanted names, wanted to know exactly who among his people had dared to keep such a secret from him. He wanted both, and the wanting visibly warred behind his eyes.

Finally, he nodded once, a small, sharp motion.

"Nightfall," he said. "Fail, and Alpha finishes what he started. And when he's done with you, we start on your friends here. All of them. One at a time, until someone tells me what I want to know."

Bale sagged in relief, even as terror still shook through him in waves, air rushing out of him like he'd been holding his breath for hours instead of minutes. His tail, no longer needed to brace against the coming blade, drifted loose and trembling in the current.

Alpha released his arm but didn't step back, didn't lower the trident more than a few inches. His eyes stayed fixed on Bale the way a predator watches something it has decided to let live only a little longer.

Beatrice didn't move. Didn't breathe. But beneath her tunic, her tail was coiled tight, every muscle ready, waiting for a signal that hadn't come yet.

Mom's whisper still rang in her ears, over and over, drowning out even the pounding of her own pulse: *Be ready to run.*

And somewhere beneath her tunic, hidden and small and impossibly heavy, the silver comb felt like it was burning straight through her skin.

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