Requiem

8. Tharion - Allegiance

He could not sweat underwater.

Or so Tharion had to remind himself as he stood below the River Queen's dais. Despite the cool water, he felt the clamminess of his skin. How each scale stood at attention under her scrutiny.

Delta had been hauled in as well. She stood on the far side of the space, flanked by guards. The Queen's guards. He briefly wondered what her parents would make of it.

All but the Queen's guards fled the room as she lifted her hand. The almost translucent skin caught in the twinkling lights that lingered this far Beneath.

"Captain Ketos," her voice boomed despite its soft cadence, "we have a matter to discuss."

And by Ogenas did he know it. It would not last long. This charade.

"Your majesty," he bowed, low.

"I have trusted you with the security of my Court," the queen mused, "I have bestowed upon you the honor of taking my daughter's hand...and you have failed me."

Tharion's gills flared in alarm, even as he tried to school his expression. His talons dug deep into his skin, his hands holding fast to each other behind his back. He swallowed.

Tharion was ready to deny it all, when the Queen spoke again.

"My spybreaker," she mused, "has been sent to the Shallows. On your orders."

She wasn't questioning him. The guilty look that flashed across Delta's face was damning. Fuck.

"Prison duty is the standard punishment for officers of the CIU, Your Majesty." He was an idiot for thinking he would get far riding a lie as stupid as that one.

"You take me for a dim-witted fool, Ketos." She seethed. The ebbing of the tide turned ever harsher against the steady thrash of his tail. It was taking all of him to stay upright. The muscles in his abdomen constricted painfully.

"Ma-..."

"Silence," it was a whisper, and yet the sound reverberated against the walls and into the depths of the deepest trenches. "I will not hear your pitiful excuses. Retrieve the girl and beg Ogenas her wards have held, or you will find yourself in a most unsavory situation, Captain."

He bowed again.

And while that was not the trouble Tharion Ketos had expected to be in, this was somehow equally daunting. Before lifting his eyes to the dais again, he could feel the weight of every particle of water upon him, and so he told himself it was that, just that, which made straightening his spine impossible.

----

"I'm sorry," Delta's voice floated up to his ears.

He'd felt her depart after him. Noticed as she followed his pace for the last mile.

"Don't apologize," he said flatly, "you were just doing your job. Now, if you excuse me, I have to do mine."

"I never told her the times before, you know?" He knew, but he didn't answer her. "Of all the times you've sent her down there I have kept quiet but..." she paused to breathe, the gills on either side of her neck undulating in the current with the inhale, "I did not expect my parents to drag me to a Court dinner today. I can't ignore a direct question." Or lie. Or live. Or marry whom you choose. Tharion wanted to add on but refrained.

"No one is blaming you Delta" he sighed at last, "we do have to find another way to nudge her forward now if she can't see the Warden anymore."

"I think it was time to move on anyway," Delta added with a shrug, "She's gone to see him so many times and we've gotten no answers. Not since the first time."

"Yeah," Tharion rubbed at his neck with his talon-tipped hand, "we'll figure something out."

He offered the female a sheepish half-smile that sent her blushing almost instantly. It was a cheap shot.

She liked him.

He was not interested.

That reason alone, was probably why she was basically committing treason for him.

He was a bastard for using her. But he'd be a fool if he didn't take advantage.

"Is there anything I can do for you while you are gone?"

"No." The response was a little too quick. "I mean...there really isn't anything to do. I'll go get Sirena and then I'll see what I can find that will help."

Surely there was something in the Archives that could help him. He made a mental note to ask Bryce. If he didn't implode swimming down to the Shallows.

"Be careful, Tharion," Delta said softly before departing. A tendril of her fin brushed against his forearm as she swam by him.

She was a liability. He'd been a fool to ask her to help him.

Tharion knew it was wrong; what he was doing to Delta by allowing her to think there was a chance he would one day come to like her, love her even. But he should have known that the possibility of his affection was not a good enough reward to pit against the wrath of the River Queen if she found out about their scheme.

How long could he do this? Walk this tightrope between the two worlds he inhabited. Not Above and Beneath, but being who he was and who he was expected to be.

He'd tried to stop. In the last ten years since he'd retrieved her, he had tried to forget it. But then Sirena's voice would float to him as if the river did not want him to halt his attempt to break her out. 

Her pleading tone coupled with an angry face as she lay on the stone slab, torn and bruised and wary of losing the sliver of herself that was left.

Don't let me sleep forever. 

He had stared at her for so long before she spoke again.

I can fix it. All of it. If she wins, please, wake me up.