Nye pushed away from her and bellowed at the woman.
As if a giant invisible hand had slapped her, she flew up from the ground and backward so hard and fast it flung her arms and legs forward so that she flopped like a ragdoll.
It hit Emma instantly that Nye had done it—just as he had tried to do when the men had caught up with them and she thought they were a threat.
“Oh my god! Is she hurt?” she gasped as she saw Gaelen and Hauk crouch beside Valee to examine her and then, thankfully, help her up.
Emma caught Nye’s face. “Baby, did you do that?” she whispered.
He turned to look at her steadily and then reached up and patted her cheek. Not just patted, touched.‘Wub mama.’
Emma heard it as if he’d spoken out loud. In fact, she thought hehadspoken just at first. “I love you, too, baby, but you mustn’t do something like that again. Ok? You could have hurt her really bad. And that’s a no no.”
‘Bad woman.’
She kissed his cheek. “Stupid woman—not worth the trouble, ok? She didn’t hurt me. I know you think she did, but she didn’t.”
He looked confused, but he merely turned and gave the woman an angry look.
Emma turned her head to look at the princess, too.
She looked so shook up Emma actually felt sorry for her.
For a couple of seconds.
“Shetoldhim to do that!” Valee screamed furiously.
“I didn’t!” Emma gasped. “I wouldnevertell my baby to do anything bad.”
“She did no such thing!” Kadin growled almost before she’d gotten her denial out. “You did that. You frightened the baby and he reacted.”
Emma glanced around the group uneasily, wondering how many of them believed the lie Valee had told. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell anything from their expressions.
Shewasresponsible, she thought guiltily. She hadn’t made any secret of the fact that she disliked Valee intensely and she was pretty sure that was fairly well known.
If she was in trouble, she’d done it to herself.
She just wished she had some idea whether or not she was in trouble.
Yes—if Valee had anything to do with it.
Thankfully, instead of arguing further, Valee stalked off—straight into the water.
Emma stared, waiting for her to reappear, struggling to regulate her breath and heartbeat.
She knew Gaelen was a water person. She’d accepted that, or thought she had, long since, but it was an entirely different thing to say this is so and to see it. A few minutes behind Valee, the warriors that had escorted them followed suit. Grabbing the supplies they had lined up along the beach, they headed out into the water and soon disappeared, as well. When they had disappeared into the sea, Emma finally looked around. She discovered then that she and Nye, Gaelen, Kadin and Hauk were all that were left.
Kadin spoke when she turned around.
“A conveyance was constructed to carry the royal family when they learned that the High King and his family would come since the Queen Mother was not of this world and not of the sea and the infant was deemed too young for such a long trek. They are bringing it now to carry you to the king’s capitol city.”
Under the sea.
The Hirachi were air breathers, though.
It was strange to think they lived in the sea. That had never occurred to her at all. She supposed it should have, but it hadn’t.
“Hirachi hab no libed in de sea for … long time, many ….” He stopped and asked Kadin something. “Genrations. Den de Sheloni come an take de young and many times kill oldest and youngest. De Hirachi moob back to de sea den.”
Emma stared at him—not because she had trouble following. She’d gotten so used to his broken English she hardly noticed it anymore.
It was the history he’d told that made her stare, that made her stomach knot with empathy.
The Sheloni had been preying upon them so long that they’d had to move back into the sea to protect themselves!
And even that hadn’t stopped it.
Because they were air breathers, land dwellers.
It made her so sad for them she felt like crying.
And angry, too.
Those bastards needed killing!
They had robots and that meant they had the technology to do what they needed to to support their civilization! There was no excuse for preying upon other people!
“We’ll get them,” she told Gaelen. “Teach them they can’t get away with preying on other people, destroying their lives.”
He gave her a strange look she had trouble interpreting and then gathered her and Nye into his arms and hugged them. When he set her away, he lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. “Yes. We do dat.”
The slap of water against something solid distracted both of them and they turned to watch as about a dozen warriors emerged from the sea guiding a lozenge shaped object. It looked a lot like a small submarine.
Emma had mixed feelings about that.
It was reassuring on a lot of levels.
And still unnerving.
She’d never been in a submarine—never been underwater in anything where she would only have that between her and … well, death.
Nye patted her. She doubted it was for reassurance, but it was love and her baby was from this place she was going to and needed to go there. So she straightened her back and ignored the fears hammering at the fringes of her mind and got in when they opened the door for her.
The interior was a surprise. It was softly lit with something. She wasn’t certain what. The light seemed to be more of a glow than centralized anywhere, dim, but bright enough to see the interior.
There was a crib like thing in the back—and a bottle waiting for baby!
The forward area was mostly filled with a very large lounging seat rather like a day bed.
She was told there were facilities in the rear.
Oh my! Facilities! Yay!
She headed to the crib to grab the bottle as the carriers closed the hatch and then settled near the
