Did You Feed Her to the Sharks?

Great, inking Abyss, if I couldn’t have kissed him right then and there, just to taste that cotton-candy memory in the crumbling stardust grottos of the deep.

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A micro excerpt (above) from my current WIP Pillars of the Deep – and in case that wasn’t enough, another lengthier excerpt to tease you even more:

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I hung back when I heard voices, heated and sharp. They were male, the baritone nuances vibrating through the water like soft-twanging drums. One of them was recognizable as Coda, but who was he arguing with, and about what? Curiosity getting the better of me, I peeked around the corner, peering down the deep-sea corridor. Ripples of aqua glimmered over the burnished bronze details of the ornate hallway architecture, glancing across tarnished candelabra torches that hung long-dormant on the walls and the decorative archway ribbing that lined the passage every few meters.

I caught the aqua-silver shimmer of scales that confirmed the one was Codexious, and then a rush of turquoise hair that identified the other culprit as Coda shoved him up against the wall.

My eyes went wide at the confrontation between the regent and his bodyguard.

“Did you feed her to the sharks?” Coda snapped with a sense of finality.

What? Inking Abyss, did he think Inaja had been responsible for that heinous crime against me?

Was this because I’d told him about Inaja’s little talk with me?

Two different flavors of horror slung through me – one highlighted by the fact that I might have caused Coda to suspect his closest ally, and another at the notion that it was possible there was something to the theory.

But surely not…

Inaja’s jaw clenched at the accusation, but he kept his body relaxed, pointedly submissive so as not to present a challenge to the regent. “Of course not,” he denied with a twinge of resentment, and I got the impression that, while he was submissive in order to deescalate the conflict, he would not tolerate the abuse and suspicion much beyond what Coda was heaping onto him.

I could hardly believe it myself, seeing Coda shove him up against a wall. Clearly the regent meant business.

More of that dangerous side of him that I hadn’t seen myself.