Ahead of us, the males dragged Aramus’s body through a slim opening which was the source of the light. This opening being a slit in a great cavern.

There would be air there, I prayed.

There had to be air there.

My captors and I entered behind them.

We swam through a tunnel, me trying to make them do it faster, the light becoming brighter and brighter, before I noticed, my heart slamming in my chest, Aramus and his abductors dipping low, apparently entering a larger section.

Going down was not good.

They must endeavor to go up.

All right.

They had to know what they were doing.

He would be fine.

They would keep him alive.

He was the Sea King.

They were surely taking him to a bubble of air.

I knew there were pockets of air under the surface. They were how, in times millennia ago, the Mer had adapted to being able to breathe outside the water, as well as in it.

I was pulled into the larger section, a mammoth cavern that went down stories upon stories of what would be human buildings, and up the same. Not to mention, it was so vast across, it could fit half a dozen of the coliseums of Fire City within it.

And I stopped.

I reared back as the massive space around me could be seen, mermaids and males swimming amongst other sea life, anemones sprouting from below and along the tall walls of the vast space, sea lettuce and kelp drifting lazily.

And all around, from the bottom to a top that went so high up, I could not see its end, there appeared to be doors or windows, the latter with lights shining through. Some even had what appeared to be window boxes tucked with sea lettuce and anemone and trailing vines of seaweed.

These were dwellings.

But I could pay very little mind to that.

Or to where they took my husband.

For right before me floated a mermale, the largest I’d ever seen who also had the longest, most powerful fin I’d ever beheld. His tail had to be at least fifteen feet long, curling behind him.

I didn’t even know merfins could get that long.

His chest was wide. His muscles pronounced. The definition of his stomach indented. The veins along his forearms distended.

His hair was long and jet black.

His beard was thick and distinct, the swoop of whiskers guiding from his beard up to the bottom edge of his lower lip something, in other circumstances, I might find fascinating.

His thick, dark eyebrows were drawn.

His eyes were a startling silver I had seen before.

He was carrying a fearsome trident in one fist.

He scowled at me before he growled, “Welcome, Ha-Lah.”

And then he turned on a supple swell and swam ahead of us.

We followed, straight to another sea wall, swimming down, to and through a tall, arched doorway that was adorned with floating anemone and set with seashells and pearls in an extraordinary pattern I did not have it within me to appreciate at that time.