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was powerless within the net.
    I drifted to the floor in despair, the soft current of the water wavering my hair around me.
    I was powerless to rescue Merrick like this, just an ordinary teenager. The irony of my horror at being “just an ordinary teenager” swept over me. Only a few days ago I’d been insisting, to anyone who’d listen, that there was nothing special about me.
    Now, when I needed to be strong, when I needed to be extra-ordinary, Neith had found a way to neutralise me. He’d found a way to bend me to his will.
    A murmur of voices outside my door made my stomach drop in fear.
    The wall behind me slid away and another gossamer-fine net similar to the one I was dressed in was hurled across the space, settling over me in a confusion of drapes and folds.
    Four Miengu crowded into the room, one of them hauling me to my feet roughly while the others formed a defensive cocoon around me.
    I was pushed out of the cell and into a curving passageway that ran in a thin gloomy streak bordered with cells on each side.
    I wondered, as we swam in a tightly crowded group, which cell Merrick was being held in as I tried, unsuccessfully, to orientate myself.
    They moved me fluidly through a grand doorway, ornately decorated with gems that sparkled faintly in the gloom. The door opened into a cavernous underwater room eerily lit in the pale blue fluorescence of the plankton I’d watched well up out of the volcano, as they clung to the walls in a fine irregular net of living light.
    We swam over a room that was packed with Oceanids, some of whom I recognised, others I didn’t. The eerie silence that filled the space was made more threatening by the regimented style in which they were arranged.
    Unlike at the cave in the mountains, where the Oceanids had interacted as a village of neighbours, these Oceanids were neatly divided into groups of varying sizes, all of them fanning out from a bare patch of rock in the centre of the gathering.
    It was obvious that each group consisted of Oceanids of the same talent or type. I recognised the perfectly proportioned but diminutive form of the Merrow, although I didn’t recognise any of the faces within the group.
    The Miengu were easy to identify; their intimidating bulk strangely contrasted by some of the smaller ones. I recognised two of them as the ones who had been tracking Qinn and me. They were standing beside each other, the smaller one looking smug and grinning and nudging the larger as I swam past.
    Some of the other groupings I’d never seen before and while all of them were exquisite some of them held a far more alien quality than I’d been exposed to until now.
    One group in particular, placed close to the centre of the gathering, had pronounced frightening features. There were a few with unnaturally long fingernails that ended in needle-sharp points, others with mouths full of pointed teeth, and still others covered from head to toe in sharply pointed barbs and spikes.
    The Miengu led me into the centre of the gathering, pushing my netted feet onto the rock before forming a tight circle around me.
    The silence boomed in the space as every eye focussed on me.
    Without warning every Oceanid bent double at the waist making me jump in surprise.
    Neith laughed dryly as he descended from above me, placing his hand firmly on the back of my neck and forcing me into the same position of deference as every other Oceanid.
    “You will be showing me the proper respect from now on,” he hissed.
    I squirmed away from his touch, pulling myself upright and glaring into his beautiful blue eyes.
    “Alexandra, I am surprised to see you here, such a brave move to come alone, and really quite out of character for you.”
    I glared at him.
    “You are not what I would call a heroine, so afraid of what everyone else is thinking of you, so eager to do what everyone thinks you should be doing, and yet here you are, clearly in search of your beloved Merrick.” His voice sneered around