Free Madly by M. Leighton Page B

Aidan.
“ Over here,” came his response.
The normal tones with which he spoke eased my fretting mind. In fact, I was just about to relax when I rounded the corner and saw him standing over Lady Sheelah.
From behind Aidan’s shoulder, I could only see her head. Her dark brown hair was spread out around her, fanned out almost purposefully. Her face was turned to one side, her expression blank, her jaw slack. When I saw the splatters of silver on her pale cheek, I gasped. There was only one thing I knew of that looked like that. It would’ve been red inside her body, but outside it…
Numbly, I edged my way around Aidan. My stomach revolted at the sight that lay before my eyes.
At the foot of her twin bed, Lady Sheelah lay prone on the floor, surrounded by a pool of liquid silver. It was mercury, the blood of the mermaid.

CHAPTER TWO

I heard the slap of Jersey’s hand as she covered her mouth, smothering a scream. My mind raced. Why would anyone kill Lady Sheelah? It just didn’t make any sense. No one had killed a mermaid—or any Mer for that matter—in hundreds of years.
As my mind sifted through options for what to do next, I heard the noise of approaching feet in the hallway outside Lady Sheelah’s door. The three of us looked at each other, silently wondering what we should do. But before any of us could speak, the room began to fill with the ghostly forms of the Seers.
Their dark, smoky presence overwhelmed the small space to the point that I felt instantly suffocated. I was almost glad when they wordlessly forced us out into the hall.
It was when I stepped through the doorway and turned the corner that I suddenly felt breathless for a totally different reason.
Standing in the hall right outside the door, hovering like an ominous, disapproving cloud, was Jackson Hamilton, Jersey’s brother and one of the most promising Sentinels the Mer had ever seen. My mouth dropped open for a second before I brought my jaw shut with an audible snap of my teeth.
Though I hadn’t seen him since I was almost fifteen and he was sixteen, I was instantly transported back to the days when I idolized him. At one point, I was crushing on him so hard my parents actually grounded me for pining away over a Sentinel, a match that was strictly forbidden in the Mer culture.
Now, at nineteen, Jackson was fully matured and every inch the Sentinel. Standing nearly a foot above my tallish 5’8” frame, his shoulders looked wider than the doorway behind me. His hair, cut short for his assignment in Slumber, was the same blue-black as the other Sentinels, denoting his station, and his skin was as tan as ever. His jaw seemed a little harder than before, probably because he was gritting his teeth, but it was his eyes that caught and held me, eyes I had thought I’d finally managed to put out of my mind.
They were the clear, pale blue of shallow water and they were glaring at me furiously from beneath a straight, heavy brow and thick, raven lashes.
I was taken aback by the anger I saw in their mesmerizing depths, so much so that I lost my tongue.
Jersey, however, had no such problem.
“ What crawled up your butt and died?” she demanded tersely.
After a few more seconds of blatant intimidation, Jackson swung his gaze to Jersey. He said nothing until his startling eyes moved on to pin Aidan.
“ Get them out of here,” Jackson ground out in a deep and booming voice, his expression growing even more thunderous if possible. “What were you thinking, bringing them here?”
Although Aidan was royal, he wasn’t exactly a warrior like Jackson. I could almost see him shrinking back inside himself.
“ I didn’t…we didn’t know that…I never expected that she might…”
Poor thing, he never did form a complete sentence, just stammered nervously.
“ If you even suspected that something was wrong, you should have called. Never, ever, ever bring the Princess out without protection.”
“ But I was here with her, I didn’t think—”
“ No,