The Daughter of the Sea would never have peace.

For days and months and years, she swam around the Golden Palace alone. Her friends were few and far between. The old women of the court who marveled at her magic. The leering warriors who longed to feel the strange pulse of her magic on their skin.

The Silver Queen wondered if she was strong enough to be patient. To see her captors dead at her hands. She repeated their names, like promises to the Goddess of the Moon, the Gods of the Sea.

She gave food to the merpeople lingering outside the palace and took her husband’s wrath when he heard of her kindness.

“They will never love you,” he told her.

She held her hand over the sting on her cheek and waited.

The waiting was the most painful, for she was pregnant once more. She could feel the life of the child pulling at her life strings, her life magic. The first time she carried a child, it came out small and bloody like a broken heart ripped out of a chest. It might as well have been; the Silver Queen wailed harder than the day she was taken from her home.

And then another, and another.

The Rebel King sent a small army to the Sea King’s gate. They would pay for a daughter who could not bear children.

Rumors spread through the kingdoms of the Silver Queen and her dozens of bloody children. That she ate them from the womb for her blood magic. That she was cursed to never bear life of the Rebel King. That the magic destroyed her from the inside and she would one day burn.

Not this one, she promised, pressing her hands on her swollen belly. She was bigger than the times before. Stronger. This child was strong and healthy. She could feel it swim laps inside her. This time, the king let her rest. She would not perform at court. She would not leave her chambers.

The Silver Queen asked for her lady-in-waiting, Melaya, and no one else. Just as well. The Rebel King wanted nothing to do with the queen or her child. His forces were weakening in the Northern Seas and he wouldn’t return for weeks.

It happened when the moon was gone from the surface. She felt the pain come on too soon, and she held her swollen belly and prayed for the child to stay inside. Melaya took her to the caves south of the Golden Palace where the magic was raw. The king knew nothing of the caves’ existence. Life there was strong, rooted deep in the earth. There had been merpeople here once, their markings etched deep into the walls.

The Daughter of the Sea screamed as her fins ripped in half, parting to make way as the white head of her child crowned.

“Shhh,” Melaya urged her. They didn’t know who was nearby, and so the Silver Queen bit down on her teeth and pushed. She closed her eyes and willed the child to leave her until a small mermaid, no bigger than her fist, came out.

All at once, the Queen felt empty and weak, a black void filling where there had once been life. And the small mermaid child was not a mermaid at all.

Melaya gasped.

“What is it?” Nieve cried, holding her arms out for the child. “What’s happened?”

Melaya took a blade and cut off the lifeline that still attached the child to its mother. She brushed the hair away from the child’s face and bit her lip to keep from crying because she knew if the Rebel King laid eyes on the child, he would not stand it.

“Let me see her,” said the Silver Queen.

In her arms, she could see the girl’s deformity. Her teeth as sharp as needles when they drew blood from her mother’s milk. The left side of the child’s body was smooth as pearl, her hair grew in white tufts, and her scales were white as the stars. It was as if there were two halves to her. The right side was bald, the skin puckered as if it were burned.

“Gwenivere,” the Silver Queen said. “I will call her Gwenivere.”

•••

The Rebel King had many sons, but none were of his Queen.

They were brown as the earth with eyes like golden suns, swimming and fighting through the palace. They said after the Silver Queen lost the last child, the king no longer touched her. Her madness was too much for the king to withstand.

And she let them have their whispered stories, as she left the palace every night and swam to the caves where Melaya and Gwenivere waited for her.

Sometimes she came with food, shark fins and tentacles.

Other times she came with a maiden. The first one was young and happy to be in the company of the queen. She took the queen’s hand eagerly and followed deep, deep down into the ancient caves. The maiden stared at the creatures she’d never seen before, their sharp teeth and glowing faces. She traced her fingers along anemones that glowed with inner light and tickled her skin.

When they reached the mouth of the cave, she hesitated, feeling the water turn icy.

“What’s in there?” the maiden asked.

“My treasure,” the queen said with a lovely smile as she put a hand to the maiden’s chest and put her to sleep.

It wasn’t supposed to hurt. All Nieve needed was some of the girl’s life. Just a bit of blood to heal Gwenivere. But the girl woke up and screamed and screamed, and with another touch of the queen’s hands, she was reduced to surf.

They tried again and again until Gwenivere had nothing left but a thin scar along the side of her body. She was as beautiful as any mermaid in the court. She laughed and sang with Melaya, always wondering where her mother went off to and longed for her return. Gwenivere never noticed where the pretty maidens went, but she woke to the burst of bubbles in the sea and reached out with her tiny hands to touch them.

•••

They noticed.

Mermaids missing from the harems, mermaids missing from their homes.

The Silver Queen sat silently on the throne, knowing she had to stay away from her child to keep her safe. She kept her secret treasure close, marrying her to a strong merman, a herald of the Eastern Seas who relished the magic of Gwenivere’s hands.

“Patience,” she told Gwenivere, “for soon we will rule the entire seas.”

•••

“My king,” Nieve said. She had not spoken in so long that the Rebel King marveled at the sound of her voice. “You know quite well who is behind these disappearances. For who else would want to take the daughters of our court except the man you took me from?”

It was easy, stoking the fire that was already lit. The Rebel King armed himself with his best men and his golden armor and charged the true king.

The Silver Queen was left alone on the throne, and she watched it carefully, patiently. She resumed the feasts, but this time, no one would die. Instead, she gave them gifts—shark skin armor and jewels from the king’s caves and food. There was always food for the people on the outer lands, the ones as skinny as coral. They praised her kindness, her beauty, and they loved her.

When the Rebel King Amur did not return, they loved her still, bowing and willing to give their lives for their generous Silver Queen. And she drank their love the way they drank her gifts. From miles and miles came strange tribes of the sea, uniting with her against her father, the true king. They heard of his heir, King Karanos, leading his father’s armies. But Nieve did not fear her father or the brother she had never known.

When her father came to the Golden Palace, he demanded she unite with the northern kingdom.

“I am your eldest child, Father,” she said. “Will you take the trident from Karanos and give it to me?”

She waited, staring at the frightful face of the man who sent her away and now wanted her back.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, when he answered with silence.

They came from the shadows, each and every one of her army. They surrounded the king and his small fleet in the great hall of the Golden Palace.

“What are you doing?” he said, succumbing to the fear he’d always felt around her. “My son is on his way. He’s bringing the entire Sea Guard.”

He babbled, twisting and turning. But the king was too old, and the sword in his hand weighed him down.

“Let him come, Father,” she told him. “I’ve been waiting.”