Indigo and I swam through the narrow cave that led to His Majesty’s grotto. Even before reaching the main chamber, I could hear Creon’s booming voice. Someone or something had made him angry. The two mermen guards at the entrance moved aside and motioned for us to enter. While Creon had no offspring, neither Indigo, daughter of my other—deceased—uncle and his wife Isla, nor I, were ever consulted on tribal matters. Most of the time, I thought Creon wished we’d just go away. We served as a constant reminder that he had no offspring. It was rumored that he had started looking for a new bride, asking among even the most distant of the noble Atlantic blood for a candidate, even though his last three wives had all died giving birth. We mers were becoming less and less healthy each year. The contamination of the seas was shriveling up our fertility. So many little mers were stillborn. It was rumored that the Gulf tribe, our enemy of old, was dying. The recent pollution in the Gulf of Mexico had killed off the old, weak, elderly, and newborn mers of their tribe. Gulf mermaids had lost their unborn babes. Their situation was becoming dire. Some whispered they’d soon have to leave their native waters. But I learned all these things through rumor, not royal consultation. Indigo and I were inconsequential to Creon. After all, if he was still dreaming of sons, what good were two mermaid nieces?
As we swam into the grotto, we were startled to hear an even angrier voice roaring in retort to Creon. Strange. No one dared raise his voice at the king. It piqued my curiosity. Who would have the nerve to put Creon in his place?
“I will not abide this. The accord between us has not been broken since the founding of Oceanus. Your brother swore it would remain so, swore it with his blood. There are rumors among the freshwaters that you plan to—”
“Silence,” Creon shouted. “You will not speak of those creatures in my presence. Freshwaters,” Creon spat, “a dead race like your own. You exist because I tolerate it. You still live because I permit it!”
Indigo moved toward a ledge at the back of the grotto. When I saw who Creon was speaking to, who had spoken out in anger, I froze. My aunt Isla sat on a dais beside Creon. She wore a distressed expression on her face. She motioned for me to sit, but I couldn’t move. Naguals, human-animal shifters, were rare. When we had warred on land and sea, they had been our enemy—as had the Gulfs and freshwater mers. The Atlantic mers had given no quarter in their quest for dominance over Florida. I thought we’d killed them all. But there he was, a massive beast of a creature with a leathery alligator tail in the place of our shimmering fins. His body rippled with muscle, his skin marred with scars. His head was shaved clean, but I could see the shadow of black hair thereon.
“For a king clutching at power, master of a dying kingdom, those are strong words,” the stranger said, his posture stiff and angry. He moved toward Creon. “I know what you are doing,” the nagual seethed.
I was surprised. Creon did not tolerate such disrespect. As for the stranger’s words—your brother swore to it with his blood—there was only one person he could have been talking about. My father. Indigo’s father had been a merdolphin, forever tied to the sea, not a drywalker. My father and mother had both walked the dry earth. It roused my curiosity even further.
“Enough. I will hear no more from you, Hal,” Creon said, motioning to his guards. “Take him to the shallows.”
I suppressed a gasp. The shallows, a series of chambers on the ocean floor, were mercilessly cold, dark, deep, and confined. It would be harrowing torture even for an alligator shifter like the nagual. I wasn’t even sure how long he could stay submerged without air. I opened my mouth to contradict Creon but then thought better of it. There was another way.
The guards grabbed the nagual by the arms, but he shook them off.
“You dishonor your brother’s memory,” Hal, as Creon had named him, spat back. I could feel his anger. It polluted the water around us. It was not something you could see. There was just this strange, low vibration, not unlike the echo of a dolphin emanating from him. I closed my eyes, tilted my head, and listened. I could hear a sharp whine rising from his body. It was growing louder as he became angrier. I had heard such a sound before…inside me.
I opened my eyes and looked around. No one else seemed to hear. The guards surrounding Creon were on alert but not frightened. They should have been. From the feel of him, Hal, the nagual, was ready to kill us all.
“Don’t speak of my brother again,” Creon barked. His eyes flitted toward me, then away. “Get this aberration out of my sight.”
This time, the nagual did not fight. Creon’s guards took him by the arms and turned him toward the entrance, which, I realized then, I was blocking.
“My Lady,” one of the guards said, alerting me to the need to step aside.
The nagual fixed his gaze on me. I’d expected to see long, yellow teeth, scaly skin, and reptilian eyes, but I found something entirely different instead. He was startlingly handsome, but his expression was stormy. His heavy brows furrowed over dark green eyes, his strong jaw clenched hard. At some point, he must have broken his nose. The crooked bump on the ridge gave his face a rugged character. Because he was a drywalker, his skin was tanned by the sun. I held his gaze.
He looked me over, studying my face carefully. I heard a change in the vibration that surrounded him. He seemed… astonished. Whatever he was feeling, it had distracted him from his rage. A slight halo of bubbles effervesced from his skin. He gazed so deeply at me that I looked away for a moment, but only for a moment.
“Princess,” he murmured, inclining his head to me.
“Ink!” Creon stormed. “Move! And what took you so long?”
Once more, the nagual seemed to seethe. I nodded to him, then moved aside, watching the guards lead him from the grotto. Once they’d passed the outer chamber, I turned to Creon.
“Why are you sending the nagual to the shallows? Don’t you know what can happen to him there?” I demanded.
Creon’s tail had faded to an angry dark purple color, and the muscles around his left eye twitched spasmodically. Isla shook her head, warning me away from the conversation.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, ignoring my question.
“That was my father he was speaking of, wasn’t it? What oath did my father swear to the nagual? Why are you breaking a promise my father made? And why is that creature so far from land?”
“Silence! These matters are not your business, mermaid. By the fathomless deep, it’s no wonder King Tricus silenced your kind. You will not question me. I’m king here.”
“How convenient,” I murmured. The youngest of the three brothers, Creon’s rise to power was brought about by his siblings’ bad luck. The exact cause of my father’s death was still a mystery. While Creon and Isla contended my father had died “in the war,” that was never a good enough answer for me. Indigo’s father, the middle brother, had supposedly died in an accident, tripping a human mine underwater. Creon’s rise to power was conveniently surrounded by accidents.
“Go to the surface. Welcome the yacht that will arrive any moment. Escort the visitors to the grotto,” Creon commanded.
“And who am I welcoming?”
Creon’s face twisted into a strange expression of anger and glee. “Just go,” he ordered, then turned to Indigo. “You will stay here and wait. Don’t leave the grotto again. Enough of this business playing with dolphins, Indigo. Leave it to the lesser of our kind.”
“Lesser of our kind?” Indigo retorted, her voice edgy.
“Insolent girls! I am cursed with my brothers’ impudent daughters. You’re both of Tigonea’s ilk. One would think destroying the mermaid’s holy orders and drying up siren song would be enough,” he said, then looked at me and smiled. “Yet there are other ways to tame willful mermaids. Go, Ink. What are you waiting for?”
Turning, I swam out of the grotto. Rage made my hands shake. My great-great-grandfather had done everything he could to punish those involved with Princess Tigonea’s uprising. The temples of the Great Mother Ocean had been destroyed, the Great Mother’s cecaelia acolytes murdered, and siren song outlawed. But if Creon died leaving no heirs, I would become queen. When that day came, things would change. I would bring back the old ways. All Atlantic mers would live wild once more, reconnected to our Great Mother Ocean. I wouldn’t have mers building sky-scrappers in Miami nor investing in the human stock market, as Creon had them doing. Until then, however, I had to follow Creon’s will. Now he had me off welcoming visitors, playing pretty princess with some strangers. No doubt another mer tribe was arriving by boat, but who? Someone from farther in the Atlantic? The Bermudas, perhaps? It hardly mattered. I’d do as he asked…eventually. First, I had a little side trip to make.