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The doors slammed closed behind the captain’s tail. I could only stare at it numbly before it all gave way to a boiling anger inside my chest. Ever since I’d met the captain, my life had been a riptide wave of chaos. He had tried giving me the illusion of free will when we met, but I realized now that he wouldn’t have let me stay behind. He would have done anything for Princess Odele, even if it meant sacrificing me in her stead. The only reason he’d chased after me in the arena was because the merpeople believed me to be her. Because he wanted to protect her reputation.
Ever since I’d gotten to the palace, he’d been controlling and judging everything I did. I understood why, but he was harsher than most, harsher sometimes than even the queen. They never ceased to remind me who I was and where I came from. That I’d never measure up to the inerrant princess I pretended to be.
And for the first time since I’d come here, I’d found a friend in Elias. We were alike, he and I. Two poor mer, trying to survive under the tyranny of Thalassar. Two outcasts. Two selected. In a way, I had been selected too.
Then Captain Saber had tried to take away the one friend I had in the whole of Eramaea. Like he wanted me to be miserable. And maybe the princess had been miserable, too. Maybe he’d been as controlling and as protective with her as he was with me. Maybe her parents were just as cruel. Maybe that had given her the courage to flee. Someone out there was already trying to kill her, so what was leaving everything behind and starting a new life in the grand scheme of things?
I still had so many secrets to discover.
But first, a nap.
I swam over to the mirror by the rose quartz wall and looked at myself, wincing. I looked like I’d been dragged through the streets of Eramaea. My dress was torn at the hem and covered with speckles of mud and silt. My hair had tangles through it, and it floated in disarray above my head. There were shadows under my wide, red eyes.
Well, silt.
I stripped the clothes off and tossed them by the door. I wasn’t the princess, but I knew that if she came back, she wouldn’t want to set sights on that outfit again. I certainly didn’t want to. I’d lost the crown in that arena of death and wore no other jewelry, so when I was naked, I swam into the bathing room.
The claw-footed shipwrecked tub looked so inviting. Back at home, I hadn’t had the luxury of one. Back in Lagoona, most of the mer lacked tubs. To bathe, we dumped sand in buckets and scooped out handfuls to scrub our skin and scales with. It was a nice change, to finally experience this lavish life. But at what cost?
I went over to the sea fan shelves and pulled off a couple of jars of pink sand from the shores of two-legger territory. Turning, I uncapped one and bent over to dump the contents into the tub. The grains fell to the bottom. I put down the jars on the floor and knew that the servants would later refill them. There was a lava seam in the room, located just below the tub, and a lever to release small quantities of heat to warm the contents inside. I pulled it and waited. Once it heated, I adjusted the lever again and then swam into it.
Sinking myself into the sand, I let out a pleasurable sigh, my tail burying beneath the grains. The color was light and warm against my dirty scales. It felt good, not having to scrub off grime and slime from my tail with Lagoona sand.
Out of every horrible thing the palace had to offer, I had to admit that this was the least horrible of them all.
I picked up a handful and started scrubbing my arms slowly, scraping it against my skin in circles, smoothing it out and making it shine. I scrubbed everything, making my way down to my chest, where I paused, remembering the feel of Elias’ lips there, just on my collarbone, and lower still.
I looked down at myself. I hadn’t had much of an education in Lagoona. The school there only served to teach the young ones how to read, write, and do math. Afterwards, the mer were expected to work. Those who were lucky enough to leave Lagoona had probably enrolled in a school somewhere else in Thalassar, if they hadn’t had the misfortune of being selected later on.
Needless to say, I wasn’t very well educated in things like the anatomy of the mer. I mean, I knew. I worked at Tides’ Tavern, and there we got all manner of creatures, male and female alike, and I’d heard talk. I knew what made us different, how everything worked, and how babies were made. I knew mer kissed and touched, the same way Elias had touched me. I just never knew it could feel so... pleasurable.
I trailed my fingers lightly over my skin, over the swells of my breasts. Where mermaids were soft and supple, mermen were all hard panes and muscled skin. I let my fingers roam lower, over the dip of my stomach. It wasn’t so thin anymore. Not like it’d been before I’d come to Eramaea. The palace had given me curves in places I never thought I’d see. My hips flared at my sides and the skin that had clung to my frame was fuller. I was muscled from the constant swimming and exercise I’d done. My touch veered lower where my skin met my tail, touching what my dresses hid. My skin dipped below my waist in the figure of a V where it met the lining of purple-blue scales.
I touched that V, fingering the line where the scales met. I knew that this was how the mer mated. There was a small slit that ran down the center of the V that opened to accommodate a merman’s member. I slid a finger up the line then, pushing against the slit of myself. A tingling sensation ricocheted through my body and that slit opened, allowing me to push a single finger inside.
My face heated as I explored myself. I’d done so before, back in Lagoona when I felt curious, but it had never felt like this. I’d never felt like I was filled with such urgency, and I’d certainly never imagined someone else while I was doing it. But I did. I could all but feel the Black Blade’s kiss on my skin, the shape and imprint of his lips against my body as my own fingers moved to the slow rhythm of that memory. I was reaching for something that I couldn’t quite grasp. I had no idea what it was or why it was so unreachable...
I dropped my hand into the sand with a groan and grabbed a fistful of it and resumed scrubbing at my body, trying to push away the feelings and sensations Elias had awoken in me. The very thought of it frustrated me. I wasn’t here to feel these things. I was here to stop a war, discover what had happened to the princess, and go home where I belonged.
Scrubbing vigorously until my skin shone, I finally finished and swam out of the tub. I reached over to a claw-shaped hook on the wall and pulled off a pink robe, slipping the garment on. When I made my way out to the room, I lifted the ivory shell of the telly in passing. A bubble rose from it, depicting clear recorded images of happenings in Thalassar.
As it started to play, sound resonating through the room, I swam into the closet and grabbed a comfortable—miraculously, as the princess only seemed to own extravagant, uncomfortable garments—dress. I slipped it on, the silk pooling around my sand-sensitive skin and swam back into the room to plunk myself down on the bed.
Anemones reached for me, caressing my skin and scales. I was about to plop back onto the cushioning of the bed and fall into a long sleep when the voices and words on the telly caught my attention.
I stared at it. On the telly was a mermaid and merman, two mer I recognized. They were news reporters, and they reported all major events on Thalassar broadcasts.
“...have informed us that the princess is in the palace, and that she is alive and well,” the mermaid said.
“That’s quite a relief! I think it’s safe to say that we were all worried about the princess facing this dire situation.” The merman smiled at his co-host, like they were having a normal conversation, pretending that the conch recorder wasn’t in front of them. Like they weren’t being watched by thousands of Thalassarins.
“I think this whole situation deserves a conversation, don’t you? What is your opinion on what the princess did at the execution? Do you think she was in the right to stop it?”
I leaned closer to the edge of the bed, holding my breath to wait for his reply.
“It was certainly a surprise. Up until now, we’ve only ever seen the princess take part in lavish state balls and parties. We’ve never actually seen her take an interest in political affairs before. I have to say, and this is my opinion, mind you, that it was refreshing to see how our future leader cared so much about the merpeople, even if it was just a criminal. Let’s have another look at the footage, shall we?”
He turned his body and suddenly, him and his co-host disappeared, the image of them on the telly replaced by another one. This one from a high angle inside that death arena, images depicting me before the mer, pounding a fist against my chest.
“Stop the violence! No more!” I’d cried out.
I wasn’t sure how or what to feel about seeing myself on a telly screen like that. All I knew was that, in the moment I had gone to save Elias from death, I had looked fierce like I never had before.
The screen switched back to the mer hosting the news. “A very brave thing for her to do!” the merman complimented, an enormous smile on his face.
“Or very foolish,” the mermaid added. I glared at her. “She put herself in harm’s way to save a criminal. That rouses another question; do you think she should be punished for what she did? Though she is the princess, she acted above royal law—a law set by her ancestors—and aided in a wanted criminal’s escape.”
The merman laughed off the mermaid’s reply as if it meant nothing. “She’s going to be queen once she marries Prince Kai and comes of age. She can change laws on her whim if she so wishes. As for punishment... Well, according to interviews we’ve conducted since the incident, polls state that the middle and lower class mer are enamored with her suddenly, all because of what she did. If she is punished, there are sure to be riots. Let’s have a look at more footage we’ve gathered...”
The telly changed again, this time showing the image of hundreds of mer gathered near the palace of Eramaea, screeching and screaming. Some of them held up signs that were hard to make out. The screen cut to another image of a merman interviewing a mermaid.
“Can you tell us why everyone has gathered here today?” he asked.
The mermaid was middle-aged, wearing a simple commoner’s dress similar to those I wore in Lagoona. She smiled into the conch. “We are gathered here to celebrate Princess Odele for her valiancy in saving the Black Blade from death!”
“You do realize that the Black Blade is a criminal, right?”
The mermaid frowned. “To some of the upper class he might be. To others he is a savior, a symbol of hope. Sometimes he’s the only hope mer like us have.”
The interviewer looked genuinely confused. “Mer like you?”
She nodded vigorously. “Poor mer selected or living in fear of being selected to fight against Kappur. He’s given more to our community than those in the palace have.”
They cut to another merman. “I always thought that the princess was just another stuck-up royal and that she didn’t care about any of us. Today proved differently. For her to sacrifice herself to save the Black Blade? I never thought I’d live to see the day when a royal fought for a poor mer’s life.”
“The Black Blade threatened the princess. How can you all admire a criminal willing to harm the princess you now admire?” the interview asked, perplexed.
The merman shrugged. “I don’t think he would have harmed her. That’s not the Black Blade’s way. He doesn’t kill or hurt anyone. He’s like a miracle sent to us from the gods. He has more of a heart than the queen and king, that’s for sure. Besides, she’s safe in the palace. He didn’t touch her.”
The scene cut off and went back to the hosts of the news. They began talking, but I didn’t hear them. My mind was reeling so much that I almost forgot I was still holding my breath. I let it loose slowly and then dropped back onto the bed cushioning.
What I’d thought would end disastrously had actually ended in something else entirely. The mer of Thalassar were happy. They were rejoicing. They loved the princess...
No.
For once since I’d come here, it wasn’t the princess they loved.
It was me.