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We were sitting on a bench in an Eramaean park, finally able to rest. We had spent what felt like hours traveling from stand to stand trying foods and speaking to mer. On more than one occasion, the poorer mer of Eramaea came up to Princess Odele. The guards had tried stopping them, but she’d intervened, allowing them to come forward. They held her hand, bowed over her, and thanked her.
“You’ve given us hope,” they whispered.
“Thank you, for saving the Black Blade.”
She accepted their gratitude with a smile on her lips. I’d grown angry at the mention of that criminal, but it soon dissipated. I saw what their thanks did to the princess. I saw her eyes light up, and I saw just what it all meant to her. And to them.
The Black Blade had been a hero to these mer, and because she saved him, she was now one too. And because I swam at her side, hand protectively at her back, they kissed the tops of my knuckles, as if I’d done anything to warrant it.
Word had gotten around that two of the most popular royals were swimming through Eramaea. The crowds had gotten bigger, and news conches followed us. It was easy to pretend they weren’t there.
When we finished our rounds, going through nearly every vendor in the capital, Odele had pulled me to the park and sat me on a bench. I had never sat on a bench before or watched children play without restraint. I’d never seen a life lived so simply.
Back home in Draconi, the royals were confined to palaces. The walls of ours had been my home, and my prison, for as long as I could remember. We saw little beyond it, except for the battlefields we shed blood on and the grounds where we bred our beasts.
Needless to say, the simplicity of this was enjoyable. I was full, content, and one look at Odele told me that she was as well, if a little thoughtful.
Her gaze lingered on where the children played, and there was something akin to longing on her features.
I wondered what she thought of. Was she imagining her own childhood? Or, maybe I was foolish for hoping, was she imagining the children we would have together one day?
Before, I would have relished in that fantasy. But after discovering what she was doing in her spare time, asking questions about marriage contracts, about mine and hers, I was nervous. Before, there had been plenty of time to break off the engagement had she wanted to do it. Our kingdoms desperately needed the Draconi-Thalassar alliance. Now, our joining went beyond duty. For me, at least it did. I had agreed to marry her, to sire children, and to be gifted their secret magic against two-leggers plaguing our homes. Then I fell in love with her, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she didn’t feel the same.
“If you could do one thing in the world right now, what would you do?” I asked.
She broke slightly out of her reverie to blink at me. Silence, as she bit her bottom lip before trailing her tongue across it. I followed the gesture with hungry eyes, but forced my gaze back up to her own.
“I’d stop a war.” There was raw honesty in her voice.
The war between Thalassar and Kappur obviously affected her a great deal. My father was a war general, and I wasn’t too far behind his swim strokes going in that direction. He’d spoken of battles, and I’d lived through a few myself in my short twenty-five years of living. The mer in Draconi grew up faster than in Thalassar. By fourteen, the females were considered adults fit for marriage, while the males were prepped for war at thirteen.
I knew the hardships. I’d lived to gain my own scars and tales of battle. I’d ridden fearsome dragons into the oncoming onslaught. I’d skewered mermen with swords, had let my dragon devour them in gruesome bites. I’d fought by my sisters’ and father’s sides, had mourned the dead and rejoiced for the living.
War with mer was a simple thing. It was something I had been trained for since my birth.
What I was not prepared for was war with the two-leggers. Whispers in my kingdom said a war was coming, unless I could stop it with the help of Thalassar and the princess at my side. So I understood what she meant. I understood all too well.
“Once we are wed, the dragons of Draconi will swim here. Our alliance will be a fearsome thing to behold, and Kappur will cease to attack. The Selection will be no more, and the war will finally end.” It wasn’t just empty promises. It was truth and strategy.
She sighed. “I don’t want to wait until marriage,” she muttered. “I want the war to end now. I want the bloodshed to be over.”
My fingers twitched before curling tightly into the palm of my hand. “Without the war, you and I would never have come to pass.” I wondered if those words had sounded cruel, if she would turn and slap me for such insolence. To say I was glad her mer were dying if it meant we could be together. But the deepest desires in my heart were dark things. I was forged in ice and jewels, in blood and war. Chaos and darkness.
She smiled though, the gesture rather sad. “There is that, my prince.”
I reached for her hand, grasping it in mine. “Princess, if it is a war you want to stop, then stop it.”
Her eyebrows rose, and her voice trembled. “How?”
Gods. She didn’t know what power she wielded. “My gem...” I trailed a nail down the side of her cheek, relished in the sight of her leaning into me, closing her eyes. “You are blind to what you are. You are formidable. You are caring. You are fearless.” Each attribute was punctuated with me trailing over different spots on her skin. Cheek. Neck. Lips. My fingers stopped there, and I felt rather than heard the gasp push from her mouth. “If anyone can stop a war, it’s you.”
“No, Prince Kai. If only you knew what I truly was...”
I pressed a finger to her lips. They were smooth against my calloused fingertips. I longed to bend across the space that separated us and take a taste for myself. “I know who you are, my gem. You are not the same princess you were before. You are better. Kinder. And I love—”
She shot back, not allowing me to finish my sentence. She knew what I was going to say, and she rejected me before the words were even out of my mouth.
She shook her head back and forth. “You can’t, Prince Kai. Please.”
I frowned, and something rose in me. A battle of ice and heat, gorging its way up my body. A dragon awakening to roar and claim what was mine. “Don’t presume to know what I feel, Princess.” My voice was dark, face glowering. “I know what I feel for you, and your denial will change nothing.” My hand encircled her wrist, and I felt the pulse beating there. “You are mine, my gem. You are benitoaito, the dragon stone, one of the most precious and valuable gems in Draconi.” Her pulse was frantic now, and there was this sudden maddening urge in me to lick that spot on her wrist. But I let her go and turned. Calm settled over me once more. “You do not have to love me back.”
Please love me back.
She did not reply, so I got up from the bench. News reporters were watching our every move. I’d nearly forgotten they were there, and I wondered if they’d heard the display, if they’d seen me practically tear my heart out and set it gently in her lap only to have her knock it over with distaste.
My skin prickled with defensiveness, just like it did moments before a battle. Nostrils flaring, I turned and offered my hand to my betrothed.
“Shall we get back to the palace now?”
Her eyes were wide, and from the corner of one of them, a small bubble swarmed out, floating above her head. My gut clenched at the sight of her tears. She swiped at her eyes discreetly and got up, ignoring my hand completely.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” she whispered sincerely. “But I cannot—”
The rest of her sentence never came out.
My senses heightened, and I stilled. My body became the calm before the storm. The silence before a hurricane swept the ocean off its fins. Maybe I never would have noticed if my back had been turned. But because I was staring at Princess Odele, I noticed. And my blood boiled, and the beast inside me unleashed.
I thundered forward, gripping Odele by the neckline of her dress. I was not gentle as I yanked her away, pushing her aside, then behind. My body was the shield that protected her from the arrow that would have struck her head.
It pierced through my chest. A moment’s worth of pain was all I gave it. Just a moment before I was shouting for guards, for advisors to come and protect the mer I loved.
Her breath came out in ragged pants, palm touching my arm. I could hear her words, yet they sounded so far away. “Kai, oh gods, Kai!”
Ice blasted through my veins. The magic of decades, of ancestors and dragons pummeled through me. I felt myself changing, rearranging, becoming something new. Something I’d never wanted Thalassar to see.
And yet for her, I would bare myself naked a thousand times over. If only to protect.
Guards swarmed in, pulling Odele back. She screamed and thrashed, hands pulling the back of my clothes. Like she meant to grab me, and pull me back into the line of protection of the guards. But my fury was overwhelming now. And the beast in me was out.
I straightened and heard the gasps. I knew what the magic of my ancestors did to my appearance. I knew it somehow elongated me. The scales on my tail hardened and sparkled like impenetrable diamonds, and where my nails had been earlier, talons grew in its place, curved and black. I was still mer, yet not. I was something wholly different now, a mixture of merman and beast.
Many thought magic was dying out.
But I bore the oldest of it inside me.
The arrow was stuck just below my collarbone. It had ripped through my clothes, embedded itself into my flesh. Pain was a miniscule thing when my rage had the power to freeze the kingdom over.
With a hard yank, I ripped the arrow from my body and let it fall. My eyes scanned the crowd of shocked Thalassarins. Then I saw him. The sniper. He wore all black, a mask, and a speargun was held in his hands. The weapon intended for the princess. For my betrothed. My mate.
I roared, trembling the waters, manipulating the drift of the current. I snapped my tail and charged forward. The guards trailed after, but they weren’t as fast as me. Between one blink and the next, I was before the murderous sea scum and had him by the throat.
I hauled him by the neck, throwing him in the center of the park. Just seeing me made him tremble in fear. Foolishly, he fumbled with the speargun. With a jerk of my wrist, I pulled it away from him and crushed it beneath black talons.
Discarded pieces rained down over his face. He whimpered.
“Who sent you?” I asked calmly. My voice was different. Deeper. Sinister. Yet still understandable, all the same. “Why were you trying to kill the princess?”
Kill. Kill. Kill.
I thirsted for his blood. Why waste time on explanations when I could gut him with the swipe of a finger?
“Tell me!”
He didn’t speak. Or maybe he did and I just couldn’t tell. The waters around me spun like a violent riptide ripping through the water. I swayed and fought to keep my balance. The sea scum opened his mouth and laughed.
I swiped a hand out. Better to get this over with now, end his life, and get back to my betrothed. Yet my talons didn’t reach him.
It was then I realized the severity of the situation. As my head spun and my limbs grew lethargic.
Poison.
The arrow had been poisoned.
Sound drifted away, and my vision darkened around the edges. My body turned, and beyond the fray of bodies, I could make out the one mer I wanted to get to above all others.
“Princess...”
That was my last word before I succumbed to the darkness.