Maisie

“Hello, cousin.”

Shock unhinged my jaw, making me numb to my surroundings. In this breathtaking moment, I knew nothing but the sight before me, or rather, the mermaid before me.

I had the sinuous curves of her features memorized for months now, all from the portraits in the castle and the recordings sequestered deep inside that secret cove. But the silver-gold sheen of a moving image hardly compared to the princess of flesh and blood floating before me.

I’d only ever seen her in the richest gowns Thalassar had to offer, ostentatious jewelry dangling from her ears, neck, wrists, and hair. It had become a uniform of sorts, one I associated with the mer whose place I’d taken, who I had been pretending to be for months now.

Having her in front of me right now was different. She was different.

Instead of gowns in pink and flashy colors, Odele Malabella, Crown Princess of the mer kingdom of Thalassar, wore the black tunic of a laborer and a dark hooded cloak to match. A simple leather belt hung from her hip, where a steel sword was sheathed.

A sword she’d used only a moment ago to run through the merman attacking me.

Her hair, similar in color and length to my own, was tied away from her round face, a face not unlike mine. Whatever image of her I had in my mind the whole time I’d been in Eramaea, this certainly was not it. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Certainly not this mercenary-looking mer before me. Though pretty, she no longer looked the part of a royal. It was still there, in the elegant cock of her hip and the arrogance flaring in eyes that were more brown than black.

I was so distracted staring at her, almost certain she’d be a phantasmal illusion my distressed mind had conjured up, that I didn’t really register her words.

I shut my open mouth and swallowed past the tight lump in my throat. I looked down at the merman slumped in the silt, his body already starting to rise and twirl through the water. Plumes of blood still flowed in little smokey tendrils. His mouth hung open, and I could almost hear the sound of his last dying cry, echoing in the ripples of water around us.

“You killed him,” I whispered. Inexplicably, anger swelled to the roots of my chest. She’d killed him. Odele had killed this merman. My gaze shot up to hers, and I couldn’t hide the glaring rage.

Her own delicate, perfectly arched eyebrows rose, eyes shining with amusement as she pressed her fist into the curve of her hip and looked down at me, like she looked down on so many other mer that were lesser than her. “I just saved your life. I think gratitude is in order.”

Because I couldn’t stand to have her looking at me like I was less—though I probably was—I scrambled from my sitting position to float up and face her. I was taller by a mere few inches but she still had this look on her face, like she could belittle me, chew me up and spit me out for fun. She probably could, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“I needed information from him,” I accused. “And you killed him before he could give it to me.”

She scoffed, a sound that was both elegant and condescending at once. “He was too far gone into his craze at the end of that pretty little speech to reveal anything.” Her eyes softened as she took me in. “Besides, he gave us the most important part of the story, cousin.”

Cousin.

That word rippled shock through my entire body. I’d been too numb to hear it that first time, to process what she’d said and what the words implied. The heavy weight of them threatened to sink me into the darkness of an abyss I wouldn’t be able to get out of.

“I am not your cousin.” My hand tightened around the studded hilt of my black blade. It was a small comfort, to sense Elias here in the dark alley with me when the reality was that I was alone. Alone with a princess, a body, and heavy words that made no sense.

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Odele began softly, yet fiercely. “Aunty Odessa had a female babe. One he took and gave to an old mer. That baby was you.”

The lump in my throat suddenly took the shape of steel, making it hard to swallow and speak. I had to breathe a couple of times before I could reply to her and even when I did, my voice cracked. “It’s not true. That would make me—”

“A princess,” she interrupted. “The rightful heir to the throne of Thalassar and Kappur. My cousin. Princess Odalaea Malabella Knoll.”

Odalaea.

The merman had called me that when he’d taken a swing at me. It was all so confusing. I could hardly wrap my head around it. Me? A princess? It was preposterous. Ridiculous. Impossible.

“I am Maisie Fauna, a waitress from Lagoona,” I told her firmly. Saying the words aloud helped settle them over me. They pushed past the tightness, the overwhelming sensation inside me. These words were real. These words were the truth of my life. Not hers.

Odele’s lip twitched. “That may be who you thought you were, but it isn’t who you are. You are a princess. My cousin.”

I shook my head back and forth. It wasn’t true. I couldn’t quite possibly be royalty. Me. With my torn fin, my accent, and... well, everything else that was wrong with me. I was nobody, nothing special. Whatever she said to try and convince me otherwise didn’t matter. In my heart, I knew the truth. My truth.

Instead of saying this, and possibly continuing an argument that could last hours, I looked past her shoulder. “We really shouldn’t stay here,” I whispered.

Odele looked inclined to argue more, but agreed with a shake of her head. Then, she crouched so she was leveled with his still-floating form and unceremoniously started digging through the lapels of the dead merman’s jacket.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

She pulled out the pouch of gold coins and rubies I’d given to him, jangling them in the palm of her hand. “I see you found my lovely treasure cove.” She placed them inside the pocket of her own cloak and then went back to digging from his.

“Can’t you let the dead rest in peace?” I was sure there was a special place in the abyss reserved for this kind of offense. Stealing from a dead mer was low.

Odele snorted, obviously not sharing in the sentiment. “These coins are mine, first of all. He would have taken them and left you dead in the street. I’m surprised you have compassion for him at all.” When she finished emptying his pockets, she got back up. “I plan on leaving this... mercenary...” Her voice rang with unbridled hatred. “...here to be found in the morning. I want it to look like a robbery.” She was still staring down at his form. Her hands were tightening into fists, looking as though she would erupt.

“Leave him here?” For a brief moment, I wondered if he had family. If he had anyone out there that was looking for him, would miss him.

“First kills are hard,” Odele whispered, eyes not straying from that limp, floating body. “But I will shed no tears and feel no guilt for this scum.” She looked up at me again, and despite what she’d said a single bubble, so tiny I almost didn’t notice it, rose from the corner of her eye. “He killed my mother. Our mothers.”

I didn’t want to argue with her. Not when I knew she was right about him being a murderer. He had killed both Princess Odessa and Queen Odette.

“He deserved worse. Now come on. We’ve got to go before soldiers come poking around.”

Odele whirled away from me and didn’t wait as she swam to the mouth of the alley. I scrambled to follow, annoyed at her attitude. It was the very demeanor I’d hated while I watched those recordings of her. Like every mer was obligated to bow at her fins.

“Stick to the shadows,” she ordered.

I wanted to snipe back, but held my tongue and did as told. We both drew our hoods over our faces before venturing out in the water.

Odele, I realized quickly, had expert knowledge of the streets of Eramaea. She knew where the shadows rested, areas that were sparsely populated, and seemed to know just how to avoid any soldier in sight. It was a skill that rivaled the Black Blade’s, and I was sure it would have made Elias strangely proud to see Odele so at ease in the shadows, like a thief of the night.

We made it to the alley by the palace. When Odele pressed her hand to the wall to open that passageway, there was no fumbling, no feeling around crusted barnacles and algae. She knew exactly where it was.

The archway opened and Odele swam in quickly, flicking her tail in precise, elegant movements. There was no limp on her. No sign of imperfection like there was in me.

My heart gave a painful lurch at that as I followed, stone closing behind me.

Odele never stopped to pause once. She just reached into her cloak and tossed out the bag of gold coins with perfect aim and kept swimming up to that tunnel. I followed.

We made it all the way to my—her—room, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized no one was there to greet me.

“Ah, it feels good to be home,” Odele huffed as she untied the strings at the neck of her cloak and let it slide from her body.

All I could do was watch her, take in her every movement. She was graceful, beautiful. The curves of her body were generous, the purple of her hair and tail literally shone. Even in rags she was regal and powerful. I couldn’t help but compare myself to her, the way I’d been compared to her since I’d gotten here. Yes, we looked so alike it almost hurt, except she was more poised than I could ever hope to be.

It was a moment before I realized I was staring, and another moment for me to realize she was staring right back.

I startled, but she didn’t rustle an inch. Her eyebrows were raised in amusement that slowly cooled into a softer, warmer expression.

“I never knew my aunt,” she began. I tensed. “But I remember my mother speaking of her sometimes.” She was speaking to me in hushed tones, sharing a small piece of herself she’d perhaps never shared with anyone before. And I knew this secret wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It would now be a link between us, this piece of her past, and of her. “I always stare at the portraits of them, the ones in the halls.” A little laugh trickled from her throat. “I mostly liked to marvel at how alike they seemed, and sometimes, in those moments, I’d find myself wishing for a sister.” She gave a brief pause, and her stare seemed to bore into me. “But now I have a cousin, and that’s practically the same thing.”

Her following smile was so blinding, so painful, that I had to look away. Staring down at my fins seemed easiest. Kept me focused. “I told you,” I ground out tightly, if a little sadly. “I’m not your cousin.”

“You’d really float there, see the resemblance between us, and still deny it? Why, Odalaea?”

I ignored her question. “I told you to stop calling me that. My name is Maisie.”

The annoyance was clear in her voice. “Odalaea is your birthright. The Thalassarin and Kappurin thrones are your inheritance. That name you’re trying to carry is a lie, and I will not call you by it.”

My rage flared then, and I took a stroke towards her. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her, to scream. Instead, I calmly asked her, “Why are you so certain I am...” A princess. “...your cousin?”

“How are you so certain you’re not?” she countered. “That mercenary admitted as much. He took you when you were a baby and gave you away.”

My breathing grew shallower the more this conversation carried on. “He was just crazy.”

Odele rolled her pretty eyes. “You were so keen to believe him when he said he’d murdered royals and when you wanted to know who hired him to do it. Why is this so hard to believe?”

I lost my temper, anxiety pulsating through me, like a wave crashing, exploding into a violent pull of ferocity. “Because that would mean my entire life has been a lie!” I shouted, causing Odele to still. “It would mean that the mer I called ‘grandmother’ my entire life was nothing to me but someone who took me off of someone else’s hands. It would mean accepting all of this!” I gestured at the ceiling, at the richness of her room. “Accepting a royal life that I don’t want. It would mean that I really have a father—a father who has waged war against the kingdom I love—and a mother who—” I choked off, unable to say the words but needing to get them out. I had to. “Who was murdered.”

Oh, gods.

The truth was out. The truth on why I couldn’t accept this as reality, why I would deny it until my last breath. I’d never wanted a crown. I’d just wanted change. I’d wanted a war to end, a princess to be found, a murderer and culprit stopped.

I hadn’t asked for this. I hadn’t asked for the weight of a whole kingdom, for this sick, twisted family who lied and murdered one another.

“I don’t want it,” I told her viciously, my chest rising and falling with my anger. “I don’t want it to be real, because it would mean my life is a lie. That I don’t even know who I am.”

There was silence for a long stretch of time after that, filled only with the rasping labor of my breathing.

“Whether you want it to be real or not, Odalaea, it is. It is real. You are my cousin. You are a princess. And you are heir to the throne.”

It’s not real. It can’t be.

To avoid further argument, I plopped myself down on the edge of the bed, letting the anemones reach for me. I sighed into that small comfort. “Now what? Where do we go from here?”

Obviously taking the hint, Odele let the subject drop. For now. I didn’t doubt she would keep bringing it up whenever she saw fit. It was a conversation I didn’t want to have. Not now, not ever. I didn’t even think I wanted to contemplate the weight of everything in my own solitude.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but that tavern made me feel dirty.” She shuddered. “It was likely crawling with unsavory diseases. I’m going to go bathe.”

I could use a nice long bath myself. “Yeah,” I agreed. “And when we’re done and changed, we need to talk. Like about where you’ve been all this time.” And why she seemed so at ease with thinking I was her cousin. She was taking it in stride and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the situation; by me or killing that mer in the alley.

“Sure thing.” She waved my words off, and I wondered if she’d even heard them at all before she bounded into the bathing room, closing the door behind her.

With her gone, I was able to sort through a fraction of my muddled thoughts. The words echoed in my mind, a mockery if anything.

Princess Odalaea Malabella Knoll.

I repeated them over and over, trying to feel a stirring inside, a sense of rightness. Something that said, Yes. This is you. Take it. But no feeling came, because that name wasn’t mine.

It belonged to another, to the baby who had been clutched in her mother’s arms, and then ripped from them. And it had stopped belonging to her the moment her mother’s murderer gave her away to a strange mer on the street.

My grandmother...

She’d been the mer to take me in. And she’d cared for me, loved me like I was her own, because I was hers. I doubted she’d even known. I recalled so vividly then. All the times when I was younger, when I’d tried finding pieces of myself in her. We’d looked nothing alike, and I had not questioned it. Why would I when she loved me so fiercely, when she had told me that I looked like my fabled parents...?

It had all been a lie. A lie I couldn’t bear to accept. A lie I’d hold on to like it was the truth, because I couldn’t stand to have my world suddenly sinking into the unknown. All my life, I’d known what I was, who I was, and now I couldn’t even claim that.

Sighing, I got up and swam past the bathing room door. I needed to go into the closet and find something to wear. Granted, every scrap of clothing in this room was Odele’s, and I wondered if she’d be infuriated at me for wearing what belonged to her. But I stopped in my tracks right before I passed the bathing room door, I heard muffled sounds coming from inside.

Loathing doing it, but not being able to resist, I pressed my ear up against the door and listened.

Listened to the sounds of Odele sobbing.

First kills are hard, she’d said with certainty.

I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d said it more for my benefit, or for hers?

I didn’t comment on Odele’s puffy, swollen eyes when she exited the bathing room. She feigned confidence as she sauntered over to pull out an outfit. I quietly went in to bathe myself, nervous that if I turned my back for even a moment, Odele would disappear.

So I hurried through the process, dunking my head into sand, and scrubbing it and my skin raw. I quickly donned a robe and swam out into the room, nearly out of breath.

But Odele was there, lounging across the plush cushions of her ivory scallop bed. One hand was propping her head up, and she admired me with amusement.

“Still here, O.”

I tried to compose myself, assuming a cool demeanor as I went to grab the nightdress I’d laid out. My hands paused, hovering over the material.

“I hope you don’t mind me wearing your stuff...”

She just shrugged. “You’ve been using them for months now. Doesn’t matter.”

Not what I was expecting. What had I been expecting? Not this... friendliness... if that’s what this could be called.

I changed, pulling on the nightdress and hovered just at the edge of the bed. I felt suddenly out of place and chastised myself. This room had never been mine to begin with, and I’d gotten too comfortable. Now, Odele was back and there was no place for me here.

Not that there ever had been.

But I hadn’t really planned this far ahead. I didn’t know what to do, where to go from here. Would I be kicked out of the palace? Or would the queen have my head for my disobedience? The future was a dark, blurry thing, and I didn’t know what mysteries waited for me inside it.

I started to turn from the bed I’d grown used to for these past few months. I could always fashion a hammock out of a sheet. It’s not like I wasn’t used to sleeping in discomforts. That had been my life. The only life I knew and accepted it.

“There’s plenty of room on the bed for the both of us,” Odele quietly offered, as if she sensed where my thoughts were taking me.

I stopped, turned to look at her. “I don’t want to impose.”

She scoffed, waving my words away with her delicate fingers. “Nonsense, we’re family.” She patted the empty space next to her in invitation.

My teeth ground together in annoyance, but I loosed a breath before slowly trudging over and sliding into the spot next to her. I kept distance between us, afraid to get too close. She had no such qualms about me, and obviously no concept of personal space, because she scooted closer until our arms touched. The contact jolted me, but I fought to keep very still.

“You need to relax,” she commented. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know.”

She didn’t seem the murderous type. Not like her stepmother, anyway. The mer in the alleyway didn’t really count. After that initial shock, after hearing her sob in the bathing room, I’d understood. It had been about revenge, and it had been about justice. The moment her sword had pierced the mercenary’s heart, the lines between the two terms had blurred. It had been about saving her mother’s honor. It had been about saving me, even if I couldn’t accept the possible connection lying between the two of us.

She had saved me regardless of what I thought.

“Where have you been all this time?” I asked.

Odele’s fingers started plucking at the cushions beneath us, the only sign she was even remotely nervous, even when her voice was calm and confident. “It’s a long story...”

“We have all night.”

She sighed. “I guess the whole thing started months ago. I—” She paused, and I didn’t turn to look at her, but I imagined she was chewing her lip, debating how much truth to tell and how many lies. “I really enjoy reading, and I enjoy listening to conches. Don’t tell anyone I told you that.” Her nails dug into my arm in threat. “I will deny it with my last breath.”

“Alright.”

She loosened her hold and continued, “I spend a lot of time in the royal library. I’ve read through almost every parchment and listened to nearly every conch there. The selections here aren’t quite as extensive as they are in other kingdoms...” Her tone grew wistful. “I hear the great library in Brague has millions of conches and the libraries of Draconi record messages in dragon eggs...”

She was getting off track, and the grand library that wasn’t extensive to her had been quite impressive to me. That comment only served to remind me how different we truly were, how much more knowledgeable she was regarding the world.

“So I started poking around in the Royal Records room. Out of boredom, you see. No one usually goes in there except the queen and my father, or their closest advisors. The conches were really quite boring. Just a bunch of stuff on our long dead ancestors...” She paused, and her fingers slid down my arm. I wondered if it was a nervous gesture, or if she was seeking comfort in me. “I came across the conch on my sister—I hadn’t even known I’d had a sister—and the conches on Aunty Odessa and my mom.” She sucked in a breath, shuddering and painful. I couldn’t help but take her hand then, to loan her my strength. The way I wished so many times before that someone would’ve loaned me their strength so I didn’t have to battle harsh truths alone.

“You can imagine what a shock it was to me... to hear that my aunt had been poisoned after giving birth. And who would have known? The queen didn’t like me meddling in that room, said I’d break important records with my foolery...” She scoffed. “Anyway, everything after that kind of just... fell into my lap. I started digging. I discovered that this room...” She gestured with her free hand. “...had belonged to Aunty Odessa. I found sketches of blueprints of the palace, old and new, and realized some sections had been cut off. I found the secret cove only days later.”

So the cove had not only been Odele’s, but Odessa’s as well.

“It’s a good place to hide things you don’t want others to see...”

I imagined her hundreds of conches littering the floors.

“The more I dug, the more I found out and started to put things together myself. I found a discarded marriage contract, then a conch with your parents getting married, and it opened my eyes to everything. I had a cousin out there somewhere. Not just distant cousins, like Jessinda is, but an actual cousin. My mother’s twin’s child.” Her hand squeezed mine, as if that simple motion could implant the words into me and make me believe them.

“I knew I had to find him... or her. To discover all I could. That’s when the attempts on my life started. Someone knew what I was looking for and was trying to keep me quiet. At first, my goal had been only to find my cousin—to find you—but with the assassination attempts, I looked deeper.

“I knew there’d always been something suspicious about my mother’s death. She’d been healthy, so how was it she died of a supposed attack or sickness? Odessa had been killed with poison, so I took a trip to the morgue. The merman there was obviously following someone’s orders. The more I dug, the more vicious the attempts got.

“It was all kept quiet, of course, and I had to pretend like nothing was happening. Like I hadn’t accidentally been thrown off my hippocampus. Like I hadn’t noticed the shadows following me with the glint of steel shining beneath the glow of lava globes. Like someone wasn’t trying to murder me for what I knew.” A shuddering breath racked through her body. “No one would have believed me. So I kept it to myself.”

My heart constricted at her words, so sure they weren’t true. “Captain Saber—”

Odele scoffed. “Tiberius would have smothered me, had he known, and that would have been worse.”

Tiberius. Even I rarely called him that, despite what we had shared, what intimacies lay between us. And here Odele was, using his first name as if it meant nothing. Like it was so easy. The jealousy that seared inside me came unbidden, and I tried to expel it before she could glimpse it.

“So I came up with a plan. I started sneaking out of the palace dressed as a commoner. I learned what I could on the streets of Eramaea and from what few members of the staff I could trust. I learned about the Black Blade. I gathered what information I’d collected, names of nurses and doctors who had worked for our grandparents, the names of those who had died the same day as aunty Odessa, and I took them to him.”

Just the mention of Elias warmed my heart. He’d been telling me the truth. Not that I’d ever doubted him.

“I knew some of them had already died, but I wanted to make sure, to see if any of them were still alive. Anyone who could tell me what had happened to you. Where you were. By then, I’d already decided to flee. I couldn’t risk the attacks getting more aggressive. Not before I found you. So I escaped through the cove and went to search for the names on the list.

“Most of them were old and had died. There was only one name on that entire list that had survived. And the old mermaid was in a nursing home here in Thalassar. The doctors let me see her—they didn’t recognize me, of course—but told me to be gentle, because she was out of her mind.”

I vaguely remembered Elias saying that everyone on the list Odele had given him was dead, save for one. This old mer. Had he spoken to her, or had he deemed it hopeless?

“But she was as sane as you or me. She saw me and recognized me right away. I asked her if she had been there that day my aunt had given birth. She said yes, she’d been head nurse at the time.

“‘She’d been locked in the hospital for months, away from the public eye,’ she told me. ‘It was improper for someone of her station to have a baby out of wedlock, but I knew she had to be married.’”

“Why did she think that?” I asked, speaking for the first time.

“I asked the same thing. She said she wore a ring on her finger like two-leggers do when they get married. And during the first few days of her lock up, a merman kept trying to get in to see her, but was never allowed.”

King Dorian. Had he gone to find her? Begged to see his pregnant wife before he’d been brutally chased from the hospital, the kingdom?

“The nurse said that the day you were born, a merman barged into the hospital, claiming he had royal business to see to. She wasn’t there at the time; she’d gone to get medicine or something. When she came back, the nurses were dead, and she thought Aunty Odessa was too. She said she went to check her pulse and it was weak. She thought she could save her, but all Odessa could manage to say was ‘Odalaea’ over and over again before she died.”

I hadn’t realized the tears were pouring from my eyes until it was too late. Until a sob lodged tightly in my chest and rose, coming out of me in a strangled sound. I muffled it, yanking my hand away from Odele’s to bite down on my skin. Maybe the pain of a physical injury would make me forget this story and all it implied. Make me forget the sadness of my origins.

“Why are you telling me this?” My voice came out as a whisper as I tried holding back the sobs that trembled my body.

“You wanted the truth. This is it. The nurse said she swam to look for you, but it had been too late. And after everything was cleaned up, those who knew of Odessa’s stay at the hospital had started disappearing. She knew she would have been killed eventually, so she hid in that nursing home, all those years, keeping this secret with her.”

What must have it been like for this old mer? To hold one of the greatest secrets in Thalassar, hiding because of what she knew, unable to tell anyone what had happened that day, that somewhere out there, a criminal had stolen a baby. A princess. Me.

“You want to know what else she said?” Odele asked, breaking a silence that had seemed to stretch out for leagues. I didn’t answer before she continued, “She said she knew, in her heart, that someone was caring for the baby. That she had always hoped the baby would be found and that she would retake the throne that was rightfully hers, putting an end to the corruption of the crown.” Odele reached over and squeezed my wrist. “She’s right, you know. You’re a royal, and you’re ready.”

She let the weight of all she’d said settle on to me. I wanted to reply, to say something, ask more questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to say a thing. Having royal blood didn’t make me one. Odele was wrong. So, so wrong.

It was hours before I finally replied, my voice the mere caress of a whisper, “I’m not ready. I’ll never be.”

But Odele didn’t hear me.

She was already fast asleep.