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“Well, he seems as stiff as ever.”
I hadn’t noticed the moment Odele had swam out of the bathing room and plopped herself down on the bed. She laid against it casually and was giving me a knowing, sarcastic look that I fought to ignore.
“Even when he’s trying to be romantic, he sounds so... rigid.” She laughed mockingly, and my annoyance with her flared.
“You know he cares for you, right?” I snapped.
Odele’s eyebrows rose. Her lips twitched. “It seems like he cares for you.”
I growled, forgetting she was a princess. I glared at her, mer to mer. “He was in love with you, Odele.” I don’t know why I threw it out like an accusation. Perhaps I wanted some trace of emotion from her, to be reminded that she wasn’t just a crown and the jewelry she wore. To get a glimpse of the vulnerability underneath, at the mermaid who cried while locked in a bathing room after confronting the mer who had killed her mother. I wanted to see that mer. Not this doll, not this princess. I wanted to see a trace of the mer that Tiberius had fallen in love with. The lonely, vulnerable mermaid he’d wanted me to believe she was.
“I know that,” she replied, clearly annoyed.
I tried to control my angry breathing. It was hard, so hard to not want to reach across the space that separated us and throttle her. I settled for a question instead, one I had to know. Even if the answer could threaten to destroy me entirely.
“Did you ever love him back?”
Odele paused as she stared at me, reading me. I didn’t squirm. I just lifted my head in a confidence and defiance I didn’t truly feel. Inside, I felt weak.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she replied. “No. I never loved Captain Saber.”
Something in me eased but a fraction. “Why not?” I knew it was a silly question as soon as I asked it. She could ask me why I loved Elias, Kai, and even Captain Saber, and I’d be able to answer thoroughly, but I doubted she’d understand just how deep the depths my feelings for them ran. The heart wanted what it wanted, and mine tore me into three different directions, not forcing me to choose, but wanting them all at once.
Odele shrugged and leaned forward, hugging her tail, expression suddenly serious. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess... I mean... I watched you both just now.” My cheeks heated at the admission, but she didn’t say it to shame me. “You do something to him, something I was never able to do.” She shook her head back and forth. “I’m not explaining this right... You challenge him, cousin, and he challenges you, but me and the captain? We never had that. He never questioned me or defended himself when I was rude to him. That’s how I know it wasn’t love. That maybe, he never really loved me in the first place.”
We were both quiet after that, both lost in our thoughts, seeming to contemplate the words she’d just said. I wondered if it could be true, if Captain Saber had never really loved her. Maybe she’d known and that’s why she never reciprocated those feelings. Because they weren’t meant to be.
But if Odele and Captain Saber weren’t meant to be, then who was he supposed to be with? Was it selfish of me to want him, Elias, and Kai? Probably. I wanted them all regardless.
“So now what?” I asked after a while.
Odele looked up at me with curiosity. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “You heard him. There are things you have to do today. What should we do? Should we tell everyone you’re back or...” I let the sentence trail off; let her fill in the blanks, even if I loathed what she might say.
Odele’s eyes widened before she made a face of disgust. “Oh, gods, no.” She stuck out her tongue. “Do you know what would happen if we told anyone I was back, cousin?” I’d had an idea before, but hearing her say it aloud, solidifying it, made my whole body tremble. “My stepmother, the evil barracuda, would have us both killed.”
“You think?”
“I may be rich and vain, but I am not daft. You think I haven’t figured out why my stepmother didn’t want me in the royal records room? Who is the one who has benefitted from all these deaths, and who is trying to keep me from uncovering the truth?” She shook her head furiously. “It’s her. I know it. And if she knew I was back, the attacks on both of our lives could get more aggressive.”
The mercenary had said that someone—the queen, most likely—had discovered the truth of who I was, and wanted him dead for not being able to finish the job. It would explain her not-so-veiled threats towards me. Because she knew who I was and the threat I posed to her throne. The threat both Odele and I posed to her. She’d do anything to keep the throne, and she was capable of anything, like killing her cousins and trying to kill her cousins’ daughters.
“We have to keep this a secret,” Odele urged. “For both of our sakes.”
I agreed with a nod of my head but looked at her with narrowed eyes. “So where will you be? Come to think of it, where have you been?” I doubted she’d been staying at shady night inns.
“I told you, I got the blueprints to the palace. That means I know routes and secret passageways no one else does. I know how to stay hidden.”
I blanched at that. She was telling me that she’d been hiding in the palace this whole time, right under everyone’s noses? I had the sudden vague flash of memory, of her in this room one night, lingering by the shelf of coral that held her little trinkets.
I grinded my teeth together to hold back my frustration. It hadn’t been a dream at all. It had been real.
She’d played us all for fools.
I crossed my arms over my chest with annoyance. “What if I refuse to do your duties?” I snapped. All she’d done this whole time was sit back and watch as I suffered through her royal life. Through Percival’s beatings, the poisonings, and the queen’s threats. And she’d done nothing to help, nothing to stop it. And now she would sit back and let me continue through this, while she was tucked safely away, hidden from the mer who wanted us both dead.
Odele’s eyes twinkled. “You could, but you won’t refuse. You forget, dearest cousin, I’ve been investigating for months and have been observing for just as long.” She leaned back on her palms, kicking her tail out carelessly. “For as much as you claim to despise royal life, I can tell that you actually love it.”
My whole body jolted, as if I’d been stung by a jellyfish. I uncrossed my arms, clasping my hands in front of me. “You’re wrong,” I replied weakly.
She snorted, telling me how much she disbelieved me with a simple sound. “You don’t have to hide it from me. I recognize that look in your eye. You enjoy the privileged, lavish life. You enjoy having my prince—and apparently a guard—to yourself. It’s okay to admit it, you know.”
Captain Saber had said much the same thing. Words I didn’t want to believe. I didn’t enjoy getting almost murdered at every turn and I didn’t enjoy not having any power to protect anybody. How was any of this enjoyable?
“My life is in danger.” My voice cracked. “I’m out here taking arrows that are meant for you.” And she didn’t seem like she cared one bit.
“My life is in danger, too,” Odele argued. “And those arrows weren’t just meant for me. But as long as you keep pretending to be me, she won’t harm you fully.”
“What, because she hasn’t harmed me at all thus far?” I scoffed.
Odele shook her head. “The attacks have ceased, at least for now. Why do you think that is?” When I shrugged, Odele went on. “Because the public loves you now, Odalaea. She wants to keep you in line for now. And she also wants to find me. The minute she has us both together, she won’t hesitate to take us out. That’s why my appearance has to be kept a secret, if only to buy us a little more time.”
“Little more time for what?” I nearly shouted, waving my hands in the water with exasperation.
“To take down my stepmother, and to place you on your throne.”
Those words, once more, dawned on me. She would not let this go. She wouldn’t let me rest until I accepted what she said as truth. Until I sat on that throne, whether I deserved it or not.
“Why do you want me on that throne so badly, Odele?” I asked, not caring if I was speaking to her with familiarity. We were past propriety now, each of us knowing hidden aspects of the other to give us that right of speech. “I’ve seen your conches down in that cove. I’ve seen you prepare yourself to be Queen of Thalassar.”
My question made Odele’s careless movements suddenly freeze. Her jaw clamped closed, and the expression in her eyes shuddered into one that was almost unreadable. Then she loosed a small breath and tried to assume that same blithe spirit as before, flicking floating tendrils of hair over her shoulder. Her movements just came out terse.
“The throne belongs to you, Odalaea...”
“No, it doesn’t,” I snapped sharply. She glared at me, and I did not back down from her stare. “Even if Dorian and Odessa’s marriage was legitimate, there was a contract promising her to another. They both broke that contract, and Thalassar wouldn’t recognize them, or their child, as heir to the throne. You know this. So why are you pushing it?”
There had to be a reason she was doing this. I wanted to believe what she’d said last night. That she had gone through such lengths to find the missing royal—to find me—because of her sense of honor, her sense of family. But I knew her. I’d seen her personality shine through in the silver-gold glow of secret conches. I’d seen cruelty in her, and shallowness as well.
Odele must have known that. For all the secrets she kept, for all she claimed to know me, I knew her too. And like Captain Saber, I wanted to see the good in her. The vulnerability. I wanted to see the mer who cried behind closed doors. A mer who didn’t hide what she was feeling.
But Princess Odele let out a sound of eternal exasperation, her voice suddenly a tone more serious when she replied, “I told you last night, cousin. You and me, we’re the closest things left of our mothers. I searched for you because I wanted family, a friend. Do you think Jessinda is that for me? She’s not. She gossips and talks behind my back. At least you’re brave enough to say what you think to my face. That’s what I want. I want what my mother had. A sister.” She paused, like she was letting those words sink in for a moment. “But I can tell that you don’t feel the same.”
She got up then, ever the image of grace and refinement. She smoothed out the nightgown she wore, pushed back her tendrils of hair until they stayed. Every movement was precise, holding an edge of finality, and I couldn’t help but feel like every swipe of hand, and finger, was equivalent to the swing of a blade, readying to come over my head.
“If you don’t want my royal duties, that’s fine. I know they’re not ideal. They may not be what you imagined when you came to Eramaea, so I won’t burden you with them any further.” Her narrowed eyes focused on me intently. “Just do me a favor when you leave; do it secretly and get as far away from Thalassar as possible. Even if you don’t care about me, I care about you. I want you safe.”
A lump had caught tightly into my throat. I couldn’t swallow past it; I couldn’t do anything but stare at her, breathe her in. Compare us once more.
Over the years, there were things I’d learned while living a lonely life in Lagoona. When my grandmother had died, I felt more alone than I ever could have imagined feeling. All my family was dead; what did it matter if I died, too? But then Josiah had pulled me up from my sinkage. He’d been the only father figure I’d ever had in my life. And it was thanks to him that I realized family wasn’t just about blood.
And here was Odele, a Princess of Thalassar, claiming a blood right that neither of us had known existed until recently. Claiming me as hers, wanting me as I was, limp and all.
I saw it then. Saw that her desperation for a family to call her own was an equal match to my own desires. Not a family who was dead, or the murderers, but actual blood. That loved with honesty, with their all. She was offering it up to me, and I was pushing her away.
“I—” The word came out a rasp. I cleared my throat, and tried again. “It’s hard for me... to accept all of this as reality,” I explained. Her eyes were on me cautiously. “It’s obviously easier for you, but I’ll need time, okay?” She opened her mouth to speak, no doubt to tell me we didn’t have time, but I spoke over her. “I cannot accept the throne or the crown and riches that comes with the Malabella lineage. But I can try to accept you. As family.”
One moment she was stern and the next, alighted with happiness. Odele squealed loudly and rushed to me. Her arms enveloped me in a crushing hug of strength that was surprising. It took a moment to push past the incoherent screeching to realize that she was speaking words in her excitement. I floated numbly in her arms, unsure of what to do at first, before I slowly wrapped my arms around her and gave her an equally strong squeeze.
We stayed like that for a moment, wrapped in each other’s arms. In that moment, everything fell apart, fell away. I could forget who I thought her to be, and what she was inside. None of it seemed to matter then, because all I cared about was this.
Being in the arms of family.
“I can’t breathe,” I gasped.
Odele ignored me and yanked the strings tighter. “Suck it in,” she ordered unkindly, yanking once more.
My hands were on the curved ivory edge of her bed for support while Odele was behind me, pushing and yanking as she tried to fit me into, what she called, a corset. It was more like a torture device that threatened to squeeze my bones until they snapped.
“Why do I have to wear this?” I asked breathlessly.
Odele finally stopped pulling and began tying. When she finished, she spun me around unceremoniously. She was making noises that ranged between approval and disapproval, but didn’t answer right away. She grabbed for a dress, a solemn looking thing in black, and pulled that over me as well.
As if I was a child that needed help dressing.
“You’ve been half-tailing the way you dress for months now. It’s embarrassing, and you’re making me look bad.” She started fixing the dress at the hem and then straightened to fix the low neckline.
My face heated at her honesty. I knew I wasn’t princess-like; the fashion critics on the telly had made that abundantly clear after my first anniversary dinner. I just hadn’t expected her to say it with such disgust. It made me want to bury my head in the sand.
“It’s not my fault you don’t have maids,” I grumbled.
Odele clucked her tongue. “I don’t have maids because I don’t want them snooping around my stuff. Also, no one does a better job at dressing me than me. Now, let’s brush your hair.” She pulled me away from the bed and sat me in front of her little vanity table. It was of Thalassarin make. A blue clamshell opened, the edges rimmed with jellies glowing a natural light and held a mirror in the middle.
I avoided staring at myself while she got to work, instead focusing my gaze on the pins and brushes she picked up and set back down in a pattern.
She worked in silence for a while before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“If you were hiding in the palace the whole time, why didn’t you ever make yourself known before now?”
Her fingers paused on my scalp before she resumed working, pulling apart strands to comb them out. “I wasn’t sure if I could trust you yet. If you would tell the queen about me or not.”
Perhaps I would have, those first few weeks. I was miserable enough to want to end the whole charade, to go back home to Lagoona and never have to set fin in Eramaea again.
“What made you decide to trust me?”
“I saw the broadcast on the telly where you saved the Black Blade.” I felt the hair begin to tighten, and stole a small glance in the mirror to see her braiding it. “I thought anyone who publicly defies the queen and the law like that is deserving of my trust.” She bent over me and picked up a string of pearls that were a mixture of white and pink, and one by one, she began integrating them into the braids.
“But you still didn’t show yourself right away.”
“No,” she agreed. “I couldn’t find the right time to do it, and I was nervous you’d dislike me.”
My eyes widened as I took in her reflection. Her? A princess of the realm nervous I’d dislike her? I couldn’t fathom it.
“There.” She placed the last pearl into place and took a stroke back. “Stop ogling at me and look at yourself.” She gestured at the mirror.
I tore my gaze away from her to finally stare at myself.
I froze.
“Pretty, right? We look nearly identical, but this way it’s more believable.” Odele’s face appeared next to mine, but all I saw was my own.
She’d taken the stubborn strands and pulled them back, creating braids at my sides in a way that kept the strands floating in what looked like magical curls behind me. Pearls shone, pink-white against the dark strands of my hair, forming a discreet yet beautiful crown around my head.
“You have elegant cheekbones and a slender neck that should be showed off. Your eyelashes are dark enough to not need cosmetics, and your eyes are super intense. I wish mine were that dark.” Odele sighed wistfully into my ear. And each word she spoke, I saw. I saw what she meant, what I’d never seen in myself before.
I was beautiful.
“Thank you,” I whispered, emotion tight in my throat. I never thought I could be beautiful. Even as I spent months in her fins, wearing her dresses, I’d never felt the sensation I was feeling just then.
She waved me off. “You’re beautiful, cousin. I mean, duh, you’re a Malabella. Our mothers were gorgeous.”
They were. I’d stared so often at their portraits in the hall that I knew it for a fact. Even if I hadn’t been able to see a royal in myself then, I did now.
“I look like her,” I said, so quietly that it wasn’t meant to be heard.
Odele heard it anyway, her smile radiant. “Of course you do. Although your nose is a bit straighter, and your cheeks aren’t as round. I suppose you get it from King Dorian.”
“Do you know what he’s like?” I asked. “King Dorian, I mean.” I couldn’t refer to him as my father, like I couldn’t refer to Princess Odessa as my mother. Not yet.
Odele nodded. “He’s very beautiful, so I hear.”
I hadn’t ever actually seen any recent recordings of the King of Kappur, but I didn’t doubt her words. Most royals were quite beautiful, and even if he’d waged war with Thalassar for years, I didn’t doubt the truth of his appearance. I’d seen him promise himself to Odessa. He’d been young then, probably younger than me at the time. He’d been handsome in his youth. But I couldn’t help but wonder if, like King Xristo, the light had extinguished from his eyes, if he was nothing but a simple, hollow shell of a merman.
“Anyway, I’m done now. You can get up and go about your duties.”
I got up slowly, getting a good look at myself and the dress she forced me in. I couldn’t take my eyes off my reflection.
The dress was scandalous. Perhaps the most revealing thing I’d ever worn. The neckline was plunged relatively low, and the corset pushed my breasts up, holding them firm. The décolletage was low, the edges trimmed with a thin pattern of sea lace. Despite the revealing neckline, the dress had long, sheer sleeves, a cinched waist, and a long, light train that flowed down to my fins.
I tugged at the neckline, trying to pull it above the swells of my breasts, but it didn’t budge.
“Just leave it,” Odele ordered with irritation. “You’ll rip it if you keep doing that. Here...” She was in front of me suddenly, swatting aside my hands and—to my numbing shock—grabbing my breasts. She stuck her fingers in the neckline and adjusted, then pushed my breasts up so far, it seemed like they’d spill out.
“Why?” I beseeched, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why is this dress necessary? And why black?”
Odele rolled her eyes. “It’s not black, it’s violet.”
I looked down at it again with raised eyebrows. At first glance, it looked black. But I obviously hadn’t been paying much attention to it. When I moved, the dress seemed to shimmer, and it was violet. A violet so dark it looked black, two colors clashing together in every strand as I moved, battling for dominance.
It would look absolutely perfect with...
I whirled away from Odele and rushed to the spot where I’d hidden Elias’s ring, my ring, now. It matched perfectly with the dress, too.
Odele eyed it and smiled. “I was just about to suggest jewelry. Give it here.” She held out her palm, and when I hesitated, she pulled the ring from my fingers. She looked at it curiously for a moment, obviously noting that this piece wasn’t hers, but after a moment, she merely shrugged. I watched as she rummaged around in one of her drawers and produced a dark, delicate chain from which she slipped the ring onto. “So riptide,” she smiled as she went behind me to clasp the chain around my neck. The heavy weight of the ring settled in the curve between my breasts. Just the sight of it there felt intimate. Odele circled back to face me, eyes bright. “The tides will love it, cousin.”
I looked down self-consciously. “The cleavage is a bit much.”
“Nonsense. You look like a confection.”
An eyebrow rose. “I look like a pastry?”
Odele pointed. “Exactly. A delectable, sweet, and delicious snack.”
I’m sure what she said was meant to be a compliment, but all it did was make me flush and look down, where the first thing I saw was the rise and fall of the swells of my pink skin, and the color was only darkening. I bit back the groan that tumbled up my chest. Yes, I did look good, but I was also embarrassed by it.
Odele must have sensed the turn my thoughts were taking, because she swam into my personal space, so close our noses touched. She brought her hands up and clapped them on either side of my cheeks. “Own it,” she commanded. “You’re a Malabella, a princess, and you’re beautiful. I know for a fact you’ll have Tiberius ensnared in seduction the moment he sets eyes on you. Be confident.”
Her words sunk into me, into the hollow pits of my mind and heart right next to my insecurities. A million protests sprang to my lips. I am not beautiful. I have a limp. I am a waitress. I’m not royalty.
None of them came out.
I saw myself as she did, pressing those words so tightly into my chest until I believed them. I was beautiful, limp or no. And I was descended from two beautiful mer. I carried their blood in my veins, the blood of greatness, of two mer who loved each other.
And for once in my life, I felt that swell of power rise in me, shifting me entirely.
Odele smiled. “Good.” And she took a stroke away.
I felt the change in my posture, the straight back, and the tilted chin. It wasn’t just because I’d perfected that pose in order to be her. It was a pose of confidence and regal command.
Mine alone.
“Go forth and prove to them how much of a royal you truly are.”
I swam out into the hallway, closing the door behind me, while Odele’s words echoed in my mind.
Prove to them how much of a royal you truly are.
I wasn’t a royal, but I sure felt like one, for the first time since I’d come here. It was all thanks to Odele. Funny that, how the royal I thought I’d come to despise had become an ally of sorts, a tentative member of my family. I still couldn’t read her as well as I hoped. She was still somewhat of a mystery, though not quite as selfish as I imagined her to be.
Oh, her vanity was there and strong, like the crashing pull of a vicious wave. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder—hope—that there was more beneath the surface of her. The way Captain Saber had hoped as well.
“Princess...”
So engrossed in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed the guards surrounding me, Captain Saber leading them in the middle. Every single one of them took me in with wide, surprised eyes.
I did not feel an inch of shyness as I lifted my chin and smiled at them each in turn. Some of them flushed and looked away. Others had their eyes focused on the revealing décolletage and couldn’t seem to look up. Captain Saber took one look at me, and his expression shuttered into one of scrutiny. Just as quickly as he took me in, he fixated his gaze on his mermen and snapped at them.
“Eyes ahead, soldiers. You have a job to do.” His tone held a hint of irritation, which I couldn’t help but find amusing.
The soldiers all assumed their positions surrounding me, like mer-shields on my every side. The captain took his place stiffly to my left, and we began to swim.
As the hallways widened, so did the mermen’s stances. They put space between us, giving me an illusion of privacy, though they were undoubtedly close enough to hear anything I had to say.
Captain Saber was the only one to stay by my side, and he didn’t say a word.
“What’s on the schedule today, Captain?” I broke the silence between us.
“The queen requests a meeting with all of the royals currently present.” His blistering reply thawed at the confidence I’d so surely built. There was no trace of the caring warmth he’d displayed that morning in my—Odele’s—room. He was back to his rigid old self. Someone who couldn’t be bothered with me at all.
Just as I started to retreat into my silence, I felt a warmth slide across my knuckles and the tips of my fingers. I looked down slowly, finding Captain Saber’s own fingers ever close to mine. He flexed them, and the tips grazed across my skin.
It was a simple touch, but one that seemed to melt me from the inside out.
My own fingers reached for him, not to hold or to grasp, but to convey a silent message between our hands. A message I couldn’t really decipher at all, and I doubted he could either. But we were there, and we were touching.
And that was enough.