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Because she swam blindly, knocking herself into walls and onto vases, she left a trail in her wake, one that was all too easy to follow.
I found her, finally, still and unmoving in the hall of portraits, staring almost angrily at one in particular. The one of Princess Odessa Malabella Sanitorum, her mother.
I stopped beside her silently, watching her expression, staring from the portrait to her face.
She looked breathtakingly similar to Odele, and that hadn’t meant a thing to me before. After all, the ocean was a vast, vast place. Surely every mer had someone out there who looked like them. But this made sense. It explained so much.
She had the elegant arch in her neck, the same one as Princess Odessa, and her coloring was that of the Malabella lineage, purple-blue hair and tail, pink tones of skin. Her eyes seemed wholly her own. Or maybe those were her father’s or some Kappurin ancestor’s. Features pulled from both royal lines to make up the mer that I loved.
I pressed my hand lightly to her arm. “Would it truly be so bad to be a royal?”
Laughter trickled softly from her throat, and I could tell sheaa didn’t mean it with humor but with bitterness. She turned to me and tears flowed freely from her eyes, rising like shining little clouds above her head. She looked so lost. And it broke my heart.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, it would be.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why is the idea so repulsive to you?”
“Because!” she shouted. “Because this is what it means to be royalty.” She started forward and jerked the sleeves of my kimono up my arms, yanking my palms face down. Her fingers slid over my forearms, and the ridges of thin scars there. The scars my own father had given me. “It means cruelty and death. It’s a whip coming down on hands for answering a question wrong. It’s war. It’s the lives of mer in inexperienced hands.” She pushed me away, almost as if with disgust. “I don’t want that, Kai.”
I let the sleeves slide back to my wrists. “It’s not just cruelty, my gem. It’s so much more.” I took a stroke forward, grabbing her wrist to pull her to me until our bodies touched. Until I felt every curve and angle breathing against me, until I felt the thumping of her heart like the second rhythm of my own. With one hand, I held her and with the other, I pressed it against her chest. “This is what being a royal means.” I pressed my hand tighter against her chest, right against her thumping heart. “It’s for the love of the mer, and the love they have for you. It is heart and determination. It is sensitivity and caring. It is you.”
She stilled, black eyes trained on mine. She wanted to believe me, wanted to grasp onto those words like a lifeline. And I could see the precise moment when it all sank. She yanked away from me, shaking her head back and forth. “It’s not,” she whispered.
Those two words shattered my heart entirely. “It’s not?” I repeated quietly. “Then is our shared love not enough to convince you? Is my love for you so awful that it prevents you from wanting to marry me?”
“You know that’s not it.” Her words came out weak and unconvincing.
“Then what is it?” I demanded, causing her to flinch. “What is it about?”
She paused, and I had cause to wonder if it was about anything at all. If she truly had qualms about the whole thing, or why she even had to stop and think on it. At this moment, I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t understand her.
“It just would have been nice to have been asked,” she admitted quietly. Before I could comment on it, she was shaking her head back and forth and glaring at me once more. “The problem is, you’re a royal.”
“So are you!”
“No. I mean, you’re a royal at heart. You didn’t bother asking me, you just expected me to marry you, without talking to me first, because you’re used to everyone obeying. I don’t want that from you or from this life.”
I ran a hand through my hair, stopping when I realized it was tied up. I dropped it again. “If that’s not who you want to be, then don’t be that mer. I’ll admit, to be a royal sometimes means giving up a part of yourself for the mer, doing what you don’t want to do for their safety and protection. Isn’t that what you’re doing already? You care about the mer, and they care about you. No one is saying you have to be like Odele or like me. Just be you. Caring, kind, and beautiful.”
A sob burst past her lips, and her shoulders began racking up and down. “What if he doesn’t want me?” She gestured at herself, in her imperfect entirety, taking extra effort to gesture at the left side of her tail, where I knew her torn fin was.
“He will want you,” I said fiercely. It was all I could think to say, words I prayed to the Great Dragon would be proven true, because if they turned out not to be, I’d kill the King of Kappur for hurting my mate.
“How do you know?” she demanded angrily.
I pulled her into my arms and held her there, pressing her face into my chest. I let her sobs rack through me, felt her heartbreak like it was my own. Inside, my dragon roared at her pain. I pressed a comforting kiss against the top of her head. “He’s tried to tear apart all of Thalassar to find you, my gem. He will want you. He will.”
She pulled away slightly to look up at me. She sniffled. “Kai,” she whispered. Her words were an invitation to take the pain away with a ferocity that almost crippled me.
I bent down, more than willing to gift her with this, perhaps the only thing I could, when around the corner, a body appeared, stilled, and stared.
Maisie gave a small jolt of fear and turned to look at the merman there.
Staring.
I wondered how long the Iolish mer had been there. What he’d heard. One look into those knowing, eerie silver eyes told me all I needed to know.
He’d heard every bit of our conversation.
“Val,” Maisie murmured nervously.
He looked between us, gaze gauging, assessing like a predator would its prey. There was no mistaking the threat there. A threat that passed over neither of our heads when the side of his lip twitched into the semblance of a smirk.
“Good evening,” he murmured, his voice like black ice, before he swiftly swept past us.
Maisie’s face was white with horror. “He heard us.”
He had. It had been obvious in his expression, the expression similar to a two-legger gloating upon catching game. And we were the fish on his hook.
“What are we going to do?” Maisie looked to me for guidance to fix this. I’d nearly ruined everything else for her, including our relationship. I’d almost pushed my mate away because of my arrogance. The least I could do was fix this.
Determined, I bent and took her lips in a ferocious kiss that left her breathless. All too soon, I was forced to pull away, even as she reached for more.
“Go to your room, my gem,” I ordered gently, yet firmly. “I will sort this out.”
I half expected an argument, but she sighed and nodded. Before she left, she pressed her hand warmly against my arm, like an offering of peace between us, as if our relationship hadn’t just shifted into something more. Boundaries had been tested, threatened the balance of the love we shared. I could only hope that our honesty strengthened it, helped us love deeper, wholly.
She turned from me, and I watched her go briefly before I whirled and swam to catch up with the Iolish.
He swam at a sedated pace, with all the stance of a mer who had nothing to worry about. He tensed when I swam up to him, and I noticed his hand skim over the pommel of his sword.
I decided to do aside with niceties. “You heard,” I accused without preamble.
He didn’t break his stance. Didn’t slow, or hasten. I took in his cool demeanor. The merman looked every bit a warrior. He was fairly tall, taller than even me, with a wide expanse of muscle. He looked like a block of ice, and his silver eyes were eerie, with something absolutely vicious in those depths.
“Perhaps,” he answered coolly. “It did not make sense at first, but I understand it now. Why she is so different from what we heard of her.” There was a smile in his voice, even if his lips were forming a thin, serious line.
A hot wave of rage swept through me, causing me to give free reign to the dragon inside. It reared up, spreading its massive wings. I could feel the change take over me in an instant. Nails lengthened to talons, scales hardening, pupils splitting, eyes changing. Everything about me was suddenly menacing.
But the Iolish did not quiver, foolish mer.
“You will tell no one,” I growled, my voice low and guttural. I’d do whatever it took to protect my mate and her secrets. Even if I had to leave this one bloody in the waters. “You will speak to no one about what you heard or saw.”
The Iolish stopped and turned abruptly to me, silver eyes blazing like starlight. “I do not respond to threats. So you will do well to hold your tongue.”
I smiled, a formidable twist of my lips that was mocking, and knowing. “Perhaps not, but if you share her secrets then I will be forced to share yours.”
He did tense then, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword of steel and ice. His eyes narrowed, as if to say, I don’t know what you mean.
I smiled cruelly. “You Iolish may frown upon mingling with the rest of the kingdoms, and you may close yourselves off, but you are not as secretive as you think.” Daringly, I lifted a talon up and traced it down the length of his smooth cheek. He kept still, as still as a block of ice. “You thought I wouldn’t know? We are neighbors, after all.”
He did knock my hand away then, without fear, yet with impatience. He had assumed a battle-ready stance, but I had no desire to fight him. All I wanted was assurance, assurance that he would not tell our secrets. In exchange, I would not tell his.
“I assume you are keeping your secrets for a reason, just like we are keeping ours.”
The Iolish growled. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“Your silence is all I seek.”
“Then you have it.”
He held his arm out to me. A Iolish tradition, to seal deals with a hard shake. I clasped my arm in his, gripping his forearm while he gripped mine. We shook tightly, brusquely, and then pulled away.
“So it is done,” he murmured.
I smiled. “So it is.”