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The days closed in on me, suffocating and demanding. Though I was frightened of what lay ahead, I dared show it to no one. I was back to the way things had been before. I had no allies, and I had no friends. Tiberius and Kai barely spoke to me unless it was necessary for the plan. They looked utterly destroyed, the both of them just trying to get through this wedding and usurping as quickly as possible. Perhaps we should have gotten together, the three of us, to share in our pain and abandonment.
But I was alone, and preferred it that way.
I’d not deny that Odalaea had left an ache in my chest. For a moment, I’d been so blinded with the prospect of family, of a true friend, that I’d forgotten to encase my heart in ice and steel to avoid this hurt. I thought, with her, it wouldn’t have been necessary.
How wrong I was.
So, I threw myself into my duties with ease. Truly, I’d been trained for this my entire life, and if the mer in the palace suddenly found it odd that I was way better at this than my cousin who had pretended to be me, well, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
I’d ordered the seamstress to make me a new wedding gown. No different than the one she’d already tailored. Odalaea was taller than me, and slimmer, so her measurements would not fit. Altering the one she’d already made had felt like a betrayal of my own, somehow. Like I’d be wearing her skin, and that was just too morbid to contemplate, so a new dress had been made. My crowns had been picked out for the ceremony, practice had gone without a hitch, and soon, the palace was hosting new visitors.
We swam to the balcony the day the Draconians arrived. We watched as they paraded through the streets, making a show of arriving at the palace for our wedding. I tried to look unimpressed, but I could not deny that seeing dragons in the flesh was as frightening as it was breathtaking.
The beasts were massive creatures, bigger than any hippocampus I’d ever seen, as big as large orcas, bigger. I knew from my studies that dragons could stretch to the size of humpback whales, but the ones the Draconians had brought seemed tamer than the ones I’d heard about in conches.
Their skin looked leathery and sheer on the wide expanse of their claw tipped wings—wings that, according to conches, helped for easy gliding through the water. Their hides and scales looked as hard as diamonds and sparkled in different colors of blue, red, white, black, and even purple. Spikes ran down their spines like the jutting points of thick, threatening blades, and the many rows of sharp teeth were overwhelming in their gleam.
Leading the procession was a dragon the color of blue ice. It was a massive thing, with slim muscle and an elegance in the long arch of its neck, and the steadiness in its black eyes. It had four legs, with sharp, curved talons that it used to push through the Thalassarin waters. A long serpentine tail, barbed at the end, swished behind it. The wingspan on the creature was impressive and dangerous looking, elegant and vicious in equal measure.
I didn’t even need to look into the longing elation in the eyes of Prince Kai for too long before I realized that this was the mount he boasted of.
Suddenly, I could very well picture him atop it. They both had a stillness about them that was matching, almost eerie.
There were more dragons of course, but none of them stood out as much as this one. Neither, really, did the warriors atop their own mounts. Draconian males and females shared in Kai’s features of dark eyes and varying shades of skin tones ranging from white to a light brown. Some wore kimonos, others wore steel armor shaped like the overlapping scales of a dragon.
“I never thought a Draconian display could ever impress me,” I murmured conspiratorially to Kai.
He cast me a sideways incredulous look when I spoke. Either because of the words, or because they were perhaps the first words I’d spoken in what felt like days. His lip merely twitched in response as he swept past me to go down and greet his mer as they swam up to the palace.
He greeted them in his own language, and I feigned indifference, even as I grasped the words. I’d always been desperate for a piece of the outside waters, and the fact that a bit of Draconian culture was here in Thalassar now, well, I was desperate to grab on to whatever knowledge I could.
“Impressive,” a voice at my ear suddenly whispered.
I sighed with exaggerated exhaustion as I turned to look up at Prince Ytgar. His eyes weren’t on me, but on the parade of Draconians dismounting and greeting their prince and his advisors with respect. One mermaid, with features similar to his, the angle of her sharp cheekbones, and color of her koi fish tail told me they were siblings, especially when she rushed to him and he wrapped his arms around her.
I cripplingly missed Odalaea.
“Of course, the orcas of Iol are much more impressive.”
“Are they?” I asked with bored disinterest. My eyes were still on Kai, who was twirling the mer through the water and laughing merrily, despite being surrounded by dozens of royalty who would judge him for a display. It was the happiest I’d seen him in days.
“Of course,” Ytgar replied. “Val can attest to that. Can’t you, Val?”
“Yes.”
I turned, my eyes narrowing on the merman I hadn’t noticed before. And how had I not noticed him? The mer was massive, built as solidly as a block of ice. He put Tiberius to shame with all that muscle. His skin was brown, his straight hair silver and tied back. Eyes as silver as the glittering of diamonds or snow, found me and an involuntary shiver sluiced down my spine.
The merman—Val—bowed to me. “Princess,” he acknowledged.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded with irritation. More because of my body’s treacherous reaction to Val—who I now remembered to be a whale trainer—rather than their presence.
“We came to greet the Draconians. Perhaps rile them up with our sharp wit and humor.”
“Riiiight.” I rolled my eyes and turned back to watch Kai. He’d finally released the mermaid, and she was speaking to him rapidly, with quick gestures of her fingers and wrists through the water.
“You don’t have to do it, you know,” Ytgar whispered.
“Do what?” My eyebrow rose.
Ytgar smiled knowingly, though what this tiny-brained Iolish could know was a mystery to me. He leaned down, so close, too close it could have been construed as offensive to our visitors. His lips brushed the lobe of my ear, and I fought not to shiver. “You don’t have to marry him,” he whispered.
Behind him, Val warned darkly, “Ytgar...”
Val’s warning went ignored. “You know you don’t want to.”
I turned my head, ever so slightly, that his lips grazed along the edge of my cheek, and when I looked into the ice blue of his eyes, I found them looking down at the space that separated our lips.
“What would you have me do instead?” I teased.
He almost seemed too distracted to answer that question. His tongue darted out to lick his lips, and for a moment, I almost felt the brush of the tip of his tongue against my bottom lip.
“Marry me.”
My whole body went rigid at that. Those words, I hadn’t been expecting them. I’d expected teasing, a joke, and banter. Not that.
“Ytgar,” Val admonished darkly. “Leave her be.”
And then Ytgar’s lips twisted into a slow, mocking smile that made a flush shine across my cheeks. Oh. Oh gods, how embarrassing. He had been joking, and I’d taken his words seriously.
To save my dignity, I tossed my hair back, and looked him straight in the eye, my lip curling to the side in a mocking smile of my own, lest he see too deep. “How cute,” I complimented sweetly. “To think I’d ever sully myself with the likes of you orcas.”
Ytgar blinked. “Orcas?”
My lips pursed. “Isn’t that what your ilk breed with up north? I’ve heard the stories, don’t think I haven’t.” I turned away from him. “Dragons are much more suited to me than orcas. I mean, look.” I gestured at Kai’s dragon, who he was now greeting by running a hand down his snout. “Powerful, majestic. And orcas?” I turned to look at him with mocking, raised eyebrows. “Cold, smelly creatures.”
“Smelly?” Ytgar echoed.
“Disgusting, really. As if you’ve been shoveling their waste all day. I’d sooner let a dragon eat me than lie with a mer who shovels orca feces.”
I didn’t contemplate the brief slash of hurt to cross his features, because I didn’t care, and because I had to go greet the Draconians.
Even if the words he’d muttered had excited me, despite them being a joke, I couldn’t think them over and wish, because I’d made my cousin a promise.
A promise I intended to keep.
The day of the wedding came.
The day I’d fulfill my promise and get Thalassar back.
I bathed quickly, and soon, servants were bustling into my rooms, bringing in the newest dress for the wedding. They set it on the bed beside the old dress, by Odalaea’s. Fear suddenly gripped my gut as I looked at both garments. With difficulty, I pushed the sensation away and let myself be tended to by the servants.
They slipped the dress onto me, fixing the fluff of the skirts before sitting me before my vanity and brushing out my hair. Before they could begin parting the strands in an intricate braid, I stopped them.
“Leave it down,” I ordered. They looked at me incredulously “No fancy braids. Today, I want simplicity.” It almost hurt to utter those words. Since when did I not like ostentatious hairstyles? Today was different. And it didn’t matter what they thought, anyway.
Once they finished dressing me, I shooed them out, my eyes straying to the dress and then to my shelf, where the conch, old and chipped, sat. I’d have to leave it here, but Tiberius would take it into the throne room after the wedding to expose my stepmother.
A sudden twist of nervousness spiraled through me. This had been all I’d hoped to accomplish when I’d discovered the truth so many months ago. Perhaps not in the way I’d envisioned it, but vengeance was so close, too close within my grasp that I feared, for the first time, that I’d ruin the plan entirely.
No.
I couldn’t think that way.
I had to get through this.
I had to be strong.
Or else the whole plan could fall to pieces.