“Go now!” I shout.
Talise, who is closest to the opening, flees, followed by Baltic and Edlyn. Dover’s a lot slower, and by now, the guards are starting to move.
Adra hands me the hairpiece, and I point it at the selkies as I swim backward.
“Thanks for the hug. I feel better now. All warm and fuzzy, and…” I glance over my shoulder and shift to leave the cell. “And now it’s time to part waves.”
I slam the cell shut and race to follow my friends. Coming here had been a mistake, but things could’ve been worse. They could’ve been better, but they could’ve been worse.
Chapter 8
We slow down once we leave the kingdom behind. There aren’t any guards around the perimeter anymore, which makes me very uneasy. Just what is their queen planning? The selkies had to have been lying about our king and queen, right? All we did was make matters worse.
Dover’s sleeping so slowly now, and I have to admit that I’m not feeling up for a race any longer myself. I swim beside him and throw an arm around his waist.
He grunts. “I thought you liked the leviathan.”
I jerk away from him. “Who told you?”
Dover laughs and then groans, wincing. “First of all, you could’ve told me.”
“Who told?”
“No one did. You talk about him all the time. You blush when you talk to him. You stare at him.”
“I don’t stare, and I never blush.”
“Okay, yes, you don’t really blush. Your face just doesn’t seem quite so white anymore. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, but your face does change some—”
“All right. Fine. Yes. I like the leviathan, who, by the way, has a name.”
“Yes, yes.”
“I’m not touching you because I like you,” I inform him.
“Ouch.”
I giggle. “Well, I do but as a friend.”
“Your hand. Down lower. Ah, thank you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize—”
“You don’t listen well enough.”
“You didn’t say that I was hurting you.”
“That’s what ouch means,” he says dryly.
“Yes, well, I thought…”
He chuckles and then winces again.
“You need to heal, don’t you?”
“That would be nice. You got some cuts and bruises yourself.”
“Yes. Tails can bruise. Who knew?”
“Um, we all did. We’ve all gotten bruised during our underwater training regimes.”
“Yes, yes, I was trying to make a joke.” I sigh. “Do you have to be so difficult?”
“Yes. I enjoy watching you squirm instead of swim.”
Giggling, I shake my head and then turn serious. “You fought so hard.”
“We all did. Even Adra and she hates violence.”
“She’s the only one to have brought along a backup weapon.”
Dover glances at me. “Do you honestly think—”
“Hey, Adra!” I call and wave her over.
She heads back to us. Dover and I are starting to fall behind a little, but I can see the toll the fighting has taken on the others. They’re heavier in the water, not as smooth as they normally would be as they cut through the waves.
“What is it? Is something wrong?” Adra asks worriedly.
I shake my head and point to her hair. “You wore that because you knew it would go unnoticed, didn’t you?”
“A hairpiece as a weapon? I never would’ve thought of that all by my lonesome.” Adra covers her mouth and giggles. “Actually, my aunt told me that it could be used as a weapon when she gave it to me.”
Frowning, I furrow my brow. “Why would she want to give you a hairpiece and specify that it could be used as a weapon?”
“I think it was because she noticed that Storm had been paying more attention to me.”
“Ah. Storm.”
That explains a lot. I seriously don’t know what his parents had been thinking to name him Storm, but that’s another story. Storm is… Well, he’s aptly named now that I think about it. He tends to act before thinking and has gotten into more than his fair share of fights with the others. He’s very territorial and fiercely loyal, but he’s also prone to leaping to conclusions, which isn’t the best of combinations.
“Do you really need a weapon to deal with Storm?” Dover asks skeptically.
“Not truly, no,” Adra says, “but the queen is overly cautious.”
“She is, isn’t she?” I muse. “If the king is behind the attack and did provoke the selkies, I have to believe that the queen knew nothing about it.”
Dover wrinkles his nose. “Can we believe anything the selkies said?”
“I don’t know,” Adra says quietly. “I don’t know, but I’m glad we aren’t in their clutches anymore.”
“Me too. Don’t get me wrong,” I say, “but I almost wonder what their next move would have been had we been escorted to the ‘bowels’ of their castle.”
“I’m not that curious,” Dover says dryly.
“I’m glad we don’t have to learn either,” Adra says with a shudder.
“What do you know about their new queen?” I ask her.
“Nothing.” She gives a soft laugh. “I’m only the niece of Queen Kaia. It’s not as if I’m in line to be queen after her. I don’t know anything about their queen, not even her name.”
“Do you think she lied? Or that her guards lied to us?” I press.
“Of course it’s possible.” Adra shrugs. “We didn’t learn anything for certain.”
“Which means we became injured and our lives threatened for no reason,” I say bitterly. “I’m so sorry. We never should’ve gone there.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Dover says. “I don’t regret going.”
“You don’t?” I ask, surprised.
“You would’ve gone without us and gotten yourself killed if not for us,” he retorts. “Don’t deny it.”
I shut my mouth. “Maybe,” I concede.
Up ahead, the others have just reached the border of our kingdom. The guards are furious to see us, and I can hear their shouts and their desire to send us straight to the king and queen for punishment. When Dover comes into view, they change their tune.
“They need to go to the medical center,” one of the guards says. “Look at his injuries!”
“I will take them there,” I volunteer.
“You need to be looked after too.”
“Oh, no. I’m fine,” I protest. I want to see my dad.
The guards and I argue for about a minute, and they win. Worse, two of them escort us to the medical center and then stay there. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll bail, or they want to give the king and queen details about our injuries. I’m not sure, but only after we’re all seen does one leave.
The healers spend the bulk of their time with Dover and Baltic. The latter is far more injured then he let on, and even I have to wince as I’m poked and prodded. Now that I’m not in foreign waves and have a chance to relax, I can’t deny that I’m suffering myself. All I want is a chance to sleep, but I refuse to. I need to check on Dad.
The others, though, are all resting, and I feign sleep. Once I hear a merman swim away, I peek open one eye before sitting up.
A healer perched at the end of my seaweed bed grunts. “I knew you would be the runner out of the group,” she says. She lifts her chin. “Do you care to tell me how you all received these injuries?”
“I don’t care to,” I mumble.
“You need to rest to recover.”
“I can rest at home.”
She tilts her head to the side. “You look familiar. You’re the daughter of—”
“Yes, and he’s at home, so I would very much like to go to him.”
The healer purses her lips. “You shouldn’t have left. He was worried about you and came here. I tried to convince him to stay, but he refused and—”
“Why did you want him to
stay?” I blurt out so loudly that Dover, in the bed beside me, stirs. I sheepishly lower my voice. “Is he faring badly?”
“He is worried and not eating or resting enough for his body to recover.”
I close my eyes and exhale. Rage rifles throughout my body, banishing away all of my aches and pains. When I open my eyes, I watch as one of the bruises on my tail shrinks almost to the point of dissolving away entirely.
“Please let me go,” I whisper.
“You need to—”
“I will leave with or without your blessing.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she says dryly.
I smile at her. “If I have your blessing, my dad will worry less.”
“Oh, I doubt that considering his daughter seems to be a rather rash creature,” she continues in that tone.
My smile grows even wider. “What is your name?”
“Jewel.”
“Hmm. Jewel, would you be willing to swim me home and check on my dad with me?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “You strive a hard bargain. Rillia is your name, isn’t it?”
I nod.
“Very well. You do seem to be recovering faster than anticipated.”
I grin. Maybe that’s because of my shifter nature.
The healer and I don’t talk very much on the swim over to my coral house. She seems to be rather compassionate and very kind. Smart too, given her profession, and I can’t help but almost wish that she and my dad… But, no. It won’t work. Dad has never gotten over my mom. His face lit up when we spoke about her and I questioned him if she could have been a sea dragon.
Before we enter her house, Jewel stops me. “I wish you the very best.”
“Thank you,” I say, confused.
“Your father did say that if you returned alive, he might very well be the one to kill you.”
I hang my head. “So, he knows we…”
“He suspects that you and your friends swam out of the kingdom. Is that true?”
I shrug and swim inside my house. Now that she’s prying, I’m not so sure I want to introduce her to Dad as a potential love interest after all.
There’s slight banging from my room, and I enter to see Dad wincing. My books had fallen from my shelf above my seaweed bed.
“How about a little privacy, Dad?” I joke.
“Rillia!” Dad races over at almost full speed and envelopes me in a tight embrace. “How could you have gone and left like that? Without a note or anything?”
I wiggle free as Jewel lurks in the doorway. “Dad, this is Jewel.”
Dad ignores her. “You had me worried sick.”
“Don’t puke on me,” I joke.
“This is not a time for teasing,” he says.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“I should be asking you that!”
“I’ll answer after you.”
“I’m fine,” he grumbles.
I glance over at Jewel and shrug. She sighs, nods, and swims away.
“That was rude,” I remark after I spy her through my window. She’s swimming away, back toward the medical center.
“I don’t care about some healer. I’m fine. I just want to make certain you are.”
“So you send away the healer,” I point out.
“I doubt she would’ve left if you needed her,” he points out. “Did you go where I think you went?”
“That depends.”
“On where I think you went, eh? You went to Aquilina.”
It’s not a question.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To learn why they attacked us.”
“And?”
I exhale loudly. “I don’t know. I’m fine. My friends will be too.”
“What is it?” Dad asks.
I shake my head.
“Rillia…”
“Dad, I… I was foolish. I lured my friends into danger.”
Just being here, thinking about the last time that I saw my dad, the secret I shared with him…
The entire time we had been in Aquilina, I hadn’t even thought about that side of myself. Horror rises within me as I realize that most everything could have gone so very differently if only I remembered that part of myself.
“What’s worse is that we were captured. I… I could’ve prevented that. The capture. And I could have freed us a lot sooner than I did.”
“You mean by turning into…”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I clear my throat and rub the back of my neck. “I didn’t even think about it,” I mutter. “Not once. Not until just now.”
“You haven’t accepted who you are.”
“I don’t even know what I am,” I say miserably.
“What you are is brave. Foolishly so, but you are brave, and you are my daughter. Do you need to know more than that?” Dad holds out his arms.
I hug him. “So you aren’t mad at me?”
“Mad? No.”
“Good.” I squeeze him tighter.
“But you are punished.”
“Dad,” I groan.
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. You would punish your daughter if she did the same.”
“No. I would totally be one of those cool parents who understands impulsive behavior.”
“Not when that impulsive behavior threatens the lives of friends and also might cause a war to start between two species.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t want it to come to that.”
“None of us do,” he says. “None of us do.”
Maybe none of the merfolk, but I have a feeling the selkies do, the lot of them.
Chapter 9
For the next few days, I don’t know what to do with myself. Dad seems to be healing some, but he’s not fully mobile yet. His racing around when I came back had been a result of pure adrenaline, and he suffered for that afterward. I tend to him and check on my friends. It’s Baltic who notices that I have a terrible scar right above my tail. I must’ve been injured far more seriously than I ever realized, but it healed already, far faster than a mermaid would ever heal.
I am not just a mermaid.
That is something I still haven’t accepted yet, and I also haven’t accepted anything else as far as the merfolk and the selkies and our rift. Guards keep coming by my coral house, asking for me to go to the king and queen and tell them exactly what happened. Dad either tells them I’m not around or else he flat-out refuses. I don’t know if Adra’s managing to avoid talking to her aunt. She’s the only one of my friends I haven’t been able to check and see how she’s faring.
Dover is loving spending time in the medical center. Mermaids are fawning over him, and he’s pretending that he had been attacked by a shark of some kind to impress them. He must be part pig because he’s such a ham.
Baltic is more like me. He doesn’t want to be in the medical center, and he’s using some old seaweed-based healing salves and bandages. When I realize this, I tease him.
“What? Was your grandmother a sea witch?”
Baltic just stares at me.
My jaw drops. “Seriously?”
“A sea witch isn’t really a thing, Rillia. Either you’re a witch, or you aren’t. Just because she lived in the sea doesn’t make sea witch a thing.”
“So, she was a witch?”
“Yes. I didn’t inherit any of her abilities, though.”
“A witch merfolk,” I murmur.
“It’s not often that merfolk can be another type of paranormal creature, but it is possible.”
“Yes,” I mutter, but I clam up and make like a crab and swim away sideways. That had been the perfect opportunity for me to talk to someone about what I am, but I can’t.
Why? Baltic won’t think any differently about me for being part sea-dragon. Or would he? The hatred between merfolk and sea dragons will always be strong, although our contempt for the selkies grows by the day. The seal-humans have been lurking by our coral lately, but there hasn
’t been another fully fledged battle, thank the tide.
Talise and Edlyn both are nearly healed already, but they’re hanging low. Their parents are not happy with them, and their moms don’t want me to hang around their daughters. Apparently, I’m a bad influence. Okay, yes, I can see that somewhat. If I were their moms, I wouldn’t be the happiest with me either, but we’ve swum together since we first touched water. In a strange twist of the tide, all three of us were born within days of each other. We were meant to be friends.
Hmm. Did their moms know mine? Not that now is the time to ask either one of them about her…
I swim by Adra’s coral house, but no one is there, and since I’m not about to head to the castle, there’s nothing else for me to do right now. Dad is sleeping, and I don’t want to disturb him, and while I could go back to Baltic, I opt not to.
Instead, I slip out of the kingdom. Again. By myself.
Not smart, I know, but I have to make things right. There’s something going on with the selkies, and I almost wonder if their queen is playing them. Does she know something the rest of her subjects don’t? Is she the only one under the waves who knows what is going on? Because I find it almost impossible to believe that my king and queen are the true villains here.
I am not heading toward the selkies. I’ve learned from that mistake at least. But there have to be others who have seen them and their activity, others who might be willing to share what they know.
Wave by wave, I swim in the direction of the sirens, keeping a careful watch toward the waters of the selkies. The last thing I want is to be tailed or captured again. At the very least, if the sirens are ignorant about what’s happening in other parts of the ocean, it’ll be nice to see some of my siren friends.
Just as I pass by a large boulder, I notice movement to my right. I hide and wait a long moment before glancing around.
A cluster of selkies is frantically looking around. What in the world can they be searching for? They’re too close for me to be able to risk moving but also too far removed for me to hear what they are saying.
Eventually, they move closer and closer until I can make out their words.
“The chances of it being some random place on the ocean bed isn’t likely,” one says.
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