The Sea King

by C. L. Wilson

  Dilys’s expression softened. “My mother will love you. How could she not?”

  There was such sincerity and assurance in his voice, such love beaming from his eyes. For her. She clamped down on her nerves and summoned a smile that only trembled slightly. Courage, Summer. This is only the first impression that will affect the rest of your life.

  “All right,” she said a moment later. “All right, let’s do this.”

  Dilys nodded, and the guards opened the massive, gilded doors.

  Everyone—and there were hundreds assembled within—turned to face the doors as they opened. There were so many golden eyes and burnished bronze faces in this room. Not a foreign face in the lot. Except for hers.

  “These are the Donimari,” Dilys whispered. “The heads of all Calbernan Houses, along with their akuas.”

  Gabriella’s fingers tightened around Dilys’s hand. His fingers squeezed back. The heat deep inside her lurched, pressure building. But before fear could rouse the volcano, Dilys’s thumb stroked the inside of her palm. And in that instant, her fear fell away. Oh, it wasn’t completely gone. She could still feel the fluttering jumps in her belly. But Dilys was beside her, and she realized he would always stand beside her, no matter what. And with him at her side, she no longer needed to fear the violent power that lived inside her. Her chin lifted.

  She pasted a serene expression on her face, and with Dilys at her side, sailed forth into the unfamiliar sea.

  The Donimari moved aside as Dilys and Gabriella approached, clearing a path from the door to the throne, and Gabriella had her first glimpse of Myerial Alysaldria I, Queen of Calberna. Gabriella’s new mother-in-law.

  She was a tiny woman. Small boned, delicately formed. Perhaps the massive throne she sat upon made her appear smaller, but Summer didn’t think so. Thrones tended to increase one’s appearance of grandeur, not decrease it. The closer she and Dilys approached, the more apparent it became that Alysaldria was, indeed, a small woman. Probably several inches shorter than Summer herself. Yet she’d birthed a son who stood seven feet tall. Astonishing.

  She was beautiful, too. Truly, enchantingly beautiful. As dark as her son, with huge, black-lashed golden eyes in a fine-boned face of delicate, ethereal beauty. Long skeins of silky black hair were piled atop her head. To a man, Calbernan males wore their hair in scores of long ropes. Not because they fixed it that way, but because that was the way it grew. The women, however, did not. What ropes there were had been put there, braided or curled. The rest was a silky mass of lustrous black strands. If Alysaldria brushed out her hair, it would probably spill down to her ankles.

  She wore a crown that looked like the fronds of golden anemones, each curling spike crusted with diamonds and pearls. Pearls wound through her hair and draped across her chest, following the boat-shaped neckline of her stunning coral gown studded with pearls and diamonds and golden beads. Her slender hands were folded in her lap, the short, oval nails painted the same color as her gown.

  “Myerial.” Dilys dropped to his knee before the throne.

  “Myerial,” Gabriella echoed, and she sank into a smooth, deep court curtsy.

  “Rise and be welcome, Dilys, soa elua,” Alysaldria said. “Rise and be welcome, Sirena Gabriella, soa Doalanna, Myerialanna kona Calberna.”

  A loud, shocked murmur of protest rose from the court.

  Gabriella sent a quick, questioning glance at Dilys, who looked both stunned and impressed. Behind him, Chancellor Calivan appeared dumbfounded. “What is it? What just happened?”

  “My mother has just Spoken from the Sea Throne,” Dilys murmured in her ear as they rose. “She has just welcomed you as a Siren and daughter and has declared you the rightful heir both to the Sea Throne and House Merimydion. She has made it impossible for any of the Donimari to challenge your position or authority.”

  The Myerial held out her hands. “Come closer, my children.”

  Summer followed Dilys’s lead, climbing the coral steps of the throne’s dais and taking the queen’s hands.

  “You are well, my son?” Alysaldria’s sharp gaze swept over her son with a mother’s attentiveness, missing nothing. “You were chasing those krillos so long that I began to worry.”

  “I am well, as you can see, Nima,” Dilys assured her. “The krillos had help masking their trail. But they have been dealt with. As I mentioned in my report, the Shark is no more.”

  “Nor is the Pureblood Alliance. After your news, I summoned them all for a Questioning. There was more rotten fruit on that tree, but it has been plucked now. The traitor Nemuan has been declared kado’ido, a Houseless pariah whose name has been stricken from Calberna, all images and records of him excised. The others who confessed to plotting with him have already met the kracken. I have permitted the rest of the traitors’ Houses to don white in mourning for their lost sons, but only on condition that they should immediately repudiate and dissolve the Pureblood Alliance and join me in welcoming my new daughter as the blessing of Numahao that she is.”

  “That doesn’t appear to have gone over well,” Dilys murmured, glancing around the room at the tight faces and barely leashed resentment from quarters that had previously been quite vocal supporters of the Pureblood Alliance.

  “I don’t care. They fomented rebellion and provided a breeding ground for traitors. They’re lucky I didn’t purge their whole Houses. A Siren has been returned to us. They can either accept her or meet the kracken like their treacherous kin. But enough nasty politics.” In an abrupt change of subject, Alysaldria turned a golden-eyed smile on Gabriella. “You are not the Season we chose for my son.”

  Gabriella’s lips curled wryly. “So I understand, Myerial.”

  “Nima, my daughter. You must call me Nima, now. You may be oulani, but you are also a Siren bound to my son in blood and salt, and therefore bound to me by the same, my daughter and a daughter of my House. My joy is beyond measure.” Her voice resonated with sincerity.

  “Nima.” Warmth unfurled in Gabriella’s chest. She’d lived most of her life without a mother. To have one again . . . it was more than she had hoped for since she was a child. “I am the one who is joyful. Dilys has told me much about you.”

  Alysaldria arched a brow at her son. “All good, I should hope.”

  “Of course.” Gabriella wet her lips. “I know I am not the wife you would have chosen for him, but I promise I will make him happy.”

  The Myerial’s full lips broadened in a smile every bit as dazzling as her son’s, and in her cheek bloomed a dimple even more pronounced than his. “You are wrong, my dear. My advisors may have thought one of your two sisters would have been the best choice, but not I. I trusted my son to win the claim of the woman best suited to him. Do you love him?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then he has exceeded my dearest wishes for him, for it is clear to me that he loves you as deeply as any akua ever has or could love his liana. That you are a Siren, bringing back to us the most ancient, powerful, and venerated of all Calbernan magics, is an added gift we could never have expected or hoped for, and proof that even the wisest of advisors can sometimes make mistakes.” She cast a look towards a group of Calbernans standing to the left of the throne. The advisors, Gabriella deduced, when several of them began looking distinctly shamefaced.

  “I am sure they had only Dilys’s and Calberna’s best interests at heart,” Gabriella said, speaking loudly enough for those closest to the throne—including the advisors—to hear. She couldn’t change the past, but she could do everything possible to smooth her way forward, including soothing the ruffled feathers of those who would have picked a different wife for their prince. “I spent a lifetime suppressing and masking my gifts out of fear of harming someone with them. Your advisors saw me exactly as I intended everyone should—as the weakest of the Summer King’s daughters. But Dilys has convinced me that the power I have feared all my life need not be a danger to those I love, but a boon for his—for our—people. Thank you, Myerial—Nima�
��for your warm and gracious welcome. As I told your brother, Lord Chancellor Calivan, earlier, I shall endeavor to serve House Merimydion, Calberna, and all the folk of the Isles to the best of my ability.”

  “I am sure you will, moa alanna. We will begin preparations for your coronation immediately. I will, of course, abdicate the throne and pass to you the gifts that Myerial Siavaluana gave to me on her deathbed.”

  “Alys! Ono!”

  Alysaldria speared her brother with a look sharp enough to silence his distraught outburst.

  “As a Siren, Gabriella, the Sea Throne rightfully belongs to you,” Dilys’s mother continued. Her voice had a hard edge to it, a clear warning against further dissent. “It is not meet that I should keep the crown when Numahao has sent to my House a daughter bearing her greatest gift.”

  Gabriella could feel the scores of eyes boring into her back, but despite the tense silence of the throne room, no one uttered a sound. Calberna was a land steeped in tradition. And she was an outsider—an oulani stranger suddenly thrust into their midst. Calivan may have been the only one to verbalize his distress over his sister’s decision to abdicate, but she doubted he was the only one to hold that sentiment.

  “I am honored by your trust, moa Myerial,” she began cautiously, “and I wish to serve Calberna to the best of my ability, but you are its queen, not I. I am, after all, a stranger to these lands, and to its people.”

  “That matters not. The law is clear. Sirens rule Calberna. You are a Siren. The Sea Throne is yours.”

  Gabriella bit her lip. First she had gotten into an argument with Calivan, and now the queen. She hadn’t wanted to start her first day in her new home getting in fights with every member of Dilys’s family, but the idea of suddenly becoming responsible for the governance of an entire nation was more than a little overwhelming.

  “But must it be so right away?” she pressed. “So much has happened so quickly, moa Myerial. I need time to settle into my new home and become familiar with the ways and traditions of my new country. To give Calbernans a chance to get to know me, and I them. And also to work beside you, to learn to be a queen worthy of ruling of these great Isles.”

  “This is unnecessary. You are a Siren. Your worthiness is unquestionable.”

  Beside her, Dilys shifted his weight from one foot to another. The slight, nearly imperceptible motion made her aware of his growing unease. Gabriella’s hackles rose. She laid a hand on Dilys’s arm, and forced a pleasant smile. “I appreciate your confidence in me, Myerial. I suggest we discuss the particulars of the succession later, once my akua and I have had a chance to rest from our journey.”

  “Very well, but I must warn you, I will not change my mind on this matter.”

  “Then our discussion should be lively indeed, because neither will I. And Dilys can tell you how stubborn I get when I’m determined not to do something.”

  Dilys gave a laugh that sounded only slightly forced. “Oh, tey, my liana is the proverbial immovable object.”

  “Is she?” Alysaldria arched a brow, power vibrating in her voice.

  Gabriella met the challenge of her mother-in-law’s golden gaze head-on. “Tey,” she replied with an answering rumble of power, “she is.”

  The two of them stood there for several, long, silent moments—the two greatest powers in Calberna—taking each other’s measure, each refusing to be the first to look away. Summer had spent a lifetime soothing others and subtly Persuading them out of their snits, but the right to self-determination wasn’t going to be a battle she won with charm. Not this time. Dilys’s mother was clearly used to mowing down all obstacles in her path through the sheer force of her will and her power, but Gabriella was done being Sweet Summer. She was a creature of great power, and she would not be bullied into doing anything she did not wish to do.

  Besides, if she ever was to take over rule of this queendom, she could not afford to let the Donimari see her back down from the very first challenge of her authority. That was one of the lessons she’d learned from her father: no one respects weakness.

  Abruptly, Alysaldria broke into a wide, bright smile, the dimple flashing in her cheek. “Ah, my son, your liana will keep you on your toes.”

  Dilys let out the breath he’d been holding and answered his mother’s dimpled smile with one of his own. “I know it well, Nima. And I thank Numahao daily.”

  His mother rose from the throne. “Come, moa alanna. Allow me to introduce you to the Donimari.”

  Chapter 28

  The next several days passed in a whirl for Gabriella as she settled into her new life. Ari had roused and was on the mend, although due to all he’d suffered, his memory of his time in captivity was riddled with gaps. In Gabriella’s opinion, the loss of those particular memories sounded more like a boon than a curse. There were a few of her own she wished she could forget.

  Dilys was embracing his new role as a married man with relish. He’d resigned his commission in the Calbernan navy in order to take over the day-to-day running of House Merimydion’s conglomerate of businesses.

  Although Gabriella had remained steadfast in her refusal to take the place of Alysaldria as Myerial, the two of them had worked out a compromise. Alysaldria would continue to act as Myerial for the immediate future. In return, Gabriella agreed to spend five hours a day apprenticing with Dilys’s mother, becoming acquainted with the current state of Calbernan affairs and the duties of its queen so that she could both assist the Myerial and prepare for the day she eventually assumed the throne. At Myerial Alysaldria’s insistence, Gabriella also spent another five hours a day with Lord Chancellor Calivan, who had assumed the responsibility of bringing Gabriella up to speed with the history of Calberna, its royal families, and everything known about the Sirens.

  “Ever since the Slaughter of the Sirens some twenty-five hundred years ago, Calberna has made a national mission of seeking out and either liberating or destroying all written records about the Sirens,” Calivan informed Gabriella as they walked down a spiraling glass tube that led from the main, central hub of the palace to a smaller, completely submerged structure built some forty feet deeper in the volcanic crater. “Our primary goal was to erase all proof of their existence and their abilities—to delegate them to the realm of myth and legend. The hope was, of course, that when the Sirens finally returned to us, the world would have forgotten the true extent of their power. The world would, therefore, have no cause for alarm at their return, and no reason to ally against us, thereby allowing the Sirens to quietly increase their numbers and return their great strength and great gifts to our people.”

  “Dilys told me about the Slaughter,” Gabriella murmured. “I can understand why Calbernans felt the need to take such precautions.”

  Although she paid complete attention to what Calivan was saying, her gaze drank in the sight of the undersea world just beyond the walkway tube’s glass walls. The waters were darker here, in the depths of the crater. You could still clearly see the bright sunlight overhead, but below, the watery world became shadowy. The round glow lights running along the walkway’s ceiling illuminated a different reef from the one in the brightness overhead. Fewer fish. The corals and the fish both darker and less colorful than the relatives that basked in the warm, sun-drenched waters above, but beautiful nonetheless.

  Biross and Tarrant, two of Gabriella’s new guards, walked behind them, their massive hulking presence making her feel comfortable. Four of the Myerial’s own guards accompanied them as well—two at the front and two in the rear. A protective detail that, Calivan informed her, had become standard ever since the deaths of the previous Myerial and her daughter.

  “The histories of the Sirens have been preserved for posterity in the private library of the Myerials,” Calivan continued as they walked. “Documents describing the various gifts and great feats of Calberna’s greatest Sirens. Histories of their battles and sacrifices. Personal memoirs of the Sirens, their mates, and their most trusted confidants and advisors. Fascinati
ng stuff. The Myerials and Lord Chancellors through the ages have maintained this information in the hopes that it might be used to train future Sirens to manage their gifts.”

  Gabriella nodded. “You think there will be information there that can teach me how to better control my Siren gifts?”

  “I know there is.” Calivan smiled down at her. The sheer silk of his obah—a rich copper, today, that set off his greenish-blue shuma—swung about him with each step, making the scalloped fringe of pearls, aquamarine beads, and tiny oxidized copper discs that edged the obah sparkle and chime. “The study of magic has always been a particular hobby of mine, especially when it comes to magic that could aid or threaten a Siren. Alys—my sister—might not be a full Siren, but she has always been remarkably gifted—one of the strongest imlani born to our people since the Sirens. I set out from an early age to learn everything I could to protect her and prevent an attack such as the Slaughter from ever happening again.”

  “I can understand that.” Gabriella thought of her own sisters, and all the ways she’d stifled her own magic in order to keep them safe from it. “Sisters are precious.”

  “They are indeed.” There was a strange sadness in his golden eyes and a wistful melancholy at the corners of his mouth turned his expression pensive and slightly regretful. Then he smiled again, and the fleeting expression vanished. “And now that you have come to Calberna—Mystral’s first Siren since the Slaughter—I can show you the skills and artifacts I’ve amassed over the years to keep Alys safe and strong.”

  “I look forward to learning anything you can teach me. Dilys may have informed you that I’ve always been . . . afraid to use my magic. I haven’t always been able to control it. That’s why I insisted on bringing Biross and Tarrant with me today.” She nodded at the two towering warriors walking behind her. “Since we’re going to be doing magical exercises, they’re here in case I call up too much magic and need someone to bleed off the excess.”