“That is where you’re wrong. Amerin loves you to such an extent she couldn’t bear the sight of you looking upon her with pity.” Elpis placed her hand over Cosmas’s split knuckles. A subtle glow emanated as healing magic transferred energy between them and mended what had been damaged only recently. “Have you spoken with her since then?”
“Tried. Amerin won’t hear it. She’s a ‘burden’. Before you curse me, those are her words, not mine. I couldn’t give a damn if she never walks another step; if I had to carry her.”
“Pain and loss make different people of us, Cosmas. This is something I have witnessed time and time again. Amerin had plenty reason to be upset but may not have necessarily meant to take it out on you. This is twice Amerin has suffered for the crimes of others.”
“I know,” he wailed before leaning forward and clutching his hair with both hands. “I know! And it’s killing me inside that I can do nothing for her but watch from afar and wish she’d let me share the load. All that I can do is respect her decision. To stay away. She made it abundantly clear when we last met in private that she wants nothing to do with me. I must let her go.”
“Yeah?” Manu asked. “And how’s that working out for you so far?” He gestured toward the two trash bags beside the cottage door.
“I never said it would be easy for me.”
The moment Manu opened his mouth, he caught a glance from Elpis. She mouthed two words: challenge him.
Manu slammed his teeth together with an audible click then tilted his head back. Alcohol fog tried to deny him coherent thought—determination made him too stubborn to surrender when Cosmas needed him.
A challenge.
Back in the garden, El and Heracles had known precisely what to say, accosting Manu with a dose of realism.
Never, in all of his life, had Manu ever quit anything. The same was true of Cosmas.
The solution swirled to the forefront of his booze-addled brain as Heracles stepped away to use his communicator on the porch, no doubt a call from his squad. “It certainly appears to be easy for you,” he said. “Hiding here like a coward.” If there was one thing guaranteed to motivate an Atlantian, especially a Myrmidon, it was the presentation of a challenge.
“I’m not hiding,” Cosmas blustered. “I’ve given her all the space she requested.”
“While in agony. While recuperating from a terrifying and traumatic experience,” El spoke up again. “She’s doing excellent, by the way. Her recovery. I shouldn’t mention this as it’s between her and Grandfather, but he says he’s seen remarkable progress in Amerin. She may never gain the strength to walk again, but some sensation has returned. She wiggled two toes of her left foot.”
“She’s doing her best,” Manu said. “Should you not do the same? It’s so easy for you to walk away when she needs you. She can’t quit. She’s in this for the long haul, mourning a loss you can never comprehend.”
“I’m not quitting anything!” Cosmas exploded. “This isn’t hiding. It’s…” The deep and ragged breath that filled his lungs struck Manu’s heart with a figurative chisel. Emotion trembled, vibrated in his chest. “I miss her so godsdamned much. I’d trade my final breath to hold her one more time and tell her she’s perfect as she is.”
“Then what do you plan to do, since weeks have passed and Amerin now has a clear head and vision no longer distorted by her mourning the loss of her legs?” Manu asked.
“Not give up.” Cosmas lurched to his feet, swayed, and toppled forward on a direct path for the table. Manu jumped up in the nick of time and caught him with one arm around the chest. His drunk friend never noticed. “I don’t blame her for being afraid,” he declared, swaying, “and I’ll spend every second we have together proving that.”
Since Cosmas couldn’t take a step without collapsing, Manu and Elpis resettled him on the sofa. They drank more bottles of his fine liquor, pretending they were classy enough to only sip small portions of the aged sprits from the depths of his collection. Heracles dipped out early before the binge could truly begin, excusing himself to regain sobriety and return to duty. El passed out tucked into a corner of the couch and roused only on occasion.
“The three of us, we’re something, aren’t we?” El asked, drowsily raising her head to squint at Manu with one eye. Under the usual circumstances, her drinking constitution surpassed her male friends, but the current situation wasn’t normal by any means. “At least neither of you are attracted to a human bound to live a mere fraction of our lives.” Her shoulders then dropped.
“It isn’t the quantity of years with someone you care about, El. It’s about the quality,” Manu said, “and how you spend those years.”
She blinked at him, and then a slow smile formed over her red-stained lips. “Damn you for being right.”
“I’m always right.”
“Except for when you’re wrong.”
“Not in the least bit humble, but certainly right this time,” Cosmas agreed. He knocked back his drink and rose. “All right. Wish me luck.”
“But you can barely walk!”
“Liquid courage, El. I’ll sober up on the way to the palace.”
12
Scandalous Truth
Hours evaporated from Kai’s day, each of them spent behind the terminal at her desk peering at the illuminated numbers on the private console. Until the moment a servant arrived with a cart bearing a covered dish, she hadn’t even realized the afternoon had come and passed, the silver light of the twilit heliolamps indicating dusk had arrived on the surface above Atlantis.
Guessing the password hadn’t been difficult. Then, she’d thought he had a one-track mind geared toward carrying out justice. Now she understood it was more than that. He’d been giving her a code and probably hoping she was swift enough on the uptake to grasp that.
Now she understood that the contents of the datashell were at least one reason among many that Democrates likely had a price on his head.
We can’t trust anyone. If anyone knew…
Once she’d started reading, she couldn’t stop, even as she tumbled deeper down a rabbit hole of deception, one lie after another manifesting with each document she read. Most were easily verified by logging into the appropriate virtual records. If they were to be believed in entirety, the Council of Lords had stolen drachma totaling in the hundreds of thousands over the course of years, skimming tax money to suit their own needs.
How did he acquire these records? she wondered, tempted to dismiss the servant and carry on the lengthy review. Her biggest fear was that the moment she closed down her terminal, the data would be lost forever. Even when she’d been a sailor aboard a United States military vessel, she’d never handled sensitive data of such magnitude before.
“Greetings, Your Majesty,” Cyanea said, practically hiding beneath the hair for which he’d likely been named. “Lady Amerin asked that I bring your supper to the desk. Will that be acceptable?” He raised the lid, allowing her a view of the day’s culinary delight. Immediately, her mouth watered.
“Of course. Please come in and do what you must.”
Her food smelled amazing, the enormous deep-sea prawn and other shellfish in a sweet white sauce, the buttery smell of whale cream beckoning her. It was an extra fatty, extra lush sort of meal, and if she had to guess, the over-the-top entree was Amerin’s way of apologizing for doing nothing wrong at all.
The shy young mer tasked with bringing providing her meal appeared reluctant to enter the room at all, shrinking away from the intimidating Royal Guard looming over him in the door way. No member of the palace staff save for Amerin was trusted alone with the queen for fear of another assassination attempt. Kai hated it, feeling so disconnected from the people who worked alongside her, treating them all as if they were criminals before a crime was even committed.
When the servant took a step forward, Cassius did as well. Kai was torn between putting on a big smile for the former, versus staring down the latter for being unnecessarily aggressiv
e.
The change was one of many sad but necessary adjustments in their everyday security procedures. Unfortunately, the sight of a muscled Myrmidon looming over them tended to scare even their best workers. Cassius stood watch with a grim, no-nonsense sort of expression on his face while the young merman erected Kai’s portable dinner table and arranged her entree, seaweed salad, and soup.
More than once, his aquamarine gaze darted to Cassius during the preparation, which inevitably led to him sloshing wine over the edge of Kai’s goblet. “Apologies, Your Majesty.” The horror on his youthful face implied he was seconds away from dissolving into tears. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
“It’s all right,” she assured the skittish worker. “There’s nothing to forgive.” Hoping he believed that, she put on her warmest smile despite the way anguish churned in her stomach and pushed a sour taste to her mouth. It pissed her off to see them this way. Initially, she’d thought their demeanors would return to normal with time, and that eventually, the easygoing atmosphere would return to the palace. Instead, each servant behaved as if their necks were on the proverbial chopping block along with the assassin.
She’d have to speak to Heracles about the guards, not to chastise them, but to encourage them to have…
Have what?
More compassion. Maybe.
“Cyanea, would you do something for me?”
The young mer perked up, a flicker of visible delight visible in his pale eyes. “Anything, my queen.”
“Please let Amerin know that I need her in my office the moment she has an opportunity to join me.”
Cyanea backed from the room and bowed deeply while in the threshold. “She will be occupied with her therapeutic session in the healing house for the next hour.”
“Afterward is more than fine.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Cassius departed the study with him, shutting the door behind them. Heracles had done everything but assign Kai an official poison tester, and she was positive that, too, was in the immediate future if it weren’t for the fact that he’d also assigned members of the Royal Guard to patrol the kitchen and Amerin herself often oversaw the preparations. Amerin probably did taste it all.
Immediately, Kai’s stomach twisted with apprehension. She loathed the idea of anyone poison-testing her food, but Amerin seemed an even poorer choice, having both risked and lost enough for the kingdom.
More time vanished from her evening as she opened confidential missives between keepers, implicating several. Nausea taunted her and threatened to reject her recent dinner, yet she couldn’t look away from the damning stream of evidence. Kai hadn’t been so absorbed in reading since the time she read a book from her favorite author and told herself she only needed one more chapter. One more chapter became the entire book overnight, her remaining wide awake until sunrise that morning but still expected to report for duty.
She’d paid for that when a random outage occurred on the ship not long into her shift requiring her to spend almost forty nonstop hours patching physical communications lines and replacing burnt out wiring.
Now she was a queen who assigned others similar tasks.
The meal may have been the best ever prepared by the palace chef, but Kai had no time to savor and enjoy it. She stuffed her face, left the wine untouched, and guzzled the lightly salted water served alongside it. She needed a clear head to fully digest everything in front of her, especially if she wanted to remember all of the names involved. Paranoia told her not to take notes, and that the little shell would have to stay on her person.
Democrates had risked his life to transfer it to her possession. The least she could do was protect and guard it with her own.
In addition to Amerin, Kai only trusted a few others with the knowledge of what she’d just discovered, so she remained at the terminal and punched in Manu’s number. His communicator chirped and chirped, but her husband didn’t answer. After another unsuccessful attempt to contact her husband, Kai found a message on her communicator, sent more than an hour prior while she’d been elbow-deep in scandal.
“Starfish, I don’t tell you enough how much I love you,” was the first slurred sentence to reach her ears, bringing a grin to her face despite the gravity of the situation on her hands. “You’re everything. I love you so godsdamn much. You’re wonderful. You’re the reason coral exists on the…wait. Fuck. I mean—I’m saying, you’re the light on the lantern fish.”
“That’s not sexy at all, Manu.” El’s voice came through the line as a harsh whisper, followed by giggles and the familiar, but not unwelcome sound of Cosmas laughing in the background.
“A lantern fish, mate? Really?”
“Shut up.” He raved for a few minutes longer about the color of Kai’s hair and how the violet hue reminded him of his favorite anemone until eventually, those rambling words were lost as he ran out of time. It cut him off with an abrupt beep.
“Of course, he’s drunk,” she muttered, shaking her head. Since Manu was a bust, she rang up Heracles next. He answered on the first chirp and appeared in the polished clam shell communicator, looking more frazzled than she’d ever seen him.
“Good day, my queen. What can I do for you?” he asked, smiling all the while.
“I’m looking for Manu. I thought he would be training with Elpis today, but I can’t get ahold of him and he seems to be intoxicated. Is my husband with you?”
“Ah, well…” The mer cleared his throat. “He was for a time. El had this brilliant plan for a detour after his training session finally ended. We wound up at Cosmas’s home.”
“Drinking.”
“Ah, yes. Then you know.” Color heated his face immediately with a fetching shade of blush that she’d never seen him on the commander before. Mood lightening exponentially by the second, Kai turned to look at the clock on the wall. “Any idea when I’ll see him again, or have you left him rotting in a gutter somewhere?”
“At last report a few minutes ago, with Elpis and Cosmas en route to the palace, my queen. Shall I go down and send him to you?”
Manu deserved an evening of irresponsible inebriation. While worrying her lower lip between her teeth, Kai mentally calculated all the options and decided it could wait until he naturally sobered.
When she hesitated to respond, Heracles cleared his throat. His smile dropped away. “Your Majesty,” he said quietly, urgency in his voice. “If something is the matter, or if you suspect the king is in danger, I must insist that you tell me so that we can prepare—”
“He isn’t in danger. It’s another matter. I can’t speak of it yet, but soon I promise we’ll discuss everything in full.”
“No one is in danger?”
Kai glanced down at the tiny conch shell plugged into her console. “We aren’t, but someone else may be.”
Nerves were going to be the end of Cosmas, though Manu knew exactly as his friend felt as they approached the palace together. Once, a long time ago, Lago told him that training as a Myrmidon would prepare him to face any obstacle, no matter how great. According to his father, their rigorous instruction would grant him the discipline to accomplish anything under pressure.
Three decades of devoted service hadn’t prepared him for the evening he proposed to Kai and asked her to become his wife. He’d faced down armies of contaminated sea creatures believed to exist only in the most ancient of Greek tales, swum alongside feral megalodons, and he’d tamed wild krakens imported for the cavalry. But asking the ocean’s paramount mermaid to accept him as her husband had nearly been his undoing.
He wondered if Cosmas felt the same now as they stood on the palace’s garden path, neither sober nor entirely inebriated despite their afternoon. If not for El, they would have been sloppy drunk.
“Are you still planning to actually speak to her, or shall we stand here for the remainder of the night?”
“Shut up.”
“Grow some jellies and maybe I will.” The way Manu sa
w it, if Cosmas was too absorbed in his desire to crush him into a fine, fishy paste, then he couldn’t fret over his rehearsed speech to Amerin. “You already know how she feels. Her heart hasn’t changed since years ago, mate.”
“What if she has changed her mind? What if it wasn’t about sacrifice and nobility, or even grief that drove her to push me away? What if—?”
“Seriously?” Manu barked out a hard laugh. “What a sorry pair of minnows we’ve become. ‘What if she’s changed her mind?’ What if the seabed cracks open and the oceans drain dry? What if a giant asteroid strikes Earth and boils the seven seas by morning? The likelihood of either happening is equal to the chance of Amerin rejecting you, Cosmas. She loves you. And if you head into that garden and speak with her, you’ll see that it’s true.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“I’ll be here. Not that I’ll do you any good. The words that you need to say to her, mate…no amount of coaching can make that happen. It’s got to come from here,” Manu replied, placing his palm over his friend’s heart. “Speak from there, and she won’t have any choice but to listen.”
A flicker of amusement quirked one corner of his friend’s mouth. “Like you did over the comm with Kai, eh?”
“Fuck off.” Hours later and almost entirely sober, Manu still couldn’t believe he’d compared Kai to a lantern fish. He expected to retire to their bedroom to find a chilly wife with her back to him after that, but if he knew Kai as well as he suspected he did, she’d only laugh at him instead of taking offense.
He needed to make it up to her.
Something exceptional to surpass likening her to a lantern fish could be the only way to wipe that mistake from his memory.
“All right. I can do this.”
Goddess of Sea and War: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 3) Page 10