It was, all in all, one of the most reckless things Kai would likely do since her return to Atlantis. Within a second of transitioning her tail to two long legs, Manu hooked his fingers in the waist of her leggings and tugged.
Elsewhere, somewhere far northwest toward the direction of the volcanic fault line, the water trembled again with a warbling that took her by surprise. She stopped him with a hand on his chest even as he loomed above her and fought to slide the leggings down her long limbs. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“From the fault line.”
“It isn’t going to erupt. It’s—”
“No, it wasn’t a vibration in the ground. I heard a cry.”
Manu propped his weight on one hand and cocked his head to listen. “There’s nothing, love.” As much as she wanted to welcome the return of his mouth to throat, Kai couldn’t shake that something was wrong.
The piercing shriek of an infant shattered the otherwise silent waterscape. “There! That was it…I heard a cry. A baby’s cry.”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“Well I heard it. I heard it as clear as if the baby was right here next to me.”
“There are plenty of animals that communicate in the dark with sound, Kai. And some of them are able to mimic us.”
“That isn’t an animal.” And she’d seen enough horror movies while topside among the surfacers to know that it was never a wild animal. It was either a threat, or a genuine baby in harm’s way. Her heart jackhammered in her chest, adrenaline spiking her pulse despite Manu’s warm body covering her and the caress of his fingers on her cheek. “I know what I heard and I can’t…I can’t ignore it. What if it’s the ranchers, Manu? They could be in trouble or injured.”
Immediately, he set back on his heels and touched his communicator to relay her words to the other commanders. Once Heracles announced completion of area scans, the trio debated investigating it on foot. All the while they spoke of it, Kai yearned for action.
“We aren’t picking up anything unusual on our sensors,” Heracles informed them. “It may be a trap.”
“They’ve never attempted to set a trap for the queen before,” Cosmas pointed out. “Unusual change in tactic, but no less a failure than all others. Manu, bring her back to us and we’ll leave the area at once. I’ll deploy a team of men to verify nothing—”
“I won’t leave until I know it isn’t a child.”
“Kai! It could be a trap!”
The rapid thundering of her pulse had nothing to do with fear for herself, the power racing through her veins related to a sudden and urgent need to protect. Kai hiked up her leggings and merged her legs. She darted away in a powerful tail stroke, aware of Manu cursing behind her as he gave chase.
They raced, hurtling through water toward the insistent sound of a squalling infant. Kai had cared for enough foster babies in and out of Sunshine’s home to know the shriek of a neglected newborn. More than that, she’d known from the first cry that she’d never forgive herself if she allowed an innocent child to come to harm while the mer commanders argued matters of safety.
Approaching the fault line introduced her to a discernible difference in water temperature and a different taste to the surrounding water. As promised, the area appeared stable to her senses, and a small voice of self-confidence told her it wouldn’t blow again while she was near.
“Where did you hear it?” Manu asked.
“I don’t know. It’s…” She sucked in a breath despite the foul odor seeping into the water following the Earth’s release of thousands of pounds of built-up pressure. Others may have needed masks, but nothing there could harm her. Just as she could breathe the water itself, she’d come to learn that her gifts as the descendent of Thalassa afforded her certain protections that other mers lacked. A glance at Manu confirmed he’d inherited the same in his transition. “Maybe I imagined—”
Warm fingers took her by the shoulders. “We’ll find it together. Which way?”
“Here somewhere.”
Without straying far from Manu, and aware of the approaching sound of Heracles and Cosmas in the coral skipper, she drifted out over the flowing fault line. A ridge of magma trailed into the distance and reshaped the ocean floor. She scanned the area and searched until what had appeared to be a dull gray rock grained greater clarity. A small, white-gray fist emerged from the bundle of fibers wrapped around a living newborn baby.
“There!” Kai dashed over, aware of Manu covering her approach. The use of his magic created a palpable force, a tingle in the water that buzzed over her skin from head to tip of the tail whenever he summoned the Trident of Pontus. As she scooped the infant from the floor into her arms, he stood guard beside her.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“It’s a child,” Kai breathed, gazing into a face that seemed as normal and helpless as any infant she’d seen since her return to the underwater kingdom. The arrival of both coral skippers disturbed the sediment layer and sent out ripples. Before they could leave their vessels, she turned and raised a hand. “It’s okay! It’s only a baby!”
And now they had no option but to prematurely abandon their evening out and take the foundling to safety.
14
The Nameless Gift
For a newborn, the child did not fuss much. Kai held her swaddled within a blanket in the palace’s Pacific room for an hour without understanding why, only that she’d yielded to impulse. Instincts told her to hold the little girl close. Maybe because once, she’d been that lost child in need of nurturing, and it seemed only right she should watch over and love this one until her next of kin was located.
More than once since their return to the palace, Kai wondered what led to a person abandoning their child near an active underwater volcano. That she still lived was nothing less than a miracle, good fortune, and perhaps a credit to the infant’s own constitution.
Everyone, from her husband to her uncle, had a suggestion for what should be done with the infant, but none of those options pleased Kai. Her first order of business had been to ask Vitalis to clear the foundling of any health defects or illnesses while law enforcement attempted to locate the mother without luck.
Whoever she was, she hadn’t given birth at any birthing center and had brought her child into the world the old-fashioned way out in the water in a difficult, traumatic birth that bruised the newborn’s face and brow. Kai had seen similar things during Sadie’s nursing school maternal health videos, even if the horror of natural birth had made her, at the time, absolutely certain she never wanted children of her own. She’d vowed right then to be a mother through adoption alone, and to carry on Sunrise’s tradition.
Now, she wasn’t so sure that was possible. Atlantis would want an heir.
“Practicing?” Manu asked from the doorway as he trudged in and settled across from her in a wooden chair upholstered in deep, mossy green. The room was one of many designed for the royal family to entertain guests, decorated in the theme of the tropical waters off the coast of Hawaii and the warm islands. The aquarium spanning one wall featured the most breathtaking examples of the Pacific’s warm reefs, and yellow butterfly fish darted in and out behind rocks laden with green kelp.
Kai didn’t visit it much. It cracked open the surface of her childhood too often, hammer blows bursting open memories of working on the tanks alongside her mother. This room had been Queen Ianthe’s favorite. Sitting in it now with a child the way she imagined her mother had once held her, made her realize she should have chosen anywhere else.
“On?”
“Motherhood.”
Kai didn’t grimace. She hadn’t yet decided if Manu could read her mind or if she was that transparent. She tipped her head down and sighed, breathing in the scent of warm child. Despite the hours spent in the underwater environment, the infant’s breath still smelled of mother’s milk. Whoever she was, she’d fed her baby before abandoning her.
“Were they a
ble to find a nursemaid?”
“Yes. One is en route.” His dark gaze fixed on the infant. “What do we do now, Kai? Time is our greatest enemy, and I fear we lack enough of it to take a little one.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to pass her into the orphanage as a foundling either. I…”
The approaching squeak of Amerin’s wheels indicated her arrival. She hesitated at the door, eyes bright and shining. “Minthe mentioned there’s a baby. Am…am I interrupting?”
Manu beckoned with a hand, too eagerly for Kai’s liking. “Not at all, Amerin. Come in.”
Like the rest of the royal household, he’d learned to never assume Amerin wanted help. She maneuvered around the volcanic glass table to sit at Kai’s left. A set of betrothal pearls had never appeared prettier than hers did, draped over her pink strands. Occasionally, light from the overhead fixtures brought out the subtle sparkle of the aquamarine jewels Kai had overlooked before. Now that the muscle tone of her legs was dwindling, Amerin had taken to draping a small blanket across her lap to disguise them.
Kai would be a fool to deny that Amerin had changed in the recent days since accepting Cosmas’s proposal. The light had returned to her eyes, and Vitalis had mentioned to her that Amerin pushed even harder to withstand the spinal discomfort during their therapeutic acupuncture session. Kai wondered how much was due in part to no longer hiding how she felt about the man she loved.
The new technique that the old physician learned from a healer in China had proven results with paraplegic patients. But it wasn’t a painless process. The needles slipped into the epidural space and punctured the scarred nerves over and over again, infusing healing magic with each prick.
Vitalis said she’d moved two of her toes.
“May I hold her?”
“Of course.”
When the baby exchanged hands, Manu rose and excused himself, giving Kai the impression that someone had sent him in to talk sense to her. Clearly, he’d failed, because she had no intention of offloading a helpless baby onto someone or surrendering it until they knew who abandoned it.
Mountainside abandonment of children was an unfortunate but prominent component of their Ancient Greek history. Once the goddess sank the city, it continued beside underwater volcanos, a practice ended by one of Kai’s predecessors when she established the first orphanage of Atlantis.
“Did they send you to talk me out of keeping her in the palace?”
Pink brows flew up a mile, then a soft smile curved Amerin’s face. She shook her head. “Not at all. No one sent me, and I’m not talking you out of anything. I came to see this little guppy and to ask if you need my help. If they’re planning anything, they haven’t included me.”
“Oh.”
Still, something throbbed at the back of Kai’s mind. A whisper of intuition told her Amerin’s smile was too bright.
“How is she?”
“Plump and incredibly healthy according to Vitalis. No birth deformities, no illnesses. She’s absolutely one hundred percent perfect aside from those bruises from the delivery. And those should heal within the next few days, he said.”
“Good.”
A serene time passed in silence between them as Amerin rocked the swaddled, gently cooing child in her arms. The vibrant gray-blue eyes peering up at them carried a sense of intelligence and awareness Kai didn’t expect from a newborn. It was almost unnerving, much like the stare of a cat focused on an empty, shadowed corner of a bedroom at night. While Amerin played with the infant, Kai rose and wandered the room perimeter, trailing beside the aquarium stretching across the expanse of the wall.
A playful green and purple blenny zoomed between the rocks, weaving in and out a few times before pausing to mow through a carpet of seaweed sprouting between clusters of coral-studded rock. Kai lingered near him to watch for a while, her mind heavy with mounting concerns. Her heart hurt every time her thoughts returned to the vision of a desperate mother abandoning her baby within close distance of an active underwater volcano. Did she hope her child would be miraculously saved by the gods?
“Kai?” Amerin asked suddenly, disrupting Kai’s thoughts.
“Hm?” Kai turned to find Amerin holding the newborn on her lap unwrapped, with her tiny feet in the air.
“She’s perfect, isn’t she? All of her toes and fingers and yet…someone discarded her. We don’t even know if that person was her mother. Her mother could be dead, for all we know. Her mother’s killer could have placed her there. Her mother could be desperately seeking her this very moment.” Amerin sighed. “My theories are many, but then I realize I am likely biased. I would love a child so much I couldn’t fathom the thought of leaving one to die in such a barbaric tradition.”
“Neither can I.” Vitalis had mentioned it had fallen out of favor, but that every so often someone attempted to revive the practice. Over and over, her mind returned to how fortunate they were that Manu chose that place of all destinations for their date.
“It’s rotten. And I haven’t been honest with you. I have a confession.”
The solemn weight of Amerin’s words tugged Kai’s heart. Sensing the importance of the words to come, Kai drifted back to the couch and perched on its edge near Amerin. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s true that no one sent me to discourage you about the baby, but I wasn’t entirely honest when I said I didn’t come to ask something of you. I…wanted to ask if I might care for the baby.”
Kai blinked. “You want to keep her?”
“She may not be the baby I wanted and desired, but she’s a child in need,” she spoke softly. “I’ll…what did you call it? Foster?”
“Yes.”
“I will keep her,” Amerin said with increasing confidence. “At least until the mother is found.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Then she’ll be mine, and I’ll love and treasure her the way Sunshine loved and treasured you.”
“Truly?” When Amerin nodded, Kai imagined the shitstorm that would erupt in the palace. But she also couldn’t bear to reject a seemingly harmless request. A boulder-sized weight lifted from her chest. “They won’t like this. Cosmas especially.”
“Cosmas does not own me.” Amerin tilted her head down and breathed in the baby’s sweet scent. She cooed and kicked, waving bare feet and pink toes. The gray cast had diminished, and true warmth and healthy tone had emerged once the child was dry. “Isn’t that right, little one? I am owned by no one, and neither will you be.”
Explaining the change in plans to the guys wouldn’t be easy, but she imagined it was better than raising the child herself. “Well then. She’ll need a name, won’t she? We can’t continue calling her Baby Unknown. Maybe—”
Knuckles rapped against the door frame. Kai twisted toward it to find Vitalis in the threshold. The old healer held his ledger in one hand and wore his spectacles on the tip of his nose. “Apologies for the interruption, but the news couldn’t wait another moment.”
“What is it?”
“I have found the infant’s only blood relative in the archives. It wasn’t easy, isolating the different markers to narrow down potential links, but I have done this work before only recently.”
“And? Who is it? Perhaps they can shed some light on the matter.”
“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty,” Vitalis said in his quiet voice. “That isn’t possible, because the child’s only blood relative is you.”
15
Tradition and Blood
A day after the scandalous results, Vitalis confirmed the infant was related to neither Aegaeon nor Kai’s deceased father, rescuing her uncle from the likelihood of Nammu running him through with a spear.
Kai had never wondered if her aunt and uncle were true to one another, or if they participated in the game of mistresses and lovers that often plagued Atlantian elite, but Nammu’s reaction made the answer quite apparent where she stood when it came to her mate’s fidelity.
The absence of a genetic l
ink to her paternal line narrowed the blood relation to Kai’s mother, however, and brought questions to the surface no one could yet answer until Laka’s lineage was ruled out.
He needed further time and testing to determine the source. The mystery intrigued them all. As far as Kai knew, every one of her relatives had passed away. Her mother had been the eldest of three, surviving her deceased brothers who died at war in the south. Neither had a chance to marry.
Kai had no time to dwell on the matter of the child’s biological connection to her, however, when she had far greater matters of concern to handle.
The Council of Lords had censured her for the last time. On one hand, she feared she would be decried as a tyrant. On the other, her judgment as queen had been not only questioned, but disrespected.
It took her two days to work up the courage to call the council to order, and when she did, immediate relief crashed over her. The kingdom had nowhere to go but forward.
To her surprise, mers who had spoken ill of her in the papers smiled kindly in her face when sharing a meeting chamber, proving they lacked the same stones and courage. Fridericus wouldn’t even make eye contact with her.
Sometimes Kai couldn’t believe she had once been intimidated by the Council of Lords. While sitting before them now in the seat of leadership, she realized they were the ones who should have feared her. Especially now that she knew several members among the group had betrayed Atlantis, and she was absolutely within her rights to take the action she’d discussed with Manu, Cosmas, and Heracles the previous night. Due to necessities related to security, the latter’s involvement had been a critical component.
No matter how justified her intentions, sweat still moistened her palms. With her next decree, she would make good on her promise to Democrates and restore power to the people of Atlantis in the only way she knew how without thrusting the underwater realm into complete anarchy and chaos—disbanding the Council of Lords.
Goddess of Sea and War: a Fantasy Romance (Kingdom in the Sea Book 3) Page 13