“Here we are.” Madame Mercury presses her hand on the door. From inside, the locks turn, undoing themselves. She gives the door a little push but doesn’t go in. “Shout…if you need me.”
Surely, I hope there will be no shouting.
I’m the first one in. Nothing has prepared me for this. Not the creatures of Toliss, not the oracles I’ve already found. The tiles are wet. I notice too late and fall on my ass.
A little chuckle echoes against the high ceiling.
Like the rest of this place, the mosaic is artfully done. I follow the patterns down along the walls to the center of the room where she rests in a great pool. It’s her. Copper hair, milky white skin, and eyes like warm green water. Her mouth is a dream, moist and red. There’s nothing girlish about her. Not the arc of her eyebrow when she looks at me, or the pleased smirk when she finds Kurt, who is walking toward her. He takes baby steps. After we hauled ass to get here.
One. Two.
He sighs. Reaches out.
Three.
She swims to the edge of her pool. I wonder how she can float like that. Her tails are magnificent, green like pine.
Four. Five. Six.
He falls to his knees, all the while staring at her face. For a moment, she looks sad, holding his face with her slender wet hands. The breath between them makes the room shudder until it’s too much to bear.
They kiss.
I try to look at the opulent black tile of the room, the plush bench set off to the side, surely for decoration only. I don’t see the two-tailed mermaid having tea on it. I feel pervy standing around staring at them. He stands, bringing her up with him, pressing her against his body, until the water reaches her hips at the start of her scales. One of her hands disappears and I think I’ve had enough.
“Should I—wait outside?”
Kurt lets go first.
“Stay, Prince Tristan.” She lets go of Kurt’s hand and traces the red flush of her mouth. “Come, let me look at you.”
Just when I was getting tired of these people twirling me around like I’m Cinderella in a new dress. Does she want me to tap dance while I’m at it?
“You’re stronger than I’d thought you’d be,” she says.
“Thanks?” Something about her sets my entire body on edge. “You’re less creepy than I thought you’d be.”
“Tristan.”
“No, let him. This is what I like about him. He says what he means. Even if I should clip his tongue with his own dagger.”
My hand goes to my sheath. My dagger is gone. It hovers in the air above us.
“Lucine, don’t.”
“Don’t be cross with me, my love. Everything I’ve done has been for you. No one knows you like I do. No one ever will.”
I grab Kurt’s arm. “What is she doing?”
“Lucine, you know why we’re here. Do you have the fork of the trident? If you don’t have it, then there is still one out there. The sea witch, Nieve, is getting stronger. They killed one of your sisters. Tristan needs—”
“Tristan needs to learn his place in the world.” Lucine laughs. It’s a terrible sound that crawls over my skin. “Though he has done admirably, especially for a half breed.” She grips the golden edge of her pool and a fury comes over her features. “How dare the king defy me even after I showed him what would happen? How long have I lived alone in these shallow pools with people taking and taking. That’s all they do—take, take, take from the future but never learn.”
She waves her hand. Makes a mirror appear on the wall, like iridescent oil on water.
“Do you know what happens to a person who stares right at their future, Tristan?”
I shrug. “I don’t know but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“They forget to live it. My sisters and I live in between the worlds. They with their laria and hordes of petulant pixies. Yet I, I must always be alone.”
“You weren’t alone.” Kurt reaches for her. “You had me.”
She takes his hand. “I waited a thousand years for you. And when I had you, it was too, too, too much. You’d lie in my arms and in sleep, your thoughts turned to chaos. Then I sent you away.”
“So you see the future?” I remember when I met the first oracle, Shelly, the youngest. She could only read corny shells. She said she was born with the smallest bit of magics. If Lucine is the strongest, that means she is the eldest.
“I see what the fates bid me to see. Sometimes it’s everything all at once. Tiny voices and faces hurting, loving, dying. Flocks of ravens tearing at each other’s wings. Worms digging deep into the dirt. They’re all in here.” She places one hand over her temple and one over her heart.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I say, “but there’s a really nasty mermaid who wants to take over the throne and I need that trident. She’s even left you guys unprotected by sending away your sea dragons.”
“The day Nieve, daughter of the sea, commands any of my dragons is the day I breathe my last breath, and that day is not yet upon us.”
“Your dragons?” If only I had my dagger. “You sent the dragon?”
“How else could Adaro, witless as he is, reach the staff? How could I get you to trust Comit to guide you here without them?”
I feel like I’ve been set on fire. “But you told Adaro he’d find what he was looking for on this shore.”
“And he will.” Her smile is cruel. “Don’t think for a moment that we don’t know what we’re doing. The king was the foolish one to go against our wishes. I told him what needed to be done and he defied us.” She swims to the center of her pool and pulls it out of the water. The trident. It’s brighter somehow. The gold etchings glisten. Sparks fly between the prongs. If she points that thing at me, I will fry.
“This,” she says, “is the true power.”
I step closer to her. Kurt and I are side by side. I can feel the scepter between my shoulder blades reacting to it, glowing with the same light.
“What is it you want?” I ask her finally.
“I want one thing.” She lowers the trident. “To give the power to the true heir of the king—”
I hold out my hands. But I can see it in her eyes. I want to run. I want to fight. I want to grab it from her and shove it into her heart. Anything to make this moment untrue.
“The last son of kings, Kurtomathetis.”
Yet echoes in my heart a voice,
As far, as near, as these—
The wind that weeps,
The solemn surge
Of strange and lonely seas.
—Walter de la Mare, from “Echoes”
Here in the Second Circle, beneath the saloon of belly-dancing girls and Madame Mercury’s collection of monstrous beauties, is Lucine, the oracle who can see the future. She holds the trident for Kurt to take.
Kurt, who appeared in the form of a fish in my bathtub the first time I shifted. Kurt, who led me to Toliss Island, who fought by my side, who taught me how to hold a sword properly. My friend Kurt. I work out the family tree in my head. If he’s the last son of kings, then Kurt is my uncle.
“Did you know?” There’s a twinge in my spine. And what if he did know? What if he spent all this time letting me feel special and chosen when he knew he was the true son of the king? Then I say it louder. “Did you know?”
Kurt shakes his head. He can’t look at me. He can’t look at her. He bows his head and looks at his hands, the deep grooves and callouses, the thin fissures of scars.
“When did you begin to suspect the truth, Kurtomathetis?” Lucine asks. She’s manic and giddy, and I want to skewer her with my scepter. My scepter.
“I was sharpening the weapons,” Kurt whispers. “On Arion’s ship. When we went down to the cove. I was sharpening our weapons and I realized what I was holding. Triton’s dagger. It—it didn’t burn me. After we saw the oracle, and it wasn’t you, I was furious. She trapped me in a memory chamber, and I could see my mother with a shadowed figure who wasn’t my father.�
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“I couldn’t tell you directly,” Lucine says. “I knew you had learn it on your own. I knew you had to see it. I asked my sister to show you, both of you, the memory of the king.”
And I remember our trip down the well. The memory of Kurt’s mother holding him. Then the woman beneath the man. I want to reach out to Kurt, to let him know I’m here for him. But the walls he’s putting up are strong. He wants to be alone. He wants to put his fist through something. It’s in his eyes, the tremble of his arms.
Kurt shakes his head. “No, my father is dead.”
Lucine laughs again. “When the next king is called, your father’s powers will ebb completely, and only when the next king arises will he die. I told him to crown his true son. Nieve, her perversion of our kind, and the coming war are all of his making. By denying you, he gave her opportunity. So you see, my darling, your father lives until you piece together the trident and take the throne.”
“The king dies when the next king is called?” My words are a shadow in the brightness of their conversation.
Lucine nods methodically. “That is our way. The father will die, and the last son of kings will take the throne.”
“Stop saying that.” Kurt yells. He points a finger in her face. He turns around like he’s going to walk out that door. “Give it to Tristan. I don’t want this.”
“She’s crazy, Kurt,” I say. I look at the trident fork in her hands, the look in her eye. If I move the wrong way, she’s going to hit me with it. “But just take it! You were the one who found her, not me. At least if it’s with you—we’ll figure something out.” Yeah, we’ll figure out a way to not kill each other.
Lucine lets out a terrible wail. She rises taller than the pair of us. The water of her pool splashes in a whirlpool of its own. I’m afraid the candelabra chandelier is going to fall right over us when the doors burst open. Two bouncers come in and grab at us. I put my foot on the edge of Lucine’s pool, jump, and pull my dagger from its invisible hold. Behind me, I hear Kurt wrestling with one of them. I swing with the pointy end and miss.
He’s fast and smells faintly of wet dog. His fist, decked out with fat gold rings, hits my face. I fall to my knees and throw a weak punch. He punches me again. The room feels like a carousel. They squeeze my arms ’til I think my veins will pop right out. We’re out the door, up some steps, then I’m on the ground. My cheek is swelling by the second, and blood pools on my tongue from a cut on my lip. I spit on the ground.
“Kurt?”
The sky rumbles like the heavens are putting their foot on the gas pedal of the coming storm. It starts to drizzle.
“Kurt?”
I roll over and let the rain wash over me. Holy shit, it hurts. Just when I’m about to fall asleep to the soft patter of rain, the steady pulse of the bruise on my face and rib cage, a cold hand smacks me on my cheek.
“Wake up,” she says.
“Layla?”
“You wish.” Madame Mercury holds a black umbrella over my face. She holds out a hand. It’s cold and surprisingly strong. “I’m sorry for my men, but once one of my girls sounds the alarm, we have to protect her.”
I take the umbrella from her and hold it over us. The street is desolate, full of leftover food that didn’t make it into the garbage cans. “Where’s Kurt?”
“Still with her.”
“Of course he is.” The drizzle turns into rain.
“Come with me.” She turns back to the black door. When I don’t follow, she peers over her shoulder. “Well?”
I realize I’m staring. I take one last look at the street. Other than a scavenger digging through the trash can, it’s empty. Next door, the pink psychic shop is still glowing, but the session is over. Madame Mercury presses the door open. I close the umbrella, tuck it under my arm, and follow her back into the Second Circle.
Why are you helping me?”
We skip the winding steps and go through a service hallway. Quiet girls and guys fold and steam blankets, polish silver, and filter a white liquid by pressing flowers.
I find myself tripping and bumping into everything. It’s like the time I was supposed to be a stagehand during The Wiz to pass drama class. I single-handedly demolished the Emerald City from backstage. “You didn’t answer me.”
Vampires aren’t supposed to breathe, but Madame Mercury sighs. “I owe a very handsome vampire a favor. Seems you got on his good side.”
“I knew Frederik would take a liking to me eventually.” “He doesn’t like anyone, darling. Except for Marty.” We stop in the middle of a hall lined with six-inch-square circuit breakers. Mercury opens a little door, revealing two unmarked switches beside a window. When I look inside, it shows Lucine’s room.
I jump back.
“Calm down,” she says. “They can’t see you.”
“Do all these things look into a room?”
“Of course. Cameras are too detectable. Instead, we keep twoway mirrors just to make sure the body count stays down. This switch is for sound and this one to set off the sprinklers. We don’t want another fire like the Hellgate incident.” She runs her hand through my hair, admiring my face. “That was before your time. Don’t you worry.”
“I thought Lucine made that mirror appear.”
Madame Mercury scoffs. “She likes that trick. Makes her look fancy. Now, I’ll tell my staff that this service corridor is off limits. But you won’t have much time. If someone walks by, look busy.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
She presses her red lips on my cheek, then hands me a broom.
“Good luck, Sea Prince.”
“Thanks, Lady.”
She turns on her heel and sashays back down the corridor. The blackness swallows up her dress first, then the red of her corset, but not the white of her back.
I lean the broom on the wall beside me, take a look around the empty corridor, and peek into the window.
•••
I can’t remember which switch is which.
Through the window, Kurt is banging on the doors. There are no doorknobs. Lucine moves around in her pool. The water is calm now that I’m gone. She dips down to her shoulders and tilts her head back and floats around with her tailfins twisting in the air.
Kurt stops fighting with the door. He doesn’t look mad anymore. I understand the feeling. I could never be mad at Layla for too long. He steps carefully on the wet floor. There’s a splatter of my nose blood on the tiles. He stops and grimaces. He doesn’t even ask if I’m okay.
Instead, he keeps his eyes on Lucine. He takes his shirt off. When he gets to his shorts, he stops. Lucine is saying something but I’m afraid to flip the wrong switch. You know what? If the sprinklers hit, I’ll just dip out. They’re merpeople; they can handle a little bit of rain.
The switch snaps like a BB gun. I grab the broom in case someone walks down the hall. Their voices come through like a whisper.
“Hush now,” Lucine says. She undoes his button and he steps out of the shorts. It’s like a car crash I can’t look away from. He steps into Lucine’s golden pool and sits so they’re face to face. “Don’t forget I can see your thoughts. Even as you have me now, alone, you think of Tristan?”
“I’m thinking of many things, Lucine. One of which is why you aren’t letting me go. You’ve done it before. Thrown me out of your chambers just like you did Tristan. At least he was fully clothed, unlike the way I was the last time.”
She pouts. It’s a pretty pout. As a guy, I don’t know if I can fault him for staying. As his friend, I want to beat him with this broom. As his nephew…well, that’s gross and I don’t want to think about it too much.
“You aren’t still cross with me, are you?”
He answers her by grabbing her waist. The water glows as he shifts. He picks her up and sits her on top of him. She leans forward on his chest. Their noses touch. Her tails wrap around him. I let go of the broomstick and decide I shouldn’t be looking at this.
“I’ve missed y
ou.” I’ve never heard Kurt sound this way. Sweet and longing. He presses his mouth on hers.
“Too hard, bro,” I say to myself, remembering how Angelo was the one who gave me pointers on kissing. Our sworn secret.
She pulls back and touches the bite on her bottom lip. Now, she’s no longer an oracle. She’s Kurt’s. Her green eyes are bright, unworried, unburdened. He bends forward and she gasps. Water floods over the brim of the pool.
My throat is dry and I swallow. I flip the sound switch off. I shut the door and randomly peek to check if they’re finished. This is the girl he was talking about on the field? I open the door again and the pool is still.
Lucine settles her weight on him. She kisses his chest, right over his heart. Then she swims to the opposite edge for her golden comb. It has pearls along the handle and a ruby dangling on the end. I flip the sound back on.
“You always surprise me, Kurtomathetis.”
Oh, give me a break.
Kurt blushes. “And you me, Lucine.”
“Tell me, now that your mind is calm, have you accepted my challenge?”
He splashes out of the pool, grabs a towel from the bench. He dries off as best as he can before putting his clothes back on and finding that they’re wet. Duh, Kurt, everything in the room is wet. “Do you expect me to forget my true father in seconds? I’ve always been loyal to the throne. To take the trident would be to go against everything I stand for. It would make me a traitor to the—”
“Don’t you see?” She grabs at the air with her fist as if she could manifest her truths just by pulling them out of space. “You are the throne. For anyone to rule that isn’t you is already treason.”
Kurt’s silence is crushing. He starts to speak and stops, like he doesn’t want to say the words, but he must. “If the king had wanted to be my father, he would’ve announced it long ago. He’s had over a century.”
Lucine shakes her head and looks up to the ceiling. There’s so much wonder in her eyes that it’s like she’s looking at the moving sky of Eternity. Then she focuses back on this plane, on Kurt.
The Savage Blue Page 26