by Tobie Easton
“No one wants me there.” Not a convicted criminal who only escaped jail because I’m a minor who the court thought had been manipulated. I wasn’t manipulated. I never have been.
He floats there on his silver tail and his blue gaze meets mine. “Since when do you care what anyone else wants?”
Chapter Three
Lia
The sharp metal glints in my hand. I have to do this quick—everyone will be expecting me downstairs soon. I should have done it sooner; it was stupid of me not to, but …
I set the large, steel scissors down on my bathroom countertop and check the door one more time to make sure it’s locked. I’ve learned my lesson about the importance of locked doors. Then I slip off my thick headband and let the curl of hair coiled up beneath it tumble free. My parents and my sisters think my new penchant for headbands is a fun fashion statement I picked up Below while I was at Sea Daughters Academy, the boarding school beneath a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. The truth is, I did start wearing headbands like this one because of Sea Daughters, but only to hide the aftereffects of my time there, and of the powerful, illegal magic I should have known not to trust.
With the headband gone, a strand of sparkling metallic gold shimmers among my long, natural brown waves. It’s the exact shade as my tail is when I let it free. If I didn’t know what caused that strand to turn gold, I’d probably like it. I’d probably think it was beautiful.
Instead, all I see when I look at it are my own mistakes. My willingness to follow someone because she told me what I wanted to hear. My rush to join a group of girls who hid what they really wanted from me behind glittering magic and the guise of friendship.
My tutor Ondine was the most magical, exquisite person I’d ever seen, with shimmering, ice-blue streaks in her hair the same shade as her tail that I soon learned she’d gotten by performing ancient magic. She introduced me to her students—a group of friendly, powerful girls who welcomed me—and promised if I granted them access to my magic, together we could restore Clay’s memories. The choice seemed easy.
I sigh and run my fingers over the golden strand in my hair. Soon after we successfully completed the spell, this strand turned gold and I finally felt like a true member of their circle. Like I belonged. That’s when they revealed that they were sirens. That they planned to use the access I’d given them to my magic to force me to siren, too. When I refused to use sireny to steal humans’ free will, they threatened to kill not only me, but Caspian, too.
Even now, months later, fear still slithers up my spine at the memory of how much danger Casp and I were in. We managed to escape when I used what Ondine had taught me to seize the group’s magic and release it into the ocean, but the fact that Ondine has disappeared and could return means I still wake at night with my heart skittering.
I can’t afford to make any more mistakes that put people’s lives at risk. That’s why I haven’t cut the strand out yet. Keeping it there reminds me how important each decision can be.
“Aurelia!” My oldest sister, Emeraldine, knocks on the door. “They’re ready for us. Are you coming?” Anxiety makes her usually measured tone sound strained.
“I’ll be right out.”
“Hurry up.”
No more time to waste. Cold metal presses against my temple as I position the scissors right where the brown roots turn to gold. One steadying exhale and a slice of the scissors later, and the golden hair falls away, leaving only my memories to keep me in line. They’ll have to be enough.
Soon, I’m heading down the stairs to our entrance hall, then swinging open the door to an innocent-looking closet. Since no one is home but us, the coats that line the back of the closet have been pushed aside, revealing a narrow corridor. As I wind my way down the stone stairway at the corridor’s end, voices drift up to me, echoing off the damp walls. The antechamber at the bottom of the stairs is hidden from view of the rest of the grottos, its walls lined with shelves and hooks for shoes, skirts, shorts, and pants. I slip off my flip-flops and floral skirt then sit on the sloping floor at the edge of the deep canal cut into the center of the room. It flows outward around a bend, the satiny salt water calling to me.
But I don’t launch myself into that water the way I want to. Not yet. I close my eyes and embrace the familiar, magical sensation of imaginary ocean tides crashing over my legs. My muscles and bones shift and fuse in what feels like the most satisfying stretch ever. When I open my eyes, my tail lies before me, my fins uncurling, and I slide forward on my golden scales into the welcoming water.
The voices grow louder as I swim down the canal and around the corner into the grottos. My parents—along with hair, makeup, and wardrobe specialists—have transformed the cave we use as our main ballroom into a giant dressing room. My eyes widen. A team of professionals swim around what is now coronation prep central, their tails below the waterline and their torsos above it in the cool air, setting up silver trays of Mer-made, waterproof makeup, fishbone combs, and delicately wrought hair accessories of the finest gemstones. The cavernous room seems larger than ever now that mirrors in ornate, tulip shell frames hang from the ceiling, reflecting walls that glimmer like the inside of an abalone shell.
“There you are!” Emeraldine says from across the room, barely visible behind three Mermaids who each hold up different jewelry options against her gauzy siluess. They look to my mother, who swims nearby, for approval.
“I like the emeralds,” I say, nodding toward the hanging teardrop earrings that match the deep green of Em’s tail.
“They’re pretty,” my mom says, “but not regal enough for the occasion. Go with those instead.” She gives her opal fins a decisive flick toward a pair cut from aquamarine, the symbol of royalty.
“I liked the emeralds, too,” someone whispers to me.
I turn to see my cousin Amethyst sitting behind me on one of the portable, raised stools brought in for the day, its wide base preventing it from toppling in the water. “Amy!” Wow. “You look gorgeous.” There’s no way I ever looked that put-together when I was fourteen. The hairdressers have drawn her strawberry blond locks into a sophisticated, half-up, half-down affair. Mossy green eye shadow complements her light purple tail, and a pale pink lip keeps her from looking overdone.
“Thanks,” she says with a little bounce of excitement that betrays her real age even under all that makeup. “This is nothing compared to what they’re going to do to you.” Amy was raised with my family on land since she was a baby, and she feels like one of my sisters, but she’s actually my cousin. So, while she’ll have a place of honor in the procession, she won’t be included in the coronation ceremony itself. Instead, she’ll look on alongside her parents, who have returned from Below now that the wars are over.
As if to prove Amy’s prediction correct, two hairstylists introduce themselves and usher me onto a stool of my own next to where my mother drapes a massive aquamarine necklace around Em’s neck. I’m struck by how alike they look now that my mother has her immortality back. Centuries ago, before the Little Mermaid’s curse, Mer stopped aging in their mid-twenties or early thirties—we call that reaching stasis. When Clay and I broke the curse and made Mer immortal again, all adult Mer reverted back to their stasis ages. Em, with her thick chestnut hair and elegant features, always took after our mother. But now that my mom looks just a few years older than my twenty-one-year-old sister, the resemblance is uncanny. Aside from their tails, they’re nearly identical.
Platforms and heeled boots clatter against the stone steps, followed by the telltale rustling of shoes and skirts being removed. “Are we late?” a voice calls out from the antechamber.
Speaking of identical …
My mom sighs in relief as my twin sisters swim into the room.
“It was Lazuli’s fault,” Lapis explains, throwing her long blond hair over her shoulder. “She had a stupid sorority brunch thing.”
“It’s-not-stupid,” Lazuli sing-songs. She’s sti
ll wearing her candy-pink Delta-Alpha-Whatever T-shirt, which stretches tight across her enviable chest and quickly darkens as it dips into the water. “We’re planning an eighties-themed mixer.”
Lapis rolls her blue eyes, but Lazuli misses it, choosing that second to peruse a rack of siluesses. The twins commute between home and college. Unlike Lazuli, Lapis spends more time hanging with the indie rock kids than at toga parties.
“Of all days to be late.” Em’s eyes narrow and the twins both flash her innocent grins that make Amy hide a laugh behind her hand.
One of the hairstylists begins brushing my hair, and I relax under the repetitive motion. It’s almost meditative—that is, until her surprised voice breaks my calm. “What’s this?”
“What?”
“This short piece on the left?” she holds up the brown stub of hair where the golden strand used to be.
My heart rate quickens, but I keep my face casual. “Oh … um … I had a hair wrap. I cut it out.”
“When did you have a hair wrap?” Amy asks.
“Don’t worry,” the hairstylist says, patting my shoulder. “We’ll hide it under your crown.”
“Crown? I’m wearing a crown?”
She raises an eyebrow at me like the answer is obvious. I guess it is.
One hour and ten pounds of makeup later, I’m still not ready for the crown. Even after years of dressing up for my parents’ Community galas, I never knew getting ready could take this long. When my mother said she was bringing in professionals from Below, I thought it was overkill. After all, my sisters and I have been doing each other’s hair for years. But now I understand. The coronation procession will culminate in the town square at the palace in New Meris, the new capital city Below, which means our hair needs to look good not just here in the grottos but once we’re completely immersed.
To that end, the twins’ blond tresses are being coated with a thick clear gel made of a whale blubber and wax mixture that will ensure their elaborate hairstyles hold underwater. My stylist’s nimble fingers carefully curl my own hair around a heated walrus tusk. I can’t help thinking it would be easier to go upstairs and plug in my curling iron, but whatevs. Once the curls are done, they too are dipped in wax.
After the wax mixture has dried and I feel more like a candle than a soon-to-be princess, it’s time to get dressed. Unlike Em, the twins and I don siluesses that match our tail colors because, as my mother explains, those colors suit us best and we don’t need to worry about wearing a regal color, the way Em does.
I’ve never worn such a fancy siluess. The golden, iridescent fabric shimmers on the hanger like it’s made of liquid. It laces up the back, so it doesn’t disturb my hairstyle, and once it’s on, the dip of the sweetheart neckline mimics the bottom of the garment, which comes to a point right below my chest, a weighty crystal hanging from it above my navel.
Wearing similarly extravagant siluesses in blue, the twins sit back down, and a hairstylist places delicate diamond tiaras on their heads.
I’m expecting something similar for myself, so when my hairstylist swims forward with my crown, my jaw drops.
“That isn’t mine, is it?”
My dad picks that second to swim into the room on his copper-colored tail, wearing not one, not two, but three strands of star-shaped limpet shells slung diagonally across his chest. Several more dot his slicked-back hair. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen his hair neat. “Everybody just about ready?” he asks, rubbing his hands together and shooting us all a look of bolstering excitement. “Wow! Don’t you all look beautiful.”
He moves toward my mother, and his smile transforms from one for everyone else to one just for her. The skin around his eyes crinkles the way it did before he regained his immortality. “Stunning,” I hear him whisper as he kisses her on the cheek. She melts into him for a moment, warmth radiating through the dressing room.
Then he catches sight of my crown. “Tides! Look at that thing.”
Atop a cushion of midnight blue silk sits an ornate headpiece with long, golden spokes. It looks like a giant sunburst.
My mother lifts the crown from the cushion and holds it between her hands. Putting it on shouldn’t be a big deal; after all, my crown is purely decorative. My mother and father are the reigning monarchs, so they’re the only ones who will be literally crowned at the coronation. But I still swallow as my mother swims toward me with that golden headpiece.
“You are the ray of hope,” she says. “You broke the curse for our people and gave them a future, and now you represent the bright, shining hope they have for that future.”
In the second before the crown touches my head, I expect to feel like I’m in some fairytale. Like she’ll place it on my head and I’ll suddenly stand taller, as majestic music swells and I rise to the metaphorical challenge the crown poses, imbued with wisdom and pink-confetti princess powers … or something. But as it settles on my head, it just feels like it might fall off.
Two hairstylists add two dozen tiny crustacean claw clips to keep that from happening. Then they back away and my mother guides me over to one of the hanging, tulip shell mirrors, my father following right behind.
I gasp.
I may not have had some mystical King Arthur moment when she put that crown on my head, but between the classic cut of the siluess, the jewels hanging from my ears, neck, and arms, the makeup shimmering all over my skin, and the golden sunbeams shooting from my hair, I really do look otherworldly. No, that’s the wrong word, I correct myself. I have to stop thinking of the world Below as another world. It’s my world, even if I wasn’t raised there.
If that’s true, a tiny voice inside me whispers, then how come after months living Below, this house, this neighborhood, even Clay’s house, feel more like home than the coral palace at New Meris? I stare at the glittering, glamorous, and utterly unfamiliar reflection.
“You’re lovely,” my mother says, her own reflection sliding into view as she squeezes my shoulders.
“Inside and out, seashell,” my dad adds, carefully dropping a kiss on my head behind the crown.
My sisters gather around the mirror, doing final makeup and hair checks. In the glass, we look like a real royal family. And whether I’m ready or not, we’re about to become one.
Chapter Four
Melusine
“Of course I’m ready!” I snap at the muscular, hairy guard in the prison’s entrance. “It’s not like I haven’t done this before.” Maybe the guards expect people to need a few minutes to collect themselves before being searched for contraband and led into a cellblock, but by now, this whole procedure is routine for me. That’s what happens when your father is a convicted felon with an eternal sentence.
“You’re only allowed in while accompanied by an adult with a clean criminal record,” the guard recites. “Do you have anyone with you or are you alone?” He leans over his podium and takes an exaggerated look from left to right, searching for someone he knows he won’t find. He fights to hide a smile. The sick fuck.
“No. I’m alone,” I answer. The same answer I’ve given him every week for thirteen weeks. Ever since Ondine disappeared into the sea. “Where’s Galia?” I ask, glancing around for the female guard who usually accompanies me on my visits these days.
“She’s been reassigned for the day to help coordinate crowds over the Border for the coronation.” Now he does smile, big and toothy. “Guess you’re stuck with me?”
He phrases it like a question, like a challenge he thinks I’ll back out of. I’d grit my teeth, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Let’s go then, shall we? I’m on a schedule.” That’s as much cheek as I allow myself; after all, this man is one of the officers in charge of my father’s meals.
I follow him inside and, after a too-handsy search that I plan to scrub from my memory, we head deeper into the bowels of the Foundation to the cells.
As we swim, my thoughts keep drifting back to Caspian. To his
invitation to attend the coronation and the ball. I roll it over in my mind the way I rolled that smooth invitation stone over in my palm after he left.
But I push the thought aside when I reach the row of small caves, each one fitted with a steel-wire net covering its mouth. There aren’t many of these caves, and all of them stand empty except one. In this small, peaceful Community, originally created as a sanctuary from the wars Below, my father is the only Mer under a prison sentence. Two guards gripping spears wade on either side of the cave at the end of the row.
I’m not as sensitive to magic as someone with more training would be, but as I approach my father’s cave, the hairs on the back of my neck float up at the ripple of magic emanating from it. That sharp wire net isn’t the only thing blocking him from swimming out.
Before I can catch a glimpse of him, the hairy guard accompanying me leads me to the right, away from the caves and into the glass-encased visitors’ room. He motions to one of my father’s guards outside, who swims off and returns with a small vial of brown liquid.
Since spells require so much energy output, modern Mer rely on potions whenever possible. Like the potion that took my voice, making me unable to speak above water. I push that thought away, too. It’s unproductive. My father’s guards go through an elaborate procedure, locking his wrists behind his back in bronze cuffs, giving him the potion so he can pass through the magical shield in front of his cave, then attaching a third cuff to the base of his tail, which they secure between his wrist cuffs with a long bronze chain. Immobilized, my father waits there until the guards take him by the upper arms and escort him into the visitors’ room. They loop a chain on the floor through a ring on his fin cuff to keep him in place.
Each time I see my dad in chains, see such an elegant Merman at the mercy of lowly, craggy-finned guards, my stomach plummets. Each time, I fight a wave of nausea and tell myself next time will be easier. Seeing him as a prisoner isn’t the only part that’s shocking; I still haven’t gotten used to how startlingly young he looks now. His angular face, pointed features, and black hair are the same, but with the curse broken, he appears about twenty years younger. A bitter laugh almost breaks its way out of me. This time last year, how we yearned for his immortality. Now he has it, and he’ll spend it locked away.