by Tobie Easton
Yes, that works. I took Clay’s free will. If someone had done that to me, I’d want them to acknowledge I now had my power back. What next? State the obvious. MerMatron Estrella said that words have power, so just because words are obvious doesn’t mean they’re not important. I dip the tip of the gluss again.
No words will make up for what I did to you, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I know I wouldn’t if I were you. I’ve taken enough of your time already, so you don’t owe me a second more, let alone the minutes it will take you to read this.
That’s one way Clay and I are very different now. His time is much more precious; he has so much less of it.
If you’re still reading, please know that I apologize.
Apologize for what? He knows my crimes as well as I do; listing them again won’t mean anything to him. What am I actually apologizing for?
I didn’t really see you. When I looked at you, I saw—I let myself see—what my father wanted me to see. Someone less than.
Truthfully, I saw him as something less than, but that’s too great an insult to put in writing when you’re not deliberately trying to hurt someone. If I’m being honest with myself (and isn’t that the point of this fun little exercise?), seeing Clay like that is what let me do … all of it.
You deserved much better. At the time I thought I had good reasons—the best reasons—for doing everything I did. But that doesn’t change that I did it.
I stare hard at those words: but that doesn’t change that I did it. They blur as unbidden tears fill my vision. This whole time … this whole time I’ve explained over and over to myself why I sirened Clay, why I kidnapped him, why I agreed to my father’s sacrificial ritual, why I nearly killed Clay while trying to stab Lia. I told everyone I did it to save Merkind. I told myself I had to do it to save countless Mer dying in the wars, like my mother. But those words—their irrefutable ink absorbing into the smooth algae—are true. None of that changes what I did.
I brainwashed. I kidnapped. I planned and attempted murder.
I’ve never met Clay’s mother, but an image erupts in my imagination of a human woman with long, dark hair the same shade as Clay’s. She kneels, sobbing over her son’s body the way I sobbed over my mother’s at her funeral. How could I have … how? The sobbing in my memory bleeds into the present, as I curl in on myself, hunching over the desk.
I did those things. No matter why I did them, I did them. I’m the type of person who would do those things.
My insides break. They shatter out my eyes and into my heaving breaths. I want to scream out all the broken, jagged pieces.
I stay like that, crumpled over the desk like a piece of trash, for minutes or hours, until I’m so exhausted my hands stop shaking.
I lift my head and pick the gluss back up. How do I finish this?
I don’t have much experience with apologies. My thoughts wander to my conversation with Caspian and his apology to me. Simple and honest.
I dip the tip of his gluss one last time.
Clay, I’m sorry.
Sincerely,
Melusine Muriel Havelock
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lia
“Aurelia Nautilus,” Em gasps after I’ve explained everything, “how could you?” Anger doesn’t color her words, but what does is worse: disappointment. It drips from every syllable of my name as it leaves her lips, and all I want to do is wash it off me with one of those industrial hoses. She stares at me like she’s never seen me before, and I’m struck by the urge to take my confession back. Swallow the words I’ve uttered, and deny, deny, deny what I’ve done until my big sister is proud of me again.
But I can’t. I’ve kept the truth from her long enough. All I can do is let myself feel the full weight of her reaction. Of all their reactions.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Lazuli says, blue eyes wide and conflicted.
“I know how bad, how evil sireny is. Really, I do. I fully understand how wrong it was,” I say.
“No, I mean … I can’t believe how much you risked for him. I’ve never felt that way about a guy. I knew the fact that the curse broke proved you guys, like, have true love. It’s just, true love … I guess I didn’t understand what that meant. I don’t know what it feels like. But,” she says, sitting up straighter, “I’d break the law to save Lapis.” She grabs Lapis’s hand, which reaches out for hers before the words even leave her mouth. “Or to save any of you, even the law against sireny. So, I guess … I guess I do understand.”
At the first hint of support from my family, I finally release the breath I’ve been holding hostage. Em’s face still looks as pained as if I’d rammed my tail into her stomach, but Lapis angles toward me, so I focus on her instead.
She shakes her head, eyebrows glued to the tippy top of her forehead. “You’ve got balls, sis, I’ll give you that.” She exhales, her shoulders dropping. “I always thought I was the troublemaker in the family.”
“Lapis, don’t encourage her,” Em snaps. “And don’t you dare joke about this.”
“I’m not,” she tells Em before turning back to me. “I just mean, who am I to judge you? Lia, if you want my help with something, it’s still yours.”
Really? “Thank you,” I say, holding her gaze. I don’t know if I’ve ever meant any words more. Now at least I won’t be alone in this because I can count on Lapis, and if she feels that way, then hopefully …
“I’ll help, too,” Lazuli says. “Whatever you need must be serious for you to come clean about this. Is it dangerous?” She shakes her head, as if erasing the question. “Whatever it is, I’m here for you, okay? Thanks for confiding in us.”
Em mouths the word “thanks?” like she can’t fathom it and crosses her arms over her chest.
Amy studies me from her seat next to mine. Her smile—her contagious, warm smile—has vanished beneath a sea of unease. “I understand why you sirened him, I just …” Her brows swim together. “Clay has forgiven you?”
I nod. “He understands why I did it, and he knows I’ll never, ever siren again. He trusts me.”
Deep in thought, she stares unseeing at a nearby laboratory table stacked with gears and spools of wire. It’s all I can do not to prompt her, not to rush her. When she finally speaks again, her voice comes out quiet but resolute. “Well, he’s the one who deserves to be angry, so if he’s forgiven you, then it’s not really up to me to be mad.”
The orca whale floats off my chest. I hug her, and it takes everything in me not to let myself collapse in her fourteen-year-old arms. Losing her might have killed me.
“I know you,” she says after the embrace ends. “If you did it, I know it was only because you had to.”
“Thank—”
“But she didn’t have to!” Em explodes. “You didn’t have to!” She rounds on me, crossing our small circle in a flash. “No matter why you did it, there’s no justification for sirening someone—for stealing a person’s free will. None.” Em, usually more composed and calm than all of us combined, might be spitting with the force of her anger right now if it weren’t for the dehydration spells.
“I know that,” I whisper. “A-are you going to tell on me?”
She freezes, hurt lancing across her face. “You think I would do that? You think I would let them rip your voice out? Or send you to prison for eternity? You’re my sister.” Is that the end of it? Will she break down and hug me now? “But I don’t know how to even take in this information. I thought I knew you.”
“You do,” I say, begging her to accept the truth of it, to accept me after everything I’ve done.
“No,” she says, pacing in our circle. “No. Because the Lia I know isn’t someone who could”—she fills the next word with disgust—“siren.”
“I didn’t have any other choice,” I say, my volume rising to match hers.
“Yes, you did. You could have gone to Mom and Dad. You should have gone to Mom and Dad. They’v
e always been there for us. They would’ve handled this for you.”
Amy pipes up next to me, “I think Lia—”
“Don’t you think I thought of that?” I stand so Em no longer towers over me. We’re face to face now. “Don’t you think going to them is the first thing I thought of? Letting my mommy and daddy come to the rescue would have been a lot easier, believe me.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Em throws back.
“I went to Mom. I went straight to her the first time I saw Melusine sirening Clay.” I ran all the way home. “I asked her what she and Dad would do if a serious crime were committed in our Community.”
“What did she say?” Amy asks.
“She told me it wouldn’t be up to them. She said any serious crime would have to be turned over to the Community at large to decide. You know what happened the last time Mer ruled on a sireny case?”
I catapult the question at Em, but Lazuli speaks up. “Didn’t you say you were afraid to go to the Foundation because when Caspian’s great-great-aunt sirened, the authorities executed her victim to protect Merkind?”
“Bingo,” I say. “I wasn’t going to let Clay be killed.”
“Mom and Dad would never have let that happen,” Em argues.
“Like they didn’t let the Tribunal take his memories? It wouldn’t have been up to them! I couldn’t risk that. Not when Clay’s life was at stake.”
“Yes, you—”
“Pretend it was Leo!”
The words slap her in the face, her head snapping back. Her mouth shuts like a clamshell, but her eyes stay on fire.
“Pretend for one second it was Leo,” I say. “You could never risk Leo’s life, risk being the reason Leo was killed.”
That’s the end of it. The scenario plays out behind her eyes and the corners of her mouth quiver. Maybe now she’ll forgive me, agree to help me.
“I could never siren him.” She fills the words with quiet fury. “I could never do that.” Her eyes pierce into me like the spines of a lionfish. “And you never should have. You should’ve gone to Mom and Dad and told them what you were afraid of. If they thought your fears were warranted, they would’ve kept it from the board.”
“And then what?” I throw up my hands. How is she still making this argument? “What if it had come out? Mom and Dad would have been ruined for trying to hide it, and our entire Community—everything they’ve worked for our whole lives—would’ve been thrown into chaos. You know what happened Below the last time someone’s daughter made a mistake with a human and our trusted leadership was ousted? Two hundred years of war, that’s what. And there’s no way Mom and Dad would be on the throne now ushering in an entire new era of peace if they’d been caught with a siren for a daughter.”
Our eyes lock and hold.
Em shrinks back. Her eyes dart around the room, as if searching the lab for another solution. “Then you could have come to me,” she says.
“I thought about it.” I really did. I wanted to go to my big sister for help. “Of course I thought about it.” Some of the hurt recedes from Em’s face. “But you wouldn’t have known what to do either. You would have told them.”
She inhales through her nose like she’s fueling an eruption. “Which would have been the right decision!”
Ugh! We’re swimming in circles.
“You’re wrong. You just want to think our parents would have found some pretty, shiny, perfect right answer. There wasn’t one. They can’t fix everything.”
“But—”
“You’re wrong, Em.”
“I’m not. But even if I were, it wouldn’t make you right. There was another way. I refuse to believe sirening was your only option.”
Is she right? If I’d come to her, could we have found some other way together? The idea makes my throat constrict and my eyes sting. It doesn’t matter now. “I’ve done what I’ve done, and I have to live with it. Clay and I both do.”
The truth of it echoes around the dry, clinical room.
Suddenly, I’m exhausted. Em must be too, because her shoulders sag. “You’ll never do it again?”
All of them stare at me.
“I proved that when I wouldn’t siren Mr. Ericson to save my own life, or Casp’s.”
Em gives just the barest nod, and some of the tension in our circle dissipates.
Lapis asks Em the question we’re all thinking: “Do you still want to tell Mom and Dad?”
I’m trusting you, I think at Em. I’m trusting you to see reason.
“It would be pointless now,” she says on her way back to her stool, her voice more troubled than ever. “Now that Lia’s already sirened.” She sinks down heavily. “It’ll just put them and everything they’re building in danger.”
Relief splashes over me again, but this time it’s bittersweet. I feel like I just swam six hundred laps. “Should I not have told you?” I ask Em.
“I chose to know,” she says. “And … I’m glad I know. Now that we’re drafting the new constitution, I want to work toward creating a legal system that encourages people to come forward when they witness a crime instead of scaring them away.”
“That would be good,” I say. This is probably the most positive note I can hope for before I segue into telling them what I need their help with.
I’d wanted them all on board before I got to this part. I take a deep breath, and my voice comes out shakier than I’d like. “So, the reason I told you is that I wanted you to all know the whole truth before—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lapis interrupts. “Get to it already. What do you need us to do?”
Anticipation—and a healthy dash of fear—pours off them. Stools creak closer.
“When Clay got his memories back, he asked me to do something for him. Something big.” I line up my points in my brain, ready to make a case for Project Mud. If I can convince them to help, we’ll all be working on this together. I say the words out loud to my sisters for the first time: “Clay wants to become Mer.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Melusine
It’s my first time swimming to Caspian’s room. So far during my stay here, I’ve avoided this wing of the palace. A new wave of disquiet crests within me at every bejeweled door I pass. Is that one Lia’s room? That one? What about that one? I clench my fist around the bag I carry as if I could get a grip on myself at the same time.
As much as I don’t want to be, I’m still shaken from earlier, like someone used one of those creepy, unnatural evaporation spells to dry out my insides. But I need to do this now, before I lose my nerve. On top of everything, I refuse to be someone who loses her nerve.
Sharp eyes follow my every turn as the guards’ thoughts echo off the coral walls. What is she doing here? They stand, spines as straight as their spears, watching me, watching me, always watching me.
I raise my chin higher and continue counting doors until I reach the one Caspian told me belongs to him. I take a deep breath in front of it, slowly so the guards won’t see my gills flutter.
I’ve scrubbed my face and reapplied my makeup—just so it won’t look like I was crying, of course. I would have done it no matter whose door I was heading toward. Emotional weakness isn’t something to put on display in front of anyone. Caspian has seen me in a private, vulgar outburst before, and I’m not proud of it, nor keen on ever repeating it.
But whether he’ll be able to tell I’ve been crying isn’t what makes my nerves jump and dive. What if this is the wrong door? I peer over my shoulder, counting again since my last rightfin turn. This should be the one, but what if when I knock, she answers? Or the queen?
I square my shoulders and lift my fist to the door. Before I make contact, it opens in a rush of water.
Relief floods my senses, sweet and total.
Caspian.
The doorway frames his bare, broad chest and silver tail. My mouth fills with salt water until I snap it closed.
“Melusine, h
ey.” Surprise colors his voice, and he smiles. It makes the clear blue of his eyes light up—the ocean’s surface bathed in the warmth of high noon.
What? He’s saying something, but I’ve missed it.
“… going to get something to eat. What’s up?”
I came here for a reason. I have something to say. But my thoughts … where are they? I must be more unsettled from earlier than I thought. But the sensation is so different, calm and keyed up at the same time. Words continue to float just out of my reach.
“Do you want to come in?” he asks.
I nod, and he angles his body to the side, gesturing me in. My tail brushes his as I swim through the doorway.
Once I’m inside, my gaze lands everywhere at once, drinking in the details of this space. Caspian’s room.
Disappointment eels into me. It looks just like mine. Well, it’s bigger, since it’s in the royal family’s wing, but all the décor, the furniture, the layout, it’s all the same. He’s not living here, just staying temporarily, like I am. This isn’t home for either of us.
And he barely had a chance to settle into his family’s new house in New Meris before he came here, so I doubt his room there really feels like his, either. What did his bedroom in the grottos in Malibu look like? Did it have stalactites hanging from the ceiling or blue copper laced through the walls? I bet Lia has seen it a hundred times. A thousand.
Jealousy claws up into my throat, and its familiarity grounds me. I find my voice again as Caspian clicks the door shut. “I wanted to return these, in case you needed them back right away.”
I stick my arm out in a jerky motion, offering up the bag of his writing supplies.
“Oh, you can keep them longer if you want to. There’s no rush. I didn’t expect them back tonight.”
“Oh.” Does that mean he didn’t want me to come here tonight and he wants me to leave, or just that he wasn’t expecting me? The thought of going back to my empty room and being alone right now … A glance at the door makes my stomach leap into my throat.