Immerse

by Tobie Easton

  I hate the reminder that I’m changed—irrevocably and forever—because of what I did. So, I avoid the dry rooms.

  But if brushing up on my leg control improves my chances of surviving tomorrow’s encounter with the wannabe sirens, I can withstand the silent reminder that awaits me in the practice room.

  Besides, I think, a small smile tugging at my lips, it isn’t all that awaits me there.

  There is one added benefit that may or may not factor into my decision to brave that particular dry room.

  It’s Caspian’s night to volunteer.

  When I walk inside, a black satin sarong slung low on my hips and my long hair tied back in a tight bun to avoid the horrible frizz I’ve heard talk of, Caspian is helping a woman with rosy cheeks walk in a slow circle. Despite her youthful appearance, there’s something mature about her posture and the expression in her eyes that gives me the impression she was elderly not too long ago. Maybe she was one of the many Mer who were too old to master leg control by the time the Nautiluses founded their on-land Community, but now that she’s reverted to her stasis age, she has a second chance to learn.

  I don’t make a sound as I step barefoot into the room, but Caspian looks up at the same instant, as if he can sense me. No one else’s face has ever brightened the way his does when I walk into a room. It makes me smile despite my plan to play it nonchalant tonight.

  It’s several seconds before I see anything else in the ballroom. The floor is padded to anticipate all the falls Mer will take in this room, except for a dance floor in the back where the more experienced can advance to the next level. I may not have remembered what it was if not for the couple currently spinning each other around to low-playing music from a human device. The melody travels throughout the space without water to muffle it.

  Closer to the door I just came through (its spell still making my skin prickle) stand short, padded paths bordered on both sides by handrails that people can use when there’s no volunteer available to help them. Another handrail lines the perimeter of the room for intermediate leg users who only need to grip it occasionally or want it nearby for reassurance. Two tail-lengths inside that is a running track, and then the center of the room features a bunch of weight machines to improve muscle tone. I can picture this place bustling in the afternoons. But right now, aside from the dancing couple and the woman Caspian is helping, only two other men use the perimeter handrail. It’s after dinner, so most people are home with their families.

  I don’t want to resort to using a handrail, so I stand in the empty space between the running track and the weight machines and start putting one foot in front of the other. Walking feels strange after not doing it for so long. I have to pour all my focus into my muscles and tendons. Heel first, roll to toe. Heel first, roll to toe. When I first learned to walk, I learned it backwards: toe to heel. I spent months practicing that way until we realized my father’s reference konklili was out of date. It was from the reign of King Nereus, during humanity’s Middle Ages. Before paved roads and harder soled shoes, they’d walked completely differently, testing the ground with their toes before placing their heels down. When we found out that pattern would make me stick out like a bent scale in modern California, I had to learn to walk all over again. Heel first, roll to toe. Heel fir—

  “Hi.”

  With all my attention on my feet, I didn’t notice him coming up to me. Air is so much less helpful than water—you don’t feel it surge when someone approaches.

  “Are you practicing in case you need legs tomorrow?” he asks. I haven’t heard English in so long that it takes my brain a few seconds to switch over. “That’s smart.”

  I stop myself before I can let a silent ‘hi’ slip out and nod instead.

  “So, do you need any help?”

  My jaw tenses, but I refuse to look embarrassed or weak in front of him, even as intense feelings of both well up in my chest. I shake my head, short and quick.

  Realization dawns in his ocean blue eyes. “Oh, right.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Can I at least offer you my arm?”

  He leans in and says in a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s kind of my job.” He presents his arm, and I slip my hand through the crook of his elbow, my palm resting against his forearm. I expect him to start chattering to fill the absence of my voice, but he slips into an intentional silence as we start to stroll in a circle around the ballroom. It means I don’t have to feel self-conscious that I can’t respond. My jaw unclenches and my shoulders relax. The silence grows companionable, and we both settle into it.

  After a few minutes, I wonder what he’s thinking and glance over at his face. I’m used to being able to float up so we’re at eye-level, but walking side by side like this, it becomes obvious he’s so much taller. It makes the rest of his frame more obvious too. Without the weightlessness of water, it’s like the broadness of his chest, the strength of his muscles matter more. They strike me as more real, more … touchable. My head is level with his chest now. What would it feel like to lean into it, to rest my cheek against the hard muscle cloaked in smooth skin, just for a second? One thing is for sure: with Caspian next to me, I’m not having the slightest trouble maintaining my legs.

  “Young man! Young man!” the older woman from earlier calls in Mermese from across the room.

  “I’ll be back,” Caspian whispers, and without water, his breath creates a gentle brush of air along the sensitive skin of my ear. I shiver. By the time I look up, it’s at the muscles of his back rippling like waves as he walks away.

  An idea strikes me, and one corner of my mouth twists upward.

  This is going to be fun.

  I grab a chair from where several are stacked on top of each other for sitting and standing practice. Then I drag it so it’s right in Caspian’s line of sight as he supervises the older Mermaid walking back and forth between a set of moveable handrails.

  Once my chair is in place, I slowly sink onto it, then cross my legs—and I don’t mean at the ankle. I can feel his gaze from across the room. It heats my skin. I peek up from under my lashes, using the pretense of tucking away a strand of hair that’s slid loose from my bun. Sure enough, he’s looking. Now I uncross my legs—slowly, sliding sideways in my chair so my knees point toward him as they come together—and cross them again the other way, my black sarong slipping higher up my thigh as I move.

  All right, so maybe I want to get some of my own back. Can you blame me? If I … if something does happen to me tomorrow, I don’t want the last time Caspian thought about me that way to be filled with tears and rejection. And I know what the sight of legs can do to a guy. Caspian was raised on land, so he’s more used to seeing them paraded around than most, but it’s not like he ever went to a human school. We never used our legs at the Foundation’s high school in the grottos—the teachers would have sent us home for being illdri. What’s the English word for that? Unseemly. That’s it. Sometimes I wonder if Caspian’s Lia obsession didn’t have something to do with her prancing around him in her legs all the time.

  Well she’s not the only one with legs. And unlike little-miss-trips-a-lot, I know how to use mine. Boy, do I.

  I stand gracefully (and a touch suggestively) from the chair, run my hands down my hips to smooth my sarong, and start walking in a line, but this time, I let the lower half of my body sashay back and forth as I stride toward him and away, toward him and away.

  He’s a smart one, so he probably knows exactly what I’m doing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not working.

  When I turn back toward him, one hand on my waist, our eyes meet across the ballroom.

  Oh it’s working all right.

  With a smile that’s turned suddenly shy, he shakes his head at my audacity, but his eyes have darkened with uncloaked desire.

  My returning smile is guilty and playful, the glee of it reaching up into my hairline and down to the tips of my bare toes on the padded floor.

  Soon, glee isn’t a
ll I’m feeling. A thrill dives down my spine as Caspian crosses toward me again. This time, he doesn’t need to ask me to take his arm; he presents it and my hand slips in without hesitation. We walk closer together than before, and the electricity charging the air between us isn’t from the static of the dry spell. I hold my breath. Without words to distract me from his closeness, I feel it along the entire length of my body, radiating from his skin to mine. My heart races and my head swims.

  My legs are stronger than they’ve ever been.

  I imagine what it might feel like if one of my legs brushed one of his, and I swallow, forcing myself not to bite my lip or fidget as heat pools within me.

  Then Caspian’s careful steps take on a sense of purpose—he’s leading me somewhere. Where? I glance up at his face, hoping for some clue, but its handsome lines convey nothing save determination.

  We pass a couple making out in an alcove of the dry room, their hands all over each other, no doubt getting each other worked up so maintaining their legs is easier. It’s a good beginner’s tactic that I remember well.

  At the sight of them, Caspian blushes again—hard. Huh. I always thought the word cute was reserved for guppies and seal cubs, but … is there a word in Mermese for sexy-cute? If I could talk, I could ask Caspian. I bet it would make him blush even harder.

  We reach a door along one wall and Caspian opens it, leading me into a small room lined with shelves. The whole space smells like new leather. Shoes in all sizes and types stand in neat rows on each shelf: high heels, flats, sneakers, pairs of every color and material. This must be where Mer can borrow shoes to use as another step in their leg control practice. It’s less easy to figure out why Caspian brought me in here. Unless …

  “I thought we should have some privacy for a minute,” he says, a touch breathless.

  Did he bring me in here to kiss me? As soon as the thought occurs to me, I know he did. It’s such a Caspian thing to do—he’s too much a gentleman to try something like that in front of a room of strangers. So he brought me somewhere private, like he said. Somewhere intimate.

  A smile seizes my face. I want him to kiss me. The realization washes over me. I want him to kiss me, and not as some distraction like I did before, not to prove anything. Not because I want a kiss. But because I want to kiss him.

  He takes a step toward me, and my tongue darts out to wet my bottom lip. Has the dry room made my lips too dry? Will I forget everything I know to do once his lips touch mine? What will he taste like?

  But instead of bending down, he’s taking my hands in his, and instead of kissing me, his lips start forming words. “I need to tell you something.”

  It takes long seconds for my brain to process what he’s saying. He didn’t bring me in here to … he brought me in here to tell me something? Of course he did. Why did I think … I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing it to carry the flurry of my excitement away with it. Before disappointment at losing something I never even had can set in, I make myself focus on what Caspian is saying.

  “This has been bothering me all day. What you said up in my room before, in front of Lia, well, I need you to know … I’m not fine risking you.” His thumbs stroke over the tops of my hands. “I know tomorrow carries risk, but that’s not why I think you should be the one to go. Not even for a second. I’m not fine risking you,” he repeats, more strongly than before. “I believe in you and I know you’re smart enough to take care of yourself, or I never would have told Lia my idea about you going to Sea Daughters.”

  My breath hitches in my chest. He believes in me?

  “I wouldn’t risk you. All right?”

  This is normally when I’d snap back at him with something clever and cruel. Something dismissive so he doesn’t think what he’s saying has any power over me. But I can’t.

  Instead, I have to hear him, have to let the words penetrate. He wouldn’t risk me. He believes I can do this. For the first time all day, I realize I believe it, too. I can go in there tomorrow, and I can get the information from those girls. My actions can matter again.

  The urge to let Caspian know that what he just said is important to me, that his belief in me is valued, wells inside me. If I could talk, I’d make a mess of the words. Instead, I rise up on my toes and press my lips to his smooth cheek, just for a second. Then I walk out of the storeroom and straight out of the ballroom on steady legs. It wasn’t the kiss I wanted, but it feels so right.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lia

  This is so many kinds of wrong. From outside the entrance to the storage room, I see Caspian holding Melusine’s hands in his, hear him saying he believes in her. How can he, after everything she’s done? I can’t stand to look—I have to step away.

  Melusine strides right past me on her way out without even seeing me, though I stand there in plain view next to the storeroom’s open door. As soon as she’s gone, I burst inside.

  “Lia! What are you doing here?” Surprise swims across his features.

  “I knew you had a shift tonight. I came to talk to you to see if we could find any other way to … I know she’s going to use this against us. I don’t know how, but she would never have agreed unless she was trying to hurt me.”

  Caspian straightens to his full height. “That’s not true.”

  “Are you two—Caspian, tell me the truth—are you two …”—I can’t bring myself to say “together”— “… dating?”

  “What? No. I would have told you.”

  Not How can you think that, not That’s ridiculous, not I would never, but I would have told you.

  I can’t trust myself to say anything without yelling at him, so I don’t answer, and he continues. “Just because we’re not dating, doesn’t mean I don’t … care about her. I do.” Ugh, make it stop. “I didn’t suggest she go to Sea Daughters just to help you or because it’s the only option I can possibly see working. I wouldn’t use her like that. It’s also about her. Doing something … important … difficult … real to help Clay, it’s a way for her to heal.”

  I only half-listened to anything he said after he admitted caring about her. “Why do you care? Why do you spend so much time with her? We both know you’re only friends with her out of pity, which she doesn’t even deserve.” He’s too nice a person to let her be lonely, and she takes advantage of him.

  “I’m not friends with her out of pity.” His voice takes on an exasperated edge so rare for him, but he calms it, infuses it with patience before he says, “I’m friends with her because …”

  “Because why?” Oh this I’d like to hear.

  His next words come out slowly, like he’s weighing each one, “Because she … sees things and—”

  “Like ways to manipulate people?”

  “Lia, I’m serious. She was raised so differently than we were, and she has such a different perspective. And she’s smart enough to really articulate what she means, so she makes me … think.” His speech speeds up with excitement. “She makes me question and come up with new ideas. It’s so easy to get stuck, you know? To make a decision and stop reevaluating if it’s the right one. She doesn’t let me get away with that.” He chuckles, his eyes crinkling, as he says, almost to himself, “She doesn’t let me get away with anything.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” I say, arms crossed over my chest. “You’re taking decision-making advice from the person who chose to siren Clay so she could kill him in a ritual sacrifice for power?”

  “Do you think I forget that when I’m with her?” he asks, his blue eyes wide and honest. “I don’t forget it for a second.” He looks down at his hands, clasped in front of him, then up at my face again. “And neither does she. She’s been tried and punished for those choices. She’s learned from them, and she’s still learning from them. That doesn’t mean they’re all she is.”

  I tilt my head, studying the conviction on his face. Caspian has always been such a good judge of character, and so sma
rt. He’s like the king of reason. Am I … am I being unreasonable? I believe in people getting second chances but … the memory of Clay’s face—glassy-eyed, first from sireny, then from a blade and blood loss—makes my insides churn. No. Her past actions may not be all she is to Caspian, but, “They’re all she is to me.” She will always be the person who hurt Clay. And me.

  Caspian lets out a slow breath. “It’s your right to feel that way, and I respect it. You need to respect that to me she’s … more.” He stares off at the shelves of shoes behind me without seeing them. “So much more.”

  That last part comes out in a half-whisper. What does he mean, she’s …? A whole school of images flits through my mind. The way he held her hands, complete with gentle strokes. The way his first reaction when he learned of Mr. Havelock’s capture was to ask what would happen to her. The way he constantly stands up for her. The giddy excitement in his voice when he talked about why he likes her, how she makes him think. The dreamy, faraway look on his face right this second.

  It’s the same look Em gets when she mentions Leo. The one I get when I talk about Clay.

  No. Oh please no.

  “Caspian,” I’m afraid to ask the question, but I do anyway, “are you … are you in love with her?” Say no, say no!

  “What? No,” he sputters, taking a step back. His gaze lowers to my feet instead of meeting my eyes. “I care about her … but, of course I care about her. We’re friends. She’s my friend.”

  Even though it’s the answer I wanted, it doesn’t help. After all, how many times did he say the same thing about me when he felt so much more for me? Despite his words, the truth hits me in the stomach, leaving me winded.

  Caspian is in love with Melusine. He may not realize it yet, but he is. I can see it all over his face. Hear it in his voice.

  I wish I could sink down onto one of the stools against the wall for trying on shoes without looking overly dramatic.