by Tobie Easton
“Plus, you’re Melusine,” Nixie jumps in with an overly eager smile. “How cool would it be to have you around? We could probably learn so much from you!”
I dig my thumbnail into the side of my pointer finger to keep my eyes from lighting with glee. It’s the first sign that I might have a chance of winning them over. That maybe they don’t think I’m Lia’s grunion. Which, I’m not.
“If we can even trust you,” Jinju says.
Or maybe they do.
“We saw you on the beach after Ondine disappeared with Caspian, Lia, and her human,” Jinju says, with a hint of accusation.
“Clay,” Nixie provides, only to clamp her mouth shut at a withering glance from Jinju, who then stares at me with obvious, purposeful suspicion.
Damn. I have to turn the tide, quickly. “What I was doing there was my business … and Ondine’s,” I say cryptically. “How do I know I can trust you? You were all friends with Lia.” It isn’t hard to infuse her name with disgust. Nothing has felt so natural in a while.
“Ondine instructed us to befriend her,” Thessa says, “so that she would agree to siren for us in your place.” Once I was convicted, stripped of my voice, and became useless to Ondine. I keep my face impassive.
“Plus, Lia was nice,” Dionna says.
“Yeah, until she seized Ondine’s magic, threw it away, and destroyed our circle,” Jinju says.
“You trusted her to see the bigger picture of protecting Merkind and to put it above her unnatural fondness for humans. That was a mistake,” I tell them.
Guilt steals onto Nixie, Thessa, and Dionna’s faces. But Jinju’s dark eyes stay hard. “At least we were acting on Ondine’s orders. Were you?”
Asking what she means would shift the power between us, so I remain silent as sand.
Jinju swims closer. “Thessa and Nixie said you came to guard Lia’s friend Caspian in their place because Ondine sent you here with a message for them to join us by the shore. But Dionna and I were with Ondine that entire day, and we never saw her speak to you.” She raises an accusatory eyebrow.
My heartbeat hastens. “And here I thought you understood the concept of magic.” I space the words out like I’m talking to morons. “If you must know, Ondine and I shared a mental bond. She set it up before my father and I moved to the surface, so we could consult her if we needed help with the ritual she had taught my father that would take control of the curse.” Lia and Clay’s weird mental bond gave me this idea as I lay awake last night, so I repeated it over and over out loud into my empty room in case I needed it. Now, the lie slides out smooth and convincing from my lips. “Ondine based it on the family bonds royals used to use so monarchs could communicate with danisses.” Relatives who acted as chancellors, controlling distant regions for the crown. “You may not have seen her talk to me that day, but that’s only because she used our family bond to tell me to come here and send the rest of your circle to you, so you could all stop Lia.” I sneer, as if to say, “Good job with that.”
I hold my breath. Will they believe the lies or figure out that all I wanted then—and all I want now—was to trick them?
“Ondine never told us about any bond,” Jinju says.
My stomach flips. “Well, clearly, she didn’t tell you everything. Maybe I was wrong to come here. You probably don’t even know the information I need. Ondine probably never even told it to you.”
“She told us a lot,” Dionna says, crossing her arms and raising her voice for the first time.
“I’m sure,” I say with as much condescension as I can muster. “But not about family matters. Don’t fret over it. After all, you weren’t her family.”
And that’s the nerve I needed to strike.
Hurt eyes, clenched jaws, and bitten lips conquer the girls’ faces. Living within the walls of this island since they were five, they barely know the families who sent them here. Ondine is mother and sister both.
Jinju bristles. “She may not have told me about some little mind-bond with you, but only because she must not have thought it was very important. Not because she didn’t think of me as family.”
“You tell yourself whatever you need to believe,” I say, driving the knife deeper.
“If she didn’t think of me as family,” Jinju challenges, “she wouldn’t have told me family secrets, would she? Like about your mother’s murder.”
My chest tightens at the mention of my mother, but I keep my voice indifferent. “Everyone knows my mother was murdered. That’s hardly a secret.”
Jinju is smiling now. Why is she smiling? “Yes, but only family, like you and me and Dionna, know how it really happened. Ondine told us what a noble sacrifice your father made to ensure you could come here and siren for us to protect Merkind from discovery.” When he sacrificed the only world he’d ever known to move Above. I did that, too. Again, everyone knows that. But Jinju keeps smiling, keeps talking. “What a noble sacrifice he made indeed. When your mother refused to let you learn the siren song.”
All the water in the rooms turns to ice.
“He made it look like any other senseless casualty of the war,” Jinju’s voice continues. “Like she was an innocent victim who got in the way of one of the many skirmishes, when really that’s how dedicated he was to the cause. Dedicated enough to kill his wife so she wouldn’t stand in the way of you becoming a siren.”
It can’t be true. It can’t. My mother wanted me to lure Clay in, to siren him if necessary, so we could control the curse. It was her plan for me. She wanted me to be queen one day. She wanted, she wanted …
I’m going to choke. My gills are closing.
“Why, you’re white as whalebone,” Jinju says with mock concern. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know?”
“Don’t be a fool. There’s nothing you can say I haven’t heard before,” I force out, my voice sounding far away to my own ears. My thumbnail presses into the side of my finger harder than ever and I dimly wonder if I will bleed. “I’m just shocked Ondine told you such a … secret.” Does that explain away whatever they see on my face? I want to flee from them, hide somewhere quiet until my brain stops spinning. Could it be true? But I won’t let them get the best of me. I won’t let them see me so much as twitch with weakness, even if all I want to do is throw up.
Jinju thinks she can send me reeling? I’m going to suck out every drop of information she knows. I’m going to get exactly what I came here for.
But first, I need to get my heart rate to slow down, need to get my breathing under control before I faint and this is all over. I need to buy myself some time.
“Fine,” I say, only the painful press of my thumbnail keeping my voice from shaking. “If Ondine trusted you like family, then I suppose I can, too. It’s time I told you why I came to the academy today.” I clasp my hands behind my tail to hide their trembling as I take a pointed look at the door. “But not here. Not with your advisor right across the hall and girls swimming back and forth to their rooms. Where can we go where we won’t be interrupted? Take me there, and I’ll tell you everything.”
I insist on silence as we swim through the winding hallways and use those precious minutes to push the maelstrom of questions down, down, down. I’ll have plenty of time to think all of it through on the carriage ride back once I’m alone. But right now, I’m not alone. I’m surrounded by girls who have to think I am someone to be respected. Someone to be feared.
They lead me far away from the main section of the school—far away from the guards at the entrance and the safety they provide—until all the hallways we swim down are empty. We pass a row of portraits, and my grandmother’s stands out. She stares down at me from her algae leaf canvas with sapphire eyes the same shade as my own. When the authorities combed through the school investigating Ondine’s disappearance and confiscating contraband magical objects and potions, they must not have realized these paintings all contained portraits of history’s sirens.
My grandmot
her is proof I inherited my ability for sireny through my mother’s line. So why would my mother not want me to embrace it? And even if she didn’t want me to, even if she refused, my father wouldn’t kill her, would he? My breathing picks up again as my father’s face, twisted in anger, looms in my mind’s eye. Could it be true?
No, no, I’ll think about it later. I’ll think about all of it later. Breathe in, breathe out.
We turn a corner and suddenly, we’re surrounded by thousands of shells, all different kinds but all white. They cover the walls and ceiling of the small grotto, decorating every surface in artistic patterns.
Right in that spot, Caspian was tied up in magical ropes, about to die because of Ondine and these girls.
I welcome the anger that spikes inside me. It steadies me. I will take pleasure in deceiving these Mermaids.
And the best deceptions always start with the truth.
“Lia has the obsidian dagger.”
That elicits the shocked faces and rapt attention I intended.
“How?” Thessa asks.
“Does it matter? She’s Lia. She figured out a way to sneak it out of the evidence vault. Now she plans on using it to turn her human loverboy into a Merman.”
Gasps fill the grotto.
“Is that possible?” Nixie asks.
“Yes,” Dionna and Jinju answer together.
“Since she has the dagger, she can do it,” Dionna finishes, working out the puzzle behind her eyes as she speaks.
“We can’t let that happen,” I say. “We can’t let her pollute our world with a human presence.” Clay’s face swims to the surface of my mind and the words taste sour in my mouth. Did I really used to believe them? They’re my father’s words, and they’re extreme even for some of these girls, based on their hesitant expressions. “Besides, we can’t let Lia have some happily ever after. Not after everything she’s done to us. Everything she’s taken from us.”
My crown, my voice, their power, our glory. Our purpose. None of it needs to be said. It hangs like a net of rotten fish, making all our stomachs churn.
Jinju meets my gaze with one of solidarity. “What do you need us to do?”
Here goes. “I need you to explain to me exactly how to use the dagger to turn a human into a Merperson. Lia hasn’t figured it out yet, and if I know the solution, I can steer her off course until she runs out of time and has to return the dagger to the authorities.”
“Why would she listen to you?” Dionna asks.
“A reasonable question,” I say, with a nod of respect. “I’ve been living under guard in the palace ever since my father escaped from the Foundation’s prison and left a letter behind suggesting he might kidnap me. In that time, I’ve …” I let innuendo seep into my voice, “persuaded Caspian that I came here that day to help him escape. The idealistic idiot wants to believe I’m redeemable. Me!” I laugh. “I have him wrapped around my fin.”
The other girls look on in awe. It’s fun to speak like my old self; it gives me a seductive sense of control. But it also makes me feel like a hermit crab trying to squeeze back into its old shell. It doesn’t quite fit anymore. “If I tell him Lia needs to perform the spell a certain way, he’ll think I’m telling the truth because it’s what he desperately wants to think, and he’ll convince her.” I share a knowing look with Jinju as I say, “I can get him to believe anything I want him to.” I smirk.
She smirks back.
“That’s all you want to know? But that’s so easy.” Jinju swims closer to me, dropping her voice low. “Getting ahold of the dagger is the hard part. If she already has it, then it’s simple for her to turn Clay Mer. You’ll laugh at how simple.” She’s enjoying this moment, this small bit of power. An echo of what she used to wield.
With the shell-encrusted walls of this hushed grotto enveloping us, Jinju smiles and whispers the next words as if they’re a magic spell. “To turn Clay Mer, all Lia has to do, is die.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lia
I have to die?
“Is that, like, a metaphor maybe? Like my hope has to die or my negativity has to die or, y’know, my ability to interpret metaphors has to die?” I don’t expect Melusine to laugh, but I shoot a hopeful glance at Caspian. We’re back in the sitting area of his room, him and me on the couch and Melusine across from us in an armchair. He manages a weak smile.
“No,” Melusine answers. “It means you have to bleed to death. Jinju and Dionna explained the details, but that’s the crux of it. To turn Clay Mer with the dagger, you have to bleed to death.”
“You’re sure they were telling you the truth?” And if they were, are you telling me the truth? I wouldn’t put it past any of them to wish me dead.
“They were telling the truth. I worried they would suspect I was helping you, but apparently the very idea was too outrageous to occur to them.”
While Melusine was gone, I spent all day in the varellska trying to find a solution. You know how in movies, the characters research for hours during a montage complete with tense music, then find exactly what they’re looking for in some long-forgotten book at the very last second, getting their answer in the nick of time? Yeah, that didn’t happen. It’s embarrassing how far I came from that happening. I researched for hours and nada. I even went to chat with Caspian’s grandmother under the guise of sorting more experimental spell submissions, and I asked her some general questions about determining hidden uses for magical objects, but that didn’t help. All she mentioned is the reveal spell I already tried, and we saw how well that worked.
It’s late now, and the rest of the palace has been asleep for hours, but Caspian and I waited up for Melusine’s return. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her coral scales and clasping her hands. “The dagger was originally designed to turn the Little Mermaid from her human state back into a Mer when it sliced into the prince’s legs and the blood from his legs ran onto her legs, transforming them into a tail.”
Yes, when the power of the dagger took me to that ship’s cabin, each drop of the prince’s crimson blood created scales as it hit the Little Mermaid’s legs. Until it gushed in a river that left her with a tail. I swallow back nausea at the memory.
Since I don’t speak, Melusine continues. “Jinju and Dionna said that, in theory, all you’d have to do is carry out that same process.”
“So,” Caspian says, working it out as he talks, “since Clay is the one who wants to transform, Lia would have to slice into her own legs and bleed onto Clay’s until she died like the prince was supposed to, and that would leave Clay with a tail.”
“That’s what they said,” Melusine confirms.
Two sets of blue eyes stare at me, awaiting my reaction.
I’m frozen.
I want to think she’s lying. I was ready for her to lie. Certain she would.
But the truth of the answer plunks to the bottom of my stomach like a ruined ship.
It aligns perfectly with everything I know about magic—everything Ondine taught me and everything I’ve taught myself since. Like magic itself, it is cyclical and elegant. Far too elegant a solution to be false.
When I still don’t speak, Melusine adds, “The dagger was built for bloodshed, so blood is what it understands.”
Blood …
Blood! Of course!
“It did work,” I whisper.
“What?” Caspian asks. “What worked?”
“The reveal spell. It showed me exactly what the dagger needed to perform its purpose. The blade wanted blood.”
It still wants blood. My blood.
I feel stupid for not figuring it out on my own. “It’s so obvious.” I shake my head. “I didn’t see this solution before because I didn’t want to see it,” I say, more to myself than to either of them.
Caspian’s hand pats my back.
I sit hunched over, staring unseeing at my fins on the thick rug. “I want to give Clay what he wants. I love him so
much, and I want us to be together forever. But I won’t die for it.”
“No, Clay would never want you to die,” Caspian says. “I don’t want you to die.” He pats my back again. Melusine’s lips thin as she looks away. I bet she wouldn’t mind if I died.
“Thank you for going,” he says to her, his hand slipping away from my back. Something in her brightens as she nods. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to double-cross us somehow and bring back information that was obviously a lie and then I was supposed to call her out on it and find the right solution myself and it would be a spell or something I could say over the dagger. Then poof! Clay would have his tail and we’d live happily ever after.
Okay, so I know that sounds naïve, but … this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
This can’t be how it is.
If I can just think hard enough … “Maybe there’s a work-around?” Something clever, like how I managed to get the dagger without technically breaking any laws. “What if I cut into a corpse instead, and it bled on Clay?” Where would I get a corpse? All right, so it’s not a great plan, but what do you want from me? I’m kinda desperate here.
Melusine shakes her head. “The Little Mermaid was in love with the prince, and the Sea Sorceress knew that, so she wove it into the spell. The dagger recognizes love bonds.”
“That’s why you and Clay were able to break the curse on our immortality.” Caspian’s eyes light with the realization. “Because the dagger recognized your true love for each other.”
An impressed expression passes over Melusine’s features before she focuses back on me. “That’s why it would have to be you. Your blood. Because you,”—she bats her hand back and forth before finally spitting out the next part—“love Clay.” Her voice grows serious. “You can’t trick an object that powerful.”