by Tobie Easton
“What do you mean?” Lia asks.
My father doesn’t answer. It seems he’s done talking. He takes out a brush and begins drawing symbols on the ground around Lia and Clay. “Stay still,” he snaps at Lia as she shifts in her bonds on the floor. His back is to me and I can’t read what he’s writing.
Caspian touches my shoulder, drawing my attention back to him where we still crouch beneath the window. “They’re going to start.” His words are the barest whisper. “I have to go in there now and do what I can to delay them.”
I shake my head violently, grabbing his forearm to keep him in place. That’s what he did last time—and Ondine almost killed him. She doesn’t have magic anymore, but my father does. He has whatever spells she taught him and a whole bag full of potions he can use on Casp.
I can’t let Caspian do it.
While he’s whispering about how I should head back to the ocean before anyone sees me, I stand up so I’m in full view of the window and knock on the glass.
I don’t know how long my father and I stare at each other before my unexpected presence finally registers. At the first glimpse of me, he nearly dropped the potion in his hand, and his paintbrush clattered to the floor.
“Melusine!” he finally exclaims.
Ondine’s pale eyes peer at me through the glass, but she doesn’t get up from her chair. It’s my father who points toward the backdoor and heads there. After I make a hand gesture to a shaken, wide-eyed Caspian beneath the window to stay put, I meet my father and he ushers me inside the house.
“Get inside before anyone sees you. Hurry.” We move through the kitchen toward the den. “What are you doing here? I wanted you to stay safe in the palace until all this was over.”
My heart pounds. What am I doing here? I’m keeping Caspian safe, I tell myself. My dad would have hurt him. But he won’t hurt me. Right?
Just as we enter the den, he wraps me in a hug. “It’s good to see you, even if I wish you hadn’t come.”
I soften into his embrace. When was the last time he hugged me? It makes me feel like a small child, protected, cared about, safe. All that time away from my dad has made me think the worst—the therapists and guards and even people like Caspian who don’t understand him have been getting to me with their judgments of him, Jinju getting to me with her lies. But here, facing him again as he releases me, he’s just my dad. He’s done things I know now were wrong, very wrong, but he did them to create a better life for us. For me. He loves me.
I heave a deep sigh. My heartbeat still pounds in my ears and fingertips, but it’s slowing along with my breath.
The first thing that greets me as I take in the den from this new angle is Lia’s glare. It’s filled with so much hatred for me. It says, “I knew you were up to something. I knew you would turn on us.”
I don’t dare try to tell her anything different with my own eyes because it won’t help. What will? My thoughts speed by like sailfish. I have to do what Caspian had wanted to do: I have to delay the ritual. If I can just keep my father and Ondine distracted until the moon rises to its apex, then they’ll have missed their chance. Then I can convince them to run, to escape again, before the palace guards find them. Everyone will be safe. I can do this.
“Melusine, what a surprise,” Ondine says, a hint of suspicion cocking her head.
I bend low at the knee and tilt my torso forward in respect, as if I had a tail and was offering a formal greeting. Her outward display of suspicion dissolves for the most part, replaced by a nod and an approving half-smile. She always loved ceremony.
“What are you doing here? Did any of the palace guards follow you?”
I shake my head. Have the palace guards figured out that they have the wrong man in custody? Are they looking for my dad? For Lia? For me? Even if they are, they have no way to find us here, in a seemingly empty mansion with no known connection to Lia or any of us. And maybe they’re still floating around congratulating themselves on a successful capture, oblivious. Either way, I’m on my own. I square my shoulders—I’ve gotten used to being on my own. My father and Ondine both give me their full attention, waiting for me to explain. I focus on my immediate goals: Slow things down. Buy everyone time.
Keep my father safe from making another horrible mistake.
How do I … I glance around the room, then grab a pen from an end table. I bring the tip to my palm. My stomach flips. Gripping the pen tightly enough to keep my hand from shaking, I push it down and drag it across my flesh until my left palm bears a name. I hold it out for my father to see.
Uncle Axenus
It’s not the name I wanted to write. Not the one I wanted to ask him about. But it’s the only one I could bring myself to spell out.
Understanding and relief pass over his face in equal measure. “I thought that might have been what brought you here. And no one at the palace had figured it out yet—that’s why you were still allowed to leave, right?” I nod, and he grins. “Excellent, Melusine. Using your brain like a good girl.” He taps the side of his temple. “Right after I first escaped, I thought Lia would risk sneaking out of the palace to see this one.” He jerks his head in Clay’s direction. “But as time passed and she didn’t, it became clear I had to fake my own capture to lure her out.”
I paint my face with concern, and it has the desired effect on my father. “My brother won’t get in much trouble, don’t worry. He never said he was me—they assumed it—so he hasn’t broken any laws. They’ll have to release him as soon as the rash clears up and they realize who he is. In exchange for playing his part,” my father chuckles, “well, for playing my part, I promised him he’d be daniss of the region of his choice once I’m king. Once we reign like we were meant to.”
He steps up close to me, rests his hands on my shoulders, and says, like he’s giving me a gift, “Just wait until I tell you the ritual we have planned! We perform this, and the public will be so grateful for their newfound freedom that the monarchy will be ours.”
Will it? The old, beloved image of my future self sitting beside my father on one of the aquamarine-studded thrones, wearing a spiked, sparkling crown, shines as blindingly as ever. Whatever expression I bear as I picture that once glimmering dream makes my father smile. “Uncle Axenus is a greedy man and overly proud. He couldn’t resist the offer of ruling over his own territory as a daniss.” My fingers twist in the fabric of my sarong. Family traits, I guess.
My father continues. “And of course, I did tell him I’d find a way to poison him if he refused.” I swallow. Uncle Axenus is my dad’s baby brother. I always thought they were close.
“In the end, he realized that working with me was the smarter path. And the instant Lia believed it safe, she did exactly as I predicted and came Above and see her human. All I had to do was follow him to her. Quite simple, really. The two of them even provided the perfect, secluded location, where no one would ever think to look for us.” He gestures with wide arms around the room of this abandoned seaside mansion. “We should be thanking them, really, for making this all so terribly easy.”
I nod and step toward Lia and Clay, gesturing first to them then to the potion in my father’s hand and the ones on the coffee table. I raise my eyebrows in question.
“We’re going to ensure humans never discover us,” Ondine says, pride straightening her spine where she sits in her chair.
“We’re going to give Merkind power over our own destinies,” my father adds, “by splitting the human and the Mer worlds in twain.”
He says it like a big reveal. He doesn’t know I was listening at the window. None of them do, so I widen my eyes and drop my jaw. I bring my hands up, palms toward the ceiling, and mouth, “How?”
I’d hoped giving me an explanation would delay him, but he’s too smart to be distracted when time is of the essence. He picks up his brush and continues painting symbols on the floor as he talks. “As quick as I will be to take credit in front of the public, the rit
ual was your cousin’s idea.”
“I could care less about credit,” Ondine says. “All that concerns me is outcome. And my promised position as the new head of the Magic Department so I’ll finally have resources at my disposal to begin rebuilding my power and can continue my important work passing our greatest spells on to future generations.”
“As agreed, as agreed,” my father says. He moves toward Clay, and the ancient symbol he’s painted in front of Lia sneaks into view. Could it reveal something vital to the ritual? I peek at it, careful not to let my eagerness show.
But all it says is “Mer.” What? That’s it? Why would any spell require him to write something so obvious?
He starts on the one in front of Clay. “It was Ondine who realized the true potential of the bond Lia and Clay share.”
“It took a strange confluence of events to create that bond—for when else in history has a siren spell transmuted, creating a true-love bond between a Mermaid and a human?” Ondine turns to Lia and her voice takes on a bitter, obsessive edge it didn’t have when she addressed me. “A love bond you’ve spent so much time developing and strengthening so it’s not only instinctual, but physical and mental both. Thank you for letting me study the bond in such detail, Lia. For letting me get to know it, taste it. I could never have designed this ritual without your help.”
For once, Lia looks like she despises someone more than me. She’s practically shaking with the force of her hatred. Or is it fear disguised as hate?
Clay shifts his back against hers, as if to offer comfort.
I fight hard not to let my gaze flick to the window to check for Caspian. He’s only safe right now because he’s hidden, and I won’t be the one to give him away.
My father moves to begin painting a knot design around the circle, and I can read the ancient Mermese symbol in front of Clay: human.
Wha—oh.
“Very good, Melusine,” Ondine says when she sees understanding dawn in my eyes. “It’s a shame you never made it to Sea Daughters—you’re quick.” She speaks the compliment like a caress. “Because of the bond they share, Lia and Clay are connected, just as the Mer and human worlds are connected. With Lia representing the Mer world and Clay representing the human one, we can ritualistically break that connection.”
Lia shakes her head, back and forth, back and forth, face screwing up small. She couldn’t read the symbols, so for her, the roles she and Clay will play in the ritual are only now clicking into place.
“How? How do you break the bond?” Clay asks, but his tone tells me he already knows.
“First, we cut the ropes,” my father says as he completes the circle. He stands and puts the brush aside, his task finished. “But that only symbolizes the bond breaking. To actually break it, well, your girlfriend here,” he sneers the word girlfriend like it’s highly inappropriate, “has strengthened it so much that there’s only one way to ensure it’s broken.”
“One of you has to die,” Ondine says with a hint of real regret. “The only way,” she mutters to herself.
My father has no such remorse as he speaks to the two tied on the floor. “You can choose which.” A smile curls his lips—and curdles my blood. Did I used to talk like that? He’s enjoying this. My father is enjoying this. I swallow down nausea. Take an involuntary step back. The walls are too close. Lia, Clay, my father—they’re all too close. Suddenly, I wish I’d never come into the room at all. I want to jump through the window and run and swim and get far, far away.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Ondine says in a low, intimate whisper to Lia. “If you’d kept my power instead of throwing it away because you were too scared, you might be able to stop this. As it is, no one can.” She stares down her nose, one crystal-embellished eyebrow lifting. “Especially not you.”
Each word stabs into Lia and she recoils, pulling her arms and legs as close to her body as she can in the ropes. Curling in on herself.
Clay, too, twists in his bonds as my father leans down and says to him, “You should be happy. Because of this, you will be a human who actually matters. Your bond—your love—has provided us this unprecedented opportunity to free ourselves from the shackles of your world forever.”
Stop it. Stop it. We’ve hurt him enough. But I don’t move. Don’t lift a hand to stop my father.
As hard as it must be, Clay forces himself not to react to the cruel, taunting words. But Lia … the anguish on her face makes my stomach churn. I turn away, and my father catches my eye.
“You see,” he says to me, “if you hadn’t failed to keep this human away from Lia, their bond wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t have any way to accomplish this great feat now. So, you can finally swim out from under your shame.” He steps up to me and lifts my chin. “I forgive you, my darling.”
He forgives me?
“You should leave now and be careful no one sees you,” he says. “I want you to return to the safety of the palace. When I come for you, it will be with an army at my back. And I will set you on the throne beside me.”
Does he want to protect me because I’m his daughter, or because now, once again, I could be his heir to the throne? I may never know the answer.
But I know I can’t leave. I can’t leave him to entrap himself in a double murder, I can’t leave Caspian to burst in and get himself hurt the second I fail to delay the ritual, I can’t leave Clay to be victimized again when I’ve already brought him so much pain, and … even Lia, tied up there and at the mercy of my relatives …
I can’t leave.
My feet move, one in front of the other, across the hardwood floor. And before I can think any more about it, I’m standing in front of my father, blocking his way to Lia and Clay.
The entire room looks different from this side. In just a few steps, I have walked myself into danger. Betrayed my family and everything I was brought up to believe. The change makes me dizzy.
“Melusine, what are you doing?” my father asks, his eyes narrowing.
What am I doing? Ondine steps next to him. I look between where they stand in front of me and where Lia and Clay sit tied up on the floor.
I stare at my father and hold my hands up close to my chest, palms out: stop.
“Don’t tell me you’re feeling something for this traitor who tried to kill us and who helped imprison us,” my father says, with a dismissive gesture at Lia. He doesn’t suggest I’d feel anything for Clay. Maybe it doesn’t occur to him, or maybe voicing such an idea is beneath his dignity.
Admitting any feeling for either of them will set him off, so I shake my head. I can practically feel Lia’s glare burning into my back. Is Clay glaring too?
I can’t check without appearing to care, so I focus on my concern for my father instead. If his plan goes wrong and he’s caught, the authorities Below will be harsher than ever. They’ll lock him up in some deep ocean cave—or worse, execute him. For once, I don’t fight the fear from showing on my face. I allow all the fear and worry and love I have for him to surface as I gesture with both hands toward the back door. Run. Escape while you can. I point to him and then to me and then out the backdoor, my movements increasingly frantic. We can escape together. Go far away from here and start over.
“Please,” I mouth. “Please.”
My father’s expression softens. He cups my cheek with one hand, his long fingers covering nearly half my face. “My Melusine. You’re scared for me. But now is not the time for cowardice.” His voice takes on the hard edge of authority I know so well. “Now is the time for us to rally. To reclaim what should be ours. Glory comes only to the deserving—to those willing risk everything for it. Isn’t that right?”
His hand on my face turns firm as he presses into my cheek, moving my head in a nod.
It’s everything he’s always taught me. Everything I was raised to believe in. Am I weak now for trying to get in his way? Weak for letting my emotions stop me and my family from achieving all that we can? If he p
erforms the ritual tonight and succeeds, wouldn’t all we’ve been through, all I’ve had to do—sirening Clay, stabbing him, having my voice ripped from me against my will, going to a school where I’m hated, living in solitude at the Foundation, being abandoned by my only family—wouldn’t it finally be worth it?
“Picture it,” Ondine says in her soothing, musical voice. “With one ritual, Merkind can leave this world, with all its ugliness and danger. We can fade from this reality into our own. One where we’ll no longer have to hide. Where we can surface anytime we like to frolic in waterfalls, splash in lagoons, lie out on the rocks sunning our tails.” I can picture it; it’s so vivid, so bright. A dream within our grasp. “It will be paradise. Join us in paradise, Melusine.”
I gaze at her beautiful face, as beautiful and spellbinding as her words, like magic come to life. Who wouldn’t want to join her? But isn’t she also the one who was prepared to use me as a tool in her sireny plot, and who then easily cast me aside for Lia when I was no longer useful? Isn’t she the one who confided to Jinju that my father killed my mother?
At that thought, all the nervous energy and toxic suspicion that sent me in search of my father gushes forth from where I locked it away. I can’t hold it back any longer, can’t hide from it. I need to know.
The pen from earlier still rests in the pocket of my sarong, so I retrieve it. My left palm already bears my uncle’s name, so this time I ink a name onto my right. Using my left hand to hold the pen makes writing difficult and I tell myself that’s why I’m clutching it so hard, not to hide my shaking.
My father and Ondine wait, expecting me to answer Ondine’s question.
Instead I hold out my right palm and it bears the name I so desperately wanted to write earlier.
Seline
My mother’s name.
“Yes, that’s right,” my father says. “Your mother would have wanted this. Nothing would have made her prouder than seeing you up on the throne, so it’s our job to get you there. For her. Now step aside so we can get started.”