by Tobie Easton
“That’s what I said!” Lia takes a bite of cake and makes a face. Then takes another. “My mom keeps pushing the aquamarine on her.”
Are we having what might pass for a real conversation?
Lia must be wondering the same thing because she falls silent. We both eat our mediocre cake.
“We couldn’t have made Clay human without you,” she finally says, gaze fixed on her plate. “Thanks for everything you did for him. And for me.”
“I did it for Caspian,” I say, even though it’s not entirely true. “Mostly.”
I expect her to get riled up and warn me to stay away from Casp. That’s the main reason I said it—to get us back in familiar waters. But instead she says, “You protected him. I can’t imagine how hard that was.”
She means knocking my dad out. Putting my own father in a coma.
Now I’m the one staring at my plate.
“Do you, um, do you … have someone to talk to about it?” she asks.
I nearly spit out my last bite. “Are you volunteering?”
She reels back. “No, I … um—”
“I’m messing with you,” I say, putting an end to her misery. It’s a new experience. “I scheduled some extra sessions with the therapist I go to for human sensitivity. The woman’s not a complete idiot, so I’m going to go two more times a week for a while to talk all this through.”
“Good. That’s good.”
We stare out at the view over New Meris. I don’t know how to do this with her. My plate is empty now, so I settle on a polite, “Enjoy the celebration,” then swim away from the railing to head back inside.
I’m about to open the amber doors when Lia’s voice stops me. “Hey, Melusine?”
I turn back over my shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell on me? At the trial.” Lia lowers her voice. “Why didn’t you tell everyone I sirened Clay? I never figured it out. You could have so easily.”
“I … I guess I figured I owed it to you.” I pause. “And to Clay. After what I did to him, and to you.” She’d accept that, but saying the words out loud, I realize they’re not the whole truth. “You saving Clay’s life after I stabbed him … it’s the only reason I didn’t go on trial for murder.” An image I’ve been conjuring up since yesterday of my dad brutally killing my mom plays in my mind. I whisper, “You’re the only reason I’m not a murderer.” Like him.
She stares at me, all out of big speeches.
So I say, “That’s not what I want to be. I know that now.” I might not have everything figured out, but I know that. “It’s not who my mother wanted me to be.”
My voice breaks, and I cough. That’s enough of that. I shrug and go for a more casual tone, but the words come out bitter. “Besides, it’s not like telling everyone you were a siren would have changed their minds about me anyway, so why bother?”
Now it’s really time to leave. I look toward the doors, but Lia finds her voice again. “Some people might change their minds about you.”
We’re face to face now, her long brown hair billowing out around us. She really does look like a princess. “You think so?” My words come out a whisper on the water.
“I mean, I don’t think I will,” she says, although there’s something in her eyes … She shrugs. “But some people might.”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
We both say the words at the same time.
“I need to get this out,” I say at the very moment he says, “You can go first.”
But once Caspian is swimming in front of me, waiting for me to talk, I can’t. Not here, with the stragglers who haven’t left the brunch yet eyeing us. “Come with me,” I tell him. It’s only once I’m guiding him by the wrist that I realize I don’t know where to go. A little yellow butterfly fish swims out one of the arched, amber windows.
The windows are open again! I’d forgotten. With my father’s threat over, we’re no longer confined within the palace.
Taking Caspian’s hand, I swim us up through the room and out the large window, then dive into the palace gardens below.
“Great idea,” he murmurs, breathing deep.
We’re outside! Yes, we may have been out last night, but we were both too terrified to enjoy it.
Now, we luxuriate in the sensation of open space and free-moving current. For several moments, we do nothing but float there, with the beautiful seaflower beds laid out before us and the white coral palace sparkling in all its majesty behind.
Eventually, Caspian’s calm voice asks, “You wanted to talk to me about something?”
I turn to face him, so I can’t shy away any longer. “I need to apologize. What I said to you yesterday morning before you left to go help Lia …” I shake my head at the memory. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. When I called you a fool, I was being cruel and unfair.” I was so mean to him. Tears fill my voice. “You’re not a fool, and I would never laugh at you. I don’t—”
“Shhh,” he says, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “I know.” He stills his hands but doesn’t drop them. “When did you find out, um, that it was your father who … who murdered your mother?” His touch is the only thing that stops me from shrinking away from those words.
“The day before. At the academy, one of the girls said,” I shrug, not wanting to finish the sentence.
“And you wanted to tell me yesterday morning? When we were alone in your room?”
“How did you …” I search his face. He always figures it out. He can read me so well, it’s scary. I nod.
“I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have left like that if I had.”
“I didn’t tell you.” I place one hand on top of his where it still rests on my arm. “I should have, instead of saying what I said. Which you didn’t deserve.”
He deserves so much better than me.
But I’m not about to let anyone else have him. So I guess I’ll just have to get better.
“Thank you for saying that,” he says. “And thank you for last night.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You stopped me from running into that house and making things worse. You went in yourself, you faced your family, you found that potion to save Lia’s life …” His eyes, as crystal blue as the water that surrounds us, bore into mine. “You saved my life.” He moves in closer. “You were incredible.”
My mind turns hazy with him this close, his lips this close. “I was?”
“You were.” His hand comes up, and his thumb strokes my cheek. “You did good.”
I fight to keep my thoughts clear with his thumb stroking, stroking … “Don’t you mean ‘well’? Adverbs and adjectives work the same in Mermese as English, you know. And here I thought you were an expert at languages.”
“I am,” he says. My entire cheek is tingling now under his touch. “I meant ‘good.’ You did so much good.” He smiles, and my gaze clings to the sight of it. The sight of his lips. He’s looking at mine, too. And then he’s not, because his eyes are closing.
And those soft, firm lips are on mine. At last.
I open to him, and he tastes unbelievable. Like everything I’ve ever wanted, ever needed. As familiar as the ocean and as strange and new as sunlight.
I can’t get enough. My arms twine around his neck, pulling him closer, pressing against him.
It’s a kiss that lasts forever and is over too soon.
When our mouths part, we gasp and stare, separating just enough that I can study his face. Did that mean to him what I hope it did? Did it mean to him what it meant to me?
I can’t risk him leaving now, swimming back into the palace before I have a chance to show him this thing between us, it … it could be good. It could be the best. “You wanted to tell me something?” I ask, still nearly breathless from his masterful lips, before he can think to swim out of my arms.
“What?” he asks, and I consider the dazed expression on his handsome face a personal victory. “Oh,
right. I wanted to ask you something actually.”
“Then ask me,” I murmur, our mouths still so close that my words send ripples against his lower lip. Oooh, his lower lip. I want to—
But he’s pulling back. Why? Did I say something wrong? Do something wrong? The water suddenly grows cold once he’s no longer wrapped around me.
When he doesn’t leave, my pounding heart slows enough for me to realize he’s straightening his posture and presenting a hand for me to take. His other arm bends at the elbow behind his back in a formal pose. What is this?
He nods toward his waiting hand and pushes it up a little in the water with a small smile.
I’m not sure what he’s up to, but after a kiss like that, I’m game. Game, and a little dizzy.
I slip my hand onto his raised, open palm. Even this little bit of skin contact makes me yearn to feel him against me again.
His rich, low voice rolls through me in smooth waves as he says, “Melusine, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to Emeraldine and Leomaris’s wedding?”
“Yes!” Did that high-pitched, gleeful exclamation really come from me? I didn’t know I could sound so happy.
Caspian’s face—a face I’ve kissed—splits into a grin. He takes my hand that still rests atop his, and spins me under his arm in a little preview of a dance. Then he pulls me close, taking my other hand, too, and interlacing our fingers.
“You said yes,” he says. “You said yes.”
It takes me a moment to realize that in some ways, this is a first for him, too. “Yeah, well, you just better make it worth my time,” I joke, unable to stop grinning myself.
“Right. ’Cause it’s not like you’re immortal or anything.”
I whap him on the chest, but I won’t let go of his hand, so it looks like he’s hitting himself. “Was that sarcasm? Why, Caspian Zayle, I’m so proud.”
He tries to shrug it off, but he’s glowing. “At the wedding, when I ask you to dance, will you dance with me this time?”
A memory of me pushing down his outstretched hand at the coronation ball surfaces in my mind. I won’t be doing that again. “As many dances as you want,” I say. But then another memory creeps up—the one of how all those courtiers looked at me, sneering, judging, hating me for what I’d done. And they weren’t wrong. What if … “What if I can’t do this?”
“Can’t dance? I could give you a few lessons. I—”
“No.” I jerk back, pulling my hands out of his. “What if I can’t be the kind of person who can be with you?” I want him for myself—storms, do I want him—but what if I hurt him? What if I don’t know how to put his needs first when it’s necessary or even how to put them level with my own? “I was raised to be selfish,” I tell him. “I don’t know if I can ever not be that way. What if I never get there?”
He reaches out slowly and takes one of my hands back in his. “From what I’ve seen so far? You can do it.”
His blue gaze is so sure. Surer than I’ve ever felt. It holds me, safe and constant.
He takes my other hand, just as slowly. “Besides, we’re going to take our time.”
“We are?” I let my body float closer again, like he’s the moon drawing me toward him.
He nods. “It wasn’t too long ago that I learned how to say, ‘I love you.’” Loving Lia taught him that, but I’m glad he doesn’t say her name right now. I want to focus on what he’s trying to tell me instead. “I know how to say it now, and I know how to … how to live it. So, the next time I say it, I want to say it to someone who’ll say it back. And who’ll be able to live it, too. It’s really okay if you’re not there yet, because I’m not quite ready to say it again.”
Something releases in my chest as all the pressure lifts. Maybe we really can find our way in this together.
“In the meantime,” he says, and then he takes my lips with his again. Deeper this time. So deep, his kiss is all there is. His lips and tongue. His smooth-shaven cheeks and the scent of his skin. For once, I don’t need to strategize or scheme—I can just feel, just be.
Here.
With him.
If this is what I get for being good, it might just be worth it to keep trying.
When our lips part, our chests rising and falling with our breaths again, Caspian rests his forehead against mine, and it’s maybe the most intimate touch I’ve ever experienced.
It makes me feel safe enough to whisper, “What if it takes me too long?” Too long to learn to be the kind of person who doesn’t lash out, the kind of person who can keep him.
With his forehead still pressed to mine, he says, “I know a thing or two about waiting. Something tells me in your case, it’ll be worth it.” A playful, covert smile dances on his lips. “Plus, you want to know a secret?”
“What?”
He leans in, sending cool water against the shell of my ear with his breath. “We have forever.”
It’s such a good answer that I let him have the last word. And then I kiss him.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Lia
I want to kiss him. I want to kiss him when he first glides into the throne room wearing the traditional shell strands of a lenlitli, which is sort of like a groomsman, across his chest.
I want to kiss him when we swim arm-in-arm around the marriage circle, symbolically surrounding Em and Leo with the support of their loved ones. And I’m just about dying to kiss him when Em—the long train of her gauzy, emerald-studded beluess dancing behind her on the water—presses her lips to Leo’s at the end of the ceremony, creating a bond all their own.
And okay, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m picturing my own future wedding, just a little bit. With Clay looking so handsome, and so happy, how could I not be? But I’m also overjoyed for my sister. She deserves every drop of this bliss. The water rolls with the celebratory swishing of hundreds of fins, mine and Clay’s included, as the new couple turns to smile at the assembled Mer with the most genuine, ecstatic smiles I’ve ever seen. I catch sight of a pearl floating from my dad’s eye. My mom, too, looks deeply moved as she places two polished oysters on each of Leo’s fins. He now has ten total, to match Em, marking him as an official heir to the throne at her side. Leo does a good job of hiding his flinch with another smile. Fortunately, the eight oysters on my own tail have long since made the rim of my fins go numb, like Em’s must be. I can’t help but think how dazzling my big sister looks as we all follow the newly married couple into the ballroom.
The hall glitters with green and topaz decorations to match the tails of the bride and groom. It’s not until after the banquet—where we feast on an assortment of the couple’s favorite foods from both Above and Below, and tides did I miss California rolls—that Em and Leo float up from their jeweled seats and address their guests.
“We have an announcement to make,” Leo says, taking Em’s hand.
“We wanted to wait until today to tell all of you—and the kingdom—that we’ll be welcoming a guppy!” The crowd erupts in celebration, and Em flings herself into Leo’s waiting arms. Trumpet shell horns blare at the joyous news.
“What’s happening?” Clay asks, unfamiliar with the Mermese euphemism.
I scoot my chair even closer to his than it already was so he’ll hear my English under the water. “I’m going to be an aunt! I’m going to be an aunt to an adorable, teeny, little future monarch.”
Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any better! Elation for my sister and her husband (husband! So weird!) fills me to bursting. I’d never want to have kids as young as Em, just like I wouldn’t get married so young either, but I understand why she wants to. It makes sense for her to focus on her family now, before her royal duties start demanding even more of her time.
“Whoa! It’ll have a tail when it’s born, right?” Clay asks.
“Yeah, and then it’ll get legs when it hits puberty. By then we’ll be, like, thirty-something. And by the time that it takes the th
rone, we’ll be …” I multiply by 300 in my head to account for the 300-year reigns between now and then. “Over 900!”
Clay shakes his head, speechless.
By then, I better have really done something. Accomplished something. I’m still thinking about it as Clay and I head over to the side of the dance arena. I have an idea, one that’s been swimming laps around my brain the last few weeks, but—
“Congratulations!” Caspian says, swimming over after Stas cuts in to his dance with Amy. He speaks slowly as he talks to me, no doubt for Clay’s benefit. “You’re going to be an aunt!”
Clay whispers into my ear, “Sexiest aunt I’ve ever seen.”
I hide a giggle at Clay’s words and thank Caspian. We’re trying to guess tail colors when Melusine swims up. She wears a stunning, wine-colored siluess beneath her pearl esslee. But all her jewelry is the same silver as Caspian’s tail, and I’d bet my last cowrie that was intentional.
“Hey,” she says to us.
“Hi,” I say. I try for a natural-looking smile.
“Dal deet roliiga.” Clay looks mighty proud of himself. And Caspian nodding at him indulgently probably doesn’t help Clay’s whale-sized ego one bit.
Then Casp turns to Melusine, and his entire face lights up like he’s bioluminescent. “Shall we?”
He holds out a hand, and she slips hers into it, letting him guide her into the dance arena.
It isn’t long before Clay and I find ourselves dancing between them and Amy and Stas in the center of the arena, under a sparkling chandelier made of the same rock crystal as my tiara.
“I can’t believe I’m really here,” Clay whispers against my ear as we spin. “That all of this is real and I get to live in it.”
“Some days, I can’t believe you’re real,” I whisper back. The handsome, clever human boy who changed my life, then became a Merman and changed his own. “I, um, I have a present for you. Or I will have a present. I’m having it made. Well, MerMatron Zayle is.” Wow, I need to cut back on the babbling. I pause, then say more clearly, “I asked MerMatron Zayle if she could adapt the dry spell for you using this bubble formation spell I learned at Sea Daughters. I don’t know the magic for it, but she does. She’s going to teach you how to make a giant bubble of air around yourself, so you can play guitar down here.” I wait. I’ve been planning this surprise for a while.