It seemed safe to say our truce during my trail was a temporary one.
A flip of her tail and she disappeared, towed out by an undercurrent of animosity.
Father’s weaved frond curtain rustled, pushed aside by my trembling hand. A hesitant flick of my tail propelled me into his quarters where one glimpse of him stole a gasp from my parted lips. Poseidon, a daunting presence in every memory of him, had shriveled under the press of his ailments. Yellow-rimmed eyes sunk into sallow cheeks. Laboring gills sputtered to claim weak, wheezing breaths. One ashen hand lay limp beside him, the other draped over his heart. Even in his weakened state he was at the ready to return the salute of his guardsmen.
Swallowing my trepidation, I inched to his bedside. My fingers laced with his, the icy chill of his flesh sending shivers coursing through me. Biting the inside of my cheek, I surveyed his condition with the critical eye of an alchemist. His wound had festered, the skin around it red and oozing. The sickly sweet smell of infection permeated off of him. Even so, these conditions seemed easily treatable by anyone capable of swimming the line between science and magic. Much like the queen, and seasoned alchemist, who—barely a blink ago—had threatened me and sashayed off.
Unless … it wasn’t a threat at all. Amphrite schooled me on magic, she knew the extent of my capabilities. More importantly, she never did anything without carefully plotted reasoning. Why then would she entrust me with her husband’s life instead of handling the matter herself? What was in it for her?
“I get the ear of the queen when you take the throne.”
Amphrite spoke those words when first asked her motivation for seeking to mentor me.
I was the long shot in the battle for the throne.
Everyone knew that.
But … if I were to save Poseidon from the brink of death, what then?
A slow smiled spread across my face.
That plotting, scheming queen was a diabolic genius.
Turning one palm skyward, I conjured a ball of jade energy that snapped and crackled with bolts of light.
Father’s head lolled my way, his heavy lids fighting to open. “Vanessa?” he croaked in a feeble whisper.
“Uhhh!” I grunted, squeezing his hand to make my presence known.
“I tried so hard all these years,” cloudy eyes unable to focus peered right through me, “and still I failed.”
Leaning closer, I shook my head in hopes he could fix his gaze long enough to see I never thought of him that way. Feeding off my emotions, the ball of healing energy swelled, casting an emerald glow through the room.
Finally, he found me. To my surprise, the eyes staring back at me were completely devoid of emotion. “I tried to love you … yet never could.”
The words gutted me. Reeling back, my ball of energy dissipated.
Water stirred on the opposite side of the bed, my mother emerging from nothingness. For a beat I gaped at the fresh-faced beauty that had been restored to her—if only for a moment. Once more her flesh held the soft luminescence of a polished pearl, her hair a glossy Orca black.
Amethyst eyes, perfectly matching mine, pleaded for understanding. “Vanessa, my love, go now. What you’ll learn here will only bring pain.”
Oblivious to our newcomer, Father pushed on in his strained hush, “I knew your mother loved another when we met. Titonis was forthcoming with that truth. Even so, our marriage was arranged and could not be contested. To her I was a dear friend. To me she was everything—the very epitome of beauty. I convinced myself, as all foolish men do, that it was enough. That with time she may actually grow to feel as I did. I would have granted her anything … as I proved the night before our wedding when she told me she was pregnant with another merman’s child. Had I canceled the wedding, I would have bestowed a legacy of shame on her. She would have been banished from Atlantica. Unable to imagine my life without her, I agreed to proceed with the wedding and raise the baby as my own.”
A sequence of syllables, meaningless if separated, but string them together and they held the power to thrash and demolish my world while I stood impotent to prevent it.
“Vanessa, please …” Mother beseeched me, her full lips clamping together.
Head listing to the side, I tried to fathom what she could possibly be hiding if that wasn’t the worst of it.
“Titonis was so grateful for my kindness, she vowed to devote herself to me. I like to think that for a while, she actually did.” A fit of hacking coughs interrupted his conscious clearing exposé. Only after they passed did he settle back onto his pillow, face red and eyes watering. “It was after Triton’s birth that a cavernous distance formed between us. Outsiders thought us to be the perfect family. In private, my queen struggled with the demands of life as a royal. She grew distant ... withdrawn. I will admit to my share of jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Mother’s ruby lips curled from her teeth in a spiteful snarl. “You were a vicious beast and you know it!”
One weak hand rose, Father wiping away the spittle that formed in the corners of his lips before continuing on. “My greatest fear was of losing her to the pull of her heart, which never belonged to me. Nagging curiosity bested me one day, and I … I followed her. She swam from the kingdom without hesitation, straight into shallow waters. Words cannot describe what I saw that day. It defied the meaning of the term impossible. The current swirled around her gleaming body. I remember shielding my eyes with my arm. When I dared to look back, I found my queen had replaced her gorgeous tail with revolting human legs!”
Mother’s shoulders rose, her hands squeezed into white knuckled fists at her sides. “Vanessa! Not all truths should be revealed! For your own sake, turn around and leave these quarters now!”
I couldn’t have moved it I wanted to. The most I could muster was a meager shake of my head.
“Before you were even born, as you swelled in your mother’s belly, I trumpeted to all that would listen that I was your father.” Even as his blinks grew long with exhaustion, his face instinctively contorted in disgust. “I learned the truth that day, watching her run from the sea into the arms of that human … and I resented you for even being.”
Jaw swinging slack, my eyes burned with unshed tears. Reality, in its most abhorrent form, wriggled through my mind. Its shadowy tentacles lashed out, destroying the rose-colored world I thought I knew.
Rounding Father’s lavish shell bed, Mother plowed in my direction; her hands raised, curling into claws. I had no doubt, had she possessed a corporal form, she would have seized my arms and dragged me out. “Get out, girl! Every word he spits is poison! Swim! Swim far from the borders of Atlantica and never look back!”
A nervous laugh bubbled from my throat, morphing into a choked sob. One trembling hand pushed a rogue strand of hair behind my ear. My blurring gaze searched her face for some clue of what other horrible truth lay in wait.
“I toiled with the decision to inform the Council of your mother’s betrayal.” Poseidon’s head fell to the side, sinking farther into the plush of his pillow.
“Vanessa!”
“It was harder still to announce the verdict against her …”
In a blink Mother’s exquisite charms melted away, dripping from her form in heavy globules that exposed the true revulsion beneath. Skin cracked, taking on the blue hue of death. Hair fell out in clumps. Jaws widened and stretched outward into the vicious snout of a barracuda. The stench of rot assaulted my senses.
Swelling in size, she glowered down at me, and moving at a speed that would impress a marlin, she darted in.
“Get out!” she bellowed in a beastly roar.
It was too late. In the light of the king’s nightmarish spewings, I saw her spectacle for the meager attempted distraction it was.
Our eyes locked, holding each other in the only way we could to ride out the storm of Poseidon’s confession.
“My brother, Hades, hated that I made him carry out her sentencing. As he clamped on the shackles to bind her powers,
he swore he would leave Atlantica and never return. Which, of course, he ultimately did. Unfortunately, not before doing as he was ordered by rolling her onto the beach and leaving her to die … at my command.”
Ears ringing in the aftermath of my exploded world, my head pivoted from my mother to Poseidon. One was a horrifying spectacle, the other an exalted king. One meant to protect me, the other begrudged every breath I took.
The dark aspects of my tortured mind, which I feared from the moment they manifested, acted in my favor. Yet another certainty I based my young and resolute life on was flipped over with the ease of a human child’s toy boat against white-capped waves crashing against the shoreline.
Another onslaught of hacking coughs racked Poseidon’s frame, bloody bubbles of phlegm burst on his pallid lips in ruby speckles. When the fit passed, he flopped back down. Each breath wheezed passed his laboring gills in a high-pitched whistle.
“Don’t think it has gone unnoticed how hard you have worked in your pursuit to rule.” He gasped, his eyes rimmed with pink-tinged tears. “You must know that can never be. You are a half-breed, Vanessa. Your kind has no place on the throne. The most you aspire to … is to serve your brother well.”
“Child, are you well?” Mother reached for me in concern. Catching sight of her own grisly hand, she curled the offending appendage into a fist and let it drop back to her side.
How could I answer such a question when I couldn’t imagine anything ever being well with me again?
I watched with detached interest as my own hand rose seemingly under its own accord, the emerald orb flickering to life in my palm once more. Its tingling warmth traveled up my arm, radiating through me.
Cradling the orb, I dipped my head and brushed it to my chin. A whispered touch restored my tongue, the swell of it feeling foreign after its absence.
“I have the capabilities to heal you.” Trauma left my throat raw, yet the coarse, scratchiness of my voice could not squelch the conviction of my tone.
“I want nothing from you.” Poseidon’s head slumped my way, his gaze betraying him by lingering longingly over my magical display.
“All I have ever wanted was to make you proud. Please,” I beseeched him, extending the sparking orb in his direction, “may I show you?”
Letting the pull of exhaustion draw the curtain of his heavy lids, he jerked his chin in a brief nod.
“Vanessa, what are you doing?” An edge of unmistakable concern tainted Mother’s tone.
I was making a ghoul nervous—there’s a claim not everyone can make.
Hoping to calm her with the assurance of my resolve, I lowered the orb to Father’s wound. The skin began to stitch together from the inside out, the black veins of infection retracting. “Did you ever stop to think that the meeting you witnessed on the beach was my mother informing her human love that he was my true father? She may have been driven by the desire to find an acceptance for me you never offered.”
Poseidon snorted, provoking another fit of chest rattling coughs.
Continuing my task, I waited for his rash to ease before pushing on with my point. “Even if that was the case, that man played no part in my upbringing. You did. You are the only father figure I have ever known. I have learned much from you, my King. Namely, how to maintain a cold disinterest toward those we are supposed to care for.”
Without warning, I drew the orb back, yanking out every bit of the healing energy I had bestowed.
The mighty king’s eyes, faintly returning to their emerald sparkle, snapped open. His face creased in question. As fast as my magic worked, the absence of it reversed the effects in double time. The wound I tended to began to weep. Spidering black veins of disease flared and spread over the span of his chest. Each strangled breath rattled from failing gills.
Mother pulled back, her hand fluttering to her lips. “You don’t need to do this, Vanessa. For if you do, there will be no coming back from it. Not completely. Not once it has blackened your soul.”
“Shhhh,” I soothed them both simultaneously. “My mother did not die by your hand, nor shall you die by mine.”
An element of relief stole through Poseidon’s pained grimace. Mother murmured praise of thanks to Mother Ocean.
Lost in the entrancing lightshow within the orb, I raised it to shoulder height. “Unfortunately, you could have prevented it, yet failed to act. Now, to end the debate in your mind and prove once and for all that I truly am my father’s daughter, I shall do the same.”
Rolling my fingers into a fist, I crushed the orb into dissipating tufts.
His gaze fixed on the dying embers of his last hope, the King of Atlantica drew his final breath.
And I felt … nothing.
Chapter Twelve
Conch shells trumpeted their sorrowful blasts. The black shroud of mourning draped from the highest window of the tallest tower of the castle. Atlantica hung its head, the sea swallowing the collective tears of all those who grieved their fallen king.
Things moved at a head-spinning pace—the period of mourning being rushed by the urgent need to restore rule. The Caribbean mer became increasingly vocal in their insistence for retaliation against the humans for Poseidon’s death. They wanted action, and they wanted it now. With their numbers and plentiful bounty, the Council felt it was mandatory to hurry the Choosing Ceremony. A successor needed to be named before the Caribbeans could rally and pose a threat of political mutiny.
Pouring over historical scrolls since youth, I anticipated the pomp and circumstance of such an event. I hadn’t prepared myself for the trauma of living it. Poseidon’s body rested at the foot of the cathedra in the throne room. Wrapped from the crown of his head to the tip of his tail in ropes of seaweed, careful attention was paid to bind him to a plank comprised from loose logs plucked from the surface. Two guards held either end of his gurney, keeping their departed king in place until signaled.
Triton and I hovered shoulder to shoulder, not speaking. Knuckles brushing against each other’s offered a closeness we both thirsted for. All eyes were on us. Every culture of mer was represented in the melting pot that filtered into the space, shuffling to find their own space to view history unfolding. All the bodies mashed in together was rapidly morphing the situation into a confining, claustrophobic one. To distract myself, I scoured the sea of faces in search of Alastor. Somehow, I felt my constricted gills would loosen if I could see his face.
Mid-sweep, my glance fell on the vision of sorrow veiled in black a beat before she lunged. “Amphr— Ughhh!”
Fingernails clawed at my throat, gouging chunks from my flesh. Teeth set in a deadly snarl, she spat her accusations in my face, “I trusted you! It was an easy spell and I trusted you! You would’ve been the exalted one, bound for the thrown! Instead, you let him die! Traitor! Defector! Insurgent!”
“Guards!” Triton bellowed. Prying Amphrite’s hands free, he shoved me protectively behind him. “The queen is a bit overcome. Escort her to her quarters at once.”
Ushered out by two stationed guards that hooked her under her arms, Amphrite held my stare, challenging me to be the first to look away. “This isn’t over! You and I … we will finish this, Princess!”
“Don’t let her get to you.” Triton kept himself positioned between Amphrite and me until she was safely out of sight. “She’s overwhelmed, just like the rest of us.”
“She will never forgive me,” I muttered, more to myself than him, my hands smoothing over my ruffled ponytail.
“It’s okay, we’ve got each other.” Rocking forward, Triton bumped his elbow to mine, his ocean blue eyes pleading for validation. “Whatever happens here today … we’re in this together.”
For a beat all I could do was stare, my tongue caught as if torn out once more. Triton, my half-brother. Would he still cling to our sibling bond if he knew of my human ancestry? Or, worse yet, that I let Poseidon die? How could I open my heart to him when I knew that one slipped phrase could shatter our family’s fragile existence?
Forcing a tight smile, I linked my forefinger with his pinkie. “Together … to the end.”
“People of Atlantica!” the crowd parted at Neleus’s boom, my skin crawling at that loathsome sight of him.
Drawing back to the outlining walls, they revealed an opalescent pedestal in the center of the room. Only two items rested upon it: a golden trident glistening in the waving diamonds of the late day sun, and a small, spiral shell that looked so out of place there its presence seemed accidental. In moments one would belong to me. Casting a sideways glance to the body of the king, my drumming heart reminded me with absolution which way he would cast his vote if able.
“As the eldest,” hands clasped behind his back, Neleus swam slow circles around the pedestal. Devilish delight crinkled his eyes at the corners. “Princess Vanessa will swim forward. Placing her hand over the plinth, either the trident or the Ursela shell will choose her. Then,” a pause for dramatic effect, “with that act, Atlantica’s next ruler shall be decided.”
The assemblage erupted in a thunderous applause, only to be hushed by Neleus’s raised hands.
“Come, Princess,” Neleus invited me forward with a sweeping wave of his arm. “Destiny awaits.”
Time slowed with the first flick of my tail.
Triton gave my finger a pulse of comfort before letting his grasp slip from mine.
The melding faces of the crowd stared without blinking.
Alastor swam in without a moment to spare, tossing me a quick wink of encouragement.
Puffing my cheeks, a rush of water moved over my gills.
Pulse drumming a steady chorus, I approached the pedestal.
One trembling hand reached for the trident.
A slight twitch.
A faint shimmy.
Rapidly blinking disbelieving eyes, I gawked at the golden artifact that lifted, ever so slightly, from its perch.
“Everything you want is mere moments away, my darling girl.”
The desiccated rasp of my mother’s voice whipped my head up.
The Unfortunate Souls Collection Page 13