“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know what you asked.”
An awkward moment passed before Angelica spoke again. “Are you warm enough?”
“I’m fine.”
Then another.
“Your hair looks lovely, I must say,” she tried again. “Look how long it’s grown.”
“I look like a drowned rat.”
“Nonsense. You could never look like a rat.”
“Though you do look a bit peaky,” Beau interjected helpfully. “A bit limp.”
They both turned cold gazes upon him, and he shrugged, not at all contrite. When they turned away once more, I elbowed him in the ribs, hissing, “You ass.”
“What?” He rubbed the spot ruefully. “That’s likely the first time they’ve ever agreed on something. I’m trying to help.”
After a handful more feeble attempts at conversation—which Coco shut down with an ease and efficiency I admired—Angelica cut straight to the heart of it. “We have a long walk ahead of us to Le Présage, daughter. I should like to know you better, if you are willing.”
Coco scoffed and kicked an algae-covered rock. It plunked into the water, splashing my ruined hem. “Why? You said you’ve been watching me. You should already know everything.”
“Perhaps. I don’t know your thoughts, however.” Angelica tilted her head to the side, lips pursed, as if debating something. After another few seconds, she said, “I don’t know why you wear my necklace, for example.”
Subtle as a brick.
“I wonder what that’s like,” Coco mused bitterly, still watching the golden fish. “Wanting an explanation and never receiving one. It’d be horribly frustrating, don’t you think?”
Angelica didn’t force any more horrendously awkward conversation after that.
As for myself, I tried not to think. Angelica had said Reid’s injuries weren’t fatal. She said he would wake. And Isla—though I knew little about the mysterious woman they called the Oracle, she would make a powerful ally against Morgane and Josephine. With our other allies occupied, it made sense to indulge Isla. Josephine clearly feared her.
I didn’t know how much time passed before my heels began to ache. It could’ve been moments. It could’ve been hours. One second, the moon shone directly overhead, limning Reid’s silhouette in silver, and the next, it had dipped below a wall of water, bathing us all in shadow. Only then did I notice the strange phosphorescent glow emanating from the waters.
“What is that?” I whispered.
“A special kind of plankton,” Angelica said, her voice equally soft. “Though here we call them sea stars. They light the waters around the city.”
The bluish glow reflected in Célie’s wide eyes. She reached out to the wall nearest us, where thousands of nearly indiscernible specks of light swirled together to form one bright, pulsing wave. “They’re like fireflies.”
Angelica smiled and nodded, lifting her chin for us to look down the footpath. What appeared to be a golden gate bisected it, colossal and ornate, expanding into the empty plains of water on either side and rising to the sky. If not for the algae growing along its whorls and spikes, it could’ve been the gate to Heaven.
Beyond it, there seemed to be no water at all.
“Behold—Le Présage.” Angelica’s smile widened as we drew to a unanimous halt. “And there, in the center, Le Palais de Cristal.”
We all stared, necks craned, at the orb of dry, mountainous terrain in the heart of L’Eau Mélancolique. Huts had been carved into the rock along the city’s edge, into the very mountainside, as the seafloor rose to one tumultuous peak. At the top of that peak, spires of sea glass rose—cruel and sharp and beautiful—from the ruins of an enormous sunken ship. Its broken masts and shredded sails glowed blue in the light of the sea stars.
“Is it—is that dry land?” Beau glanced from Coco to me and back again in search of an explanation, but Coco didn’t seem to notice; her mouth had parted slightly as she gazed up at the city, and her free hand had risen to grasp her locket once more.
“I . . . I remember this place,” she breathed. Those dark eyes sought mine, brimming with sudden certainty. With hope. Grinning, I released her arm, and she took a stumbling step forward. “I’ve been here before. Le Présage.” She said the words as if tasting them, returning my smile. Her anger, her resentment momentarily forgotten. Memory was a strange and wonderful thing. “The Oracle City. Le Palais de Cristal.”
Angelica shadowed her movements, close enough to touch. She still didn’t dare. “You were born there.”
Coco whirled to face her, nearly breathless in her anticipation, and the dam finally burst. “How? How was I born here if you can’t leave? Is my father a merman? Is my father Constantin? Why is the Oracle City built on dry land? How is there dry land in the middle of the Wistful Waters?”
Angelica laughed at Coco’s outburst—it really did sound like bells—and gestured us onward toward the gate. The sea stars followed in our wake. Though they didn’t speak, though I could hardly see them, they seemed almost . . . curious. Sprite-like. “It isn’t always dry,” she said. “I told you. Melusines are courteous to a fault. They wouldn’t want their guests to feel uncomfortable.”
“So they drained their entire city?” Beau asked incredulously. “Just for us to breathe?”
Even Angelica’s shrug articulated elegance and grace. “Why not?”
“Does that mean they can walk on land?” I asked, sticking a finger into the waters on impulse. The sea stars clustered around my knuckle, illuminating the shape of my bone through my skin. I flexed it in fascination, watching as they swirled and eddied, desperate to touch me. They left a cold, tingling sensation in their wake.
Angelica’s smile vanished, and she slapped my hand away. “Stop it.” She lifted my finger to eye level, revealing thousands of tiny bloodred pricks. Teeth marks. “They’ll eat you if you let them.” I snatched my hand away with an outraged sound, wiping my blood on my chemise and glaring at the carnivorous little beasts. “And we are not on land,” she continued, resolute. “Make no mistake. We remain on the seafloor, where melusines are free to grow legs.”
“Grow legs?” Beau’s face twisted in disgust as a handful of humanoid shadows swam toward us from along the gate, their metallic tails flashing. I inched closer to Reid. “Like frogs?”
Angelica’s expression grew stony as the melusines’ faces took shape through the waters. Three women and two men. Though their bodies ranged in shape—from broad and coarse to fine and delicate—they all seemed somewhat longer than human, as if their limbs had been stretched, and each moved with a sort of liquid grace. Their colors varied from the palest of silver to the deepest of ebony, but all shimmered slightly, monochromatic and dusted with pearlescent scales. Their webbed fingers wrapped around what could only be described as spears. Perhaps tridents.
Whatever they were, they gleamed wickedly sharp in the phosphorescent light, and I had no interest in meeting the receiving end of them.
“Beau,” I murmured, smiling pleasantly at their hostile faces as they swam closer. Closer still. “Apologize, you blithering idiot.”
He backed into me, nearly breaking my foot. I stomped on his toes in return. He swore roundly, snarling, “They couldn’t have heard me.”
Coco spoke through her own fixed smile, imitating Célie, who curtsied low, and elbowed Beau when he didn’t do the same. “Good idea. Let’s risk it.”
“It was an honest question—”
The melusines didn’t pause at the walls of water, instead gliding seamlessly through them and stepping—actually stepping—onto the footpath, their split tails transforming to legs before our very eyes. The scales on their fins disappeared, and glistening skin wrapped around feet, ankles, calves, thighs, and—
A beat of silence passed as Beau’s alarm promptly vanished, replaced by a wide, shit-eating grin.
They were naked.
And, contrary to Angelica’s assertion, they
looked very human. Célie gasped.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Beau said to the one in front, bending to kiss her long-fingered hand. He hesitated for only a second when he saw she had one extra knuckle per finger. Each clenched around her spear as she pointed it at his face, hissing and revealing a pair of thin fangs.
“You dare to touch me without permission?”
The male nearest her lifted his trident to emphasize her words. Unlike the female, he wore a thick golden rope around his neck, its emerald pendant the size of a goose egg. Matching twin emeralds glittered at his tapered ears. “He likened us to amphibians as well.” When he tilted his head, the movement was predatory. His silver eyes glittered with menace. “Do we appear as amphibians?”
Angelica swept into a deep, immaculate curtsy. “He meant no offense, Aurélien.”
Beau lifted placating hands, nodding along hastily. “I meant no offense.”
The female slanted her black eyes at him. Against her narrow silver face and her long—long—silver hair, they appeared . . . disconcerting. And far too large. Indeed, everything about her and her kin’s features seemed disproportionate somehow. Not wrong, exactly. Just . . . strange. Striking. Like a beautiful portrait meant to be studied, not admired. She didn’t lower her weapon. “Yet still I hear no apology. Does the human prince think us ugly? Does he think us strange?”
Yes.
The answer rose to my lips, unbidden, but I bit my tongue at the last second, frowning and averting my gaze. The movement attracted the melusine’s attention, however, and those black eyes turned to me, flicking over the planes of my face. Studying me. She grinned with dark cunning, and my stomach dropped with realization.
The women who dwell here are truth tellers.
Drink of the waters, and spill their truth.
Oh god.
Beau, who’d quashed his own answer with a strangled sound, cast me a panicked look. I returned it full measure. If we couldn’t lie, if we’d been forced into a kingdom of literal truth—
If he didn’t kill us, I certainly would.
Either way, we’d all be dead by night’s end.
Beau tried to speak again, keeping his eyes trained carefully on the melusine’s face. His throat bobbed against the tip of her spear. “Of course you do not look like a frog, mademoiselle, and I am grievously sorry for the implication. Indeed, you are quite—” The lie stuck in his throat, and his mouth gaped open and closed, like the fish who’d gathered to watch our inevitable demise. “Quite—”
“Lovely,” Célie finished, her voice earnest and firm. “You are lovely.”
The melusines regarded Célie with open curiosity, and the silver-haired female slowly lowered her spear. Beau swallowed visibly as she inclined her head. The others followed suit, some bowing deeply, others curtsying. The one called Aurélien even extended his hand to her, pressing an emerald earring into her palm. “You are welcome here, Célie Tremblay.” The silver-haired melusine’s lip curled as she glanced back at Beau. “More so than your companions.”
Célie curtsied again, smaller this time. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle . . . ?”
“I am Elvire, the Oracle’s Hand.” The melusine smiled in approval at Célie’s impeccable manners, and another of her companions looped a strand of pretty white pearls around Célie’s neck. They looked ridiculous against her tattered gown, but Célie didn’t seem to mind.
“Thank you.” She lifted a hand in surprise, stroking them gently, before pushing the single emerald stud through her pierced earlobe. She looked like a magpie. “I shall treasure each one.”
Beau stared at her incredulously.
“They suit you.” Elvire nodded before gesturing toward her companions. “We are here to escort you into the Oracle City. This is Aurélien”—she pointed to the bejeweled but otherwise naked merman—“Olympienne”—another mermaid, this one the palest lavender with diamonds adorning her teeth—“Leopoldine”—a third with thin golden chains sparkling along her charcoal torso—“Lasimonne and Sabatay.” She finished with two onyx mermen. One boasted rubies in his nipples, while the other’s eyes glowed milky white. Seaweed wound through his braided hair. “We are simply enchanted to meet you. If you would be so kind as to walk beside me, Mademoiselle Célie, I would much appreciate your company.”
When Célie nodded, Elvire extended an arm, and the two joined elbows, as prim and polite as any two aristocrats strolling through the park in Cesarine. Sabatay gestured for Angelica and Coco to fall in behind them while Leopoldine and Lasimonne flanked Reid on either side. Aurélien stepped in behind without a backward glance. Only his barnacle-crusted trident even glanced in our direction, waving us forward.
And that was how Beau and I found ourselves at the rear of the procession into the city.
Le Présage was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Just as I’d suspected, the melusines lived like magpies, building their homes from the remnants of sunken ships, from coral, from stone, hoarding sunken treasure to decorate their windows and lawns. A weathered marble bust sank deep into the silt of a kelp-filled garden at the edge of the city. The owner had affixed diamonds to each eye. Farther in, officials ushered melusines to the side of a bustling thoroughfare. Instead of brick or cobblestones, the road had been paved with mismatched coins—gold, silver, and bronze couronnes, as well as foreign coinage I didn’t recognize. The occasional gemstone. An errant shell.
“Is it always this . . . crowded?” Beau asked, brows raised. Scores of melusines gathered to watch us pass, their eyes luminous and skin lustrous. Many wore gowns hundreds of years out of fashion—ostentatious and ornate—while others, like our guards, wore nothing at all. A merman with a bone necklace and pearl hood winked at me from afar. His companion had painted her entire body gold, donning only a fork in her intricately braided chignon.
The only thing every melusine had in common, it seemed, was their legs.
“We have not walked for many years,” Aurélien said as means of explanation.
From around the bend of the street, a team of sienna-colored octopi surged into view, pulling a gilded carriage behind. Except its paint had disintegrated in the salty water, and its wood had mostly rotted, caving in half the roof. Still, the melusines nearest it clapped gleefully, and the couple inside—one wore a monocle, for Christ’s sake—waved as if royalty. And perhaps they were. Perhaps kings and queens in the world below owned octopi and carriages. Perhaps they also sewed shark teeth into veils and wore golden cutlery in their powdered wigs.
The entire city glittered with the air of ludicrous opulence gone to seed.
I adored it.
“I want a wig.” I couldn’t see enough as we marched past little shops of stone with planter boxes of red algae. One melusine walked his pet spotted turtle on a gold-threaded leash. Another lounged in a claw-footed tub at the street corner, pouring water from a pitcher onto her legs. They transformed back into obsidian fins before our very eyes. Merchants hawked wares of everything from conch fritters and crab legs to oyster-and-pearl earrings and music boxes. The light of the sea stars undulated eerily across each face, the only illumination in the entire city. “Why do melusines own wigs?”
“And gowns?” Coco asked, eyeing the couple nearest us. They both wore heavy trains of brocade velvet and . . . corsets. Just corsets. No bodices. No chemises. “How do you wear them with fins? Wouldn’t skirts weigh you down in the water?”
“Can a melusine drown?” I asked curiously.
Olympienne tilted her lavender head between us in consideration. She pursed her lavender lips. “Do not be silly. Of course melusines cannot drown. We have gills.” She bared her neck, revealing pearlescent slits along the side of her throat. “And lungs.” She inhaled deeply. “But yes, unfortunately, such handsome attire can prove quite troublesome underwater. We have much anticipated your arrival for just this reason.”
“To wear dresses?” Beau frowned as a young boy strode past in scarlet breeches and billowing cloak. H
e bared sharp teeth at us. “You drained the entire city to wear . . . dresses.”
“We drained the city because we are courteous hosts,” Lasimonne said, his voice unexpectedly deep. “That we should also wear our treasure is a pleasant inclusion.”
Wear our treasure. Huh. It made sense. Where else would a melusine trapped below water find such sumptuous clothing but sunken ships? Perhaps Lasimonne’s ruby nipple rings had come from the ship we approached at this very moment, splintered at the base of Le Palais de Cristal.
“How long does it take to drain an entire city?” I peered down a darkened alley that seemed to drop straight into an abyss, where I swore I saw an enormous eye blink. “And what’s down there?”
“A giant squid. No, do not provoke it.” Aurélien steered me back onto the main road with the tip of his trident.
“Isla foresaw your arrival months ago.” Sabatay tossed his braid over a sculpted shoulder and gestured for us to keep moving. The palace loomed directly ahead of us now. “From the moment you chose to marry the huntsman rather than flee or allow the authorities to lock you away.”
Beau cleared his throat, glancing up at the waters far above. The sea stars’ reflection pulsed faintly in his dark eyes. “Yet Constantin was quite adamant that Célie and I not enter this place. Indeed, he said humans who drank of the waters would go mad.”
Elvire looked at us from over her shoulder. “And did you drink of the waters?”
“I—” Beau frowned and looked at Célie. “Did we?”
She shook her head slowly, brow creasing. “I don’t know. I did have a rather disturbing dream while unconscious, but I thought . . .”
Elvire patted her arm knowingly. “Dreams are never dreams, Mademoiselle Célie. They are our deepest wishes and darkest secrets made true, whispered only under cloak of night. In them, we are free to know ourselves.”
Beau’s skin appeared sallow in the ghostly light, and he swallowed, visibly disturbed. “I didn’t speak any truth.”
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