Silenced

by Ekaterine Xia

  Silenced

  Ekaterine Xia

  Copyright © 2019 Ekaterine Xia

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-63465-005-2

  Edited by Liana Brooks

  Cover by James at GoOnWrite.com

  For all those whom society would keep quiet and compliant: may you always find power within.

  Also, for those who keep me breathing, writing, and sane-ish. You know who you are.

  ~~*~~*~~

  I’ve heard the rumors.

  They say I gave up my home, my kingdom, my people for love of a man I’d only seen once, who I never even spoke to because he was unconscious when I rescued him from the sea. They say I bargained away my voice and then paid more in pain to the sea witch so I could be with him.

  Lies.

  There was no pain, except that of the king’s betrayal. He was the one who bargained with a witch, but one of the land not of the sea, and he was the one who took my voice. His were the hands at which I suffered agony, a little death with each step.

  I am Hai Qianya and this is the story behind that of the mermaid princess who came on land to become queen.

  Table of Contents

  Silenced

  hidden heart

  the coming storm

  regret

  lingering danger

  contrite heart

  Elle

  betrayed

  day one

  Kateri arrives

  day two

  water whispers

  clarifying

  Fates given

  Ai

  begin as you mean to go on

  define me victory

  spiraled journey

  Author's Note

  hidden heart

  I lazily swam up toward the surface of the sea, drawn by the energy of the raging storm. It was a full moon and I could feel the pull of Moon Mother adding to the gale’s force.

  Above would be wind-torn, the waves brutal even for my stronger alter ego.

  Even so, I couldn’t resist venturing out and above.

  Despite the royal banquet still in progress in my father’s hall. Despite the disapproving looks my brothers gave me as I swam left. Despite my sisters’ worried glances as I swam to the barrier that led to the outside.

  I laughed softly to myself.

  Perhaps I was testing the boundaries because of the feast and the spring-tide gaiety I was leaving behind me. Watching mer in their two-legged form flirt silk scarves in lieu of their tails made my head throb. Trying to decipher what flicks and twists of webbed fingers was innuendo and what wasn’t gave me the urge to bite. I was grown enough to admit to when I was being unreasonable and I was very near to being completely irrational. Better to leave and take my temper out elsewhere.

  I’d thought, now that I was of age, that things would be different. I’d thought that...

  I shook the thought away. Unseemly, to complain about the travails of being a princess of the West Seas, but the jewels in my hair had become heavy of late, the pearls I wore around my neck feeling more and more like a true collar rather than priceless gems detailing how I was treasured and what I’d accomplished.

  Every pearl in my yingluo had a story, from the ones big around as my thumb to the tiny opalescent drops beaded upon hair-fine golden wire into delicate lace.

  Golden pearls for my birth and every birthday after that, totaling eighteen as of three nights ago.

  Rice pearls, so named for their size and almost translucent beauty, made up the bulk of my yingluo, one for every competition I’d won, be it sparring with my sisters or racing poetry with my brothers.

  Snow pearls, each gently luminescent orb a gift from him on his birthday.

  Yuu had brought the latest one three mornings ago, big eyes wary, six of his eight tentacles braided together in worry as he dropped the intricate locket in my lap. The snow pearl held delicately in the carved web of polished abalone shell was the twentieth one in my yingluo and I’d spent the entire morning reworking the piece to properly incorporate the latest additions.

  Perhaps I would have been better served to have left it alone.

  Some days, I thought about taking out all the snow pearls from my yingluo and sending them back to him. Other days, I fantasized, briefly, about tossing them at his feet. Briefly, because grace and propriety aside, things didn’t hurl so well under the sea. Not without imbuing them with power, and I would wrestle with the giant octopuses before I succumbed to that amount of visible pettiness.

  I touched the collar of pearls and coral around my neck. Much like the traditions and expectations weighing me down, was my yingluo in reality nothing more than a pretty fetter? Talk of treasuring on one hand, chaining with the other.

  I shook my head again and swam harder. Past the palace proper. Past the kelp nests and coral gardens. Mother Ocean soothed me as I swam, singing through the gills along my ribs and caressing my capelet.

  Unsurprisingly, Hai Xin stood guard at the furthest point of the perimeter, his look grimmer than usual. Twelve had said something about Xin turning down missions outside the royal city and I should have known he’d be lurking here. Never let it be said Xin didn’t have a fine eye for an apt analogy. He’d always felt separate, different, no matter what I said or did, and it was so him to remain on the fringes even as he stood sentinel to keep us all safe.

  Despite the lethal set of his jaw, my childhood friend didn’t follow me as I passed the gates, and I thought for a moment that for once he’d let me past without comment.

  Barely ten body lengths away and I couldn’t help looking back, disbelieving my good luck. Or was it despair rather than relief?

  Had he given up even this last bit of interference for what I did? Xin hated it when I went to the surface unescorted, possibly more than even my siblings did, and had made it his mission to keep me within the city limits as much as a guard could restrict a princess. Commander of the guard now, but even so.

  My chest tightened and my heart twisted, jagged spines digging into the vulnerable organ with every sweep of water through my gills.

  I’d hated his highhandedness, especially since he refused to do anything more than act like a territorial octopus, not even having the grace to secure my willingness to be so guarded. I’d hated it, but it had at least given me hope that he would speak up eventually.

  But now...

  Maybe he’d finally taken his own words to heart and yanked his feelings for me out by the root. The small voice at the back of my mind rasped out a pained laugh, reminding me that here was the true source of the weight. I’d never felt truly burdened by who I was until the day Xin told me my position stood between us.

  Do not, princess. I swore my loyalty to your father and I cannot repay the gift of my life and his trust by besmirching his daughter’s reputation.

  His words swirled in my mind, slicing a little deeper into my heart with each repetition. Despite having grown up with me trailing along in his wake, he’d set me aside on my fifteenth birthday when I swam at him after he’d arrived for the spring tide celebration, fresh from border training and still in his warrior’s armor.

  It’d been moons since I’d seen him last, moons and moons, and I couldn’t resist the need to make sure he was unharmed.

  He’d looked down at me with those eyes the green dark of the sea, and I’d seen ice glazing their depths, his expression shuttering before those cool words fell from his mouth. He’d withdrawn after that. From the festivities and from me.

  No more meetings in the kelp forests after his missions away from the royal city.

  No more embraces when he saw me, not even the brush of our fingers allowed.

  Nothing more than the exquisite politesse of a warrior for his liege’s daughter.

 
And yet he always insisted on being my guard when we traveled away from the royal city. His gaze always circled back to me when he was on duty for one of my father’s open-court days, when the royal city was thrown open to the populace for adjudication. He never barred my sisters from venturing to the surface, but if he had his way, I would be fettered in the palace for the rest of my days, shielded from any possible danger, coming of age quest or no.

  My younger sisters flitted to the surface and back with no more than a warning look, but he insisted I always travel with an octopus or two if I wouldn’t take a proper guard. And the small gifts still came, constant as the Sister Tides. Small surprises ended up in my nest of kelp and coral, set there by unnoted hands.

  Delicate coral combs for my hair, tines of blushing red with delicate flowers of abalone shell. Spun gold cages would appear and disappear, sometimes filled with fish, sometimes laden with shells from foreign waters. Then there were the flawless snow pearls to celebrate his birthday, reminding me of how he would smile down at me and tell me that I was his birthday gift and so he had to match gift for priceless gift.

  Snow pearls were only found in the deepest trenches of the sea, where the giant octopuses and sharks lived. A mer had to risk life and fin to even catch a glimpse of the legendary shells, much less collect as many pearls as he had.

  Still, he stayed away, always at least five steps away, always adhering to protocol and tradition.

  He’d turned, his eyes meeting mine across the distance and my heart ached. Was this truly how things had to be? Why wouldn’t he say anything to my father? I was of age now, and I was Eighteen, with seventeen siblings ahead of me to my father’s crown. There would be talk; there always was when a princess married, but he was a commander of my father’s royal guard, not a commoner off the street.

  But then Xin had always felt his position more keenly than anyone else did, more fool me for not realizing sooner what that meant for my visions of a shared future.

  Found by King-father in the above, floating in an abandoned chest, Xin was marked as an outsider from the start, even without the clear flag of his auburn hair, eyes that shifted color with the tides, and the clear cut fingers of a land dweller.

  It never mattered that the priestesses claimed he was goddess-touched and that he was raised along with me and my siblings. Nor that my king-father’s premier general stepped forth to foster him as soon as he came of age to participate in the warrior’s games. Not even that my king-father was the one to gift him the ability to shift into one of us.

  I turned my face to the above again. Dwelling on what was and what wasn’t didn’t serve anything. I needed the storm, needed the unleashed violence, the pull and drag of Mother Moon, Ocean Mother, and the elements. Perhaps then I could be reminded of things bigger than myself and unrequited love.

  Determination shivered through the water behind me and Xin shot past with a mere flick of his powerful tail. He twisted to face me, and of course he was oh so conveniently between me and the surface.

  So much for thinking that he would let me go without protest.

  Relief tangled with annoyance. Irritation at him and at myself. It’d been three years of this push and pull. When was he going to relent? When was I going to give up and simply bite his head off instead of allowing him this much influence over me? Or maybe someday I would toss aside the rest of my pride and go to my queen-mother and petition to be allowed to court him. If he said no after that, at least then I would have a real answer.

  “Princess.” He bowed, the exquisitely polite gesture at odds with the sternness of his mental voice.

  I sighed out a stream of bubbles. “Commander.”

  That sculpted mouth firmed into a line as silence welled between us.

  I stared at him, happy for the chance to do so without reserve, even if it was under less than perfect circumstances.

  Xin truly was an heart-stopping creature.

  My mouth quirked in involuntary humor. Maybe just my heart, soft weak organ that it was.

  Lean and lithe, his powerful torso tapered into matte midnight scales patterned in glossy black. Waist length auburn hair pulled back into a simple warrior’s braid that tapped against his hip. His golden skin glowed with the luminescence particular to dwellers of the deep despite being of land-dweller origin. He wasn’t quite as bright as my siblings and I, but close. Bright enough to dazzle my eyes, at any rate.

  But in truth there was nothing particularly jaw dropping about his appearance. He was pretty enough, in that way I liked, but the maidens didn’t flock around him. What made my heart flutter around him was the way he carried himself. I’d seen princes with less presence, dancers with less grace, and there was that delicious sense of safety I had around him that simply made me want to melt.

  Not that he would let me.

  I blew out another cloud of bubbles. Much as I liked staring at him and falling into those fathomless eyes, it would lead to nothing. Nothing but my grief.

  “Commander?”

  “Do not forget that you are a princess of the West Sea, daughter of a dragon king.”

  I looked away, pain twisting in my chest. “How can I, when you never let me forget it?”

  He didn’t respond. Not in thought, not in voice, and not in deed.

  “Have a good evening, Commander,” I said, and swam away.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t follow.

  I didn’t think too much of it; I couldn’t.

  the coming storm

  The barrier around the city tingled along my skin as I pushed past, the sea darkening around me after a mere two flips of my tail. A glance behind me revealed nothing but black water, my mother’s magic shielding the city from normal sight. Only those keyed to the city would be able to see the slightest shimmer in the water leading to the gates.

  Away from the warm, calm waters surrounding the city, the sea grew colder, darker, and gradually more turbulent as I headed toward the surface.

  I shivered, willing my capelet to fold and lie flat against my shoulders and back.

  I loved the ever changing ocean, how the caressing currents a mere body length beneath the surface of the waves turned to bruising force when I poked my head out of the water. White-capped waves taller than two mer lying head to tail lashed the sea and the wind howled its joy at being allowed free rein. I caught a glimpse of one of the dragon princes of the sky as he twitched his tail, releasing a bolt of lightning.

  I quickly ducked just before a wave slammed down on me and headed for deeper water.

  Getting storm tossed could be enjoyable, but not when the princes of sea and sky were reveling in their work as much as they were that night. If my sisters were with me, we could have done some spell work, but since that wasn’t the case, I wasn’t about to try my resilience against their combined power. They were anointed bringers of rain, heralds of storm, and had the Heaven-given duty of weatherwork whereas I was a maiden not yet tested.

  I closed my eyes and drifted, soaking in the ambient energy of the storm, enjoying the sensation of being carried along with the waves. Once in a while I’d open my eyes, make sure I wasn’t drifting too far, or too close to the surface. Even if it was highly unlikely that there would be a threat, no sense in being careless.

  Not when there was no one else around me to help should anything go amiss.

  I could have asked another to come with me. Should have, perhaps, but Xin was no longer a choice and there was no one else I’d trust myself to when energy-drunk. I would be safe as long as I was careful and I had been trained from birth to keep caution close.

  Besides, there was always Yuu and her mate Youu. I would be surprised if the two octopuses hadn’t followed me to the surface. Most of their kind didn’t, but Yuu and Youu had been hand raised from tiny clingers by Xin and considered him all but a god. They would do much more than venture out of their natural habitat for him, even if they weren’t of the soldier breed.

  A disturbance in the water roused me from tipsy drowsi
ness. A brief glance around yielded no answers.

  Then, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Too slight to be a dolphin, the movement too languid to be anything but...

  My heart in my throat, I propelled myself forward, hoping against hope that I was wrong. Battle readiness pumped through my veins, my capelet unfurling, converting the storm energy and threading power through my veins.

  It was a land dweller. Human, I thought they called themselves. Male, if the clothing indicated correctly. Skin tight breeches outlining strong, muscled legs, a billowy white shirt, and a brown cloak that looked ridiculous in the water. Auburn hair drifted around his head, obscuring his face, his body soft within the currents of the water. No longer struggling, which probably meant he was near death if not already at the foot of death.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. Hard, against both the choice I had to face and the hair too eerily similar to Xin’s. That shade of red was rare in our clan and uncommon even amongst the land dwellers from what I saw when we last visited the above.

  There were very clear guidelines on what to do with land dwellers.

  Usually, if there was a dolphin nearby, we had no objection to helping them to the surface and then asking the dolphin to take them to shore. However, if, as with today, there were no dolphins at hand, the people were strongly discouraged from taking the land dwellers to shore. Better to let them drown than risk discovery and entrapment, especially for the mermaids. Being taken from the sea would be horror for any mer, but my queen-mother had always muttered about fates worse than death.

  There were stories of mermaids being forced to bear children for land dwellers. Children that had to be carried and birthed the land dweller way. Children that were unable to return to the sea with their mothers, soft unbreakable chains that often resulted in the deaths of the mermaid.

  However, I was not merely a mermaid. I was a dragon king’s daughter and I had magic to protect myself. A mundane land dweller couldn’t hope to keep me captive. Still, rules were rules for a reason and a king’s daughter was not above punishment.