The servant raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to answer his question.
Another quick glance at Ari and I knew my answer. “No, thank you. He’ll be sleeping with me.”
The servant quickly hid his shock, but it was too late. I’d seen the expression on his face. It was the same expression everyone in the kingdom was going to have when they read tomorrow’s headlines and saw the photo of us getting out of the water. I wasn’t trying to shock anyone. I just really didn’t care anymore what everyone thought. I’d already failed at being a good princess enough today. What was an added scandal on top of everything else?
“Can you ask Lucy to bring up some of her cream for Ari’s legs and some heavy duty sleeping pills? She can bring them straight to my room. I’m retiring for the evening.”
“Ma’am.” He nodded his head and turned toward the palace infirmary where Lucy the nurse would be working.
“This way.” I ushered Ari to the grand staircase, making note of how unsteady he was on his feet.
“I don’t need Lucy’s sleeping pills,” he said, gripping the banister so hard, his knuckles were white. “I’m no use to you asleep.”
“And you are in agony. Don’t try to pretend you aren’t. Look at your legs.”
He looked down. The skin was peeling off all over and deep red lesions covered both legs. It was so bad that small spots of blood were dripping onto the floor where he walked.
“It hurts a little, but I’m here for you.”
He put a finger under my chin and slowly brought my face up so I was face to face with him. As I was standing on the step above his, we were almost exactly the same height. He was so beautiful. His green eyes flashed purple for a ghost of a second, telling me his emotional state was high. It was hypnotic how he had a hold of me despite the fact that our only contact was the tip of his forefinger on my chin.
“This is it, Erica. Us, you and me. We are bonded, and nothing can change that. My heart only beats properly when you are near me. The rest of the time it’s frantic, wondering where its mate is, skipping beats, and working double-time. It’s only when you are near me that I feel completely calm. I don’t need the creams and the pills because you are the only balm I need. You are the one that soothes me. No cream can do for me what your presence does, and I think that I am the same for you. I came here to heal your pain, not to have you help me with mine.”
It was so true. Nothing felt right whenever he was away from me, and yet, when he was close, everything fell into place. It wasn’t that I felt less fearful about my father, but with Ari I was able to manage the pain, to breathe easier. Maybe it was the same for him? I leaned forward and kissed him, and for that minute both of our pain went away.
The Bathtub and Magic
I held his hand all the way up the stairs, and despite his protestations of it not hurting too much, he gripped my hand a little too tightly, letting me know it wasn’t true.
In the bedroom he flopped down on the bed and pulled the sheet over his body, leaving his legs exposed to the air. I could barely look at them, and I certainly couldn’t do it without my own chest constricting. He looked like the victim of a fire. Even if he refused the sleeping pills, I was going to insist on the cream. As the thought struck, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find the same servant with the pills and the cream.
“Will that be all, ma’am?” I saw his eyes dart to his left to see Ari lying on the bed. Thank goodness, he’d thought to cover himself up. We’d caused enough gossip for one night.
“Please, can you have some food brought up and a phone? I wish to call the hospital.”
He nodded his head and departed.
“I’m not taking the pills. I already told you.” Ari sat up in the bed then grimaced as his legs scraped on the sheet beneath them. My white sheet was already spotty with blood from the open lacerations on his legs. Bandaging them might work, but it would also make changing back to his tail impossible.
Instead of arguing with him, I set the pills and cream down on my bedside table and lay beside him being careful not to touch his legs at all. Even the slightest pressure could damage them.
“I wish my grandfather hadn’t had the sea witch killed,” I mused, putting my hand on his chest. I’d have to get up again at some point as I was still in my wet underwear with only a towel to stop the bed from getting wet, but for now, I just needed the warmth only Ari could provide.
He twirled a wet lock of my hair around in his fingers. “If he hadn’t, you would be dead and I’d rather this...”—He pointed to his legs—“than not being able to see you at all.”
“Is there no one else in Havfrue that can change this magic?” I’d asked the same question a million times, and Ari always gave me the same answer.
“Your grandfather is a powerful man, the most powerful man in the whole kingdom of Havfrue, but he cannot change this spell. He has tried. You must know that I’m not the only one with this problem. Many people loved the sea witch. She was a manipulator, and many people fell for her lies. Your mother did, I did. Your grandfather has been doing everything he can to help those affected, but it seems that many of the people who got something from the sea witch are now disadvantaged in some way. Some, like me, are in pain.”
“You know, nothing happened to my mother when the sea witch died, and my mother was the one person she most wanted to hurt. You’d think if anyone would suffer, it would be her.”
It was true. I’d been waiting for my mother to develop some kind of pain or discomfort since the sea witch died, but she’d remained as she always had been, except perhaps, a little happier knowing her children could go in the ocean without anything bad happening to them.
“You don’t think my father’s illness has anything to do with the sea witch’s spell do you?” I asked, sitting up. “She wanted something from my mother and never got it. This could be her final act of treachery.”
Ari’s eyebrows knotted together as he mulled my theory over. “I don’t think so. The people affected are directly affected. Some are having their hair fall out, some are having pains in their limbs, or their voices are changing. Everything she left behind is physical and directly related to the person involved. As far as I’m aware, no one has lost family members because of her spells.”
I wasn’t so sure. How was it possible my mother got away with it when so many others hadn’t?
A knock on my door broke me from my thoughts. I jumped out of bed and yelled through the closed door.
“Just a minute!”
After grabbing a clean set of pajamas from my drawers, I ran into my bathroom, peeled my wet underwear off, and pulled my nightwear on.
It was the servant with a couple of beef sandwiches on a silver tray, along with some tomatoes, salt, pepper, and mustard in case we wanted to add to them. Next to the plates, was the phone I asked for.
I thanked him and let him retire for the night.
Passing one of the sandwiches to Ari, I dialed the number for the hospital. Being a member of royalty meant I had a direct line to the head of the hospital, and it was programmed into the phone.
“Yes?” A man with a steely voice answered.
“This is Princess Erica. I’m calling to inquire about His Majesty.”
He paused, and then I heard him cough as though he was clearing his throat.
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Your Highness, but I’ve been requested to ask you a secret question in case it’s not really you. The paparazzi have been trying to get in all afternoon, and your mother thinks they might find out this number. I’ve already had about fifty of them pretending to be you on the public hospital lines.”
Despite everything, I gave a small smile. Trust my mother to come up with that. It was part of why she made a good queen. I would never have been able to keep my composure long enough to worry about secret questions.
“Go ahead.”
He cleared his throat again. “What item of jewelry did your mother give to you last year?”
“It was a necklace with a ruby pendant.”
“Yes, yes, well done.” He answered me like I’d just won a competition rather than the ability to ask after my own father.
“So how is he?” I asked when it became apparent he’d completely forgotten why I’d called.
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid there is no change. I’ve got my best doctors with him, trying to diagnose the problem, and a team of the top specialists in every field are being called in from all over Trifork.”
“Could it be a magical problem?”
“What?”
Magic was not common in Trifork. Unlike some of the other kingdoms, we had almost no magical people living here. Our only magic came from the depths of the ocean, and that strictly wasn’t ours. It belonged to the merfolk of Havfrue.
“Magic. Could magic be causing his illness?”
“I’m afraid I can’t possibly say. Do you think it might be a possibility?”
I thought back to the sea witch. Whatever Ari thought about it, I still wasn’t sure she didn’t have something to do with this. Ok, she’d been dead for months, but her magic lingered on, causing lasting damage to those affected. I knew she’d been planning to hurt my father before she died, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that she’d managed to perform a spell on him before she became a shark’s lunch.
“Yes, I do.”
There was silence on the line, and for a second, I thought he might have been cut off, but then he answered me. “I’ll have someone brought in from Thalia or one of the other magical kingdoms to check. They might be able to figure out the problem better than we seem to be doing.”
I thanked him and hung up.
“How is he?” Ari asked his voice full of concern. He’d not touched his sandwich at all.
I picked mine up from the silver tray.
“He’s the same,” I replied. “They have people trying to figure it out. The head of medicine at the hospital is sending for some mages to help diagnose him.”
“So I heard,” Ari said, finally biting into his sandwich after seeing me take mine. “I think you are wrong, though. I’ll be surprised if it turns out to be magic.”
After we’d both eaten our sandwiches, I placed the tray back on my bedside cabinet and turned back to Ari. There was expectation in the air between us. I’d never slept with a boy in my room before. Not unless you counted Hayden who used to come to sleep-overs on my birthday with the rest of my classmates when we were little.
I leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were so warm and yet he still tasted of the ocean, even when he was away from it. It was a taste and a smell I associated with him without even thinking about it now. I could never go for a walk by the sea and smell the briny air without picturing Ari in my mind. He turned his body into me, and I heard him moan. At first, I thought it was a moan of pleasure. I’d certainly been enjoying myself, but when he pulled back quickly and gritted his teeth. I knew the pain was winning.
Grabbing the cream next to the silver tray, I squeezed the tube and applied liberal amounts of the stuff to his legs, hoping it would ease his pain. As I slathered it on, great globs of it fell onto the bed, messing my sheet up even further, not that I cared. A sheet could be washed.
He barely made a sound as I smoothed the cream on thickly, but he gripped the sheets beneath him and closed his eyes despite the deliberate lightness of my touch.
“Does it feel any better?” I asked. His legs were now wet and white, hiding the worst parts.
“A little...” he grimaced again as he tried to move on the bed to make space for me. “Ok, not much,” he admitted.
I picked up the sleeping pills. They would knock him out almost instantly and keep him asleep for hours, but it was better than him lying next to me in agony. I couldn’t bear it.
“No!” he growled when he saw what I’d picked up.
I sighed, knowing it was no use arguing with him. We were both going to have to sleep on wet sheets covered in skin cream and blood, with him not daring to move because of the pain moving would cause. I’d sleep so far on the edge of the bed for fear of hurting him in my sleep that it was more than a possibility I’d fall off.
As I replaced the bottle of pills, my eyes fell upon something else.
Picking up the salt shaker, I dashed into the bathroom and turned both taps on, emptying the whole shaker of salt into it.
“What are you doing?” I heard Ari call out.
“I’m making this night a whole lot easier for both of us,” I grinned, poking my head back around the door.
It took a whole five minutes to get Ari from the bed to the bathtub, but the look of relief on his face as his legs turned back to a tail made it worth it.
“You can sleep in here.” I pointed out.
“What about you?”
I thought about it. The bed would feel lonely, knowing Ari was in the next room. Besides, the sheets were totally ruined, and I didn’t want to bother the staff any more than I had to. Instead, I brought a pillow from the bed and placed it beside the bathtub.
“I’m going to sleep right here next to you.”
The way he looked at me then almost broke my heart. It was as if no one had ever done anything for him before. I could feel everything in that look, and I only wished that the bathtub was bigger so I could climb in with him.
It wasn’t the way I’d expected to spend my first night sleeping with a man, but it was the only way that worked.
In the morning, I woke up to a neck so stiff that I could barely move it and the news that my father had died during the night. The new queen of Trifork had spent the night on the bathroom floor.
Chapter five
It was John that came to my room at five-thirty in the morning to inform me of the news. It was also John that held me as I cried. Ari, unable to move quickly thanks to having to wait for his tail to change into legs, only managed to get to me once my tears had subsided. John passed me over to him, and I clung to him, holding onto his naked body, covered only in a sheet as if he were the only thing that would stop me drowning in grief.
“I’ll give you time to compose yourself, but I must inform Anthony of the news.” John was ever the professional. I knew he was close to my father and would feel his passing almost as keenly as I had, and yet he stood at my door with the stoic composure I, as the new queen, should be showing.
“Would you like me to tell the staff or would you prefer to do that?”
I wiped a tear from my eye and looked up at him. I knew what he was really asking me. He was asking if I was strong enough to take on the duties I’d been training for my whole life. It was crunch time, and he was waiting to see if I’d sink or swim. I took a deep breath and pulled myself up to my full height.
“Please gather everyone into the great hall in thirty minutes. I’ll tell everyone the news.”
John nodded. He didn’t smile. Of course, he didn’t. There was nothing to smile about, but I saw the pride in his expression as he nodded his head and turned away.
“I need to get dressed,” I said quickly, panic evident in my voice. “Something appropriate and formal...and black.” I turned away from Ari to head to the closet, but he pulled me back toward him and held onto me, running his fingers through my hair with one hand and gripping me to him so tightly, my face was almost crushed to his chest.
I didn’t want to break down. I’d already cried in front of John, but Ari was a cocoon wrapped around me. A safe harbor in the worst storm of my life and a haven of safety cushioning me from the reality I’d woken up to. I let the tears fall, creating streams down Ari’s chest and over his stomach. I sobbed, letting all the pain out, and despite his own pain, Ari was a rock, holding me until I was completely out of tears. Letting go of him was hard. Like setting adrift, away from an anchored ship, but I
had to go. I had a job to do, and people were counting on me.
“Stay here. There’s no point you trying to walk. I’ll come back for you.”
Ari nodded, knowing that the best help he could be was to do as I asked. I pulled out a demure black dress from my closet and pinned my hair back from my face.
Ari gave me a quick kiss as I left the room. Downstairs, I found John in his office fielding calls from journalists and well-wishers. When he saw me walk in, he hung up midway through a conversation.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed to me in a way he never had before. It was so poignant, and it didn’t escape me that our relationship had changed overnight. I was no longer the princess. I was now the queen and, therefore, his boss.
Blue Water (A Little Mermaid Reverse Fairytale Book 2) Page 3