Tiberius turned to look at me, and his eyes widened, his mouth dropped open when his eyes searched mine, obviously recognizing me for who I truly was. He hadn’t known it would take this turn. None of us had. And I’d be the one to bear the bad news.
“He did not know.” I smiled. “No one did. I only arrived last night.”
The Queen’s nails dug into the arm of her throne. I saw bits of it crumble down to the floor. Her anger only fueled my own desire for vengeance. She turned to Tiberius, and commanded him from between gritted teeth, “Go fetch me the other one.”
Tiberius stilled, and with good reason. It’s what we’d thought she’d try to do all along. Get us together…and kill us both.
“If by ‘the other one’ you mean that filthy Lagoona commoner you tried to replace me with, then she’s not here.”
“What do you mean she’s not here?” the Queen shouted.
An eyebrow rose high on my forehead as I let amusement flitter through the words of my reply. “Precisely that. She is gone. Left, in the middle of the night.”
The Queen rose then, straightening in her formidability to loom over us, her and the ostentatious crown of my mother, and my mother’s mother before her. But I was not frightened, if that had been what she’d set out to make me feel.
“How did she leave the palace with no one taking notice? And who helped her leave?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I let her go.” When the Queen’s glare seemed to become a prominence on her features, I added with glee, “I hardly saw the need to keep her here since her purpose has been fulfilled.”
“Where is she?”
“Gods if I know. I gave her a handful of coins and she left. My guess? Probably Brague. Or Ventlaer.”
“You insolent little—”
“Do not speak to my daughter that way,” my father interrupted, a slow sign of rising rage over his features. It startled me, to hear him defend me so openly, so freely.
The Queen sat back down on her throne. Her anger heating the waters, palpitating around us, making goosebumps rise over my skin. I fought back a shiver of weakness, trying not to let her affect me.
After a few tortured moments of silence, she finally spoke, her words coming out in a whoosh of breath. “Very well, then. It is done, and now we can proceed as originally planned.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “You will marry Prince Kai. I trust you are here to stay and do your duties this time around?”
Like I had a choice?
“Of course.”
“Good,” she sneered. “Now get out and go do them.”
~~
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Tiberius hissed, so obviously fighting the urge to tug at my arm like an Uncharted savage.
“Not here,” I replied. There were eyes everywhere, and it was hard to discern who we could even trust. Anyone of his trusted guards tailing after us could be in cohorts with my step-mother. I’d not risk our mission. My mission. “Find Kai,” I ordered quietly, too worried to bother with any unsavory nicknames. This was too important.
And I needed to speak urgently with them both.
And prayed they could handle the truth of our betrayal.
~~
THEY ASSEMBLED in my room for a chat before the seamstress was to arrive for the final gown fitting. Dread coiled in my belly as I took a seat demurely before Tiberius and Kai. Both looked confused, and both looked eagerly around the room for Odalaea.
“You won’t find her,” I told them. “She’s gone.”
A breath of silence followed, one I could only interpret as disbelief. Nothing was doused in clarity yet, but soon they’d see. A part of me hated Odalaea for this. Usually, I didn’t care who I hurt, because after all, nobody truly mattered to me. And while I didn’t care for Tiberius or Kai, the news would be a blow to them, one I knew they’d not swim away from intact.
But they had to.
For the good of Thalassar, they had to.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Tiberius demanded impetuously. “Stop kidding around. This isn’t funny, Odele.”
“I’m not joking. Odalaea left. She’s gone.” And every moment of her absence killed me inside.
“Well, where did she go?” Kai asked, his voice a quiet calm that rose the flesh on my arms uncomfortably. There was a hidden danger in those depths, like the calm before the storm. Like the calm before a volcano erupted.
“I do not know. She did not tell me. She just left, with Elias.” I could still remember her parting words like a blow to the face. ‘I can’t marry Kai. It has to be you.’ I took a deep breath, and my throat tightened. I was not one to convey my emotions so openly, so I tried to push the sensations aside. Tried to tilt my head just a bit higher. “She said she doesn’t want to be Queen. That she’s not suited for the role.”
Kai’s brown eyes flashed blue, giving me the desire to flinch. “You lie,” he hissed.
My chin tilted even higher as my eyes narrowed. “She’s the liar. She told us all what we wanted to hear last night and escaped with Elias. Neither of them looked back.” My heart thundered, and my stomach lurched.
Captain Saber took me in, from head to tail fin. He’d find no lie, because there was none. Slowly, he let out a breath through his nose. “You’re telling the truth,” he whispered darkly.
“How is that possible?” Kai jerked back. He looked like he’d been punched in the gut, and was reeling from the pain. I’d felt the same way when she told me she was leaving.
“Did you even try to stop her?” Tiberius accused.
I glared at him. “Of course I did. She didn’t listen. I don’t want to be Queen either, I don’t want to marry Kai, but we have no choice now. If we both disappear, the Queen stays on the throne forever, and we can’t let that happen.”
Tiberius growled, a low rumble. “You expect me to believe you care?”
Tears welled in my eyes but I pushed them away, piercing him with a glare. “I don’t. But I promised her…”
‘Promise me you’ll do it. For our mothers, you must promise.’
So I had.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone now, and you are stuck with me. The plan is still on, but we will have to make do without Odalaea. Just because she isn’t here doesn’t mean her existence should be hidden any longer. My step-mother must be removed from the throne, and we will do it. Do you understand?”
In their shock, they couldn’t do much but numbly nod.
Good.
I’d thought it’d be much harder to get them to agree.
“You both have jobs to do. Do them.” As the words escaped my mouth, I realized just how much I sounded like my step-mother, and felt the curdling pain deep inside me. If that wasn’t proof enough that I didn’t belong anywhere near the throne, then I didn’t know what was.
But I promised Odalaea, on the graves of our mothers, that I would do this.
And it was a promise I dared not break.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tiberius
THE PAIN OF it all was almost crippling. But even if it hurt, even if I felt something inside me crumble, I kept my head high, determination the only thing willing me to continue. I didn’t want to believe that Maisie had gone, that she’d just leave without a word. But she wasn’t in the room and she wasn’t in the cove.
My mind kept flashing back to the day before, searching for any signs I might have missed, anything that would have told me to expect this, but for the life of me, I couldn’t seem to find that hint of her plot of betrayal.
Was everyone I loved destined to leave me? Every time I tried to open up, would they swim away? First, Odele had left, and even if I hadn’t truly loved her at all, the pain of her departure was very much real. And now Maisie was gone, and everything was worse.
Maisie was eternal.
Or so I’d thought.
The truth was, I didn’t know what to think anymore, didn’t know what I should feel besides catastrophic heartbreak that threatened to end me entirely. It was
all I could to keep from falling apart, focusing on my duties. On getting rid of the Queen I served and replacing her with the mer I thought I once loved.
Maybe, if enough time went by, Maisie would return. Or maybe, she’d never been destined for this life at all. Maybe the pain of her leaving would ebb into a pang, instead of this vicious throb.
And maybe, if I made enough excuses for her departure, eventually I’d believe one of them to be true, instead of thinking that maybe, Maisie never really loved me at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kai
THE DRAGON INSIDE roared in fury and betrayal. It spit ice and lava. It raked its claws down my consciousness, demanding I relinquish control, so that it may tear all of Thalassar apart if only to get its mate back.
For that reason alone, I kept him tightly tethered.
There had to be some explanation for her departure, even if I didn’t want to accept it to be true. Had I pushed her away with my insistence that we wed? Despite what she’d said last night, inside, had she been afraid? And could I really blame her?
We were so different. She came from a line of powerful royals and love, and I came from a line of mixed breed beasts. And like a beast, I’d been relentless in my conquest of her. Like a dragon, capturing a fish to play with it, tossing it from one clawed hand to the next, only to find it dead in its paws.
I should have been more careful with her. I should have listened, and not forced my status and my love on her so viciously.
But, like Odele said, I was a beast, a beast desperate for love.
Instead of getting the happy ending I longed for, I destroyed the future I’d dreamed of.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Odele
THE DAYS closed in on me, suffocating and demanding. Though I was frightened of what lay ahead, I dared show it to no one. I was back to the way things had been before. I had no allies, and I had no friends. Tiberius and Kai barely spoke to me unless it was necessary for the plan. They looked utterly destroyed, the both of them just trying to get through this wedding and usurping as quickly as possible. Perhaps we should have gotten together, the three of us, to share in our pain and abandonment.
But I was alone, and preferred it that way.
I’d not deny that Odalaea had left an ache in my chest. For a moment, I’d been so blinded with the prospect of family, of a true friend, that I’d forgotten to encase my heart in ice and steel to avoid this hurt. I thought, with her, it wouldn’t have been necessary.
How wrong I was.
So, I threw myself into my duties with ease. Truly, I’d been trained for this my entire life, and if the mer in the palace suddenly found it odd that I was way better at this than my cousin who had pretended to be me, well, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
I’d ordered the seamstress to make me a new wedding gown. No different than the one she’d already tailored. Odalaea was taller than me, and slimmer, so her measurements would not fit. Altering the one she’d already made had felt like a betrayal of my own, somehow. Like I’d be wearing her skin, and that was just too morbid to contemplate, so a new dress had been made. My crowns had been picked out for the ceremony, practice had gone without a hitch, and soon, the palace was hosting new visitors.
We swam to the balcony the day the Draconians arrived. We watched as they paraded through the streets, making a show of arriving at the palace for our wedding. I tried to look unimpressed, but I could not deny that seeing dragons in the flesh was as frightening as it was breathtaking.
The beasts were massive creatures, bigger than any hippocampus I’d ever seen, as big as large orcas, bigger. I knew from my studies that dragons could stretch to the size of humpback whales, but the ones the Draconians had brought seemed tamer than the ones I’d heard about in conches.
Their skin looked leathery and sheer on the wide expanse of their claw tipped wings—wings that, according to conches, helped for easy gliding through the water. Their hides and scales looked as hard as diamonds and sparkled in different colors of blue, red, white, black, and even purple. Spikes ran down their spines like the jutting points of thick, threatening blades, and the many rows of sharp teeth was overwhelming.
Leading the procession was a dragon the color of blue ice or electricity. It was a massive thing, with slim muscle and an elegance in the long arch of its neck, and the steadiness in its black eyes. It had four legs, with sharp, curved talons, that it used to push through the Thalassarin waters. A long serpentine tail, barbed at the end, swished behind it. The wingspan on the creature was impressive and dangerous looking, elegant and vicious in equal measure.
I didn’t even need to look into the longing elation in the eyes of Prince Kai for too long before I realized that this was the mount he boasted of.
Suddenly, I could very well picture him atop it. They both had a stillness about them that was matching, almost eerie.
There were more dragons of course, but none of them stood out as much as this one. Neither, really, did the warriors atop their own mounts. Draconian males and females shared in Kai’s features of slanted, dark eyes and varying shades of skin tones ranging from white to a light brown. Some wore kimonos, others wore steel armor shaped like the overlapping scales of a dragon.
“I never thought a Draconian display could ever impress me,” I murmured conspiratorially to Kai.
He cast me a sideways incredulous look when I spoke. Either because of the words, or because they were perhaps the first words I’d spoken in what felt like days. His lip merely twitched in response as he swept past me to go down and greet his mer as they swam up to the palace.
He greeted them in his own language, and I feigned indifference, even as I grasped the words. I’d always been desperate for a piece of the outside waters, and the fact that a bit of Draconian culture was here in Thalassar now, well, I was desperate to grab on to whatever knowledge I could.
“Impressive,” a voice at my ear suddenly whispered.
I sighed with exaggerated exhaustion as I turned to look up at Prince Ytgar. His eyes weren’t on me, but on the parade of Draconians dismounting and greeting their Prince and his advisors with respect. One mermaid, with features similar to his, the angle of her sharp cheekbones, and color of her koi fish tail told me they were siblings, especially when she rushed to him and he wrapped his arms around her.
I cripplingly missed Odalea.
“Of course, the orcas of Iol are much more impressive.”
“Are they?” I asked with bored disinterest. My eyes were still on Kai, who was twirling the mer through the water and laughing merrily, despite being surrounded by dozens of royalty who would judge him for a display. It was the happiest I’d seen him in days.
“Of course,” Ytgar replied. “Val can attest to that. Can’t you, Val?”
“Yes.”
I turned, my eyes narrowing on the merman I hadn’t noticed before. And how had I not noticed him? The mer was massive, built as solidly as a block of ice, he put Tiberius to shame with all that muscle. His skin was brown, his straight hair silver and tied back. Eyes as silver as the glittering of diamonds or snow, found me and an involuntary shiver sluiced down my spine.
The merman—Val—bowed to me. “Princess,” he acknowledged.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded with irritation. More because of my body’s treacherous reaction to Val—who I now remembered to be a whale trainer—rather than their presence.
“We came to greet the Draconians. Perhaps rile them up with our sharp wit and humor.”
“Riiiight.” I rolled my eyes, and turned back to watch Kai. He’d finally released the mermaid, and she was speaking to him rapidly, with quick gestures of her fingers and wrists through the water.
“You don’t have to do it, you know,” Ytgar whispered.
“Do what?” My eyebrow rose.
Ytgar smiled knowingly, though what this tiny brained Iolish could know was a mystery to me. He leaned down, so close, too close it could have been construed as
offensive to our visitors. His lips brushed the lobe of my ear, and I fought not to shiver. “You don’t have to marry him,” he whispered.
Behind him, Val warned darkly, “Ytgar…”
Val’s warning went ignored. “You know you don’t want to.”
I turned my head, ever so slightly, that his lips grazed along the edge of my cheek, and when I looked into the ice blue of his eyes, I found them looking down at the space that separated our lips.
“What would you have me do instead?” I teased.
He almost seemed too distracted to answer that question. His tongue darted out to lick his lips, and for a moment, I almost felt the brush of the tip of his tongue against my bottom lip.
“Marry me, instead.”
My whole body went rigid at that. Those words, I hadn’t been expecting them. I’d expected teasing, a joke, and banter. Not that.
“Ytgar,” Val admonished darkly. “Leave her be.”
And then Ytgar’s lips twisted into a slow, mocking smile that made a flush shine across my cheeks. Oh. Oh gods, how embarrassing. He had been joking, and I’d taken his words seriously.
To save my dignity, I tossed my hair back, and looked him straight in the eye, my lip curling to the side in a mocking smile of my own, lest he see too deep. “How cute,” I complimented sweetly. “To think I’d ever sully myself with the likes of you orcas.”
Ytgar blinked. “Orcas?”
My lips pursed. “Isn’t that what your ilk breed with up north? I’ve heard the stories, don’t think I haven’t.” I turned away from him. “Dragons are much more suited to me than orcas. I mean, look.” I gestured at Kai’s dragon, who he was now greeting by running a hand down his snout. “Powerful, majestic. And orcas?” I turned to look at him with mocking, raised eyebrows. “Cold, smelly creatures.”
“Smelly?” Ytgar echoed.
“Disgusting, really. As if you’ve been shoveling their waste all day. I’d sooner let a dragon eat me than lie with a mer who shovels orca feces.”
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