Death Beyond the Waves

by Aleera Anaya Ceres

  Everyone turned to the entrance to the royal throne room, and I smiled at my cousin. It was quite like her to announce herself in such a fashion, wearing a wedding dress identical to mine, her hair down and floating around her face, the Black Blade at her side, and a mortician panting at the end of her blade.

  The Queen let out a surprised gasp, and stared back and forth between the two of us. As did the rest of the guests assembled.

  “So you see,” I turned back to the Queen and smirked. “I am a daughter of Kappur and Thalassar.” And because my heart was already pounding, and the whole affair was already drenched in scandal, I lifted up the skirts to my gown and flashed my torn fin to the Queen. “I have been all along.” I dropped the skirts again and turned to the crowd.

  Odele pushed the mortician forward unkindly, and he swam, cautious of the tip of the blade she had aimed at the back of his neck. Behind her, Elias strutted down the aisle, smiling with mischief, dressed head to tail fin in black, his blade at his hip, and a bag thrown over his shoulder.

  “Little fish,” he greeted with a smile.

  Odele pushed the mortician to the ground at the dais, and turned to flash a smile at the mer. “I know this must all be confusing for you,” she mused. “But it’s all quite simple once it’s explained. We are identical, because our mother’s were identical. I grew up in the palace, while my cousin’s birthright was taken from her. After her mother was murdered, she was hidden away in Lagoona. And we are here to restore your rightful ruler to the throne.”

  Someone in the crowd got up and broke the silence. To my surprise, it was Jessinda, our cousin. “Murdered? Who murdered her?”

  “An excellent question, dearest cousin,” Odele answered. There was something absolutely gleeful in her tone, an anticipation at what was to come, at the vengeance she would finally claim. “The mer who murdered my aunty Odessa was the same person who murdered the nurses that birthed Odalaea. The same mer who murdered my mother, your Queen.” She smiled widely and swiveled, pointing the tip of the sword in the direction of her step-mother. “Circe Malabella.”

  A gasp tore from her throat at the accusation. This time, she didn’t let Kai stop her. She pushed him aside to confront Odele, anger maring her beautiful features like a scar. “How dare you accuse me!”

  “Don’t deny the truth!” Odele yelled, thrusting the sword. No one moved to aid the Queen from the potential danger. Everyone was just too dumbfounded to do much more than watch the truth unravel from its dangerous, entangled threads. “You had the most to gain with their deaths. You killed them, and you tried to kill us as well to keep the throne.”

  The Queen’s mouth dropped, and she pressed a hand to her throat. “I can assure you I have never harmed a mer in my life, especially not my family. And as for you…” She turned sharply to me, eyes roaming over me in an expression that, for once, I couldn’t quite interpret. “I wasn’t even aware Dorian and Odessa had married, that they’d had a child.”

  “Liar!” Odele’s breathing had gone heavy, and for the first time since I’d met her, I could see her composure falling apart entirely. “You knew, because you hired a mercenary to kill our mothers and us. You thought she had died as a babe, but when she turned up here to take my place after I went missing, you pieced it together.”

  She shook her head vibrantly. “I swear to my crown, I did not know.”

  My chest seemed to compress, tightening in on itself. Circe had threatened me, she had been so obvious since the beginning why she despised me, had made it clear she knew who I was. So then, why did I believe her now? She looked genuinely shocked at the accusations, but was it all an act? It had to be. She was the only one who benefited from all this death.

  “Deny it all you want,” Odele ground out. “But we shall have the truth soon enough.” She swiveled the sword back to the mortician, jabbing the tip against the back of his neck and causing him to flinch and whimper. “This is the mortician who falsified my mother’s death conch. The one before him was an honest mer, who unfortunately met with an untimely death.” She turned a narrowed gaze to the Queen before going back to the mer at her fins. “This one knows my mother died of poison. Who told you to keep quiet?”

  The merman visibly shuddered. I almost felt sorry for him, felt sorry for the malice and murder in Odele’s eyes. My heart ached for her, for what she must be feeling. I sought for justice, for all that I would have had. Odele fought for all that she had lost.

  “Please, I was just doing what I was told!”

  “Who told you? Who gave the order? Speak and you might live.”

  He took a deep shuddering breath, and he looked around, his head turning, not to look at Queen Circe, but to sweep past her and look at someone else.

  “It was Per—”

  He didn’t get the rest out.

  Because at that moment, an arrow whizzed through the water and pierced straight to his throat.

  Blood rose up in the water as he gurgled and gasped. Odele took a surprise stroke back, dropping her sword to the ground with a clatter.

  Several things happened at once. Mer jumped from their seats, some scrambled to get to the exits that the guards dutifully blocked. King Dorian got up, and shouted my name, but for some reason, my eyes instead went to Ytgar and Val, who, like brave warriors, swam towards Odele, surrounding her with shields and swords. Queen Circe had gripped Kai, using his body for cover. In the fray, I couldn’t find Tiberius or Elias.

  But I felt the pull on my gown, the forceful tug that whipped me around to face the mer I instantly knew to be guilty. The one we hadn’t truly expected at all, because we’d been too busy placing blame on the Queen.

  Percival.

  The merman looked haggard and angry, and a moment too late, I realized there was a spear gun in his hands… and he was pointing the weapon at me.

  I startled, trying to take a stroke back, but when his finger grazed the trigger, I froze in my fear. How had the merman gotten a spear gun? The ridiculous question drifted painfully through my mind.

  Screams ensued at the sight of the royal advisor with a weapon he was so freely willing to use, followed by silence as Percival spoke. “Captain Saber, by order of the crown, I command you to arrest this would-be usurper and throw her in the dungeons!”

  I felt rather than saw Odele’s presence as she pushed past Ytgar and Val to come closer, and then I felt Tiberius’s presence like a beacon of light and tranquility, like safety and a promise. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the tip of the arrow pointed between my eyes, but I could feel him tall and proud.

  “Arrest her!” Percival commanded again.

  And Captain Saber replied, “I will not.”

  A shiver sliced through me. It was, perhaps, the first and only time he had ever disobeyed a direct command from his leaders. From those he had sworn to obey and protect.

  Percival looked so taken aback, his grip on the spear almost faltered, before he held it tighter and waved it in threat. “Fine,” he conceded. “Then I shall execute her now.”

  “Percival!” Queen Circe had come out from behind Kai to confront her advisor as if he’d sprouted a second head. “What in gods’ names are you doing? Put the spear gun down at once! There will be no execution.” Yes, that was genuine care and fear in her voice.

  So it would seem that the Queen hadn’t been guilty after all.

  It had been Percival all along.

  “I fear I cannot obey your command, your Majesty. This mer threatens the whole balance of Thalassar and our customs!” His hand was shaking, and I willed his finger not to tighten around the trigger accidentally.

  “What are you talking about?” the Queen demanded incredulously.

  “This bastard cannot be allowed to usurp you and rule Thalassar.”

  I noticed then that King Dorian had pushed his way through the crowds, closer to me. “She is no bastard. She is my daughter, and Princess of Kappur.”

  My eyes glazed over with tears at the words. I wanted to shout, He
accepts me, he really does! but I avoided the urge, thanks to the arrow threatening my face.

  “You will unhand my wife this instant.” Kai demanded, swimming forward in my peripheral vision. Metamorphed into the other entity, he had never looked more beautiful to me. His hair was loose, his eyes with slit pupils and a glaze of blue. Black talons curved on his fingers menacingly.

  “She is not your wife. This whole ceremony was a farce.”

  “Actually,” I murmured to Percival, knowing I shouldn’t provoke him, but not being able to help myself, “it isn’t. I signed my name on the marriage documents. Odalaea Malabella Knoll. Our marriage is legitimate.” I gifted Kai a smile, and hoped he could forgive me.

  Odele and I had to play the cruelest of tricks upon them. And my future was looking rather bleak, so I hoped he understood, that they all understood. I itched to let my gaze roam over them all. Kai, Elias, Tiberius, Odele, and my father.

  “Like your mother before you, this marriage is despicable, and goes against every Thalassarin tradition!” Percival spat. “I’ll not have you tainting the Malabella lineage further.”

  King Dorian’s eyes narrowed on Percival at the comment, but it was Odele who spoke, “You had our mothers murdered.”

  “They threatened the balance.”

  Queen Circe started forward, her eyes holding the fury of molten lava. “You murdered my cousins?”

  How could we have been so wrong? So, so wrong? The Queen was ruthless, she cared about the purity of the Malabella lineage, but it was Percival who was the extremist. It was Percival who had killed, ridding himself of those he thought too impure for the throne. And we hadn’t seen it, hadn’t contemplated that it was anyone but Circe.

  And now my life was in his hands.

  “And neither of you will rule now,” he threatened quietly, just before his finger tightened against the trigger.

  Odele screamed, and I was too frozen to do much but watch everything play out before me, too fast, too soon. The arrow whizzed towards me, and the impact of it piercing the flesh below my collarbone sent me hurtling to the floor. Pain spiraled through me, intensifying my whole body as I fell onto my bottom, on the ground. My teeth smacked together, and I gasped for breath as it painfully left my body.

  A haze quickly fell over my body, but I fought for consciousness and watched. Watched as Percival notched another arrow and pointed the weapon at Odele. But he never got the chance to pull the trigger on her. Because in a move, brave and swift, Val pulled out the sword at his waist and threw it. His weapon of ice hurtled through the water, hitting the weapon from Percival’s hands altogether.

  The next moment happened so fast. Elias slammed the hilt of his black blade against the back of Percival’s head, knocking him to the floor. Kai advanced, but it was Ytgar and Val who got there first, both of them wearing equal expressions of loathing.

  “The line must be cleansed!” Percival shrieked. “And I shall cleanse it! It’s too late! She will die! The poison is in her now!” He laughed, scrambling on the floor to reach for his discarded weapon. The last sound he made before Ytgar pulled out the royal sword of Iol and stabbed it through the merman’s chest.

  Killing him instantly.

  I sighed, closing my eyes against the pain that suddenly assaulted me. Heat soared through my body in agonizing intervals. My limbs seemed to stop working, and I could no longer hold myself upright. I felt myself falling, falling into darkness, but Tiberius was there to catch me. “Maisie!” he shrieked. Or at least, I think he did. Sound was escaping me entirely. I fought to keep my eyes open, but the agony. Was I screaming, or was that someone else? “Maisie, oh, gods, someone get a doctor!”

  Numbly, I felt the pressure of hands against my body, though I couldn’t discern whose they belonged to. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was being lulled into a painful sleep.

  “Maisie, stay with me. Don’t die on me.”

  “Get a doctor!”

  “Cousin, oh, gods…”

  “My gem…”

  “Little fish, wake up.”

  “Daughter…”

  I didn’t hear the rest.

  Because I succumbed to the darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Tiberius

  MAISIE LAY unmoving against the bed’s cushions, veins stark against the paleness of her skin. It had been days since Percival had shot her with a poisoned arrow, and still she did not wake. She didn’t even stir.

  It was her stillness that worried me, her lack of reaction to pain, to the fever that had finally broken. The royal medics claimed it was the sickness of her body, as well as the sickness of her spirit that kept her unconscious.

  For days, I had not dared move from my place at her bedside. None of us did. Kai sat at the fin of the bed, cradling his face into talon curved fingers. Elias sat opposite of me, balancing his blade on his palm, as if he meant the movements as a distraction, so he’d not have to focus on Maisie’s immobility, but he looked no less haggard than the rest of us. His brown skin had taken an almost paleness to it, dark shadows rimming beneath his eyes. It hurt to look at them, hurt to look at anyone but Maisie, lest I find hopelessness in their eyes. Lest I find their thoughts written so plainly on their faces as they assumed the worst.

  That Maisie would not wake up.

  Unable to help myself, I reached for her hand, squeezing it gently in my own. Her skin was as cold as ice.

  As cold as death.

  I let her fingers slip from mine once again.

  “Why isn’t she waking?” I demanded angrily, to no one in particular. A surge of hopelessness overwhelmed me entirely. I was her guard. I’d been meant to protect her. The arrow should have been for me. But like everything else I set out to accomplish in my life, I had failed.

  I did not deserve her. And now she was lying near death in this room, and if she didn’t wake up at all, I’d never get to apologize for believing she had left me. I’d never get to hold her one last time, to kiss her, laugh with her. I’d never get to see her become the Queen she was meant to be.

  “She will wake up,” Kai answered, equally quiet. I looked up at him to find him straightening, turning so his dragon blue eyes were fixated on Maisie’s still form. “She is strong.”

  “She is,” Elias agreed, twirling his blade through his fingers before sheathing it. He, too, turned to look at her with longing in the dark depths of his eyes. “She may be a little fish, but she is a fighter. Through and through.”

  Pain caught tightly in my throat. “You love her,” I stated.

  Elias’s lip quirked into a smile, not arrogant or mischievous, but honest, “I do,” he confirmed. “We all do.”

  I never imagined how such a love could feel. A love so strong and powerful, that the three of us, the four of us, could love one another so deeply. I could only hope that this would be enough to bring her back.

  Slowly, I took her hand again and bowed over it. “Come back to us, Maisie. Please, come back to us.”

  There is so much I have to tell you, I added silently, hoping that my thoughts carried to her in her dreams. There is so much I still want to confess. So much we still have left to share. Come back to me. To us.

  I love you.

  And after what seemed like days, hours of waiting for something, for the tiniest of signs that she was returning to us, Maisie’s breath hitched, and she turned, eyes closed in unconsciousness.

  It was enough to make me hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Elias

  I’D BEEN at the palace for days, ever since Maisie had been shot by the damned arrow, and no one had arrested me yet. Perhaps it was because the whole palace was in a state of sorrow and disbelief. They all mourned for Maisie, and the injury she had sustained, I doubted anyone had the energy to come after me. Not when I’d helped to murder that bastard. Not when it was so obvious how much Maisie meant to me.

  I was not the praying sort of merman. I had not prayed a single day in my life. I relied m
erely on myself, and my own devices. I had not sought the gods help since the day I’d been selected. I’d not sought them to save the merman who had given up his safety for my own, in exchange for a ring and a better life in the seas.

  But now, seeing Maisie, a mer so full of life and love, lying still on a deathbed, I bowed my head and prayed for her.

  If you take her away from me, I will hunt you and kill you myself, I promised the gods silently. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to threaten all powerful beings, but it was a promise. One I meant to keep. If they took her away from me, I vowed to never stop hunting them until they restored the life back into her.

  Maisie deserved more than this. She deserved the world, and if I had to destroy it to give it to her, I would.

  Wake up, I whispered to her, mind to mind, as if it were some secret and shared power we had. She had been good at reading my thoughts, and I hers. Conversations flowed in the silences between us like bubbles on a current. Easily. Quickly.

  And I prayed to the gods to send my words to her in sleep, so that she may wake up, and share silent conversations with me all over again.

  For now, and always.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Kai

  THE DRAGON inside flickered in and out of my own consciousness. I was growing too weary to keep the tether on it much longer, so I gave it free reign in those moments when feeling became too much. When my emotions curled deep inside me into a blinding pain that kept me on the precipice of control. So I relinquished it. I let the dragon take over, malforming my body into something vicious. But even as the roaring sounded, and the talons curved, and my scales hardened, the dragon did nothing but sit, and watch Maisie in hopelessness.

  There was only so much we could do, only so much we could take, before we broke entirely. And the both of us still held onto the hope that her eyes would open. That she would smile, and kiss us. Our wife. Our mate.