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Copyright © 2019-2020 by Bethany-Kris. All rights reserved.
ONE
Arelle
IN THE VAST expanse of the Blu Sea, the water always matched the sky. It never failed, and it was what Arelle enjoyed the most as she skimmed along the surface of the water and followed her two sisters.
Poe led the pack—a year older than Arelle’s eighteen—with Coral close behind and all too willing to hang off every word that left their older sister’s lips. Coral had done that for her, too.
What was it like to change, Arelle? Did you just know how to walk? Will I feel different?
Then, Coral had turned sixteen and the curse swimming through their blood took hold. She no longer needed to ask her sister those kinds of questions when she was able to experience them for herself. Instead, her questions turned on Poe. The only older sister who remained in their kingdom, and mated, that had experienced something she hadn’t.
A storm was rolling in to batter the Realm of Atlas, the Blu Sea surrounding it, and the small band of islands the three women currently called home, with their grottos safe from any hunters. Not that the storms would bother the sisters—it was the safest time for a mermaid to … well, live. The air became wet. Travel for the landwalkers on Atlas turned dangerous. The sea, too rough for their ships and nets and weapons.
Not that Arelle, or the rest of her sisters, were supposed to know anything about the humans. Their ways and motives were only whispered about when they learned something new from someone else.
“Down we go,” Poe said when bubbles burst in a small swirling pool. The only sign that beneath the dark waters of the churning sea there was a small enclave that led into her sister’s grotto. An underwater haven, private to Poe, made up from the remnants of a sunken ship, and the cave carved from one of the islands. Another entrance to the grotto waited behind the curtain of a waterfall but the sisters couldn’t use it to swim through like this one. “And then, Coral, I will tell you all about the mating.”
Coral let out a happy chirp—one that even underwater, her sisters would understand to be a pleased yes. Poe dove under the water, the shimmer of the green-blue scales with similar markings to Arelle’s on her tail and fins, slapping the surface before she disappeared into the rolling, black sea.
“You’re coming, yes?” Coral asked Arelle, her excitement vibrating in the water. “You can’t go back to the palace yet, Arelle.”
She smiled, struck by despite how young Coral was, even if she was only a year younger than Arelle, they still seemed like mirrors of each other. The same vibrant, fire-colored hair plastered to dainty features and cherry-red lips. People in their colony called the sisters of the Blu Sea the most beautiful.
Sirens of the water with wide violet eyes framed by long, dark lashes. Full lips shaped like bows that sang tempting songs capable of sinking ships, drawing in men, and even the sea creatures if they needed. Faces round like the sun when it dared to peek through the clouds, temples spattered with speckles of sparkling scales and olive-toned skin that glimmered like gold in the water.
As if that wasn’t enough to say the three were sisters—their fourth sister, Sarha, mated and gone from the Realm, shared their same, distinct features—the burned scar on the back of their left hand certainly did. Two arrows, one atop the other. The sign of royalty.
Blu Sea royals.
“I’m coming,” she assured her sister.
Another happy chirp came from Coral before the girl darted closer to the spot where Poe had disappeared moments before.
Arelle peeked over her shoulder to look for the guards the king—their father—constantly sent to watch them. The three mermen, imposing in their stature with spears at the ready, all lined up shoulder to shoulder with a watchful eye on her, waited for when she would head under the water to the grotto. At least they stayed far enough back that the sisters’ conversation remained private.
Coral slipped under the water. Arelle didn’t hesitate to follow, spiraling down twenty feet deep into dark water in mere seconds until the broken bow of a sunken ship came into view and she slipped within the hole, careful not to touch the jagged edges of the broken wood. The ship had sunk decades ago, much like the others surrounding the dangerous Atlas Islands. The nearby regions provided safe shelter to many mermaids in their colony.
Homes where the landwalkers couldn’t touch. Not without endangering themselves, too.
A few feet ahead of her, Coral was quick to hang her twisted golden crown on a piece of wood that stuck out from the wall of the ship, and Arelle did the same with her own. They ducked low to avoid the hanging netting their older sister’s mate used as a warning to anyone who entered his grotto. Skulls bunched like lumpy balls in a low-hanging net, like a morbid decoration Arelle had never quite gained the courage to ask about.
At least, not entirely.
Who did the skulls belong to?
Their kind?
The landwalkers?
Both?
They looked so much alike—when they weren’t in the water, of course—that Arelle thought it would probably be difficult to tell the difference between their skulls.
“Wish he’d take that down,” Coral muttered, quickly looking away from the netting full of skulls. “It’s unsettling.”
Yes, much like the rest of the grotto. A dark black from the walls of stone the home had been carved into just beyond the sunken ship, with bones as decoration and glowing fish trapped in overturned glass bowls to provide a little bit of light. The water in the grotto tasted of her sister and Poe’s mate as it passed Arelle’s lips and she exhaled through the gills in her throat.
She didn’t have one of those yet—a mate, that was. Although with her eighteenth year passed, it was only a matter of time. Her suitor had already been chosen, his travel to her underway, and once he arrived, she too would find herself in a situation similar to her older sister. Only unlike Poe, Arelle would not be staying in this kingdom—she would leave with her mate to return to his homeland.
It wasn’t that which bothered her. It was everything that had to come before.
Coral shrieked as the purple octopus Poe seemed to like so much flicked a sticky tentacle a little too close to her face when they passed by his small den before entering the largest portion of their sister’s grotto. “It feels dark and … where is the color or the pretty things, Arelle?”
“Tak leads Father’s royal guard but also spends his time hunting creatures in the sea,” Arelle returned, “and you think he wouldn’t have a penchant for all things malevolent? The man doesn’t go anywhere without something sharp in his hand.”
Her sister chuffed but didn’t reply.
In the water, they went back to their mother tongue. A language made up of clicks and cheeps and noises produced from their throats that traveled even in the choppiest of seas; one the humans hadn’t learned, despite how easily the mermaids absorbed their language and ways.
“Could always go back to the palace if you don’t like my grotto,” Poe said as the two entered the largest section of the underwater cave.
The cave reached so high under the island that, at the very top, a hole big enough for two allowed them a view of dribbling water and a rocky ledge.
Arelle didn’t want to go back to the palace though she wouldn’t tell her sisters that fact. There was nothing waiting for her there. Except, perhaps, the suffocating control of her father, and a court that couldn’t seem to look away whenever she was in view.
Poe didn’t give the two a chance to respond before she lifted herself to sit on the ledge. What seawater remained in her lungs exasperated in her next exhale, sliding down from the gills at her throat and over her breasts, which were covered by the long length of her hair. Just like that, with her first breath of air instead of water, her sister’s shimmering scales disappeared by the churning water where she rested her tail.
Gone was her fin.
The blue-green scales.
All the black markings.
In its place were her sister’s very human legs and bare feet. Poe stood from the edge, walking to sit where she kept all her favorite things in her grotto. Arelle followed suit, pulling herself out of the water at the rocky ledge and letting the curse—although some believed it to be magic—take hold and change her, too. Despite how it looked to see her scales melt away into legs and feet, it never felt like anything more than a tickle racing over her skin and through her blood.
Coral, on the other hand, stayed skimming the surface. Arelle passed her a look, shaking her head at the same time and asking, “How are you ever going to be comfortable on your legs if you don’t use them?”
“I use them,” Coral replied.
A bit too defensively, really.
“Not nearly enough,” Poe muttered when she picked up an old, leather-bound book from the floor. She flipped through the pages, clearly knowing where she had left off. Arelle often wondered how her sister managed to get books, not to mention, keep them from getting ruined in the very damp, earth-smelling grotto. Besides that, how had she even learned to read? “Yet, you want to take to land every other day.”
“I just—”
“Need to learn to use your legs. What if you need to run?”
Coral quieted.
Arelle dropped next to her sister’s seat, enjoying the smooth, cold rock against her skin. As naked as the day she slipped from her mother’s womb, she stared up into the hole of black overhead, considering the storms again.
“How long do you think the storm season will last this year?” she asked.
Poe grinned slyly.
Out of all of her sisters, Poe could be the most dangerous, Arelle thought. Calculating, always able to say the right thing, and capable of great violence when she knew she could get away with it. Beautiful, too, and the only one of Arelle’s sisters who had been able to pick her own mate—a merman who was just as prone to violence and dark things as she was.
“Long enough, I hope,” Poe replied.
“For what?” Coral asked.
“I’d like a child this season.”
That silenced the grotto but for the constant drip drip drip of water.
“Will Father—”
Poe’s stare cut to Coral, stopping her from asking more. “I’ve been mated for a year—why wouldn’t he allow me to have a child this season?”
She had a point.
Not that it would make a difference to their father. As the King of the Blu Sea, Zale made all the choices for the people in his realm. Because when even getting pregnant required them to change and leave the sea where they were most vulnerable … it was a risk. Not to mention, having young meant his people would protect them more than even him or themselves.
“I just don’t understand,” Coral muttered, her cheeks pinking when her sisters’ attention turned on her. “I’m not allowed to ask.”
Ah, yes.
Not even the king’s children, or his mate for that matter, were exempt from his control. The girls saw their mother more infrequently as they got older. As for them, their father believed the less they knew about the ways of their people and their traditions the less they’d want to be included.
That was never the case. He’d not yet learned.
Coral, ever curious, had no understanding of mating although she would soon gain a companion to teach her everything. Except she wanted to know now.
“How does it … work?” Coral asked.
“Which?” Poe replied.
“Sex.”
Coral promptly turned as red as the hair on their heads. She wouldn’t even meet their stare, was far more interested in making circles in the water with her fingertip.
“Anyone can fuck,” Poe said, sighing. “Fucking is just that--fucking. A bit different with your tail than in your walking form, but you should know about that, don’t you? Your cleft, Coral …”
Their stares turned on their younger sister, who still didn’t seem to want to look back at them. Coral might be the most curious, but she was also the one who wasn’t at all ready to be grown.
Arelle decided to give the girl an easy out for this side of the conversation. Only because she didn’t think Coral understood anything about sex as a merwoman because her younger sister hadn’t yet had sex. “You’ll learn soon. A companion will be picked to teach you everything. It comes easy.”
Poe sighed. “But if you want a child …”
“We can only conceive when we’re like this,” Arelle added when her older sister didn’t elaborate, waving at her naked legs. “And when we give birth, too. The curse, again.”
Beside her, Poe laughed a tinkling sound. “A curse—doesn’t feel like that when the thrall comes over you, and the heat begins.”
“And how does that work?” Coral asked, at least managing not to squeak with her embarrassment that time.
Arelle allowed Poe to answer, knowing good and well she didn’t have the firsthand experience to give Coral.
“It’s …” Poe’s gaze darted to Coral, and then to Arelle before going back to the book in her hands. “It’s instinctual, a need in your blood, Coral, and when it is your time, you will know what to do. That’s all I can tell you.”
Coral’s fingers danced along the rocky ledge of the grotto. “So, when the storms come, we take to land.”
“Right, Coral.” Poe nodded. “We have to take to land.”
“Where the landwalkers are.”
“Not always. The storms scare them. They’re not like us—they die in the water.”
“We die in the water sometimes,” Coral pointed out. “Right?”
“But the water doesn’t kill us when we can breathe. They can’t.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” Poe said, flipping another page in her book, “I want a child this season. I’ll have to ask if Father will allow me that—it’ll make others want the same, which means people will go to the land, and he might not like that.”
Right.
Their numbers were not great anymore. With each season, it seemed as though the landwalkers found more cunning ways to capture them. With children to protect, it made everything even more dangerous.
Their father didn’t like that. Disobeying him—for anything—meant punishments sometimes worse than death. It was, after all, how he kept his people firmly in line.
Arelle looked to Coral who had grown quiet, staring down at her nails, which she picked nervously.
“The landwalkers—they believe we’re like this because we’re magical. They’re wrong. This has always been a curse,” Arelle said, knowing her sister would understand she meant their shifting forms. “We’re doomed to need the sea as desperately as we need the land to survive. And now that they’ve taken the safety of one from us, they’re determined to take the other, too.”
Because they were the hunted. Thought to be magical. Their blood, coveted. Arelle just thought they were doomed. Doomed to be the prey of those who walked on land.
Forever.
“Where is your mate?” Arelle asked Poe.
“Hunting. I want to give him a surprise when he gets back. His favorite fruit, I think. He’ll like that.”
Arelle’s brow lifted high. “Do you mean the fruit from—”
“The west side of Atlas, yes. The water orchard. It’s the only place it grows, now.”
“You can’t go there,” Coral whispered. “It’s forbidden.”
Poe rolled her eyes. “Everything is forbidden, but only if others know you did it.”
Arelle did smile at that. Poe wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll go with you to get the fruit,” she told her older sister. “Tomorrow, when the court is distracted with Father?”
“It’ll be the perfect time. The guards fall back with the others and tend to stay away. Easier to slip out, of course.”
“I want to go, too,” Coral spoke up.
She was back to that whine again.
The older sisters shared a look.
“She stays with you,” Poe warned. “She doesn’t understand anything. And I have other things to worry about than looking after her.”
“Hey!”
They ignored Coral.
“She stays with me,” Arelle agreed, and then she gave Coral another look. “That is, if she doesn’t decide to stay.”
What was the worst that could happen?
TWO
Eryx
IT WOULD BE a difficult season of storms. The extended, quarter-round window to the left of Eryx’s chair gave him an ample view of the darkening sky. Although, if he were being fair, the sun hadn’t peeked through the clouds that day at all, which meant the season had already begun to roll through.
Soon, he and the rest of the realm would find themselves shuttered away from the safety of the wind, torrential rains, and the rest of the dangers that came with this time of the year.
He didn’t look forward to that.
Never did, really.
A throat clearing drew Eryx’s attention back to the party, and his father sitting a few paces away in his gawdy throne. The monument of a chair dominated the room—the back sitting high at six feet tall, and wide enough that he’d not seen a man’s shoulders be able to fill the width. Not that he’d seen anyone but his father sit in that chair. Ornamental carvings curved the arms and legs, coils of gold spun around the edge of the throne as if it weren’t ostentatious enough.
In the morning light, with its placement in front of the windows, the chair glinted brightly in the room. The first thing one noticed when coming into the main room of any house his father used during his travels, since the throne came with the king.
And the man sitting in the chair?
Not much better.
“Yes?” Eryx asked from his smaller throne.
His father raised an eyebrow. A good sign, if there ever was one, of the man’s displeasure at Eryx’s lack of interest in a day and party that were meant to be for him. Or rather, his twentieth birthday celebration.
He wished he cared.
Except he didn’t.
The king tilted his head to the side, bringing Eryx’s attention to the man who waited just beyond the stairs leading up to the platform where their thrones rested. With the sky dark outside, and only candles in the ballroom of the estate house, it almost seemed like the dinner party had gone long into the evening.
It hadn’t.
It was only a little past midday.
The season, again.
Eryx stared at the man and woman, both well-dressed with jewels on their fingers and gold hanging from their throats, waiting for them to greet him properly as was custom. One of the servants of the house stepped forward with her head tipped down as to keep herself from meeting the prince’s gaze.
In a simple gray dress that didn’t showcase much of her figure or expose too much skin, one might think the woman was just a servant. Even he’d thought so at first glance. If not for the silver shackle around her throat that practically covered the entire delicate column and designated her a slave. Had her hair been pulled back, the spattering of shimmering scales at her temples would have given away her true breed as well. Sometimes, the mermaids blended in far too well with the rest of them when they walked on land.
The slave stepped up to speak. “Prince Eryx Bloodhurst of Atlas, the Lord and Lady of the house would like to—”
Eryx’s father was quick to quiet the slave with a slice of his hand through the air. “Return to your position--quietly and quickly.”
The slave did as she was told, but not before daring to defy the laws of the land by raising her head. Violet eyes—another sign of her heritage—flashed with indignation and anger. She spun sharply on her heel and returned to the spot behind the waiting man and woman.
“King Misael, your highness, I apologize for my slave,” the man spoke up, doing his best to look apologetic. “She sometimes forgets her place. Rather new, that one. Bought her from the last hunts.”
“That so?” his father asked.
“Yes, sire.”
Misael nodded, his sharp gaze slicing through the crowd to find the slave woman while he tipped his head back. The candlelight caught the jewels encrusted around the rim and pointed tips of his gold crown. “Bring her to my rooms later—I enjoy teaching them how to behave around the royal family.”
It wasn’t even a request. The king didn’t have to make those. All Misael ever had to do was point a finger, and he was given what he wanted. It was their way.
Eryx wasn’t much different in that regard, but he didn’t share a lot of the same interests. He didn’t find quite the same enjoyment in fucking and keeping slaves for sport like his father, and too many others, did. A bit too much work, honestly.
Mattue, the advisor appointed by his father to Eryx when he had been just a young boy—and also his uncle, through his father’s side of the family—stepped forward. Always waiting in the shadows for his moments.
“Prince,” Mattue said, hands clasped at the front of his closed fur cloak before he bent over subtly at the middle in some semblance of a bow, “the Lord and Lady simply wanted to give their greetings, congratulate you on your twentieth year, and thank you for allowing them to host you at their estate for this evening.”
Was that all?
All this conversation for that?
Ugh.
“Could have sent up a message through Mattue,” Eryx replied dryly. “No need for a scene.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the clear frown that pulled his father’s mouth down at the corners. He had a record of how many times he could displease his father in a day—twenty-two. Sometimes, he made a sport out of breaking said record.
It wasn’t as though his father would punish him. Eryx was the only living son Misael had left on Atlas. The youngest had been sent to their closest neighboring realm the moment he’d turned seventeen, married off to a princess of an unworthy royal family to keep the peace and continue their trade of slaves.
His other brothers?
Dead.
Eryx was his father’s last hope.
Misael let out a sigh and waved at a servant who dared to move in the corner of the room and draw in his attention. “You—boy! I want another drink. Hurry with it.”
The boy—who looked no older than thirteen—bowed with a quick nod. “Yes, sire, right away.”
Soft chatter returned to the room, and soon the music started playing. With no clear effort from Eryx to conversate with the man and woman of the house, they were also led away, and he was left to his throne and thoughts.
Mostly.
Mattue joined him, stepping behind his throne where he liked to place himself. That way, he could whisper all sorts of things into Eryx’s ear the same way he’d done from the time he was a boy. No one ever thought anything of it, being that Mattue was his advisor. He was also one of his father’s most trusted members of the court, considering they shared blood. And yet, Eryx did not think people realized how manipulative his uncle could be when he wanted. As a young boy, he’d often fallen into Mattue’s trap.
Not so much as a man, however.
“Your father thought you might like the Lady,” Mattue noted. “Her husband was even willing to share her for the evening, had she caught your eye.”
Eryx’s lip curled up at the edge before he plucked the goblet from the arm of his throne and downed what remained of the red wine in one gulp. Setting the gold cup down harder than he should, he let out a dark laugh. “I don’t, and won’t, fuck women he picks for me. I wouldn’t care if she were the queen of the skies—if he picks her, then I won’t touch her.”
“Eryx—”
“It only means he wants to fuck her himself.”
Mattue didn’t even bother to deny it.
There was no lie, so he couldn’t.
Deciding to switch to his advisor tone, Mattue said, “The storms are rolling in—you’ll return to the west court with your father when the rest of the royal caravan begins the trip back. He’s decided. Over the season, you’ll have ample opportunity to consider each and every woman in the land who he believes is appropriate for your position. He wants you to have picked one to marry once the season has passed and a wedding can be had.”
Was Eryx supposed to be listening?
He really wasn’t.
Despite having to listen to Mattue because he’d been appointed by his father, Eryx didn’t actually care to do anything the man wanted or told him to do. Not unless it benefitted him in some way.
Tit for tat.
“Get him to lay off that for a year, would you?” he muttered.
His gaze swept the crowd, searching for someone who should have been milling near the rear of the room like she usually did. His mother, that was. The only person in this entire realm that he gave any care or concern to at all.
“What—a marriage?”
“Yes, that.”
“Eryx, your twenty years have passed. It’s time to marry.”
“I can marry anytime. You posed it like I was meant to pick a woman. Which woman has he already picked for me? I’m sure she’ll be just a respectable and fertile in another year as she is right now, no? I’ll marry no one when this season passes, and if he wants me to marry whichever cunt he’s picked for me, then he’ll wait another year, anyway.”
Hell, his father had probably already had a taste of the woman. Eryx wouldn’t rush to have his.
Mattue sighed. “You seem frustrated. Perhaps you should take the Lady of the house to bed tonight. Drink a bit, then fuck away your mood. The rest of the court would appreciate it, Prince.”
Right, right.
“Undoubtedly not,” Eryx murmured.
He was still searching for that familiar face in the crowd—her clothes would, of course, be a bit finer than those around her, considering she was favored by his father within the court. Something else his mother never did was try to hide what made her so unique amongst the people with whom she was allowed to mingle.
And he couldn’t find her.
Eryx had a feeling he knew exactly where his mother had gone when she’d had the chance to slip away from the room and people. Events like these often allowed her less attention from his father, and she used it to her advantage.
“You have that look—the quietness in you—again,” Mattue noted.
“Do I?”
“Mmhmm.”
Eryx stood from his throne, saying, “If they ask, tell them I went to take a piss.”
“Are you? Taking a piss, I mean.”
He gave Mattue a smirk, feeling the weight of his crown tilt with his head as he met the man’s dark eyes with his own stormy blues when he replied, “Well, as long as that’s what you tell them, then it really doesn’t matter what I actually do, now does it?”
His uncle didn’t respond.
Eryx didn’t really need him to.
• • •
If there was such a thing as love—if it was true and real like fairy tales and myths suggested—then that’s what Eryx felt for his mother. Not the romantic love that women in the realm cooed about when they thought men weren’t close enough to hear, but something else entirely.
A love worth more, maybe.
More loyal.
Far more coveted.
His father spent years fucking his way through slaves before discarding them. A lot like he did to any wife he took, almost all of whom died under circumstances no one really understood when the truth had never been told. A number of his brothers had come from women kept in his father’s harem of slaves, and yet none of them had ever seemed to care for their mothers the way Eryx did.
He wasn’t sure why that was.
Perhaps it was because their mothers hated the children they’d been forced to birth, and his mother never had.
He also didn’t understand why it felt like he could hear his mother wherever he went. Even when she wasn’t with him, she was there. As much a part of him as the blood running through his veins, she was just there. He didn’t tell anyone—they wouldn’t understand—but he knew his mother was aware. She simply wouldn’t tell him why.
“I knew you would be here,” he said, smiling when Anthia turned her hooded head in his direction when the horse approached the water orchard. Rows of water fruit trees stretched through long channels with deep sea water on either side. He listened to the wind whispering through waving branches with low-hanging fruit. The water fruit was best at the start of the storm season. Harvest would happen soon, and the fruit would be good to store for the coming year. “Always your favorite spot, Mama.”
He had her dark hair, twisted with curls down past his ears, while hers was long enough to touch the small of her back when she let it down. He also had her small lips that seemed perpetually turned into a smirk, even when he didn’t realize it. And the sharp lines that made up her delicate features, although from his boyhood to adulthood, his had become harder and more masculine.
“You’re going to ruin your cloak,” he added, dismounting from the horse that he’d taken from the estate’s stables earlier. “It’s not meant to be worn in the rain.”
At least, not the one she was currently wearing. The satin fabric would be ruined by the time he got her back to the house.
“It’s not raining.”
“Yet.”
Anthia shrugged, her hand raising to touch the silver shackle at her throat. Unlike most, his mother’s was always kept shined and gleaming. The three-pointed crown resting upon a cursive B carved into the metal designated her a royal whore.
He hated that.
More than even she knew.
“I like the wetness, Eryx,” his mother returned, “because it smells like home.”
“The sea,” he returned. “That’s what you mean.”
She merely smiled.
Once he was close enough for his mother to reach out and touch him, she did just that. Her warm palm came up to rest against his cheek, soft against the roughness of his few days’ worth of facial hair. A heady gust of wind pushed back the hood of her cloak, causing it to fall around her shoulders and open a bit to showcase the velvety green dress that had been chosen for her to wear that day. The low neckline did nothing to hide the collar at her throat.
She preferred her hair up, when the style of the time was to wear it down, and she refused to let them paint her face to hide the spattering of scales at her temples. Because if she was going to be kept as a prize, then she demanded to be shown like one. She liked sandals on her feet instead of the tightly laced shoes with clunky platforms on the heels that gave women a bit of height. They showcased the empty spots where her pinky toes had once been, before the surgeons clipped them to devastate her. They would have become the tips of her fin tail should she shift in water. The loss made it harder for her to escape.
His mother was a slave.
A mermaid.
Everyone in the land would balk at the title, and yet his mother seemed to wear it all with pride. She shoved it right back in their faces, and her favor from the king allowed it.
“You never tell me about it,” he said.
“What, the sea?” Anthia asked.
“That, and them … any of it.”
“I did when you were younger. Sang the stories, when they allowed me to have you. Someone told them that’s what I was doing, and they made me stop.”
Eryx’s brow dipped. “Why?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
He really didn’t think he did.
Anthia shrugged almost helplessly when he didn’t reply, and her hand slid down from his cheek to allow her fingertips to glide over the side of his throat. The pulse of his heart beat there, overtop scars that had faded with time. Just because they were faded, however, didn’t mean that the gills the surgeons had sewn shut after his birth hadn’t once allowed him to breathe. They existed, even if he now was incapable of using them.
After all, he couldn’t be a slave.
He had to be human.
Or he had to look like it.
“Because then you’d empathize, Eryx. And you can’t be what your father wants you to be when you care more for a slave than you do the people that slave is meant to serve.” Just as quickly as his mother’s mood seemed to turn dark, she smiled brightly and dropped her hand back to her side. “Walk with me?”
“You know, if they catch you leaving the estate without a guard …”
“They’ll whip me until I bleed purple, lock me in a chamber, and … well, what else could they do? They’ve already done and taken it all. If only the punishment scared me now.”
He wished it did scare her. Wished so much he could protect her more.
He stayed close to his mother’s side as they headed down one row of the trees. Plucking one of the low-hanging, white and red fruits from the tree, he offered it to his mother, knowing it was her favorite. She didn’t get it nearly enough.
“How did the hunt go this season?” she asked, her fingernail dragging through the soft skin of the fruit to peel it back like a knife might. “I’ve only heard whispers about it.”
“Not well,” he replied, “and it looks like most of the catches will be used for trading to harvest, because they can’t afford to keep any of them. Not with what the hunters promised the king, and what he promised the neighboring realm for the coming year’s trades.”
His mother hummed under her breath, nodding but otherwise saying nothing about the hunt. She never did—or maybe it was that she learned not to over time. He couldn’t be sure. Sometimes, he found it interesting how she could stand to listen to people talk about the hunting, capture, and subsequent sale of her own people without as much as a frown on her face. He supposed she didn’t have much of a choice.
And neither did Atlas.
Their realm was only guaranteed safety from war with other kingdoms if they could continue to produce worthy goods in their trades. Creatures from the sea, with blood that bled purple and could produce results in medicines that cured ailments and slowed aging were definitely a commodity most other realms in the world weren’t currently offering. It was also why the mermaids remained young-looking once reaching adulthood, their aging taking a decade to show what a human’s year would for them. And while mermaids elsewhere had the capability and power to defend their people, the ones in the Blu Sea did not.
The people of Atlas took advantage.
Often.
While his mother chewed on a piece of the fruit she’d broken off from the five prongs at the bottom, he listened to the wind dancing through the orchard. Others wouldn’t dare to stand out in this weather, knowing a storm was on the way while the sky swirled black overhead. He’d never been as afraid of it as the rest of them were.
Neither had his mother.
“You never tried to run.”
So many did.
And were killed for it, too.
“No,” his mother said quietly.
“Why?”
Anthia’s walk came to a stop, and so did Eryx’s beside her. Her violet eyes—the one thing he hadn’t taken from his mother because he wasn’t full-blooded like she was—met his blue stare, and he mirrored her soft smile. “Now, that, you really should know the answer to.”
“I think I do.”
“But maybe you want me to say it?”
“Maybe,” he agreed.
“For you. I never ran because of you.”
So yes, he had known. He was just selfish enough to admit he liked that answer, too. Even if he shouldn’t.
“Do you know why else I sang to you?” his mother asked. “When you were little, I mean.”
“I don’t even remember it.”
“Not here,” his mother said, pointing at her right ear and winking. Then, she pointed at her heart before also gesturing at her mind. “But in these places, you can’t forget them. The water songs—the siren’s calls, Eryx. It’s the thrall of the mermaids. Families hear them singing for miles. Mates, even farther. Through waters and storms and wars … we hear them inside. You hear them, too. Why did you think you came to find me here?”
“I thought the songs were a way of warning …”
Anthia grinned. “Or a way to call someone home.”
The wind blew again, and this time, his mother sang with it, the melody twisting and curling with the breeze and through the trees. He stood right beside her, heard the song as clear as day, but it almost seemed to echo within him, too.
Except when she stopped …
Well, the song didn’t.
But it wasn’t his mother singing anymore.
Anthia’s head tipped up, and the paleness of her face became far more prominent when her eyes widened like the two moons beginning to peek through the heavy, dark clouds overhead. The song continued on, coming closer and … higher?
Eryx looked upward into the fruit trees. “Who is sing—”
His mother made an inhuman noise. “Run.”
His stare snapped back to his mother. “What?”
“You’re more like them than us, and that’s all the mermaids will see. Run, Eryx.”
She didn’t give him the chance to argue about it. The singing in what seemed like the trees above them came louder with every passing second. Her hand locked around his wrist, and she darted back up the channel of high water fruit trees. She ran like the wind, but he was still faster. It didn’t matter because he stayed behind her as they weaved through the narrow trail beside the trees, avoiding low hanging branches that swung in the suddenly heavy winds.
The storm had arrived. He should have listened to the rustling of the leaves. The creak of branches.
He might have heard the mermaid when she dropped down on top of them. Except he didn’t. Not until it was too late.
Red hair and violet eyes. Fingernails sharpened like claws that dug into his throat and teeth bared with a vicious hiss slipping past snarling lips. She was naked, shifted from her water form to walk on land although she attacked from the trees.
Eryx’s mother’s screams pierced through the howling winds, but from which direction he couldn’t be sure. All he could see was violet eyes and fire-red hair intent on ripping the throat right out of his fucking neck.
Copyright © 2019-2020 by Bethany-Kris. All rights reserved.
ONE
Arelle
IN THE VAST expanse of the Blu Sea, the water always matched the sky. It never failed, and it was what Arelle enjoyed the most as she skimmed along the surface of the water and followed her two sisters.
Poe led the pack—a year older than Arelle’s eighteen—with Coral close behind and all too willing to hang off every word that left their older sister’s lips. Coral had done that for her, too.
What was it like to change, Arelle? Did you just know how to walk? Will I feel different?
Then, Coral had turned sixteen and the curse swimming through their blood took hold. She no longer needed to ask her sister those kinds of questions when she was able to experience them for herself. Instead, her questions turned on Poe. The only older sister who remained in their kingdom, and mated, that had experienced something she hadn’t.
A storm was rolling in to batter the Realm of Atlas, the Blu Sea surrounding it, and the small band of islands the three women currently called home, with their grottos safe from any hunters. Not that the storms would bother the sisters—it was the safest time for a mermaid to … well, live. The air became wet. Travel for the landwalkers on Atlas turned dangerous. The sea, too rough for their ships and nets and weapons.
Not that Arelle, or the rest of her sisters, were supposed to know anything about the humans. Their ways and motives were only whispered about when they learned something new from someone else.
“Down we go,” Poe said when bubbles burst in a small swirling pool. The only sign that beneath the dark waters of the churning sea there was a small enclave that led into her sister’s grotto. An underwater haven, private to Poe, made up from the remnants of a sunken ship, and the cave carved from one of the islands. Another entrance to the grotto waited behind the curtain of a waterfall but the sisters couldn’t use it to swim through like this one. “And then, Coral, I will tell you all about the mating.”
Coral let out a happy chirp—one that even underwater, her sisters would understand to be a pleased yes. Poe dove under the water, the shimmer of the green-blue scales with similar markings to Arelle’s on her tail and fins, slapping the surface before she disappeared into the rolling, black sea.
“You’re coming, yes?” Coral asked Arelle, her excitement vibrating in the water. “You can’t go back to the palace yet, Arelle.”
She smiled, struck by despite how young Coral was, even if she was only a year younger than Arelle, they still seemed like mirrors of each other. The same vibrant, fire-colored hair plastered to dainty features and cherry-red lips. People in their colony called the sisters of the Blu Sea the most beautiful.
Sirens of the water with wide violet eyes framed by long, dark lashes. Full lips shaped like bows that sang tempting songs capable of sinking ships, drawing in men, and even the sea creatures if they needed. Faces round like the sun when it dared to peek through the clouds, temples spattered with speckles of sparkling scales and olive-toned skin that glimmered like gold in the water.
As if that wasn’t enough to say the three were sisters—their fourth sister, Sarha, mated and gone from the Realm, shared their same, distinct features—the burned scar on the back of their left hand certainly did. Two arrows, one atop the other. The sign of royalty.
Blu Sea royals.
“I’m coming,” she assured her sister.
Another happy chirp came from Coral before the girl darted closer to the spot where Poe had disappeared moments before.
Arelle peeked over her shoulder to look for the guards the king—their father—constantly sent to watch them. The three mermen, imposing in their stature with spears at the ready, all lined up shoulder to shoulder with a watchful eye on her, waited for when she would head under the water to the grotto. At least they stayed far enough back that the sisters’ conversation remained private.
Coral slipped under the water. Arelle didn’t hesitate to follow, spiraling down twenty feet deep into dark water in mere seconds until the broken bow of a sunken ship came into view and she slipped within the hole, careful not to touch the jagged edges of the broken wood. The ship had sunk decades ago, much like the others surrounding the dangerous Atlas Islands. The nearby regions provided safe shelter to many mermaids in their colony.
Homes where the landwalkers couldn’t touch. Not without endangering themselves, too.
A few feet ahead of her, Coral was quick to hang her twisted golden crown on a piece of wood that stuck out from the wall of the ship, and Arelle did the same with her own. They ducked low to avoid the hanging netting their older sister’s mate used as a warning to anyone who entered his grotto. Skulls bunched like lumpy balls in a low-hanging net, like a morbid decoration Arelle had never quite gained the courage to ask about.
At least, not entirely.
Who did the skulls belong to?
Their kind?
The landwalkers?
Both?
They looked so much alike—when they weren’t in the water, of course—that Arelle thought it would probably be difficult to tell the difference between their skulls.
“Wish he’d take that down,” Coral muttered, quickly looking away from the netting full of skulls. “It’s unsettling.”
Yes, much like the rest of the grotto. A dark black from the walls of stone the home had been carved into just beyond the sunken ship, with bones as decoration and glowing fish trapped in overturned glass bowls to provide a little bit of light. The water in the grotto tasted of her sister and Poe’s mate as it passed Arelle’s lips and she exhaled through the gills in her throat.
She didn’t have one of those yet—a mate, that was. Although with her eighteenth year passed, it was only a matter of time. Her suitor had already been chosen, his travel to her underway, and once he arrived, she too would find herself in a situation similar to her older sister. Only unlike Poe, Arelle would not be staying in this kingdom—she would leave with her mate to return to his homeland.
It wasn’t that which bothered her. It was everything that had to come before.
Coral shrieked as the purple octopus Poe seemed to like so much flicked a sticky tentacle a little too close to her face when they passed by his small den before entering the largest portion of their sister’s grotto. “It feels dark and … where is the color or the pretty things, Arelle?”
“Tak leads Father’s royal guard but also spends his time hunting creatures in the sea,” Arelle returned, “and you think he wouldn’t have a penchant for all things malevolent? The man doesn’t go anywhere without something sharp in his hand.”
Her sister chuffed but didn’t reply.
In the water, they went back to their mother tongue. A language made up of clicks and cheeps and noises produced from their throats that traveled even in the choppiest of seas; one the humans hadn’t learned, despite how easily the mermaids absorbed their language and ways.
“Could always go back to the palace if you don’t like my grotto,” Poe said as the two entered the largest section of the underwater cave.
The cave reached so high under the island that, at the very top, a hole big enough for two allowed them a view of dribbling water and a rocky ledge.
Arelle didn’t want to go back to the palace though she wouldn’t tell her sisters that fact. There was nothing waiting for her there. Except, perhaps, the suffocating control of her father, and a court that couldn’t seem to look away whenever she was in view.
Poe didn’t give the two a chance to respond before she lifted herself to sit on the ledge. What seawater remained in her lungs exasperated in her next exhale, sliding down from the gills at her throat and over her breasts, which were covered by the long length of her hair. Just like that, with her first breath of air instead of water, her sister’s shimmering scales disappeared by the churning water where she rested her tail.
Gone was her fin.
The blue-green scales.
All the black markings.
In its place were her sister’s very human legs and bare feet. Poe stood from the edge, walking to sit where she kept all her favorite things in her grotto. Arelle followed suit, pulling herself out of the water at the rocky ledge and letting the curse—although some believed it to be magic—take hold and change her, too. Despite how it looked to see her scales melt away into legs and feet, it never felt like anything more than a tickle racing over her skin and through her blood.
Coral, on the other hand, stayed skimming the surface. Arelle passed her a look, shaking her head at the same time and asking, “How are you ever going to be comfortable on your legs if you don’t use them?”
“I use them,” Coral replied.
A bit too defensively, really.
“Not nearly enough,” Poe muttered when she picked up an old, leather-bound book from the floor. She flipped through the pages, clearly knowing where she had left off. Arelle often wondered how her sister managed to get books, not to mention, keep them from getting ruined in the very damp, earth-smelling grotto. Besides that, how had she even learned to read? “Yet, you want to take to land every other day.”
“I just—”
“Need to learn to use your legs. What if you need to run?”
Coral quieted.
Arelle dropped next to her sister’s seat, enjoying the smooth, cold rock against her skin. As naked as the day she slipped from her mother’s womb, she stared up into the hole of black overhead, considering the storms again.
“How long do you think the storm season will last this year?” she asked.
Poe grinned slyly.
Out of all of her sisters, Poe could be the most dangerous, Arelle thought. Calculating, always able to say the right thing, and capable of great violence when she knew she could get away with it. Beautiful, too, and the only one of Arelle’s sisters who had been able to pick her own mate—a merman who was just as prone to violence and dark things as she was.
“Long enough, I hope,” Poe replied.
“For what?” Coral asked.
“I’d like a child this season.”
That silenced the grotto but for the constant drip drip drip of water.
“Will Father—”
Poe’s stare cut to Coral, stopping her from asking more. “I’ve been mated for a year—why wouldn’t he allow me to have a child this season?”
She had a point.
Not that it would make a difference to their father. As the King of the Blu Sea, Zale made all the choices for the people in his realm. Because when even getting pregnant required them to change and leave the sea where they were most vulnerable … it was a risk. Not to mention, having young meant his people would protect them more than even him or themselves.
“I just don’t understand,” Coral muttered, her cheeks pinking when her sisters’ attention turned on her. “I’m not allowed to ask.”
Ah, yes.
Not even the king’s children, or his mate for that matter, were exempt from his control. The girls saw their mother more infrequently as they got older. As for them, their father believed the less they knew about the ways of their people and their traditions the less they’d want to be included.
That was never the case. He’d not yet learned.
Coral, ever curious, had no understanding of mating although she would soon gain a companion to teach her everything. Except she wanted to know now.
“How does it … work?” Coral asked.
“Which?” Poe replied.
“Sex.”
Coral promptly turned as red as the hair on their heads. She wouldn’t even meet their stare, was far more interested in making circles in the water with her fingertip.
“Anyone can fuck,” Poe said, sighing. “Fucking is just that--fucking. A bit different with your tail than in your walking form, but you should know about that, don’t you? Your cleft, Coral …”
Their stares turned on their younger sister, who still didn’t seem to want to look back at them. Coral might be the most curious, but she was also the one who wasn’t at all ready to be grown.
Arelle decided to give the girl an easy out for this side of the conversation. Only because she didn’t think Coral understood anything about sex as a merwoman because her younger sister hadn’t yet had sex. “You’ll learn soon. A companion will be picked to teach you everything. It comes easy.”
Poe sighed. “But if you want a child …”
“We can only conceive when we’re like this,” Arelle added when her older sister didn’t elaborate, waving at her naked legs. “And when we give birth, too. The curse, again.”
Beside her, Poe laughed a tinkling sound. “A curse—doesn’t feel like that when the thrall comes over you, and the heat begins.”
“And how does that work?” Coral asked, at least managing not to squeak with her embarrassment that time.
Arelle allowed Poe to answer, knowing good and well she didn’t have the firsthand experience to give Coral.
“It’s …” Poe’s gaze darted to Coral, and then to Arelle before going back to the book in her hands. “It’s instinctual, a need in your blood, Coral, and when it is your time, you will know what to do. That’s all I can tell you.”
Coral’s fingers danced along the rocky ledge of the grotto. “So, when the storms come, we take to land.”
“Right, Coral.” Poe nodded. “We have to take to land.”
“Where the landwalkers are.”
“Not always. The storms scare them. They’re not like us—they die in the water.”
“We die in the water sometimes,” Coral pointed out. “Right?”
“But the water doesn’t kill us when we can breathe. They can’t.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” Poe said, flipping another page in her book, “I want a child this season. I’ll have to ask if Father will allow me that—it’ll make others want the same, which means people will go to the land, and he might not like that.”
Right.
Their numbers were not great anymore. With each season, it seemed as though the landwalkers found more cunning ways to capture them. With children to protect, it made everything even more dangerous.
Their father didn’t like that. Disobeying him—for anything—meant punishments sometimes worse than death. It was, after all, how he kept his people firmly in line.
Arelle looked to Coral who had grown quiet, staring down at her nails, which she picked nervously.
“The landwalkers—they believe we’re like this because we’re magical. They’re wrong. This has always been a curse,” Arelle said, knowing her sister would understand she meant their shifting forms. “We’re doomed to need the sea as desperately as we need the land to survive. And now that they’ve taken the safety of one from us, they’re determined to take the other, too.”
Because they were the hunted. Thought to be magical. Their blood, coveted. Arelle just thought they were doomed. Doomed to be the prey of those who walked on land.
Forever.
“Where is your mate?” Arelle asked Poe.
“Hunting. I want to give him a surprise when he gets back. His favorite fruit, I think. He’ll like that.”
Arelle’s brow lifted high. “Do you mean the fruit from—”
“The west side of Atlas, yes. The water orchard. It’s the only place it grows, now.”
“You can’t go there,” Coral whispered. “It’s forbidden.”
Poe rolled her eyes. “Everything is forbidden, but only if others know you did it.”
Arelle did smile at that. Poe wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll go with you to get the fruit,” she told her older sister. “Tomorrow, when the court is distracted with Father?”
“It’ll be the perfect time. The guards fall back with the others and tend to stay away. Easier to slip out, of course.”
“I want to go, too,” Coral spoke up.
She was back to that whine again.
The older sisters shared a look.
“She stays with you,” Poe warned. “She doesn’t understand anything. And I have other things to worry about than looking after her.”
“Hey!”
They ignored Coral.
“She stays with me,” Arelle agreed, and then she gave Coral another look. “That is, if she doesn’t decide to stay.”
What was the worst that could happen?
TWO
Eryx
IT WOULD BE a difficult season of storms. The extended, quarter-round window to the left of Eryx’s chair gave him an ample view of the darkening sky. Although, if he were being fair, the sun hadn’t peeked through the clouds that day at all, which meant the season had already begun to roll through.
Soon, he and the rest of the realm would find themselves shuttered away from the safety of the wind, torrential rains, and the rest of the dangers that came with this time of the year.
He didn’t look forward to that.
Never did, really.
A throat clearing drew Eryx’s attention back to the party, and his father sitting a few paces away in his gawdy throne. The monument of a chair dominated the room—the back sitting high at six feet tall, and wide enough that he’d not seen a man’s shoulders be able to fill the width. Not that he’d seen anyone but his father sit in that chair. Ornamental carvings curved the arms and legs, coils of gold spun around the edge of the throne as if it weren’t ostentatious enough.
In the morning light, with its placement in front of the windows, the chair glinted brightly in the room. The first thing one noticed when coming into the main room of any house his father used during his travels, since the throne came with the king.
And the man sitting in the chair?
Not much better.
“Yes?” Eryx asked from his smaller throne.
His father raised an eyebrow. A good sign, if there ever was one, of the man’s displeasure at Eryx’s lack of interest in a day and party that were meant to be for him. Or rather, his twentieth birthday celebration.
He wished he cared.
Except he didn’t.
The king tilted his head to the side, bringing Eryx’s attention to the man who waited just beyond the stairs leading up to the platform where their thrones rested. With the sky dark outside, and only candles in the ballroom of the estate house, it almost seemed like the dinner party had gone long into the evening.
It hadn’t.
It was only a little past midday.
The season, again.
Eryx stared at the man and woman, both well-dressed with jewels on their fingers and gold hanging from their throats, waiting for them to greet him properly as was custom. One of the servants of the house stepped forward with her head tipped down as to keep herself from meeting the prince’s gaze.
In a simple gray dress that didn’t showcase much of her figure or expose too much skin, one might think the woman was just a servant. Even he’d thought so at first glance. If not for the silver shackle around her throat that practically covered the entire delicate column and designated her a slave. Had her hair been pulled back, the spattering of shimmering scales at her temples would have given away her true breed as well. Sometimes, the mermaids blended in far too well with the rest of them when they walked on land.
The slave stepped up to speak. “Prince Eryx Bloodhurst of Atlas, the Lord and Lady of the house would like to—”
Eryx’s father was quick to quiet the slave with a slice of his hand through the air. “Return to your position--quietly and quickly.”
The slave did as she was told, but not before daring to defy the laws of the land by raising her head. Violet eyes—another sign of her heritage—flashed with indignation and anger. She spun sharply on her heel and returned to the spot behind the waiting man and woman.
“King Misael, your highness, I apologize for my slave,” the man spoke up, doing his best to look apologetic. “She sometimes forgets her place. Rather new, that one. Bought her from the last hunts.”
“That so?” his father asked.
“Yes, sire.”
Misael nodded, his sharp gaze slicing through the crowd to find the slave woman while he tipped his head back. The candlelight caught the jewels encrusted around the rim and pointed tips of his gold crown. “Bring her to my rooms later—I enjoy teaching them how to behave around the royal family.”
It wasn’t even a request. The king didn’t have to make those. All Misael ever had to do was point a finger, and he was given what he wanted. It was their way.
Eryx wasn’t much different in that regard, but he didn’t share a lot of the same interests. He didn’t find quite the same enjoyment in fucking and keeping slaves for sport like his father, and too many others, did. A bit too much work, honestly.
Mattue, the advisor appointed by his father to Eryx when he had been just a young boy—and also his uncle, through his father’s side of the family—stepped forward. Always waiting in the shadows for his moments.
“Prince,” Mattue said, hands clasped at the front of his closed fur cloak before he bent over subtly at the middle in some semblance of a bow, “the Lord and Lady simply wanted to give their greetings, congratulate you on your twentieth year, and thank you for allowing them to host you at their estate for this evening.”
Was that all?
All this conversation for that?
Ugh.
“Could have sent up a message through Mattue,” Eryx replied dryly. “No need for a scene.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the clear frown that pulled his father’s mouth down at the corners. He had a record of how many times he could displease his father in a day—twenty-two. Sometimes, he made a sport out of breaking said record.
It wasn’t as though his father would punish him. Eryx was the only living son Misael had left on Atlas. The youngest had been sent to their closest neighboring realm the moment he’d turned seventeen, married off to a princess of an unworthy royal family to keep the peace and continue their trade of slaves.
His other brothers?
Dead.
Eryx was his father’s last hope.
Misael let out a sigh and waved at a servant who dared to move in the corner of the room and draw in his attention. “You—boy! I want another drink. Hurry with it.”
The boy—who looked no older than thirteen—bowed with a quick nod. “Yes, sire, right away.”
Soft chatter returned to the room, and soon the music started playing. With no clear effort from Eryx to conversate with the man and woman of the house, they were also led away, and he was left to his throne and thoughts.
Mostly.
Mattue joined him, stepping behind his throne where he liked to place himself. That way, he could whisper all sorts of things into Eryx’s ear the same way he’d done from the time he was a boy. No one ever thought anything of it, being that Mattue was his advisor. He was also one of his father’s most trusted members of the court, considering they shared blood. And yet, Eryx did not think people realized how manipulative his uncle could be when he wanted. As a young boy, he’d often fallen into Mattue’s trap.
Not so much as a man, however.
“Your father thought you might like the Lady,” Mattue noted. “Her husband was even willing to share her for the evening, had she caught your eye.”
Eryx’s lip curled up at the edge before he plucked the goblet from the arm of his throne and downed what remained of the red wine in one gulp. Setting the gold cup down harder than he should, he let out a dark laugh. “I don’t, and won’t, fuck women he picks for me. I wouldn’t care if she were the queen of the skies—if he picks her, then I won’t touch her.”
“Eryx—”
“It only means he wants to fuck her himself.”
Mattue didn’t even bother to deny it.
There was no lie, so he couldn’t.
Deciding to switch to his advisor tone, Mattue said, “The storms are rolling in—you’ll return to the west court with your father when the rest of the royal caravan begins the trip back. He’s decided. Over the season, you’ll have ample opportunity to consider each and every woman in the land who he believes is appropriate for your position. He wants you to have picked one to marry once the season has passed and a wedding can be had.”
Was Eryx supposed to be listening?
He really wasn’t.
Despite having to listen to Mattue because he’d been appointed by his father, Eryx didn’t actually care to do anything the man wanted or told him to do. Not unless it benefitted him in some way.
Tit for tat.
“Get him to lay off that for a year, would you?” he muttered.
His gaze swept the crowd, searching for someone who should have been milling near the rear of the room like she usually did. His mother, that was. The only person in this entire realm that he gave any care or concern to at all.
“What—a marriage?”
“Yes, that.”
“Eryx, your twenty years have passed. It’s time to marry.”
“I can marry anytime. You posed it like I was meant to pick a woman. Which woman has he already picked for me? I’m sure she’ll be just a respectable and fertile in another year as she is right now, no? I’ll marry no one when this season passes, and if he wants me to marry whichever cunt he’s picked for me, then he’ll wait another year, anyway.”
Hell, his father had probably already had a taste of the woman. Eryx wouldn’t rush to have his.
Mattue sighed. “You seem frustrated. Perhaps you should take the Lady of the house to bed tonight. Drink a bit, then fuck away your mood. The rest of the court would appreciate it, Prince.”
Right, right.
“Undoubtedly not,” Eryx murmured.
He was still searching for that familiar face in the crowd—her clothes would, of course, be a bit finer than those around her, considering she was favored by his father within the court. Something else his mother never did was try to hide what made her so unique amongst the people with whom she was allowed to mingle.
And he couldn’t find her.
Eryx had a feeling he knew exactly where his mother had gone when she’d had the chance to slip away from the room and people. Events like these often allowed her less attention from his father, and she used it to her advantage.
“You have that look—the quietness in you—again,” Mattue noted.
“Do I?”
“Mmhmm.”
Eryx stood from his throne, saying, “If they ask, tell them I went to take a piss.”
“Are you? Taking a piss, I mean.”
He gave Mattue a smirk, feeling the weight of his crown tilt with his head as he met the man’s dark eyes with his own stormy blues when he replied, “Well, as long as that’s what you tell them, then it really doesn’t matter what I actually do, now does it?”
His uncle didn’t respond.
Eryx didn’t really need him to.
• • •
If there was such a thing as love—if it was true and real like fairy tales and myths suggested—then that’s what Eryx felt for his mother. Not the romantic love that women in the realm cooed about when they thought men weren’t close enough to hear, but something else entirely.
A love worth more, maybe.
More loyal.
Far more coveted.
His father spent years fucking his way through slaves before discarding them. A lot like he did to any wife he took, almost all of whom died under circumstances no one really understood when the truth had never been told. A number of his brothers had come from women kept in his father’s harem of slaves, and yet none of them had ever seemed to care for their mothers the way Eryx did.
He wasn’t sure why that was.
Perhaps it was because their mothers hated the children they’d been forced to birth, and his mother never had.
He also didn’t understand why it felt like he could hear his mother wherever he went. Even when she wasn’t with him, she was there. As much a part of him as the blood running through his veins, she was just there. He didn’t tell anyone—they wouldn’t understand—but he knew his mother was aware. She simply wouldn’t tell him why.
“I knew you would be here,” he said, smiling when Anthia turned her hooded head in his direction when the horse approached the water orchard. Rows of water fruit trees stretched through long channels with deep sea water on either side. He listened to the wind whispering through waving branches with low-hanging fruit. The water fruit was best at the start of the storm season. Harvest would happen soon, and the fruit would be good to store for the coming year. “Always your favorite spot, Mama.”
He had her dark hair, twisted with curls down past his ears, while hers was long enough to touch the small of her back when she let it down. He also had her small lips that seemed perpetually turned into a smirk, even when he didn’t realize it. And the sharp lines that made up her delicate features, although from his boyhood to adulthood, his had become harder and more masculine.
“You’re going to ruin your cloak,” he added, dismounting from the horse that he’d taken from the estate’s stables earlier. “It’s not meant to be worn in the rain.”
At least, not the one she was currently wearing. The satin fabric would be ruined by the time he got her back to the house.
“It’s not raining.”
“Yet.”
Anthia shrugged, her hand raising to touch the silver shackle at her throat. Unlike most, his mother’s was always kept shined and gleaming. The three-pointed crown resting upon a cursive B carved into the metal designated her a royal whore.
He hated that.
More than even she knew.
“I like the wetness, Eryx,” his mother returned, “because it smells like home.”
“The sea,” he returned. “That’s what you mean.”
She merely smiled.
Once he was close enough for his mother to reach out and touch him, she did just that. Her warm palm came up to rest against his cheek, soft against the roughness of his few days’ worth of facial hair. A heady gust of wind pushed back the hood of her cloak, causing it to fall around her shoulders and open a bit to showcase the velvety green dress that had been chosen for her to wear that day. The low neckline did nothing to hide the collar at her throat.
She preferred her hair up, when the style of the time was to wear it down, and she refused to let them paint her face to hide the spattering of scales at her temples. Because if she was going to be kept as a prize, then she demanded to be shown like one. She liked sandals on her feet instead of the tightly laced shoes with clunky platforms on the heels that gave women a bit of height. They showcased the empty spots where her pinky toes had once been, before the surgeons clipped them to devastate her. They would have become the tips of her fin tail should she shift in water. The loss made it harder for her to escape.
His mother was a slave.
A mermaid.
Everyone in the land would balk at the title, and yet his mother seemed to wear it all with pride. She shoved it right back in their faces, and her favor from the king allowed it.
“You never tell me about it,” he said.
“What, the sea?” Anthia asked.
“That, and them … any of it.”
“I did when you were younger. Sang the stories, when they allowed me to have you. Someone told them that’s what I was doing, and they made me stop.”
Eryx’s brow dipped. “Why?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
He really didn’t think he did.
Anthia shrugged almost helplessly when he didn’t reply, and her hand slid down from his cheek to allow her fingertips to glide over the side of his throat. The pulse of his heart beat there, overtop scars that had faded with time. Just because they were faded, however, didn’t mean that the gills the surgeons had sewn shut after his birth hadn’t once allowed him to breathe. They existed, even if he now was incapable of using them.
After all, he couldn’t be a slave.
He had to be human.
Or he had to look like it.
“Because then you’d empathize, Eryx. And you can’t be what your father wants you to be when you care more for a slave than you do the people that slave is meant to serve.” Just as quickly as his mother’s mood seemed to turn dark, she smiled brightly and dropped her hand back to her side. “Walk with me?”
“You know, if they catch you leaving the estate without a guard …”
“They’ll whip me until I bleed purple, lock me in a chamber, and … well, what else could they do? They’ve already done and taken it all. If only the punishment scared me now.”
He wished it did scare her. Wished so much he could protect her more.
He stayed close to his mother’s side as they headed down one row of the trees. Plucking one of the low-hanging, white and red fruits from the tree, he offered it to his mother, knowing it was her favorite. She didn’t get it nearly enough.
“How did the hunt go this season?” she asked, her fingernail dragging through the soft skin of the fruit to peel it back like a knife might. “I’ve only heard whispers about it.”
“Not well,” he replied, “and it looks like most of the catches will be used for trading to harvest, because they can’t afford to keep any of them. Not with what the hunters promised the king, and what he promised the neighboring realm for the coming year’s trades.”
His mother hummed under her breath, nodding but otherwise saying nothing about the hunt. She never did—or maybe it was that she learned not to over time. He couldn’t be sure. Sometimes, he found it interesting how she could stand to listen to people talk about the hunting, capture, and subsequent sale of her own people without as much as a frown on her face. He supposed she didn’t have much of a choice.
And neither did Atlas.
Their realm was only guaranteed safety from war with other kingdoms if they could continue to produce worthy goods in their trades. Creatures from the sea, with blood that bled purple and could produce results in medicines that cured ailments and slowed aging were definitely a commodity most other realms in the world weren’t currently offering. It was also why the mermaids remained young-looking once reaching adulthood, their aging taking a decade to show what a human’s year would for them. And while mermaids elsewhere had the capability and power to defend their people, the ones in the Blu Sea did not.
The people of Atlas took advantage.
Often.
While his mother chewed on a piece of the fruit she’d broken off from the five prongs at the bottom, he listened to the wind dancing through the orchard. Others wouldn’t dare to stand out in this weather, knowing a storm was on the way while the sky swirled black overhead. He’d never been as afraid of it as the rest of them were.
Neither had his mother.
“You never tried to run.”
So many did.
And were killed for it, too.
“No,” his mother said quietly.
“Why?”
Anthia’s walk came to a stop, and so did Eryx’s beside her. Her violet eyes—the one thing he hadn’t taken from his mother because he wasn’t full-blooded like she was—met his blue stare, and he mirrored her soft smile. “Now, that, you really should know the answer to.”
“I think I do.”
“But maybe you want me to say it?”
“Maybe,” he agreed.
“For you. I never ran because of you.”
So yes, he had known. He was just selfish enough to admit he liked that answer, too. Even if he shouldn’t.
“Do you know why else I sang to you?” his mother asked. “When you were little, I mean.”
“I don’t even remember it.”
“Not here,” his mother said, pointing at her right ear and winking. Then, she pointed at her heart before also gesturing at her mind. “But in these places, you can’t forget them. The water songs—the siren’s calls, Eryx. It’s the thrall of the mermaids. Families hear them singing for miles. Mates, even farther. Through waters and storms and wars … we hear them inside. You hear them, too. Why did you think you came to find me here?”
“I thought the songs were a way of warning …”
Anthia grinned. “Or a way to call someone home.”
The wind blew again, and this time, his mother sang with it, the melody twisting and curling with the breeze and through the trees. He stood right beside her, heard the song as clear as day, but it almost seemed to echo within him, too.
Except when she stopped …
Well, the song didn’t.
But it wasn’t his mother singing anymore.
Anthia’s head tipped up, and the paleness of her face became far more prominent when her eyes widened like the two moons beginning to peek through the heavy, dark clouds overhead. The song continued on, coming closer and … higher?
Eryx looked upward into the fruit trees. “Who is sing—”
His mother made an inhuman noise. “Run.”
His stare snapped back to his mother. “What?”
“You’re more like them than us, and that’s all the mermaids will see. Run, Eryx.”
She didn’t give him the chance to argue about it. The singing in what seemed like the trees above them came louder with every passing second. Her hand locked around his wrist, and she darted back up the channel of high water fruit trees. She ran like the wind, but he was still faster. It didn’t matter because he stayed behind her as they weaved through the narrow trail beside the trees, avoiding low hanging branches that swung in the suddenly heavy winds.
The storm had arrived. He should have listened to the rustling of the leaves. The creak of branches.
He might have heard the mermaid when she dropped down on top of them. Except he didn’t. Not until it was too late.
Red hair and violet eyes. Fingernails sharpened like claws that dug into his throat and teeth bared with a vicious hiss slipping past snarling lips. She was naked, shifted from her water form to walk on land although she attacked from the trees.
Eryx’s mother’s screams pierced through the howling winds, but from which direction he couldn’t be sure. All he could see was violet eyes and fire-red hair intent on ripping the throat right out of his fucking neck.
