Blood of a Mermaid (8 page)

“Only rules that are meant to be broken. What’s going on? Why don’t you trust me all of a sudden? Where is Kae?”

“I’d truly hoped she was with you,” Lybio said, exhaling a long breath, some of the stern attitude leaving his face. “She was seen holding hands and laughing with a young merman yesterday in the gardens. I assumed she was with you and that you’d run off together somewhere to spend time alone. Now I have no idea where she might be, or with whom.”

“Holding hands?” Shea felt the green monster of jealousy rear up inside him and tried to stamp it back down. There must be a logical explanation. In spite of the disagreement they’d had the day before about her leaving for Atlantis without him, he knew she loved him. She had told him as much when they kissed goodbye. “Is that something she does with her friends, perhaps? Friends other than me?”

He shook his head. “She has no male
friends
in Nantucket Sound, except for you, my Prince. Neither is she loose with her affections, as you might be implying, my Prince.”

“Would you quit it with the ‘my Prince’ stuff? You’re driving me crazy.” Shea clenched his hands into fists and rested them on his hips. “And I wasn’t trying to imply anything, I’m just trying to figure out where she could be. Where did you say she was last seen?”

“In the castle’s courtyard gardens. I questioned a servant of the Pacific clan who happened to be loading a wagon yesterday in front of the Great Hall. He recognized Kae from the kitchens, and said she was with a young merman, acting in a familiar manner. I assumed it had to have been you.”

“Acting in a
familiar
manner?” Shea shook his head. “What exactly does that mean in mermaid-speak?”

“I would assume it means the same as it would for drylanders,” Lybio retorted. “Acting like they were familiar with each other. Like they knew one another in a comfortable sort of way,
my Prince
.”

It was not just the things the older merman was saying that made Shea angry. It was the way he was saying them. And the things left unsaid. “What is it I’ve done to make you think so little of me?”

Lybio’s mouth pressed into a thin line. It was a full minute before he spoke. “She is my only daughter. I do not wish to see her heart broken.”

“Why do you think I’m going to break her heart?”

Lybio didn’t answer, turning again to face the horizon.

“I will never hurt Kae.”

Lybio let out a long sigh, cursing under his breath. He turned his head to look at Shea. “It may not be your choice, my Prince. Royals are never free to marry whom they choose.” He let his words sink in for a few moments before adding, “In the end, you, my Prince, will always need to do what’s best for the clan.”

Shea thought of his own mother, having to leave her husband and child behind. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He would never let that happen to him. Royal or not, he wouldn’t abandon the people he loved, not in a million years. He also knew there was no way to convince Lybio of that at the moment. “Let’s not focus on what might happen in the future. Can we get back to the problem at hand? If Kae isn’t on her way to Atlantis, where is she?”

“You’re positive…”

Shea was tired of defending himself for things he knew he wasn’t guilty of. Impulsively, Shea wrapped his fingers around the
transmutare
stone hanging from the cord around his neck. “Let’s go talk to that servant who saw Kae in the gardens yesterday. If she wasn’t swimming with me, who was she with?” He looked down at the black Lab, still lying at his feet. “Lucky, go home. Off the beach.”

Lucky jumped to attention and barked.

“Home,” repeated Shea. The dog barked again, and trotted up in the direction of the boardwalk.

Shea watched him go and then turned to walk into the waves. For once, Lybio didn’t argue with him. He fell in step beside him as they walked out into the deeper water, asking, “What about your grandmother?”

Shea checked the sunrise that was only now fully cresting the horizon. “Judging by the sun, it’s only just 5:30. She’s not even out of bed quite yet, and won’t be looking for me for a few hours, not until she has breakfast ready.” He dove under the next wave, with Lybio following by his side.

They swam quickly away from the shore, out into the deeper waters off the end of the rock jetty. It had been a while since Shea had used the transforming magic of the
transmutare
stone, and he felt slightly uncomfortable changing in front of Kae’s father. But there was no other way.

He stopped swimming and planted his feet into a soft area of sand, pulling in a deep breath of saltwater to steady his nerves. He needed to help Lybio get to the bottom of this mystery. He desperately wanted to talk with the servant who saw Kae in the gardens, to hear for himself what that merman had seen. And, if he wanted to make it home in time for breakfast, he’d need to swim pretty fast. That definitely meant changing.

“A pedibus usque ad caput mutatio.”
As he recited the last of the spell, a familiar heat went zinging through his body, stemming from a spot right behind his bellybutton and shooting down all the way to the tips of his toes. He looked down at his legs, where tiny bubbles were creeping their way up, starting at the soles of his feet and swirling ever faster around his shins, his knees, and finally his thighs. Out of habit, he tried to wiggle his toes in the sand and found he couldn’t move his legs at all.
The paralysis doesn’t last long
, he reminded himself, keeping his anxiety in check.

This was always the hardest part for him, feeling like he was losing control of his body, like someone or something else was taking over. It was the magick. The magick controlled the transformation, and controlled his body in the process. Once it began he needed to wait it out.
Just breathe
.

The water around him churned into a tightly seething circle. He felt the tingling moving further up his legs, each moment seeming like forever as the tiny bubbles zoomed around his body, binding his lower region together into what he knew would become one powerful tail. After what seemed like hours but was in reality less than a minute, the bubbles all stopped their frenetic movements and the froth began to dissipate, rising slowly past the rest of his body upwards to the water’s surface. He shut his eyes tightly as the rising bubbles swirled around his face, the surrounding water still warm from the transforming magick. Slowly cracking one eyelid open, he glanced downward. There, where he usually had two separate legs, was now one big bright green fish tail with flecks of blue and gold scattered along its length.

He glanced at Lybio, who had also transformed into the merman shape Shea was more familiar seeing him in. His powerful-looking tail was a deeper shade of emerald than Shea’s, with even darker green scales scattered throughout.

The older merman turned to Shea. “Are you ready to swim, my Prince?”

“Quit calling me that already, would you? And yeah, I can swim.” His voice projected more confidence than he felt. He hadn’t been in the ocean for weeks now, not since his mother had left for the Southern Ocean. King Koios had been quite clear about the restriction, but none of that mattered right now. Besides, Lybio was right beside him. Nothing bad was going to happen. It was Kae they were both worried about.

As they pushed ahead into deeper water, swimming side by side, Shea remembered the first time Kae helped him through the transformation process and taught him how to swim. It’d been the day of the Solstice ceremony, when she’d promised to take him to see his mother. She led him down to the river dock and they jumped into the deep water. He pictured the deep crimson blush on her cheeks when she transformed in front of him. He’d been awestruck by her sheer grace and beauty. He thought of how perfectly her tail undulated through the water as she swam, like an underwater wave rolling slowly up and down through the depths of the saltwater. He remembered the salty sweet taste of her lips when they’d surfaced and she’d kissed him, like the sea salt caramels they sold at that little chocolate shop in Chatham. Irresistible kisses with their sweetness tinged with salt, from an irresistible mermaid.

He clenched his fists at his sides as he kicked harder, swimming faster toward the bottom of Nantucket Sound. He knew in his heart something bad must have happened to Kae, or she never would’ve disappeared without telling him where she was going. Maybe that servant misunderstood what he saw in the gardens. That other merman she was seen with must have been holding onto her hand to drag her away from the castle grounds against her will.

Although he thought he was used to the idea of swimming, each nuance of the shimmering tail that was now a part of him continued to fascinate and distract Shea. His senses threatened to overload from the sheer pleasure of the cool ocean caressing his body, like the ocean was running its fingers through his hair, welcoming him home. He wondered if he’d ever be able to get used to the feeling enough to ignore it completely.

The smell of the water as he breathed in through his nose and pushed it out through his gills was salty, but not in a bad way. He could taste the salt in his mouth too, and he couldn’t help but think of Kae. He kicked his tail fin faster, the urgency of the errand growing in his mind with each passing moment.

The waters around them were beginning to lighten with the rising of the sun, even as they swam deeper into the ocean’s depths. Sunlight filtered downward, illuminating the awakening sea creatures as Nantucket Sound began the cycle of another day. Shea could hear the cacophony of voices beginning to stir, some in greeting, some in warning, as the never-ending circle of life continued to turn throughout the undersea world.

Where just the day before he’d been wishing he could hear Lucky’s thoughts, now he was wishing he could turn off this odd ability he’d developed. Being able to understand the voices of sea creatures had ultimately saved the life of King Koios, but at the moment Shea thought it might make him insane if he couldn’t tune out the chaos in his head.

Why had it not bothered him so much the last time he’d been swimming in the ocean? Were the abilities getting stronger, or was it the complete silence of his swimming companion that was leaving him vulnerable to the other voices surrounding him? They passed a huge school of silvery minnows, and Shea felt overwhelmed by the sounds of a thousand tinkling voices all speaking at once in his head.

“Talk to me, Lybio,” Shea finally pleaded. “I need to focus on something other than the sound of gossiping minnows or I’ll go nuts!”

The larger merman scrunched his forehead, his eyebrows coming together to form one bushy line. “Nuts? Is that a place you want to go, my Prince?”

Shea blew out an exasperated breath, bubbles streaming behind him from his gills. He always forgot merfolk weren’t very well acquainted with drylander slang and tended to speak more formally. He decided to ask a direct question instead. “How goes the search for Demyan? Any leads on tracking him down?”

The expression on Lybio’s face darkened. “Our forces tracked him to the upper reaches of the Atlantic but then lost the trail. Although the king of the Nerine clan denies any knowledge of Demyan’s whereabouts, I fear he has made an alliance of some sort with them.”

Shea opened his mouth to tell Lybio he’d heard about the Nerine from his grandmother, but stopped before the words came out. Was Gramma’s secret common knowledge among the Aequorean court? Did King Koios already know that his daughter’s husband wasn’t one hundred percent drylander? He couldn’t be sure. And he certainly wasn’t going to be the one to open that can of sea worms. Not today.

“Tell me more about the Nerine,” Shea said. “I don’t remember meeting any of their clan during the Solstice celebration.”

Lybio snorted. “You would certainly remember if you did. They are distinctive in both looks and customs.”

His grandmother had told him something very similar. “When your daughter and I watched the Solstice procession through the courtyard, it looked to me like mermaids come in every color, shape and size. What could be so distinctive about their clan in a race that already has so many variables?”

“Just as you observed, merfolk are a rainbow-hued race that thrives on variety, just as the humans are. Our hair and eye colors, our skin tones, even down to the scales on our tails and the names we give to our children. Some clans favor one color over another, but there is always the diversity that comes from the intermingling of the clans, and from our interactions with drylanders. This is not the case with the Nerine.”

“How so?”

“For them, there is no intermingling. They may attend gatherings, and they send a select few of their young to University, but they never marry outside of their own clan. Ever. And they have little, if any, contact with the human race. Their location under the thick Arctic ice helps to shield them from such temptations, but it is also strictly forbidden by both their king and culture.”

“So they all look the same?”

Lybio nodded, kicking his tail a little harder to pick up the pace as if the subject angered him. “All Nerine have the same distinguishing features. White hair, dark blue skin and tails, and eyes of the palest blue with no pupils and no whites visible surrounding them.”

A shudder ran down Shea’s spine as he tried to picture eyes like the ones Lybio described. He might have seen a Nerine at Summer Solstice, because he certainly remembered blue skin and white hair amongst the multi-hued crowd. But he never noticed any creepy, unnatural-looking eyes. “And they all look just the same? Throughout the entire Arctic Circle?”

Lybio nodded. “There is rumored to be a second race of mermaids hidden in the Arctic, descended from the Gorgons of old, black of hair and heart, but perhaps those are but scary stories we tell our young ones in the dark of night to keep them from adventuring too far from the safety of home.”

Something Kae had once told him echoed in Shea’s head. “There is always some truth to every fairy tale. Assuming these other mermaids with the black hair do actually exist, who were the Gorgons? Part of the Nerine clan?”