Coral’s oldest sister—the crown princess—was Diseased.
The Disease hung over their family, their people, following them in all they did. It was a spell that held them under. An illness from which their kind could not hide.
Coral would not allow it to drown her too.
She cursed her constricting throat and shuddering fins. Her palpating pulse, as thunderous as the red flashing before her eyes, could take a swim in the Abyss as far as she was concerned.
Coral longed to swim to her oldest sister’s chambers and comfort her, but how could she? Any show of emotion might mean Coral carried the illness her sister bore.
“Father will calm her.” Their middle sister, Jordan, tightened her grip on Coral’s shoulders, her dainty, silken hands stronger than they appeared. “Trust me.” Jordan’s whisper did nothing to abate Coral’s anxiety. “He knows what he’s doing.” Her voice was slick and silver and sleepy, the same muted hue as her tail.
Coral bit her trembling lower lip, wished upon a sea star that she might shed even a single tear. She shook her head. “Father never calms her.” Nothing did.
“Bite your tongue.” Jordan’s voice changed from silver to red with three words.
Red was poison. Red was pain.
Coral ripped out of Jordan’s grasp, the forceful jerk out of character but necessary. She may have been small for her age, but Coral more than made up for it with the feisty tenacity their grandmother had quietly encouraged. When Coral whirled to face Jordan, her sister’s expression appeared as smooth as a pearl.
But this did nothing to quench the fire inside. “If stoicism is equal to soothing,” Coral said, “then I’m an electric eel.”
The crown princess’s sobs increased, coloring the water around them in faded shades of taupe and gray.
Coral pictured her oldest sister. She imagined Father floating there, watching. Staring through his first daughter as if she were nothing. Contaminated. As if she would make him ill too.
But she wouldn’t. Mermen were immune to the Disease. Deep, soul-wrenching emotions were not something they could fall prey to.
Especially not the great King of the Seas.
“I’d be careful with that temper of yours, baby sister,” Jordan said.
“I’ll be sixteen in three days.” Didn’t that count for something? “I don’t need you to chastise me.”
Jordan blinked but did not waver from her spot three shark fins away. “You’re too emotional for your own good. Dramatic. Sensitive. Let those feelings hook you, and you’ll end up just. Like. Her. Sunken and unsalvageable.” She jammed a finger toward Coral’s chest, slid her gaze sideways to the portrait of their trio on the nightstand. When Jordan’s gaze found hers again, it dared the little mermaid to react. To respond and prove her theory true. “You are like her, you know.”
Coral stuffed her thoughts into a bottle at the back of her mind, corked the glass tight for good measure. Why must Jordan remind her? Did she think Coral was oblivious to the signs of the Disease?
“It’s only a disease if you allow it to be one . . .” Their grandmother’s words swam back to her on a wave. They’d never made much sense. Still, they comforted. Giving her the confidence she needed to say, “You’re wrong.”
“We shall see.” Jordan considered her complexion in the mirror that stretched from the stone ceiling to the straw-colored sand. She fussed over her silver hair. Examined the bridge of her refined nose. “You’re weaker than she is. What makes you think you are immune?”
“What makes you think you are?” The quip was ill formed but quick enough.
Jordan eyed her through the mirror’s reflection, clearly considering her response.
Coral bit her lower lip until it bled, tasting of brine and rust.
Curse my overactive tongue.
“I am not the one raising my voice or turning so red in the face I’d be mistaken for a lobster.” Jordan’s breaths didn’t hasten and her eyelashes didn’t bat.
Coral forced a matching calm into her features. Relaxing her coral-hued tail from scales to fins. For once, she had no words. Her. The mermaid whose life was a run-on sentence.
“You are young, baby sister. One day you’ll understand.”
Coral almost believed she detected a hint of softness in Jordan’s tone, but then it drifted away as easily as sea foam across the surface of the water.
And then the cries grew louder.
Jordan rolled her eyes, crossed to the heavy chamber door carved from old ship wood, and shut it.
The action muffled their sister’s heartbreak, but this didn’t change the true volume of the situation. “You can’t pretend this isn’t happening. She needs help.”
“Mind your own business, Cor.”
Ugh. Coral hated when Jordan called her that. But two could play at that game. “Our sister is my business, Jor.”
“These episodes are nothing new.” Jordan rolled her eyes again, her signature expression. “She’s had them since Mother died—giving birth to you, I might add.”
Guilt blossomed. Shame had hung over Coral since she understood they once had a mother who was not their grandmother or her oldest sister—who had both helped raise them.
She allowed the argument to drop to the golden-grained seabed. Then she floated to the closed door. Coral cracked it an inch as more cries filtered down the hall. When she was younger, the crown princess’s episodes were few and far between. Only recently had they become more frequent. A constant they could no longer ignore.
The future queen was Diseased. Her sobs were an unbearable, Abyss-worthy black.
Something slammed. A door? A chest? Father’s voice—tinged with deep magenta—released low and forced. While their sister’s words came through as clear as tropical water, Father’s were more difficult to decipher.
Coral strained to listen.
“How many times must we go through this?” Father grew louder, then eased again. “You will sing. And that is final.”
“I won’t,” the crown princess snapped. “I don’t feel it anymore.”
“You know very well that word is forbidden in this household.”
Coral pictured the lines creasing on her father’s forehead. She imagined his dark eyes attempting to force their sister’s emotions away.
“Feelings are devious,” Father said. “They are deceitful. They are human. Use your head, Daughter. Your feelings are deceiving you into betraying your family. You know how much we depend on your voice. We have a contract. It is binding. And that is final.”
The crown princess moaned.
“Stop this. You are being dramatic.”
She moaned all the more. “This isn’t helping me, Father.”
“What would help, then? The truth?”
Silence. Then sobs. “Your truth and my truth are very different things.”
“There you go again with your nonsense. There is only black or white.”
“Except for when there is gray,” the crown princess said.
Coral pictured their oldest sister, gracious and poised, reining in her heart before their father crushed it again.
“I cannot do it any longer.” Defeat weighted their sister’s faded ash words. “If Mother were here—”