scales. One of her hands disappears and I think I’ve had enough.
“Should I-wait outside?”
Kurt lets go first.
“Stay, Prince Tristan.” She lets go of Kurt’s hand and traces the
red flush of her mouth. “Come, let me look at you.”
Just when I was getting tired of these people twirling me around
like I’m Cinderella in a new dress. Does she want me to tap dance
while I’m at it?
“You’re stronger than I’d thought you’d be,” she says.
“Thanks?” Something about her sets my entire body on edge. “You’re
less creepy than I thought you’d be.”
“ Tristan .”
“No, let him. This is what I like about him. He says what he
means. Even if I should clip his tongue with his own dagger.”
My hand goes to my sheath. My dagger is gone. It hovers in the air
above us.
“Lucine, don’t.”
“Don’t be cross with me, my love. Everything I’ve done has been
for you. No one knows you like I do. No one ever will.”
I grab Kurt’s arm. “What is she doing?”
“Lucine, you know why we’re here. Do you have the fork of the
trident? If you don’t have it, then there is still one out there. The
sea witch, Nieve, is getting stronger. They killed one of your
sisters. Tristan needs-”
“Tristan needs to learn his place in the world.” Lucine laughs.
It’s a terrible sound that crawls over my skin. “Though he has done
admirably, especially for a half breed.” She grips the golden edge of
her pool and a fury comes over her features. “How dare the king defy
me even after I showed him what would happen? How long have I lived
alone in these shallow pools with people taking and taking . That’s
all they do-take, take, take from the future but never learn.”
She waves her hand. Makes a mirror appear on the wall, like
iridescent oil on water.
“Do you know what happens to a person who stares right at their
future, Tristan?”
I shrug. “I don’t know but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“They forget to live it. My sisters and I live in between the
worlds. They with their laria and hordes of petulant pixies. Yet I, I
must always be alone.”
“You weren’t alone.” Kurt reaches for her. “You had me.”
She takes his hand. “I waited a thousand years for you. And when I
had you, it was too, too, too much. You’d lie in my arms and in sleep,
your thoughts turned to chaos. Then I sent you away.”
“So you see the future?” I remember when I met the first oracle,
Shelly, the youngest. She could only read corny shells. She said she
was born with the smallest bit of magics. If Lucine is the strongest,
that means she is the eldest.
“I see what the fates bid me to see. Sometimes it’s everything all
at once. Tiny voices and faces hurting, loving, dying. Flocks of
ravens tearing at each other’s wings. Worms digging deep into the
dirt. They’re all in here .” She places one hand over her temple and
one over her heart.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I say, “but there’s a really
nasty mermaid who wants to take over the throne and I need that
trident. She’s even left you guys unprotected by sending away your sea
dragons.”
“The day Nieve, daughter of the sea, commands any of my dragons is
the day I breathe my last breath, and that day is not yet upon us.”
“Your dragons?” If only I had my dagger. “ You sent the dragon?”
“How else could Adaro, witless as he is, reach the staff? How
could I get you to trust Comit to guide you here without them?”
I feel like I’ve been set on fire. “But you told Adaro he’d find
what he was looking for on this shore.”
“And he will.” Her smile is cruel. “Don’t think for a moment that
we don’t know what we’re doing. The king was the foolish one to go
against our wishes. I told him what needed to be done and he defied
us.” She swims to the center of her pool and pulls it out of the
water. The trident. It’s brighter somehow. The gold etchings glisten.
Sparks fly between the prongs. If she points that thing at me, I will
fry.
“This,” she says, “is the true power.”
I step closer to her. Kurt and I are side by side. I can feel the
scepter between my shoulder blades reacting to it, glowing with the
same light.
“What is it you want?” I ask her finally.
“I want one thing.” She lowers the trident. “To give the power to
the true heir of the king-”
I hold out my hands. But I can see it in her eyes. I want to run.
I want to fight. I want to grab it from her and shove it into her
heart. Anything to make this moment untrue.
“ The last son of kings , Kurtomathetis.”
Yet echoes in my heart a voice,
As far, as near, as these-
The wind that weeps,
The solemn surge
Of strange and lonely seas.
- Walter de la Mare, from “Echoes”
Here in the Second Circle, beneath the saloon of belly-dancing
girls and Madame Mercury’s collection of monstrous beauties, is
Lucine, the oracle who can see the future. She holds the trident for
Kurt to take.
Kurt, who appeared in the form of a fish in my bathtub the first
time I shifted. Kurt, who led me to Toliss Island, who fought by my
side, who taught me how to hold a sword properly. My friend Kurt. I
work out the family tree in my head. If he’s the last son of kings,
then Kurt is my uncle.
“Did you know?” There’s a twinge in my spine. And what if he did
know? What if he spent all this time letting me feel special and
chosen when he knew he was the true son of the king? Then I say it
louder. “Did you know ?”
Kurt shakes his head. He can’t look at me. He can’t look at her.
He bows his head and looks at his hands, the deep grooves and
callouses, the thin fissures of scars.
“When did you begin to suspect the truth, Kurtomathetis?” Lucine
asks. She’s manic and giddy, and I want to skewer her with my scepter.
My scepter.
“I was sharpening the weapons,” Kurt whispers. “On Arion’s ship.
When we went down to the cove. I was sharpening our weapons and I
realized what I was holding. Triton’s dagger. It-it didn’t burn me.
After we saw the oracle, and it wasn’t you, I was furious. She trapped
me in a memory chamber, and I could see my mother with a shadowed
figure who wasn’t my father.”
“I couldn’t tell you directly,” Lucine says. “I knew you had learn
it on your own. I knew you had to see it. I asked my sister to show
you, both of you, the memory of the king.”
And I remember our trip down the well. The memory of Kurt’s mother
holding him. Then the woman beneath the man. I want to reach out to
Kurt, to let him know I’m here for him. But the walls he’s putting up
are strong. He wants to be alone. He wants to put his fist through
something. It’s in his eyes, the tremble of his arms.
Kurt shakes his head. “No, my father is dead.”
Lucine laughs again. “When the next king is called, your father’s
powers will ebb completely, and only when the next king arises will he
die. I told him to crown his true son. Nieve, her perversion of our
kind, and the coming war are all of his making. By denying you, he
gave her opportunity. So you see, my darling, your father lives until
you piece together the trident and take the throne.”
“The king dies when the next king is called?” My words are a
shadow in the brightness of their conversation.
Lucine nods methodically. “That is our way. The father will die,
and the last son of kings will take the throne.”
“Stop saying that.” Kurt yells. He points a finger in her face. He