spoke of change. Of bringing the sea people together. But you could
never do that, Tristan. No matter how much you try, our people don’t
change until they’re forced. Kurt is nothing but a puppet. The others,
they’re not strong enough. You, with your human ways, would be dead
before the next moon. Don’t you see? The old ways are gone.”
Her force field is fading. She’s pulling it back, readying herself
to go. I know I can’t let her go. She’s too valuable to Nieve.
“Then stay with me,” I say. “Help me make a change. If Nieve loves
her children so much, why does she send them out as fodder? Explain
that to me. Because they’re all replaceable. Because she doesn’t
actually care about anything other than stealing the king’s power.”
That does it.
I ready my scepter and she readies her hands. With Kurt gone, the
power has left my scepter once again, and I get a full blast of her
magic. The pillars crack and break. I never knew how much pain one
person could experience. I’m screaming, the pillar falling across my
chest, but I don’t recognize the sounds that come out of my mouth. I
hold up my hands to push the weight off but it’s too heavy.
“Gwen,” I shout.
She swims over to me and I think she’s going to help me. Hot
shocks pulse through my body as I feel something break. Ribs.
“Gwen.”
She looks at me, a white pearly liquid coming out of the corners
of her eyes. She shakes her head and reaches down, her pale hands
around the hilt of my scepter. It burns and she lets go.
“Gwen.”
She touches my face. Then she pulls back and gasps as she sees
something that displeases her. She swims away in a white blur through
the gaping hole in the castle wall, leaving me alone, screaming her
name.
“Forget her!” Kai shouts at Dylan.
They’re here.
Amada too.
Dylan is about to chase after Gwen but turns back around. They
each grab a part of the pillar and lift. Another set of hands pulls me
out from under it. They let the pillar go, and it falls with a heavy
thud.
“You court death more than me, Cousin,” Brendan says. He pulls my
arm around his shoulder and holds up my weight.
I choke back a laugh to spare myself the pain. “Where is Kurt?”
“We’ve evacuated most of our people,” Kai says in a rush. “But the
merrows are still coming in through the tunnels. The guard is
weakening and we can’t hold them back.”
“We have to destroy the tunnels,” Brendan says. “Kurtomathetis is
with the king, safe in the castle gardens.”
“We need to go to them,” I say.
I can feel them trading glances. “He won’t hurt me. It’s the only
way the trident pieces will work right now.”
I wince at the prickling pain that spreads on my chest where the
pillar crushed me. Amada shakes her reptilian head, growling in
protest. She nudges me to swim to safety.
“Take me to him,” I say once more, harshly.
And that’s the end of it. I hold on to Brendan and the others
follow.
The gardens are a patchwork of tall, thick vines that sway in the
current. Flowers with petals that flare like stars emit a soft light.
From here, we can hear the shouts of the merrows and watch as they
consume the castle.
King Karanos lies in a patch of the tallest plants with turquoise
blooms. Kurt swims over him, staring.
When we approach, he turns his head like he’s surprised. I let go
of Brendan and Dylan and get closer.
“Is he-” But I stop myself. No, he’s not dead. If he were dead, he
wouldn’t look like this.
“Not yet,” Kurt says.
“Tristan,” says the king. I don’t even recognize the hoarseness of
his voice. This is happening too quickly, and panic fills me because I
don’t know how to fix this.
Kurt swims away. He’s trying to hide his feelings by putting on
that mask of his. But I know him and he can’t fool me.
I sink down to my knees.
“Did they take Chrysilla?” the king asks.
I nod and look down at the sand. With a weak hand he lifts my face
up. His eyes are the white of pearl now, his once-tan skin fading like
an old photograph.
“This is still yours,” he says, giving me back Triton’s dagger.
I hesitate, but I can’t say no to him.
“There are still so many things I wish I could ask you. Why did
you choose me?”
He breathes in. “Some things we are not to understand until a
stranger reflects it in us.”
“We can heal you,” I say, thinking there’s got to be another
place. Another Eternity. Another source of healing water that can undo
this. “We can find a way.”
I grab his hand and a heavy wetness trickles down my face. It’s a
white liquid, hot in my eyes. And as it floats away it hardens into
tiny pearls. What the f-
He squeezes my hand, a gravelly breath going in and out. “Do not
lose each other.”
And I nod because I know he’s talking about Kurt. How does he
expect us to be friends again after we try to kill each other?
Then he calls out, “Brendan.”
My cousin is startled, as if a ghost is calling him to his grave.
He goes to our grandfather’s side and takes my place kneeling.
Kurt stands a few yards away from us, beside a statue. At first I
don’t recognize the merman depicted. I barely recognize the statues in
Central Park unless they have plaques, and this one doesn’t. His face
is scrunched up like he’s mid-battle, and his split tails reach out at
an unseen enemy. It’s Triton, it has to be.
Kurt’s hands grip the hilt of the trident so hard his knuckles are
white as snow.
“What did he say?” Dylan asks me eagerly.
Kai elbows him and then Dylan shrugs apologetically. She places a
hand on my good shoulder, and I nod my thank-you. Inside, aside from
the broken ribs, the bruised flesh, and the bloody raw shoulder, I
feel another kind of pain. Inside me is a loss that I can’t handle. A
part of myself that’s breaking, and I know it’s stupid because my time
with my grandfather has been a blink in time. Parts of me are bitter
and angry and betrayed, but despite it all, I wish I could do
something to stop him from dying.
Suddenly, Kai is surrounded by a stream of the tiniest pearls. One
floats past me and I squeeze it in my hand. When I turn, there are
merpeople all around us. Mermaids hold their babies between their
breasts, and mermen hold their swords over their heads. Refugees from
the castle. As the Glass Castle is taken over in the distance, we form
a perfect circle around King Karanos. I don’t know whether to stay or
run, but in the end, I hold the Scepter of the Earth over my head and
take comfort in knowing that he’s not alone.
It starts with his eyes, once the same turquoise as mine, now
stark white. They roll back into his head. His skin withers and
breaks. His scales shed into white sand, his bones twisting and
winding until all that is left is a towering mass of coral. The vines
and flowers of the garden instantly entwine themselves around it.
Kurt once told me, “We always go back to the sea.”
That’s all I can think about as I take my eyes off my grandfather
and notice that Kurt has his back turned, alone and outside of the
ring of refugees-scores of mermaids and mermen-who now turn to me.
They bow.
“Stand, everyone,” I say. “Or, you know, float.”
A strong merman decked in the gold of the palace guard swims
forward. “You were chosen as the king’s champion. The silver witch has
taken our homes above and below the sea. We will follow you wherever