pool. Gwen and the girl have their back to me. They cradle babies in
their arms. Their faces are distorted, like looking at something
through broken glass. They’re merrow babies. Dozens and dozens of them
in their own cribs.
“Does Mother truly have the power to make them better?”
“Not better,” Gwen says. “There’s nothing wrong with them. She can
only make them stronger.”
The girl looks confused, as if everything she’s learned is
changing in front of her eyes.
“When do we get to name them?” she asks eagerly.
“When they’re ready,” Gwen snaps, and the girl shrinks back.
A new wave of merrow babies for Nieve to raise.
“I like this one. His skin is like a sunset.” The girl rubs the
baby’s back. “Can we call him Sunset?”
Gwen makes a feral sound and the girl backs away, putting the
sunset merrow baby back in its crib. She looks my way and I sink down.
I hurry back through the tunnels, keeping myself flat against the
stones. When I press on the light creatures, they pull back into the
tiny pores of the wall. I take another route and swim upward, breaking
the surface up to my ears.
The voice speaking makes me go red with anger.
“I’ve instructed all my brothers to the head of the island. The
beach is the only safe place to land. Are you certain they’ll come on
ships?” Archer’s heavy feet pace around the room. I can’t see him but
I can picture his scarred face, his teeth smiling cruelly.
When Lucine answers, I shake with anger because I know, I know
Kurt has to be here. “I thought Nieve fixed you. Didn’t you hear what
I said? The Mutt’s people will come on ships. I’ve seen it. If you
don’t trust in my sight, then you can go cry on your mother’s lap and
ask her to do better.”
“I do not cry,” Archer snarls. He bites at the air, and feet
shuffle back and forth.
I hear Kurt whisper something like, “I don’t like this.” And
Lucine placates him like he’s a child.
“Don’t, my darling,” she says.
Kurt grunts and walks away, toward where I am. “I’m going to check
on my guard.”
There’s a splash. I press my body against the tunnel and the light
scatters around me. I consider making a dash for it, but he doesn’t
look behind and takes a tunnel going to what might be west. Something
about Lucine’s tone toward Archer makes me stay and listen.
“You really ought to keep a tighter leash on him,” Archer tells
Lucine.
“The way your mother keeps you?”
Archer growls at her.
“Once Tristan comes ashore,” Lucine says, “it is up to Nieve to
take his scepter.”
Archer steps closer to her, threatening her space. “And what of
your bastard prince?”
“He will see this is the future for us,” she says. “I will make
him see.”
Thalia is right. Lucine is controlling Kurt. How do I make him
see? I sink back down the tunnel. This time, I let myself sense the
water. East. Shouldn’t a good sense of direction come with the merman
package? There’s a tunnel that doesn’t look like the others. The light
is fainter, and the water that runs through it is colder.
I take it.
The chill makes me want to turn back, but then I remember the
first time I met Chrysilla, the nautilus maid. I went through the
well, and the water, like here, was so cold I nearly stopped
breathing. My gills refuse to open and I hold my breath, pushing
myself up the dark tunnel until I break the surface.
There’s a sigh of relief and I step out of the pool. In the center
of the white shimmering stone, there is a basin with shallow water.
The nautilus maid is not the way I last saw her. Her skin is cold,
bleeding where it’s dry and cracked. Her rose-colored eyes search the
room, but she’s dazed, and it takes time for her to focus on my face.
There are two fish in the pool, swimming around her. A few
half-eaten fins lie at the bottom and around the floor. Her laria, the
tongueless girls that were her handmaidens, are nowhere to be seen. I
saw them here in my vision, but they’re gone. Long streaks of scarlet
blood drag all the way to the chamber entrance. I can picture their
dead bodies getting taken away.
I step closer to Chrysilla, the oracle. The water dripping from me
is like the heartbeat of a clock.
When I stand directly in front of her, she sighs once more. It
takes strength for her to hold her head up, and the long, fleshy
tendrils of her hair hang limp at her sides.
“You didn’t forget me,” she says.
I shake my head. This is not fair.
“Do it,” she says, pressing a hand over her heart. “Do it or you
die with me.”
I shake my head. “Why did she take you?”
Chrysilla tries to smile. “Not Nieve. It was my sister who knew I
was hiding something. But we have taken each other’s blood and only
you can have my secrets.”
I get closer to her. She reaches out a cold hand and presses her
fingers on my wet face. I take one of the fish that swim around her
and put it in her mouth. She bites and nods. “They took my laria.”
She chews, shutting her eyes like it’s the best thing she’s ever
eaten. Her last meal.
“Why me?” I want to know. “Why did you pick me?”
Kai’s words ring in my ear: they play their games.
She leans forward and presses her hand on my chest, right over my
heart. “This is why.”
The color is fading from her eyes, like the way it did from my
grandfather before he turned into coral.
Do it, I tell myself. Do it because if she dies, I’ll go with her,
and then what was the point of all of this?
I unsheathe Triton’s dagger. My legs feel weak.
“No. The scepter.” Chrysilla shakes her head, hand still pressed
over her heart. “That is how you will retain control of your beast no
matter what.”
Her veins are raised and getting darker, like the blood is
bubbling inside them and they’re ready to burst.
“Do it,” she hisses.
I bite down and steel myself, but it isn’t me who will feel the
pain, is it? It isn’t my life that’s ending, is it?
“Do it!”
My eyes are closed and I force them to stay open because I know I
shouldn’t look away, shouldn’t hide from my own darkness.
And I take the Scepter of the Earth, look into her eyes, and
plunge the crystal into her chest.
And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
Whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
The Daughter of the Sea would never have peace.
For days and months and years, she swam around the Golden Palace
alone. Her friends were few and far between. The old women of the
court who marveled at her magic. The leering warriors who longed to
feel the strange pulse of her magic on their skin.
The Silver Queen wondered if she was strong enough to be patient.
To see her captors dead at her hands. She repeated their names, like
promises to the Goddess of the Moon, the Gods of the Sea.
She gave food to the merpeople lingering outside the palace and
took her husband’s wrath when he heard of her kindness.
“They will never love you,” he told her.
She held her hand over the sting on her cheek and waited.
The waiting was the most painful, for she was pregnant once more.
She could feel the life of the child pulling at her life strings, her
life magic. The first time she carried a child, it came out small and
bloody like a broken heart ripped out of a chest. It might as well
have been; the Silver Queen wailed harder than the day she was taken