CHAPTER SEVEN - Meela
Kori Maru
The shipwreck was so close I could feel it, smell it, even taste the iron on the current.
“Can’t wait for somewhere safe to sleep,” said Lysi.
“Can’t wait to be around others who don’t want to kill us,” I said.
More enticing than safety and rest was the promise of allies. I needed to know we weren’t the only ones below the surface who wanted Adaro dead.
Someone approached from the wreck. Lysi and I exchanged a glance and slowed.
The mermaid gradually materialised, a lone figure on a murky blue canvas. She had piercings all over that glinted in the dim light, and a green and purple tail. Her short brown hair reminded me of an urchin.
“Can I help you find your way?” she said in a clipped tone.
Lysi pushed back a lock of coppery hair and drew herself upright. “We’ve come to join you at Kori Maru.”
“Afraid we’re not accepting visitors, sugarkelp.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “We’re here to help.”
The mermaid narrowed her dark eyes. “Help?”
“The movement against Adaro,” said Lysi. “Para la reina.”
The mermaid’s eyebrows lifted, but she regained her composure quickly. She scanned our appearances—clearly North Pacific—and offered a wan smile.
“We have no quarrel with Adaro.”
“We do,” I said. “And we’ve been searching for you for days. So let’s skip past all this.”
Lysi and I were both wilted and grimy. This mermaid must have felt how tired and defeated we were. She could have helped us out a bit. Her reluctance gave me an immediate dislike for her.
She looked from me to Lysi, scowling.
“We were invited to come here,” said Lysi. “I don’t know her name, but …”
The mermaid crossed her arms. I became aware of how much muscle loomed in front of us—did she bench press baby whales?—but I stared back. We weren’t about to turn away after all the effort it took to get here. I’d fight my way past if I had to.
“Who are you?” said the mermaid. She raked her eyes over Lysi’s hair, over her body, down to her tail.
“I’m Lysithea. I’m from Utopia. This is Metlaa Gaela. She’s from”—Lysi hesitated—“also Utopia.”
I frowned, trying to catch Lysi’s eye. Had she lied because I was a former human, or because I was from Eriana Kwai? Was she worried about how they would react to my Eriana heritage? I supposed my people had probably killed more mermaids in the last few decades than the rest of the world combined.
But the Reinas needed to know who I was. My knowledge of the serpent would be useful. She was probably being overprotective again.
“Uh huh,” said the mermaid. “Capital of Adaro’s kingdom?”
“Well, yeah,” said Lysi, “but—”
“You kelpies telling me you got a problem with your own king? That’s treason. We can get in serious trouble for associating with you.”
I set my jaw, deciding Lysi was wrong. Eriana Kwai was my family, my culture. If that made merpeople hate me the moment they met me, so be it. I wouldn’t erase that part of me.
“I’m from Eriana Kwai,” I said.
Lysi looked at me sharply. The mermaid’s mouth opened a little.
“Eriana—wait.” The mermaid scanned Lysi from head to tail again. “You were at Eriana Kwai, too, blondie?”
Lysi hesitated before giving a short nod. “That’s where I met a group of you.”
The mermaid’s hard exterior melted away. She slapped her forehead. “You’re the one—you met Dione. Wow. Come with me, sugarkelp. I’m Galene.”
Galene did a graceful flip and swam towards the wreck. Lysi glanced to me. A thrill of victory coursed through my chest—and a bit of smug satisfaction.
“So what does para la reina mean?” I said, as we followed Galene.
“Means we’re acting for the queen,” she said.
“Medusa?”
Galene looked over her shoulder and glared. “Evagore. The rightful queen of the Pacific. Disappeared when that scumball invaded the Moonless City.”
“What happened?”
“Adaro told everyone she fled. Some say she was killed. We think he’s holding her prisoner.”
“Is everyone at Kori Maru from the Moonless City?” said Lysi.
“Southern, yes. We’ve had a few from the north like you more recently.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four tidecycles. Nearly since this whole thing started.”
While Galene studied Lysi, I tried to work out a tidecycle. Lysi had said something about the tides and the moon. A month? The Reinas had been active for at least four months, then?
“Bet you’re hungry,” said Galene. “We got a stash of herring eggs you can dig into. I’ll show you after you’re settled.”
“Thanks,” said Lysi.
“Anything, sugarkelp.”
She gave Lysi a secretive kind of smile. I moved up so I was swimming between them.
“There’re a couple of empty grottos you can take,” said Galene. “You can have the one next to mine, Lysithea. The mermaid occupying it moved out a few days ago.”
“What happened to her?” I said, hoping there wasn’t a high death toll here.
“We broke up.” She looked pleased that I’d asked. “She moved a few grottos down. Real snapper. Little crazy, mind you. You could say I’ve got a thing for feisty blondes.”
Her eyes traced over Lysi’s hair, her perfectly defined face, and down to her waist.
I made a point of taking Lysi’s hand. “Lysi and I can share a grotto. Thanks.”
Galene glanced to our hands and kept swimming. “Group of guys went to monitor a nearby acoustic channel and should be back tonight with news. Dione can brief you.”
Lysi gave my hand a squeeze, catching my eye. We both suppressed a smirk.
As we approached the shipwreck, the prickling of iron worsened. Lysi must have felt it, too, because her aura became subdued. I supposed all these merpeople had learned to live with the discomfort.
A canyon yawned beneath the ship, curving out of sight. The rock walls were indented with dozens of caves—whether natural or carved by merpeople, I couldn’t tell. Many had wooden doors or seaweed across the entrances.
At least two hundred mermaids and mermen must have been here, judging by the number moving about the canyon. Some brought their families. Children moved in flocks—or were they called pods or schools? I had a distant memory of Lysi telling me mermaid families usually had enormous amounts of children.
Of the few here with northern appearances, I wondered how they’d come to join this group from the South Pacific. It inspired hope that the different underwater cultures might be able to join forces. And if they were happy to work with each other, maybe they could also ally with humans.
Galene stopped us at the mouth of the canyon. A group of teens beyond it turned to stare.
“Get Dione,” Galene barked at them. “I have mermaids from Eriana Kwai.”
They flitted away, and she turned to consider Lysi.
“Look at the state of you, poor thing. You’ve had such a long trip.” She pulled a clump of seaweed from Lysi’s hair.
Ugh. Were all merpeople this forward?
“It was tiring,” I said shortly. “Think you could go grab us those herring eggs?”
Galene smiled at Lysi as though she hadn’t heard me. From the canyon, a southern mermaid approached.
Dione had a regal presence about her, with dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. Every bone in her body was distinct, like she had been chiselled from stone. Braids floated eerily around her head, supported by kelp buoys. A row of diamonds pierced her left collarbone.
“It’s you!” said Lysi. Then she seemed to come to herself and said, “I mean, hi.”
Dione offered a smile. “I wondered if fate would lead you to us. The gods did not disappoint me.”
She spoke in a deep, pronounced dialect that I had to strain to understand.
“We never properly met. I am Dione, member of the queen’s council and lead representative at Kori Maru.”
“I’m Lysithea. This is Meela.” Lysi turned to me, face alight. “Dione is the one who saved me from the serpent at Eriana Kwai.”
“And I expect your knowledge of the serpent will prove valuable. Please, come with me.”
She drifted into the canyon. We followed, leaving Galene behind.
“You know where to find me, sugarkelp,” she called after Lysi.
I snarled. Lysi laughed and kissed me on the cheek.
As we drifted nearer to the wreck, we attracted stares from everyone we passed. Either new allies seldom joined them, or there was something strange about us.
Lysi tried to smooth her hair. I took her cue and did the same to the poufy mats that had once been braids.
Dione led us into a cavern beneath the ship. Unfortunately, this was not a private grotto where we would be able to rest. Several merpeople were gathered around a stone slab acting as a table. They looked up when we entered.
They were all from the South, with tails of sundry colours and gems glinting across their bodies. Nearest to us were three young mermen who must have been my and Lysi’s age, lean and muscular, not yet scarred by battle. On the far side floated a mermaid whose hair was white-blonde. Next to her was a merman with waist-length dreadlocks and a ring in his nose.
Lysi crossed her arms across her stomach, as though trying to hide how grimy and chapped her skin had become during the trek.
“This is the mermaid I spoke of,” said Dione. “She has information on the serpent.”
Lysi and I exchanged a glance. This abruptness surprised me. I knew the Reinas would want information about it, but I’d thought we would have a bit of time to learn their plan first. Suddenly apprehensive, I wondered how much we should tell them. All that time Lysi and I had spent alone and we hadn’t once discussed what we would say, or what we shouldn’t.
“Girls,” said one of the young mermen, darting over. “Welcome to the Maru.”
He made to sling an arm across my shoulders, but the second one elbowed him out of the way and wedged himself between Lysi and me. “I’m Creon, sworn avenger of the crown and everything gorgeous within her kingdom, so, of course, this includes—”
“Enough,” said Dione, throwing out an arm before the third one could move.
The young mermen bowed and returned to the table. Lysi and I followed, leaving behind the soft glow of daylight to join them.
“When we crossed paths, I did not know the serpent was acting under Adaro,” said Dione. “Not until later did we learn of his movement along the coast.”
“You know where he is, then,” I said.
Dione cast an appraising glance over me. “We know where he has been but not where he will go next. He has been moving along the coast at random, pushing humans from the shore.”
She motioned to the table’s surface where a world map had been chiselled into the stone. Everyone stopped staring at us and returned their focus to it. Gems of various colours were hammered along the west coast of North America. Rubies, emeralds, and amethysts marked several places along the coast, from the Aleutian Islands, to Eriana Kwai and British Columbia, down to Washington and Oregon. Attack sites.
“Can you follow him?” I said.
“He moves too quickly. He will be gone by the time we arrive at the site of his last attack.”
I leaned closer to study the map, searching for a pattern. His attacks seemed to happen at random, if the colours were meant to indicate anything.
The cavern was silent except for the burble against the stone walls. I glanced up. Dione and the others were looking expectantly at Lysi. Lysi shifted uncomfortably.
“How did the serpent come to pursue you, Lysithea?” said Dione. “What did Eriana Kwai have to do with it?”
Suspicion rose in me at Dione’s abrupt questions. So this was why the Reinas invited us here. Or rather, why they invited Lysi here. We were worth as much as the information we could provide.
The same could be said for all of you, I thought, scanning the room.
The prolonged silence broke Lysi. “Um. The serpent’s been around since the beginning of time and is part of several human legends. I don’t really …”
She looked to me for help—or maybe to confirm that we should share the story.
“I can tell it.” I kept my voice low, though everyone would hear in such close quarters.
Lysi nodded, and then addressed the cavern. “Meela knows more than anyone. She was the one who uncovered the legend on Eriana Kwai.”
It was my turn to flush as every gaze in the room fell onto me.
I wouldn’t share every detail on the Host of Eriana with these strangers, but I would need to spill some information if I wanted their help getting to Adaro. Maybe if I showed I trusted them enough to tell them my people’s legend, they would trust me enough to listen to my ideas.
“The leviathan is the most powerful creature ever to exist and the only of its kind,” I said. “So of course Adaro wanted it. That’s why he’s been obsessed with Eriana Kwai. Sisiutl, the two-headed serpent, was laid to rest on our island.”
I paused, trying to quickly think of a plan. What was I supposed to tell them? I had no information that would help them destroy the serpent—and the information I did have about how control was passed by blood was not going to be shared today. Or ever.
“The serpent spent millennia destroying villages and any ship it came upon. The mortal Eriana was the only one who could control it. The Aanil Uusha—that’s our god of death—he bound Eriana’s soul with the serpent’s so it could always be controlled. That’s why Adaro calls the serpent the Host of Eriana. Eriana’s soul can be freed from its host if the serpent is killed. But that’s the problem.”
“Does it have a weak spot?” said Dione.
“Not that we know of. It’s indestructible.”
“We can go for the eyes,” said the first young merman, thrusting an invisible sword upwards.
“If you get that close to her face, you won’t live long enough to do anything,” I said.
“I’d be willing to do it,” said Creon, puffing out his chest. “A sacrifice to save the crown and the gorgeousness—”
“It would be a pretty pointless sacrifice!” I said.
Dione raised a hand, and we fell silent. “Meela, you said our island. Our god of death.”
“I’m from Eriana Kwai. I’m a former human.”
“You are no longer human. Why do you still include yourself among them?”
“Eriana is my blood,” I said. “The history, the gods, they’re still a part of me.”
Lysi looked between Dione and me, her apprehension so thick I wondered if she was about to jump to my defense.
But Dione nodded. “So the serpent can destroy anything but cannot be destroyed. What else do you know?”
She spoke in casual tones as though we were discussing weather patterns instead of an apocalyptic creature.
“I only learned about the serpent in the last month—I mean tidecycle. The legend was hidden for centuries.”
“How did Adaro gain control?”
There it was. If I told them Adaro had killed Dani, I’d be revealing that the only way to control the serpent was to vanquish its present master. If I lied, would Dione feel it the same way I’d felt that mermaid’s dishonesty at the raft last night?
I chose my words carefully.
“As a descendant of Eriana, I was able to awaken the serpent with my blood. The rest of the legend was hidden from me, and I didn’t know she would fall under someone else’s control after I awoke her. The legend said the one to bear Eriana’s mark would become her master.”
I let the implication hang, not looking at Lysi.
“Adaro is bound to the serpent through your blood sacrifice, then,” said Dione. “Did the sacrifice take you from your human form? Is that why you are now a mermaid?”
I nodded.
Dione considered, absently tracing a hand over the table.
I was startled by a deep voice when the merman with dreadlocks spoke. “If the blood sacrifice did not die, but became a mermaid, perhaps this tie between the king and the serpent is not as strong as it ought to be.”
Lysi twisted her mouth. “He was able to send it after me easily. Plus, he’s ransacking the entire coast with it. I don’t think there’s a weakness here.”
“If serpent and master are bound by blood,” said Dione, “what happens to the serpent if its master is killed?”
My heart jumped, but the reaction was covered by Creon, who said, “It might break free from all control and go on a rampage, or avenge its master.”
“Or,” said Dione, “it might also die.”
There was a pause. I had to take control of this conversation before they got any closer to the truth. How could I get their help while guaranteeing the serpent would end up in my hands, and not Dione’s, or someone else’s? My stomach churned. This group had no reason to let such an inexperienced mermaid carry out the deed. I had to convince them I was their only option.
“The problem,” said Lysi, picking up the silence, “is that Adaro isn’t easy to kill. We tried using iron, we tried blowing him up. That’s why we need your help—”
Dione raised a hand, silencing Lysi. “Our priority is not to kill Adaro.”
The words hung like a thick fog. Not kill? Had I heard her correctly?
“What?” I said.
“Sorry, but what do you mean?” said Lysi.
“Para la reina,” said Creon, as though this explained everything.
“Everything we do is for the queen,” said Dione, voice rising. “We are trying to find her, to free her from Adaro’s imprisonment, to return her to her throne. She is the rightful ruler of the Pacific, not Adaro. Stopping him will come only after we have found the queen.”
I dropped my gaze to the engraved table, taking in all of the attack sites. Another gemstone would surely be added in the next day or two. What were Lysi and I doing here if their goal wasn’t to kill Adaro? I didn’t care about finding Queen Evagore—not when Adaro was in the middle of destroying every coastal city he could get to.
“But I saw a group of you try and kill him at the mine!” said Lysi.
“We have learned since then,” said the white-blonde mermaid.
“Learned what?”
“That he cannot be killed so easily.”
“We lost lives in another failed attempt after the mine,” said Dreadlocks. “Assassinating him will be even more difficult now that he has the serpent.”
I glowered at them. “If you aren’t going to use the information I give you to kill Adaro, then what do you need it for?”
Those around the table shifted. Dione raised an eyebrow.
“We can explain better if we know what your plan is,” said Lysi with a warning glance at me.
Dione inclined her head. “The full plan is in strict confidence. Not even everyone at Kori Maru knows it. It is a question of security.”
“You can at least tell us what the others know,” I said.
“You are asking me to entrust two strangers with our war plans that have been under development for several tidecycles.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m entrusting you with a legend that’s been a part of my people for millennia.”
Dione glanced between Lysi and me, brow furrowed. Everyone around the table became still.
For a long moment, Dione considered us. Then she said carefully, “We need to track the serpent and understand its power. Adaro needs to be at least a day away from Utopia before we act.”
“So you’re storming the city,” I said.
She swept a long-fingered hand down the coast of North America. “As Adaro focuses on destroying human settlements, he is leaving Utopia without its king. A government is in place, of course, led by Nemertes. But this can be breached. So, yes, we plan to destroy the government and find our queen.”
“I don’t understand why you’re going for the government,” I said. “This is Adaro you’re talking about, which means any government is just a symbol with no real power.”
“It is the link between the king and his civilians.”
“But if you’re going to spend effort and resources to overthrow something, you should focus on the top of the chain.”
“Mee—” said Lysi.
“The top of the chain is not a wise place to try and break,” said Dione. “Consider one that binds an anchor to a ship. If you decide to attack at the top, you must sink the entire ship. If you attack the bottom, you must destroy the anchor. But to attack the middle? You simply cut the chain.”
“That doesn’t even—what will cutting the chain accomplish when the ultimate goal is to sink the ship?”
“I think I understand,” said Lysi. “You’re disrupting Adaro’s rule over Utopia. By forcing yourself in the middle, you’re giving yourself power over both the king and the civilians.”
Dione nodded. “We are going to find Queen Evagore and place her on the throne in Utopia.”
I looked down at the table, to the gap between the Canadian coast and the groove marking Utopia. It gave me small comfort to know that storming the Utopian government would lure Adaro there. That, at least, would save me the effort of trying to find him myself.
“What’ll you do when he comes back with the serpent?” I said.
The window of time would be short. Adaro would return the second he found out, and with the serpent, he would move quickly.
“By then, we will have our queen and all of Utopia behind us. If, as you say, we cannot destroy the serpent—”
“We’ll fight!” said Creon, pumping a fist.
The others around the table murmured their agreement.
I restrained from rolling my eyes. “You can’t fight the leviathan.”
Creon let his hand fall. They all stared at me.
“Use your army to attack, but our target should be Adaro,” I said. “Don’t worry about the Utopian government until the king is dead.”
“Mee,” said Lysi again, but I didn’t care that I was being argumentative. This wasn’t the time for politeness.
Dione narrowed her eyes.
“Besides,” I continued, “what makes you so sure Utopians will fight Adaro with you? What if they’re too scared to go against him? What if they even support him and see your attempt as treason?”
“This is not for you to question,” said Dione, temper flaring.
“But—”
“Mee, stop it,” said Lysi.
Dione once again raised a hand, commanding silence, then said more calmly, “We do intend to stop Adaro, but the majority voted on saving the queen as our first priority.”
A majority vote? Interesting. Maybe she was trying to convince me that many of them supported this plan—but a majority meant there was also a minority. Others did not agree. But how many? Could I rally them?
“How will the coup work, then?” said Lysi with a sideways glance at me.
“I have told you enough,” said Dione. “As I said, no one has the full details. It is the only way we can assure that, if someone is captured or leaks information, they will not be able to reveal everything.”
“We modelled this strategy after Adaro himself,” said Dreadlocks. “Those who have worked under his government tell us he makes sure no one knows everything about him—not even his closest allies.”
I didn’t like it, but what could I do? They’d told us the basics, as I’d told them the basics of the leviathan. And, like me, they’d withheld information—maybe even lied.
My insides twisted with frustration. Here we had a whole army ready for action, and I could do nothing. Every moment I spent here, powerless, people were dying at the hands of Adaro and the serpent.
I didn’t want to destroy the chain or the anchor. I wanted to sink the ship. Lysi and I would need to have a serious conversation later.
“You can trust that once we have lured Adaro to Utopia, we intend to kill him,” said Dione. “But we need your help for this. How can we destroy that serpent?”
Lysi and I looked at each other. How was I supposed to convince them to help me be the one to kill Adaro, without revealing why?
The silence stretched a beat too long. Dione opened her mouth—and a lie came to me in a flash. I blurted it out before she could speak.
“The legend says only a descendant of Eriana can defeat the serpent. To do this, he or she must kill the serpent’s master.”
They all gaped at me, including Lysi. I exhaled into the words, trying as hard as I could to believe this was true.
I need to do it. I am the only option.
“And you, as you said, are a descendant,” said Dione, her stare so intense it seemed to burn my skin.
I nodded once. The glopping of water against stone grew louder in the silence.
“So you, personally, wish to be the one to kill him,” said Dione.
My heart skipped a beat, but I said steadily, “It has to be me. It’s in the legend.”
Did she know I was lying? I cursed my inability to control my reactions. Lysi was so much better at hiding jolts of emotion than me.
“The Eriana Kwai mermaid is how we defeat him, then,” said the white-blonde mermaid. “She is written in the legend.”
Everyone looked to Dione with a mixture of hopefulness and uncertainty, but she merely continued to stare at me as if analyzing my every pore.
“You have a personal vendetta against him?” she said.
I was trying to come up with a way to make it sound like the white-blonde mermaid was onto something when everyone turned to the cavern exit. Something was happening outside.
“They’re back,” said Dreadlocks.
Murmurs broke out around the room. Dione held her gaze on me a moment longer, then turned away.
“Then let’s not keep our comrades waiting.”
Everyone pushed away from the table.
Noticing our confused faces, the blonde addressed Lysi and me. “There’s an acoustic channel nearby. It moves between Utopia and the northern military line. We take shifts monitoring it.”
We followed everyone out of the grotto to join the flocking crowd.
“What’s an acoustic channel?” I whispered to Lysi.
“It’s a current that sound travels down better than anywhere else. There are only a few, and the kingdom reserves them for long-distance messages.”
“How long?”
“The best ones carry sound past the equator. Sometimes you can hear a blue whale from the other side of the ocean.”
I gaped, adding yet another item to my list of reasons why the ocean was so mesmerising.
Lysi hummed thoughtfully. “This is probably why they picked Kori Maru. Adaro wouldn’t suspect anyone of eavesdropping on the channel way up here.”
We joined a growing crowd at the mouth of the canyon. The mood was light, cheerful, a pleasant tingling across my skin that dulled the itch of iron. Conversation and bursts of laughter rose over the chatter of fish and shrimp in the reef, and the colourful tails added a glow to the otherwise brown, red, and grey landscape.
Several minutes passed before the approaching group came into view.
As we waited, an odd feeling overcame me, one I couldn’t identify, that brought to mind the distant past. I turned to Lysi, intending to ask her if she felt anything strange, and saw her staring open-mouthed at a mermaid floating a few lengths away.
“Lysi?”
Then someone behind us called out a greeting—I thought it sounded like Coho—and Lysi startled as though someone had slapped her. She shot in front of me and put both hands on my shoulders. All colour drained from her face.
“Mee, remember I started to tell you something before? The merman—the former human who was part of the assassination attempt?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
Her eyes flitted away from mine for a moment. “He was from Eriana Kwai.”
If Lysi hadn’t been holding onto me, I would have sank.
“What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. There’s been too much going on.”
My mind jumped to a million possibilities. Was he a former warrior? A kid who’d wandered too close to the water? Did he get lured?
She kept looking over to that mermaid floating a few lengths away. Why? I followed her gaze. The mermaid was curvy, with long black hair and caramel skin. Her attention was on the returning group. They’d arrived at the canyon and were being swarmed with questions.
I shook my head. My lips felt numb. “Lysi, who is he?”
Lysi seemed to choke on her words. It was a moment before she got them out.
“It’s Nilus, Mee.”
A fog engulfed my brain, disconnecting me from everything. The gurgling of the reef and the laughter and conversation died.
Could he have been lured but not killed? Was that possible?
My eyes burned. I blinked, angry with myself for grasping at such a dead hope—and at Lysi for leading me to disappointment. My brother was dead. He had been gone for over a decade. Wouldn’t I know if he was still alive? Wouldn’t I have felt it deep inside me?
“It can’t be.”
Lysi was mistaken. It was a desperate, impossible wish to think anything otherwise.
But as the returning mermen and mermaids came closer, that long-forgotten presence grew stronger. A distant emotion washed over me like a waterfall.
“He’s here?” I said, the words numb on my lips.
Lysi nodded once. Her eyebrows pulled down. Pain exploded in my chest.
Every emotion rushed through me. Sadness, joy, fear—a surge of anger. Lysi knew Nilus was alive and hadn’t told me? I thought back to the last few days, all that time we’d spent in silence. I thought back to when she’d met my parents on Eriana Kwai.
“Lysi, why didn’t—?”
“Meela?” said a deep voice beside us.
A small cry escaped me. I didn’t look. I closed my eyes for a moment, steeling myself, and then turned to face him.
Him. My big brother.
By sight, I would not have recognised him. His features had changed from human to merman—reptilian skin and face shape, overlarge red eyes, bulbous ears, and webbed fingers. Like all mermen, he was an exemplified sea demon and never reverted to a human-like state. He was worn and tired, hair long and ungroomed, stone crossbow over his back. But somewhere beneath this exterior was Nilus. I felt it in his aura. Everything about it was familiar, taking me back to my life before he left on the Massacre and everything changed.
I lunged for him and wrapped my arms around him, shouting something incoherent that sounded like, “Nil—how—ohmyg—aliv—!”
He made a faint noise, like a note of surprised laughter.
Underwater, my tears manifested as strange half-sobs and puffy eyes that were probably leaking, but I couldn’t tell.
“You’re a mermaid,” he said in a strangled voice. “My god, how—? Lysi?”
Lysi spoke, but I couldn’t hear the words through the fog in my brain. I closed my eyes, feeling Nilus’ presence with every part of me. All the love I’d felt as a child, the affection that had been laid to rest alongside Nilus’ memory, came flooding out.
It felt as though my heart had been transported back in time—and at once, I wished I could do just that—travel back ten years, five years, even to yesterday, to tell myself that everything would be all right, that Nilus was not dead, and I would hug him again one day.
When we pulled apart, Nilus gawked at me as if he was the one seeing a ghost.
A mermaid lingered beside us—the one Lysi had been staring at.
“Oh,” said Nilus, blinking. “Meela, this is Ephyra, my wife.”
“Wife?!”
Ephyra smiled, her teeth a perfect row of pearls. I managed to keep my jaw from falling open. She was curvy in all the right places, her skin smooth and tan, shiny black hair waving behind her like silk. Her heavy-lidded eyes and full lips glimmered with iridescent makeup.
That solves that mystery, I thought, deciding Nilus had definitely been lured.
Lysi cleared her throat. “When did you get here?”
“Two days ago,” said Nilus, peeling his wide eyes away from me. “We went home to get the kids, and—oh, Meela, you have to meet them!”
“Kids? I’m an auntie?” I said shrilly.
I whirled as Nilus shouted for them to come over. Five miniature mermaids came zipping through the crowd, all girls, all with long black hair.
“Papa!” they all shouted, swarming him in the most adorable group hug.
I let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “They’re all so beautiful!”
“Girls, this is your Aunt Meela.”
Aunt Meela. The words were like honey.
I’d never really liked kids, but knowing I was related to these ones was an entirely different feeling. I opened my arms and was met with an enthusiastic and giggly group hug.
“This is Clio, Sedna, Halie, Pasithea, and”—Nilus put his hands on the eldest’s shoulders—“Little Meela.”
Her irises were the same colour as mine, her hair the same shade. She was about the age I’d been when I’d lost Nilus. My eyes burned with fresh tears.
“The next will be here in a few months,” said Ephyra. She cupped a hand over her belly, which protruded so little I hadn’t noticed.
“I’m an auntie,” I said thickly. “My parents—oh, god, my parents! Our parents! I have to tell them.”
I turned southwards as if I could return to give them the news right then. Then something occurred to me and I spun back to Nilus.
“You never came to us. You’ve been alive all this time.”
His smile faltered. “No one would have understood.”
I frowned. “That’s not true. I would have, Nilus.”
It felt strange to say his name after so long. My eyes swelled again with tears that wouldn’t spill properly.
He pulled me into another hug.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t believe I’m hugging you again.”
All the affection I’d ever felt for Nilus raced through my veins, filling my heart so much I thought it would explode. It was as though the last ten years had not been robbed of him. Memories repressed from grief flashed through my mind: days exploring the forest, jumping in the ravine, climbing trees to get the juiciest apples, hiding inside hollow stumps, making forts out of branches, staying up late and sneaking outside to watch the stars.
Whatever was happening outside Kori Maru—whoever was being attacked or imprisoned—felt insignificant. So what if the Reinas weren’t going after Adaro yet? We could stay here with everyone and help them with their coup. I didn’t need to rush. Not when Nilus was here. Not when I finally felt, for the first time in so long, like everything was right in the world.