The waves seem very violent tonight, almost like the ocean is rebelling. Maybe that’s just the way I’m interpreting it, because that’s how I feel.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here on the wet sand, letting the waves wash over my feet. Hours, maybe. The sun set a long time ago. I close my eyes for the millionth time and let go of the guard I always keep up when I’m in the ocean as a human. I let nature take over so my legs can turn into my beautiful sapphire tail and for my hands to become webbed. But nothing happens. The waves continue crashing over my feet, spraying my face with salt water. Salt water I used to crave whenever I was near the ocean but feel nothing for now. I don’t even crave fish but chicken. And meat. And vegetables. And grains. Basically everything that does not come from the ocean.

This time, I let the tears fall.

Gazing out toward the dark waves, I look for any signs of Damarian’s arrival, like splashes in the water. But I don’t see or hear anything.

Dread nestles inside me. Has something happened to him? Maybe the reason I can no longer feel him is because…No! I refuse to believe that something happened to him. I didn’t feel him last night, either.

I clutch my head. I can’t stand this anymore. I just want to be at peace. Happy and at peace.

“Cassie!”

My head jerks up, but I don’t see anyone.

“Cassie!”

I leap to my feet and squint at the ocean, spotting Damarian’s head sticking out of the surface. He waves before diving back inside and swimming toward the shore. I race toward him, into the water.

Damarian meets me and gathers me in his arms. He kisses the side of my head, my forehead, my cheeks. But I don’t feel any warmth or any butterflies in my stomach. I might as well be receiving a kiss from a crab.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I say.

“Forgive me. Fiske insisted I eat before I arrived. I have not eaten all day, for I was so apprehensive.” He nods to the spot behind him. I follow his gaze and see the large great white poking out of the water.

“He stayed with you all day?” I ask.

“Yes, for I did not wish to return home and cause my family unease. We spent the day in the cave I lived in twenty four moons ago, when I did not wish to live in my home.”

Two years ago. That seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened, but it feels as though we are right back where we started. A shiver runs down my spine.

“You are cold,” Damarian says. “Let us return to land.”

I don’t know if I want him to come on land. I don’t want to face the truth, because if he can’t switch into a human, I don’t know what I’d do.

When he moves closer to shore, I lower myself to the ground and help pull him onto the sand. The bag of essentials sits a few feet away, but I pay no attention to it. I need to believe that we won’t need the towels. I need to.

When his body is completely out of the water, I settle next to him and study his tail. It’s only been a day, but I miss his tail. I miss mine. When I glance down at my legs, a strange feeling passes through me. It’s as though my body is telling me that the only things that belong there are my legs. Not my tail. I touch his tail but don’t feel anything. I swallow the tears away.

“Can you switch?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

I tear my eyes away from him and rummage in the bag for the towels. I dry off his tail while he takes care of his upper body. Then I throw the sheet over him. This definitely feels like when we first met.

“How was your day?” Damarian asks with a cheerful smile. Even without feeling him, I sense how fake that smile is. But I know he’s trying to be brave for me. For both of us.

“Cassie?” He touches my cheek.

“It sucked.”

He laughs lightly.

“Please don’t try to be strong. Show me how you really feel.”

He lays his head on the sand. “I feel confident.”

“Confident?”

“Yes. In only a few more seconds, I will undergo the shift from child of the sea to human.”

He may be confident, but I’m realistic. I know exactly how this will play out. I turn away and bury my face in my hands. A part of me, the smallest part, is hopeful that at any second, he will cry out in pure agony. For the first time in my life, I would welcome his pain with open arms. I would throw a party.

He doesn’t cry out in pain.

I can’t turn back around. I can’t.

“My love.” He hand is on my back, softly rubbing it. “Please face me.”

“What’s going on?” I whisper.

“I do not know, my Cassie. But please turn around so I can see your face.”

“You won’t like what you’ll see.”

“I wish to dry your tears. Please, my love, allow me to hold you in my arms.”

I slowly spin around, my eyes on the sand. Damarian tucks a webbed hand under my chin and lifts my face. His expression fills with pain and regret when he sees my tear-stricken face. He closes his hand over my wrist and gently pulls me toward him.

As soon as I’m in his arms, I cry onto his chest. His hand rubs circles on my back, but it’s not comforting me like it has so many times in the past. It’s like I have a fountain behind my eyes—the tears are so abundant and strong and never-ending.

“Do not fret, my love. It is all right.”

“How can you say that?” I sob into the bare skin of his chest. “You don’t believe any of it. You’re just trying to comfort me.”

He doesn’t respond, just continues rubbing circles on my back.

Finally, when it seems the fountain has run out, I pull back and look into his eyes. “You’ll…you’ll get sick if you’re out of sea water for too long.” Like what happened the day I found him washed up on the shore and brought him to my house. He would have died if I hadn’t filled my pool with synthetic sea salt.

He strokes my cheek. “I am not going anywhere.”

“Then I’ll go into the ocean.”

“The sea is too cold for you. I will remain out here as long as I can.”

Another shiver runs down my spine.

“Fret not, my love. Let us attempt to make sense of what has occurred.” He wipes my tears away with his thumbs.

“Okay. When was the first time you felt something was wrong?”

His eyebrows crease. “In the sea yesterday. When you did not have enough energy to swim home. It was as though your body…”

“Was changing back into a human. Or didn’t want to be a mermaid anymore.”

“Indeed. Was that the first instance you felt something was amiss?”

I bite my bottom lip.

“What is the matter?”

“That wasn’t the first time…”

“When was it?”

I look away.

“What is the matter? What is it that you do not wish to tell me?”

I look into his eyes again. There’s worry and fear in there, but every emotion is dwarfed by the all-consuming love he has for me.

“It was the night we came back from land. When we were making out in our shell.”

A puzzled look overtakes his face. “I do not understand.”

“Since the first moment we’ve ever kissed, I’ve felt such intense feelings. Our love for each other takes over my whole body, makes me feel things I hadn’t felt before. It’s like out of this world.”

Damarian nods as he caresses my cheek. “Yes, I am aware of how you feel, for it is the way I feel every time as well. And I sense everything in your heart and soul whenever we grow that close.”

“Right.” I swallow, not wanting to hurt him. “But I didn’t feel anything that night.”

“Nothing at all?”

I shake my head. “It was like I was kissing a shower door.”

His gaze moves away from mine and looks out in the distance. I’m not sure what expression he has on his face. Not hurt, like I thought, but more like he’s not surprised.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “You look like you were expecting me to say something like that.”

He slowly moves his eyes to mine. “That is because I, too, have felt as though I were kissing a useless item and not my mate.”

Every part of me perks with shock and confusion. “What? You didn’t feel anything that night?”

“No, my love. I did not feel anything the next morning.”

“The next morning? You mean, when I took charge?”

He reluctantly nods, a regretful expression on his face.

“But…you seemed so into it. You made it seem like you were really enjoying yourself.” I remember how relieved I was that I finally felt him again, because I didn’t the night before.

“Your actions did bring me pleasure, my Cassie,” he tells me. “But not like in the past. It was though a stranger was attempting to please me.”

It feels like he just slapped me across the face. With both hands.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I demand, anger and betrayal settling in my heart. I take a deep breath and let it out. There’s no reason for me to get upset. It’s not his fault he felt that way.

“I apologize, my love.” He gathers me close to his chest and lays my head in the hollow space between his neck and shoulder. “I did not wish to cause you any pain. You know that all I wish is to make you happy. I thought I was tired or…I am not certain.”

I shift away from, him so I can make sense of my thoughts. So I was wrong. Damarian did feel that something was off, but he didn’t want to hurt me. Just like I didn’t want to hurt him. If either of us would have said something earlier, maybe we could have fixed this. Whatever it is.

When I glance back at Damarian, I see nothing but pain and bewilderment on his face. He doesn’t look pale, though. I don’t know how long we have until he has to go back into the ocean.

When I’m once again sitting right before him, I say, “We were fine the morning we left for the ocean. We were fine the whole day. We were fine before we left. Things seemed to have gone wrong when we got to the merpeople colony.”

Damarian nods slowly. “Yes. That must mean that something occurred during the travel from land to sea.”

I tap my chin as I wrack my brain. I know we had fun—hunting fish because we hadn’t done it in a while, Damarian not being able to keep his hands off me…

Then it hits me. “The coral.”

“Pardon?”

“My fish fell to the bottom of the sea, remember? There was beautiful coral there, black with green glitter.”

“Yes, I recall. What of it?”

I hold out my arm. “I rubbed up across it. It cut my arm.”

Understanding enters his eyes. “Yes, you were injured! Are you stating you believe…that somehow the coral is the cause of the lack of passion between us?”

“Maybe it made me sick.” I glance down at my arm, but there’s nothing there other than my peachy skin.

“I do not know, my love. As a fry, all I did was brush up against the coral. As did my brothers and sisters, and all the other children of the sea. We did not fall ill.”

“It’s the only explanation. You’ve never seen that specific species of coral before, have you?”

He shakes his head.

“It must be rare. It probably has some sort of poison.”

“But do you feel ill?” He touches my forehead and my cheeks. Merpeople don’t really get sick in the ocean, so it warms my heart to see him care for me in a human way. But of course I don’t feel it as much as I did in the past.

“I’m fine,” I say. “But this is an aquatic disease. Who knows what kind of symptoms I have?”

“But if you are correct and have taken ill due to the coral, why am I affected?”

He has a good point. I puff out my cheeks.

Then it hits me. “Because we’re mated. I feel what you feel and you feel what I feel.”

“Yes, but you have fallen slightly ill a few times since we have mated, acquiring a human disease. I had not fallen ill.”

“Because that was a human illness,” I say. “Like I said before, I contracted an aquatic disease and we have no idea what the effects are. Maybe it’s contagious through mates.” I cover my mouth. “Or maybe it’s contagious to all the merpeople. Damarian, I might have gotten you all sick. Just like with the sea serpent poison.”

Damarian’s hand flies to his forehead and he sways a little.

I grab his arm. “Damarian?”

“I feel a bit ill.”

“I did get you sick.”

He shakes his head as his eyes snap shut. “No, this feeling is quite familiar. I fear I have been on land for too long and require sea water.”

I jump to my feet. “We have to get you back in the ocean.”

Clutching his head and with his gills straining to open and close, he says, “I do not wish to leave you. I cannot leave you.”

“But you have to. Not only because your body needs sea water, but because you need to go back home and tell your family about the coral. You all might be affected.”

He starts to release those awful sounds, like a whale crying out in pain.

I take hold of his arm. “Please get back in the ocean, Damarian.”

It looks as though he wants to argue, but he’s too weak. With my help, we drag his body into the water, until he’s fully submerged. A second later, his head pops up. “Are you able to enter the sea?” he calls. “I wish to hold you in my arms.

“Of course.”

I strip out of my shirt and pants, remaining in my bikini. I put it on before I left for the beach because I anticipated I would have to go into the ocean. I walk to the edge of the water, feeling the cold water swallow my ankles. Like I expected, I don’t change. I keep walking until every part of my body, except my head and neck, is underwater.

Damarian reaches for me and tugs me into his arms.

“I don’t feel you,” I say, swallowing a fresh batch of tears. The little hope I had inside me is gone.

He tucks some hair behind my ear. “I know. I will return to our home in the sea and learn all that I can. Fret not, my love. I will return to you with only good news. I promise.”

“Don’t promise, Damarian. I don’t think you can keep it.”

He presses his forehead to mine. “I have confidence that I can. And that I will.” His lips skid across my cheek until they meet mine. I open my mouth to welcome him, but once again feel like I’m kissing a shower door.

I miss how good he made me feel. I miss how good I made him feel. I miss him.

“I shall meet you tomorrow night,” he says, his lips moving to various parts of my face. Even though I don’t feel anything, the act itself makes me feel loved.

“It feels like we’ve gone back in time, to two years ago when we first met.”

“After tomorrow, it will no longer be that way. I promise.”

I shake my head. “Another one you can’t keep.”

He puts his finger on my mouth. “Another one I am confident I shall keep.”

I can’t look into his eyes. I don’t want to say goodbye. Who knows what Damarian will learn when he speaks to his family and the other merpeople? What if I’m dying? Or worse, what if I once again poisoned all the merpeople? True many—if not all—of them will most likely never yearn to be a human and come to land, but there could be other effects of the poison. Maybe in a few months’ time, they’d all be wiped out.

“No.” He softly wipes my eyes. “I may not be able to sense you, but I know the thoughts you have in your head. Please do not think such thoughts. All will be well.”

I want to believe him, but I don’t think I can.

He squeezes me tightly to his chest. “I have so much love for you, my sweet Cassie. My heart bursts with it. Never forget that.”

“I won’t.”

He reluctantly frees me and turns around, to where Fiske emerges out of the water. He nods to me, and from the look in his eyes, I know he’s trying to tell me something.

“I can’t communicate with him,” I say. “Or to any creature of the sea.”

“He is only reassuring you that all will be well. He does not wish for you to worry.”

“Thanks, Fiske. I’ll try to stay positive.”

Damarian once again envelops me in his arms. “Parting with you is so difficult. I miss you so much.”

“Me, too.”

“But I must go if I am to find answers. Please do not be sad. It causes me such pain when you are hurting.”

I touch his cheek. “As long as I’m apart from you, I’ll hurt. There’s nothing anyone can do about that.”

“Then I shall return to you with only good news.”

We break apart, but our hands are still clutched. Damarian moves further away, our hands drawing further apart. When they’re both stretched to the limit, he lets go and disappears under the water. I stare at the waves, watching them go from volatile to calm. Then I turn around, stuff my clothes into the bag of essentials, and trek home, my vision blurry from my tears.