Elyssa had failed.

Kadir was breaking up with her.

“No.” Her chest felt like it was open and exposing her heart to the stinging ocean. She almost couldn’t get her breath. “Please.”

“This is killing you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do.” His tenderness was immobile as iron. He tied the bag shut and gave it to the stunned silent Zoan. “Return the seed to the city. I will take Elyssa to the surface.”

He was really doing it.

Zoan struggled to close his torn right hand around the bag neck and took it instead in his left. “My king. It is not safe to swim across the open ocean with less than five warriors.”

“Our enemies focus on the city.”

“You abandon us on the eve of battle?”

“No. I leave Soren in charge. Tell him to do whatever he must to hold the city until my return.”

Zoan hesitated. He did not want to abandon her, even though he had already rejected being her guard. And he didn’t want to let Kadir abandon their city. His close friends, Pelan and Nilun, would be with Soren inside. Elyssa could see all those thoughts and more crossing his normally cheery face. He couldn’t seem to make a joke about it. He could only hesitate and frown.

Kadir growled. “Where do your loyalties lie?”

Zoan flinched. He finally made the more-kiss salute and carried the bag heavily back toward the city.

Where she would never be allowed again.

Her eyes burned and her nose clogged. “I didn’t mean to cause so many problems.”

Kadir’s jaw flexed. He held out his hand. “Come. Hold on. We will fly.”

Her arguments were useless. Like arguing with Chastity Angel. Nothing she said made any difference.

She reluctantly moved into his arms. He kicked. She was a screw up from the very beginning. This was her final swim as a mer queen.

It wasn’t fair. Her head rested against his broad, flexing shoulders that were no longer hers. Her ear tuned to his heartbeat, which would never again sync to her rhythm. His long length would never pinion her with pleasure. The vanilla-hickory flavor of his skin would never radiate across her tongue as she licked his silver tattoos.

She couldn’t control her power. She couldn’t help him swim. She was barely a mermaid at all.

All reasons to get rid of her and start over.

It was like Aya said. Just because you tried hard or wanted something badly didn’t mean you’d succeed.

Kadir raised his voice. He sounded exhausted and labored. “Elyssa. Relax against me.”

She tried. She did not wish to. But she tried.

They flew silently through the empty ocean. Kadir had exhausted all his words. She couldn’t think of a single way to reach him.

He knew she wanted to stay. He knew she loved him. He knew she would become a surrogate if that was his wish.

He rejected her. Every offer. Completely.

She had no words either.

All too soon, they reached the surface. She hauled herself into the lowered dinghy and threw up sea water over the side.

Kadir bobbed in the large waves. Was he going to give her a goodbye kiss? A goodbye speech? A sorry-it-didn’t-work-out memento?

His hand curled over the side of the boat.

She started to reach out for his hand.

The dinghy jerked and the motor started winching up the chains. She rose.

Kadir turned away and pushed off. He disappeared beneath the waves.

The total emptiness of the ocean was hard to describe. A vast, open horizon of choppy blue waves and a haze separating sky from sea. Her throat was raw from coughing.

The dinghy rose to the platform. No one was there to greet Elyssa. Who had operated the winch? The control mechanism was abandoned.

She scrambled off the dinghy and skidded naked across the rusty metal deck. There was no Aya to tell her it was alright, no care package to surround her with comfort, no wool blankets to warm her up, no towels to dry her off. Where was the crew? Who had winched up her dinghy? The platform seemed as empty as the horizon. She finally broke into the dining galley.

Aya’s laptop was set up for a conference call.

Elyssa found a dish towel in the galley. She covered her important bits, which felt weirdly exposed in the air, and turned on the conference.

Chastity Angel stared back at her. “You’re late.”

Elyssa shrank in on herself. It was muscle memory. The woman’s hardened, mask-like face triggered her to automatically say sorry.

Her lips closed without speaking the forbidden word. All that training with Kadir had done something after all.

“Where’s Aya?” she demanded instead.

“That is what I want to know.” It was the dark of the night wherever Chastity Angel was. “Tell me quickly. What have you done with her?”

What had Elyssa done with Aya? “I don’t understand. Why isn’t she here?”

Chastity Angel’s mouth pinched. “I do not see any Sea Opals.”

Okay. “The Life Tree of Atlantis is—”

“Because of your failure — and my daughter’s full knowledge that you would fail — she has taken it upon herself to do something drastic. Now. You will tell me where she is and how to reach her immediately.”

Aya could be near Portugal, begging Dragao Azul to answer their undersea phones. Or she could be repopulating Sireno’s sacred islands in the Gulf of Mexico with hand-picked brides.

“I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been underwater for the past month.”

She whitened. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know!”

“I swear to you, Elyssa. My daughter’s life was perfect before you arrived. Your schemes lead her astray. Every time she works with you, disaster is right behind.”

The accusation stabbed deeply.

“As of now, the Merman Bride Project is shutting down.”

“It doesn’t even matter.” She rubbed her face. Aya wasn’t here to make things okay. There was nothing okay about this. “Kadir already returned me. It’s over anyway.”

Chastity Angel regarded Elyssa with glittering eyes like a white-haired viper. “You are a failure in every possible way. Do not come back to Van Cartier Cosmetics. You are hereby fired.”

She was a failure. In every possible way.

Don’t choose Elyssa for our group. She’s not an A student.

Sweetheart, your mom and I love you, but that college is out of reach for you.

I’ll tell you up front not to apply for that promotion. You can’t handle the added responsibilities.

She was fired?

No returning to a comfy HR job that was mostly college recruitment fairs and filing. No more giggling over mermen with Aya and planning how they were both going to become super awesome mermaid queens. No more sweet, determined mermen, striving so hard to protect their city and stop their eventual extinction.

No more Kadir.

Aya needs this for her future. Everyone knows you will never do anything important.

Elyssa had nothing left to lose. Everything she’d tried so hard to hang onto had fallen through her fingers like water. Like sand. She scrambled to catch it and lost all.

And if she lost all, what was left?

Not Important Elyssa. Not Bride Elyssa. Not Queen Elyssa.

Just herself.

Just Elyssa.

A small nugget of her past life dropped into her mouth. “Abandoning an employee in a foreign country at the termination of a job is a violation of labor laws in the United States.”

Chastity Angel’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me which scheme you talked Aya into, and I will consider informing a container ship of your location.”

“Get it through your head! I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“We talked about a lot of schemes, alright?”

“No, it is not alright. Her disappearance is your fault.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s yours? Because you’re always so horrible to her? And you never loved her as an adult or as a child?”

Chastity Angel froze.

How funny. She’d yelled at Chastity Angel before, but it felt amazing to actually shut the woman up and speak her mind.

“There are more important things than love,” Chastity Angel hissed. “Like success. And being worth something. You wouldn’t know either of those.”

Elyssa wouldn’t because she’d always been so busy trying to please people. Trying to be there for them. Trying.

Trying wasn’t good enough.

Kadir knew. The other warriors knew. They saw some flashing light in her soul that said, “This is Elyssa, trying hard.” They saw her caring too much. They saw her slip and fall.

So it was time to stop trying and show herself what she was capable of.

Chastity Angel was still waiting for her reaction. The insults she flung had always crippled Elyssa before. But now, lines rimmed the woman’s bitter lips. A lifetime of pinches and frowns. Makeup could only disguise it so far.

“You’re right. I guess I can’t help you. Good luck.” She reached forward to turn off the connection.

“Wait. We’re not done. You must tell me where Aya is.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. And don’t you remember? I’m fired. I don’t have to tell you a darned thing.”

“You need me to return home.”

“I’m not going home.” She flexed her knuckles. They didn’t crack because she was actually pretty flexible in her fingers, but she felt like Chastity Angel didn’t know that. “Now that the Sea Opal contract is off the table, I have a few things I’d like to say to the guy who told me I didn’t belong.”

Such as that he didn’t get to decide that. Kadir had claimed her and loved her. He wanted adjustment? Bossing a bunch of warriors around felt super easy after shutting up Chastity Angel with a single phrase.

“Goodbye, Auntie.” Elyssa enjoyed the revulsion crossing Chastity Angel’s face — she’d always hated that name — and tapped to close the conversation. The screen went black.

She rose and stretched. Her spine popped. This surface visit was done in record time. She might even be able to catch Kadir on the way back to Atlantis.

Elyssa turned to leave the dining area.

A twitchy, sallow-skinned man blocked the doorway. She started.

Wait. She knew that mean look. Brutal, like he wanted to cut her. They were no longer in the middle of a crowded company party, or on a yacht in Mexico surrounded by a paramilitary team, and he was no longer in the Mexican jail she had left him in.

Uh oh.

Lucy wasn’t here to save her. Aya wasn’t here to save her. Nobody was here to save her.

She swallowed. “Blake?”

“So, you do remember me.”

She was hoping he didn’t remember her. But it didn’t look like she would escape. He blocked the only exit. His waistband sagged with the weight of a cold, black gun.