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She edged a little closer and pressed a small, heavy bag into his hands. Then she wrapped her own cloak around his shoulders. “Up on your feet now.” She put her small shoulderunder his arm and hauled him upward with a soft grunt of effort. “You’re heavier than you look!” She kept her hand on his arm until he steadied himself.

“Can you not talk?” She stepped back and stared at him. “Shake your head like this for no. Nod for yes.” She demonstrated.

He shook his head, the motion making the world spin. She grabbed his arm again when he swayed, taking the little bag back from him. “Never mind. You’re in no shape to be walking to the inn. Sit down here against the stone, and I’ll send the physician down to take a look at you. Can you do that?”

She tugged him toward the cliff to an outcropping of stone that would offer a little shelter from the wind. He stumbled and nearly fell, but she caught his arm and supported him another few steps until he collapsed in a heap on the sand not even halfway to the cliffside.

“You’re a strange one.” Her voice had a strangled quality to it, which he noted as something to figure out later. She tugged the cloak around his shoulders more tightly and flipped the cloth over his legs and torso. “Someone will be back soon. They’ll come down that path right there. The passage up from the beach is just there. Do you see it?”

He nodded, feeling a bit of stubborn strength returning. A merman of his lineage would not succumb so easily to the battering of the sea.

“Good.” She gave him a skeptical look.

He did not want someone to take a look at him yet, while he still felt so wobbly and strange. So he staggered to his feet.

“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll send someone to you. With a hot meal in you, you’ll feel much better. Just wait here.”

What was a hot meal? He stared at her in growing confusion. The world would not stop its strange spinning, and his bodyshivered in a way it never had before. Why were his hands shaking as he held them out to her?

It was mortifying.

“You could go to the inn if you really wanted,” she said doubtfully.

He tilted his head. What was an inn?

“Never mind. Just wait here. I’ll send someone for you as soon as I return. They’ll come down that path right there, so just stay where they can find you. Don’t worry.”

She set off briskly up the path.

Kaerius stared after her.

Chapter 7

The cloak that hung from his shoulders whipped in the wind, pressed against his body as he trudged up the beach. There were several clasps at the throat, but he did not see them and did not think to look for them, for his eyes were watering in the frigid wind, and the strange shivering that racked his body took more attention than the cloth.

He held the cloak against his chest as he stumbled up the narrow, rocky path, more out of concern that the cloak would blow away than any desire for its warmth. He turned uphill when he reached the road. She had told him that the inn was at the bottom of the hill, but he did not want the inn, whatever it was. He wanted her. He had seen her looking out over the sea from far up the cliffside more than once, so he felt he was far more likely to find her uphill than down. Besides, his beloved was a princess, and, while strange, this great stone edifice was clearly the palace. She must live inside it.

The wind was partially blocked by a low stone wall on the cliff side of the road, and the palace on the other side made the wind that came over the wall swirl in ways that confused his senses. His feet had little fingers at the ends of them, and theystretched wide on the flagstones. The feeling was so strange and fascinating that he knelt to examine the odd appendages.

Then he shoved himself upright and staggered up the road. Though they looked different here in the world of air, doors were still identifiable as doors, so he investigated each one before climbing higher.

At last he found the door that seemed most promising, with the faint hint of the princess’s fingers upon the edge and several other human scents upon the wood. Though he could barely walk and the world of air was already more challenging than he had anticipated, at least the Lord of the Deep had left him his sharp Mer senses.

Frigid raindrops spattered against his face. His hair dripped icy water down his back and chest and whipped into his eyes.

He felt strange and dizzy, and he coughed again, spitting out saltwater that burned as it came up. He leaned against the door and slid down to sit with his back against it. The cloak rode up against his back, and he pulled it off and held it to his face. What a kind gesture from the princess! He pressed his cheek to the sodden fabric, and though the cloth was too wet to give off her scent, when he touched his tongue to it, he tasted her skin, as sweet and fresh as sunlight through the clouds. His affection for her was entirely justified.

He looked up at the iron grey sky. A storm was coming.

Kaerius shivered,pulling his new legs in close against his body. The pelting rain stole the fragile heat from his skin; the feeling of being chilled was unfamiliar, and he did not at first understand that it was dangerous as well as unpleasant. The stone behind him scraped his back as his shivers intensified. He turned toexamine the rock and mortar, letting his soft fingers run over the abrasive surfaces, then looking at his wet fingertips. How strange! Before, his skin had been smooth as pearl and tough as sharkskin. Now the skin of his fingertips had tiny ridges, wrinkling as they soaked in the freezing rain.

He leaned forward to lick the stone, pondering the taste. Salt from the sea spray, familiar and reassuring, and the faint undertone of gull guano, any visible signs long since washed away, lingering only to his extraordinary senses. The distant hint of something unfamiliar and organic, perhaps pollen or the tang of pine.

He rested his forehead against the rock wall, letting the roughness bring him back to himself for a moment. The cold was making him sleepy. That too, was strange. Never before had cold been stupefying; always it had been simply a fact. If anything, cold had been invigorating; when snowflakes landed on a choppy sea, he had played in the spray with Kali, their tails flicking the spray up, up into the air.

His fingers had a faint blue tinge now, the nail beds a bruised purple. Was that from the cold, or an unrelated phenomenon? His head dropped to rest against his knees. They were bony and strange, so unlike his smooth tail. He flexed the little fingers on his feet, admiring the tiny, fragile bones and delicate nails. His arms and legs had white-blond hairs that stuck to his wet skin.

Kaerius was human in every way that he could see. He was pleased with the kraken’s thoroughness and disconcerted by the vulnerability of his nakedness. His skin was so soft and fragile, easily scratched by the stone and sensitive to the impact of every raindrop.