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A sharp pain in his tail made him flinch in surprise, and he whirled to see a young Mer grinning at him.

“What?” Kaerius snarled.

“Oh, did I tweak your pride?”

Kaerius bared his sharp teeth and darted after Tehrgil. “You insufferable upstart!”

The Mer child, barely into adolescence, screamed with mirth as he swam away. He had dared nip Kaerius’s tail with his needle-sharp teeth, drawing a few drops of blood. “Prince of pomposity! Thought it would do you a little good!” His laughter tinkled through the water like the song of a newborn whale.

The prince surged forward and caught the little prankster by the tail. He turned toward the surface, hauling the now-frightened child behind him with a roar of anger.

“I AM a prince, you insulant brat! Never forget your place!” As his head broke the surface, he gave a furious flick of his tail, sending them both high into the air. At the apex of his leap, he flung the child away from him to tumble through the air and flop back into the water with an undignified slap of his tail.

Tehrgil was not hurt, of course. Mer skin was far too tough to be stung by the slap of water, even from such a height. But the young royal, a cousin much lower ranked than Kaerius himself, was suitably chastened and fled without a backward glance. Tehrgil often sought attention, usually by causing trouble, but to actually bite the prince was bold, even for him.

Kaerius roared after him, “And never draw blood near the nursery!”

If Tehrgil had looked back, he would have seen the prince twist beneath the waves with a graceful arc of his tail and then slip his head above the surface again.

A small sailing ship had been close by.

Ships were rarely of interest to Mer. If there were a storm, the ship might be dashed into pieces among the rocks and the sailors would drown. But on this coast storms were rare. Moreover, three hundred years ago the humans had built a lighthouse on the nearby promontory. Since the lighthouse, there had been only two wrecks, both before Kaerius’s birth.

He had seen ships, of course, but only from a distance. Little fishing boats hugged the coast, dragging their nets behind them. Nets were dangerous; rumor said that once a mermaid had been caught in a net and killed by humans, an ocean away and several generations before. Kaerius couldn’t remember the details, and imagined it was a myth anyway. If he were caught in a net, he would cut himself free with his knife or his teeth! A warrior such as himself would never fear a human. Still, the Mer folk had always been cautious of contact with humans.

The sun setting behind Kaerius seemed to gild the entire ship, and he drew closer without realizing it.

A sound carried across the water.

A strange instrument made a sweet, pure sound unlike anything Kaerius had heard before. It was like sunlight in his ears, warm and bright, sliding liquid through his veins. Another swish of his tail brought him closer, and he shook his head to fling his wet hair from his eyes.

Then another sound joined the first, a voice of dawn as the sun settled below the waves. The words were a little breathy, as if the singer were young and nervous in the most charming way, and then the singer found her confidence and her voice soared.

Waves slapped the side of the little ship, and Kaerius followed it as it drew close to the rocks, caught as surely as if he were entangled in a net.

The ship threaded the narrow passage into the harbor, and Kaerius still followed.

The instrument quieted, but the singer continued, her voice softening, until the last words carried over the water.

Kaerius sucked in a deep breath, startled to discover how close to the shore he was. What a lovely voice the singer had! She sounded near to his own age, twenty, and her voice would be a perfect counterpart to his.

That was a foolish thought. Mer did not sing with humans! They sang with the whales and the dolphins, with the crash of the waves, and with the thunder and rush of a storm.

Her voice was too soft and too human, too devoid of magic, to match his.

But he wanted to hear her again.

Chapter 2

The following week, the sea was choppy and rough. A storm was blowing in, and the humans never risked a ship in this weather.

Merfolk were not troubled by the storms; if the little ones became frightened, they could always dive into the stillness of the depths. Kaerius loved the crashing thunder, screaming winds, and the shock of lightning in the water, the sound and fury and terrible joy. He tested his strength against the thrashing waves and rode the swells into the bay, avoiding the sharp coral with a flick of his muscular tail. He swam upward until he burst from the water with the speed of his own effort and the strength of the ocean beneath him, so that he flew nearly as high as the mast of a ship and flipped end over end before he dove beneath the froth again.

He delighted in his strength, and if he thought of humans at all, it was only with understandable pity, for they were imprisoned on land, too fragile to survive in this terrible, joyous violence of wind and water.

The crack of lightning sounded different, and when Kaerius rose again, he looked around for the reason why.

A ship!