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I am a prince of the Mer, and I would be honored by an alliance, but even more honored by her hand in marriage. I love her, not her crown.

Brighton couldn’t see or did not understand these signs in the darkness, for he sighed softly, staring out at the sea as if grieving for the princess and her inevitable misery.

Finally, he said, “My wife is waiting for me.”

I can find my way back. Kaerius glanced up at the taller man.I would like to listen to the waves, if you don’t mind.

The sky cleared just then, and Brighton saw the motions clearly. “You want to… listen?”

To the ocean.Kaerius made a shooing motion, adding the sign for gratitude so that it would not be rude.Go home to your beautiful wife. I am fine.

Brighton hesitated, and then said, “You can find your way back?”

Kaerius nodded.

The guard pressed his lips together, and then said, “All right. I suppose we can trust you that far. Just don’t go wandering through the palace.”

The Mer prince nodded and watched the guard walk down the steep stone road that curved away down the cliffside. The man had been remarkably kind, once he’d concluded that Kaerius posed no threat to his princess. When Brighton was out of sight, Kaerius turned back to look out over the vast sea, breathing deep of the cold salt wind.

He had underestimated how much he would miss the pressure of water on his skin and the scent of kelp in the water, how his heart would long to sing for the dawn. Silence felt like a kind of death.

He shook himself and strengthened his heart, like the implacable tides. It was only death for a time.

If he could save Marin from her suitors, if he could show her his beauty and the strength of his love, he would regain his voice. He must not fade like foam on the sand.

A sharp cry sounded from below, and he turned toward it.

There was no other sound, and Kaerius wondered whether perhaps it was merely a cry of surprise rather than distress.

The Mer prince slipped to the other side of the street and crouched in the darkness, his hunting instincts telling him that he would be silhouetted against the moon if someone lower down the slope were to look in his direction. He had probably already been seen, but he should not make it easy for them to know where he was.

He walked down the slope as quietly as he could, searching the darkness for any indication of what was going on.

He had nearly reached the bottom of the cliff, where the road joined with the other street on which Brighton lived, when he caught the scent of blood.

His nostrils flared, trying to pinpoint the source. The wind came over the wall from the sea, and at last, when he heard nothing, he crossed back to the wall and looked over it.

With the moon behind Kaerius, the cliffside below was in deep shadow, but the scent of blood was a little stronger. Kaerius looked around and, seeing no immediate threat, clambered over the stone wall.

His feet slipped on the stones, and the rough rocks scraped the skin from his fingertips. He paused, finding the scent again, and climbed a little farther down until his feet came to rest upon a narrow stone ledge.

Even his sharp eyes could not make out the identity of the body he had found, but he could hear faint breathing, so he knew the man wasn’t dead. He crouched close to take in a deeper breath and grimaced.

Lord Galbraith lay upon the stone ledge, bleeding from head and shoulder, unconscious and helpless. His sword had not been drawn before he fell, and the only indication that he had attempted to defend himself at all was a scrap of cloth in his hand.

Kaerius carefully stepped over the Severtian lord’s torso to investigate this more closely. It was so dark that it was impossible to see the color, but the scent of it was familiar.

The cloth was torn from Brighton’s jacket.

Kaerius straightened, puzzled and uneasy, and then bent closer to lick the cloth.

Ah. That made more sense. The cloth was from Brighton’s jacket, but there was the faint, unmistakable tang of Lord Ralph upon the fabric.

Of course Brighton would not attack the obnoxious Severtian lord; he might despise him, but he would never attack a foreign lord and throw him over the cliff wall like a piece of garbage to be disposed of. It was something of a miracle that Galbraith had landed upon this ledge; it was barely wide enough to support a body, and was not easily visible from the street.

Besides, if Brighton meant to kill a man, he would do it face to face, in broad daylight, and he would leave the man thoroughly dead, not wounded and helpless. He would not throw a wounded man, however detestable, over the cliff to die in a fall.

Ralph, however, was exactly the sort of man who would attempt to place the blame on another man for his own despicable crime.