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Marin’s lips trembled. “If you love me, I am sorry for you. I should not have involved you in my troubles at all.”

Kaerius dropped to his knees so the lantern light would fall across his face. Perhaps that way she could see the passion and sincerity in his eyes.I regret only that I saw you as a beautiful prize to be won rather than a courageous woman of honor. The beauty of your face, body, and voice is far surpassed by the beauty of your heart.

“I advise you to disappear, Kai. There can be no good end to this. There is no reason for you to be killed defending me when the outcome is more or less assured.”

The Mer prince shook his head.I am sorry that you think so little of me.But he was not offended or hurt; he could see the grief and fear in her eyes, and he knew she intended to protect him. To protect him! A prince in his own right and a formidable warrior.If I die, I die. But Ralph will not get his disgusting hands on you. I promise you that.

Marin’s tears overflowed silently, and she looked away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Just go, please. I don’t want to have your death on my hands, too.”

Kaerius’s heart twisted inside him, and he bowed his head.I am sorry to disappoint you in this, he signed at last.But honorand love compel me to serve you, even if you hate me for it. I will not trouble you again.

He bowed to her and stood, drinking in her beauty one last time. Then he stepped quietly out of the room and left the royal chambers.

He nodded to the guards and then found his way to the stairs. He descended five flights before he had to stop and cough, and then he leaned against the wall because he could not get enough air for several minutes. He took the next three flights of stairs more slowly as his heart thudded raggedly in his chest. It would not do to faint now; there was no time for his human body to fail.

For a moment he wondered if the kraken’s threat of having his human lungs fail was even now being fulfilled. But he did not think the kraken would be so impatient to kill him; it had been little more than a week, and the Lord of the Deep had promised him thirty days. This was not the kraken’s fault.

The lower levels of the palace were a maze of stone corridors, servants’ quarters, and rooms for all sorts of work, but Kaerius did not stop to explore them. He wandered through the labyrinth until he found a door to the western side of the palace, where he exited the building to the lower portion of the road some way up the cliffside.

The road was in shadow from the sun just beginning to rise behind the palace, and the sea was a deep, vast darkness ahead of him beneath the gray sky. Kaerius followed the road down the hill and then turned onto the steep, narrow path down to the frigid beach.

Wind whipped at his hair, and his legs burned as he clambered down the path. The ocean smell filled his lungs like a breath of hope. He coughed and sucked in a huge breath of icy, salt-scented air.

His boots crunched on the sand when he reached the bottom of the cliff. His human body was susceptible to chill, so heundressed, for there were no humans to be embarrassed by this, and put everything in a neat pile at the base of the rocks. When he exited the water, he wanted the clothes to be dry.

He walked, shivering, to the icy water.

The water that lapped at his bare toes was so cold he hesitated for a moment. But Marin needed him, needed the Mer to stop the Boravian ships, so he stepped deeper into the water. When the water was only waist deep, he sank into it so that he could duck his head underwater. The cold stole the breath from his lungs, and he coughed convulsively, nearly choking on the water before he could catch a breath of air.

How fragile human bodies were! His chest felt like it had iron bands around it, and he could not breathe deeply enough to satisfy his lungs.

No matter. He had a mission.

He could not sing, but he could click his teeth enough to call for the Mer.

The prince ducked his head under the water again and clicked his teeth, and then listened for a response.

There was nothing but the rush of the water in his ears and the ragged thud of his heartbeat.

Click click.

Nothing but the sounds of the ocean. Something scuttled along the harbor floor a quarter mile away. Dolphins sang and clicked, hunting sharks.

Click click click.

Humpbacks called in the distance. Harbor seals hunted fish near the shore.

Click click.

The ocean was full of life, but the Mer did not answer him.

The Mer prince lifted his head and took several breaths, ignoring the tightness in his chest and the shivers that wrackedhis body. He ducked his head beneath the water and began to click again.

Kaerius clicked and listened, clicked and listened, as the tide came in, bringing a pod of harp seals which frolicked in the waves. Their antics roused him enough to realize that he was drifting much too close to unconsciousness and death from cold. He clicked again and, when he did not hear an answer, staggered from the water to his clothes. He dried himself with his trousers and then dressed. He was too cold to shiver and too dazed by the cold to fathom climbing up the path to the palace to warm up.

Without conscious thought, the prince curled up on the sand and fell into the darkness.

He drifted toward awareness only because it was so difficult to breathe that his human body began to scream for air, and he woke, gasping, to find that his chest felt like he was a thousand fathoms beneath the surface, with his lungs crushed by the weight of the water above him. He flopped onto his back and sucked in air, only to cough and gasp again.