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Then, with his heart filled with love and gratitude, he swam to the skiff and popped up with a sharp, toothy smile of triumph.

Marin flinched back and then looked closer. “Prince Kai?” she said. Her voice shook. “You were dead, and then… what happened?”

“I made a bargain with the Lord of the Deep,” said Kaerius, his eyes searching her face. “You were weeping. Why?”

Her eyes were red, and her lips trembled. “You can talk!”

For a moment, Kaerius could not look away from her, but he forced himself to glance at the others in the boat.

“Why are you wet, Brighton?” Kaerius remembered nothing of Brighton’s nearly fatal effort to bring Kaerius to the surface. “You’re cold.”

“It’s freezing,” said Brighton, with admirable steadiness to his voice, though his body shook. “Let’s get you out of the water. How are you alive?”

“I don’t mind the cold,” said Kaerius. He’d been falling, and then… then what? The kraken’s voice echoed in his mind.It appears she loves you.

“You have a tail! And your teeth are different,” Marin said. “But you’re still yourself.”

Kaerius ran his tongue over his familiar, sharp teeth as he took in Marin’s tearful appearance and the shivering men. “I think you humans need to get warm,” he said at last. “Do you have a rope?”

Marin pulled the rope from the bottom of the skiff and handed it to him.

Rope in hand, Kaerius surged toward shore, towing them far faster than a human could have rowed.

He shoved the boat onto the shore with Mer strength and as he landed upon the sand and thought of legs, he found himself stumbling to his feet, suddenly chilled by the wind and water that had not troubled him a moment earlier.

“Good grief!” Brighton’s laughter had an edge of hysteria. “Your trousers are ruined.”

Kaerius pulled off his ruined shirt and wrapped it around his waist. Humans were funny about which body parts were acceptable to bare.

“What are you?” said Marin wonderingly. “You had a tail! I saw it. Kai isn’t even your name, is it?”

“My name is Kaerius,” the prince said, and his smile was softer and sweeter than it had ever been. “I would very much like to hear you say it someday. I’ve loved you for years.”

“Kaerius,” she repeated.

In her voice, his name was even lovelier than he had imagined, and tears sprang into his eyes.

They wanted to talk, to explain and wonder and marvel at each other, but Brighton sagged, and Kaerius said, “Let me help you.”

So Kaerius and the young soldier supported Brighton up the path to the road, where servants and guards were hurrying down to assist them.

“The Boravians have been detained,” said one of the guards to Brighton. “Their servants were in on it, but we captured them all, sir. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” the captain said, but he was pale and unsteady on his feet.

“Good. Thank you. Let’s go inside so Brighton and Prince Kai can warm up.” The princess motioned them toward the nearest door.

“The Boravian ships!” Kaerius said suddenly. “I’ll be back.”

Feet flying, he ran back down the path to the little beach. He stripped down to his underclothes and sprinted to the water, where his tail appeared as soon as he imagined it. With powerful strokes of his tail, he crossed the bay in only a few moments, and then he was in the open ocean.

Kaerius opened his mouth and sang of terror and tentacles, the might of the Elerian army and the honor of its men, a storm sweeping west over the valley to wreck the ships upon the shoals, and the Mer who would eat the sailors’ flesh and pick their teeth with splinters of human bones.

He sang of the safety to be found in the Boravian port from which the ships had come, and the devastation and despair that awaited the men if they continued to advance.

Within minutes, the air was filled with cries of fear from the men. Even the most courageous and determined commands of the officers could not convince the sailors to pursue their attack, for Kaerius’s voice was filled with all the magic of the Mer, which could compel men to fling themselves into the water and drown themselves deliberately.

He could have compelled them to turn on each other in murderous rage. He could have sung them to their deaths in a hundred ways.