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“Where is Pim?”

Barnacles and slick seaweed covered the ground of the cavernous hall in which Clara now found herself. Pillars of pearl and

coral towered above her, shells strung on thread delicately clinking in the current. The sheer beauty of the place would have

stolen her breath away if not for the marble at her throat. “And why are we not at the grotto? I thought you said it was the

only place that was safe from your mother.”

Maurits had his back to her, his broad shoulders bare, his torso tapering to where an emerald green tail met his lower back.

She had never seen him in his true form before; at least, she thought this must be his true form. His hair was darker than

she remembered, his posture rigid despite the gentle flow of the water. Perhaps she had not committed every detail about him

to memory after all. She wondered how much of her brief infatuation had simply been the result of boredom, desperation. Now

that she knew the satisfaction of working, of creating worlds of her own on canvas, she did not need to let her heart fly

away on the smallest promise of excitement.

The minutes stretched out, and Maurits seemed in no hurry to answer her or produce Pim. She shifted her weight, glad to at

least have her boots this time to protect her from the creatures that scurried across the ground.

“Where is my dog,” she repeated, a sudden heaviness pressing in around her chest. She had left the little life that she had scratched out for herself in Amsterdam to follow a man—or whatever he was—who had only ever lied to her.

Something was very wrong, and she knew that she only had herself to blame for whatever was about to happen.

When Maurits finally turned to face her, it was a slow, deliberate movement, and she felt her already frigid limbs go colder.

Something was happening to his face. It was like when she had leaned over the canal as a little girl to see her reflection,

and a frog would jump in, rippling her visage into something blurred and unrecognizable until the water settled again. He

was changing right before her eyes, smudgy and blurry until it was no longer Maurits’s face, nor even his body.

The eyes that had given her pause now shone a completely different color. Gone was the beautiful green-blue, replaced instead

with a piercing slate gray. There was some resemblance to the man who had once kissed her by the canal, but it ended at the

strong curve of his jaw and the tousled hair. He was wrong, all wrong. Her mind screamed at her to run, but her body was anchored

to the rock floor.

“You’re not Maurits.”

The man who was not Maurits stretched his mouth into a humorless smile. “How clever you are. No, I am not your Maurits.”

Clara swallowed the fear that threatened to clog her throat. “Where is she?”

The smile slipped, just for a moment. “She?” he asked.

“The queen. Whoever you are, you have brought me to the water queen, haven’t you?”

Clara did not like the way his gaze sharpened on her, the corners of his mouth pulling up again. “No, though I am sure she would have liked to have seen you for herself. No,” he said again, “you are here at my leisure as my guest.”

“Please,” she pleaded. “Whoever you are, just let me have Pim and go. I will make no trouble for you, I will not tell a soul

about you. Just please, let me have my dog and go.”

In the time it took her to blink, the creature had darted to her with amazing speed, hovering before her so closely that she

could see the unearthly shimmer of silver in his skin. She leaned back, nearly losing her balance, as he regarded her with

something between curiosity and amusement. “You truly don’t know, do you?” he murmured.

“Know wh-what?”

“Your dog—Pim. You don’t know what he truly is.”

Her already tight stomach clenched further. Though she could breathe and speak, it was terribly cold here, and her body was

aching from it. She forced a swallow and tried to remember anything Helma might have ever told her that would help her deal

with this nature of creature. Merfolk were clever and dangerous, that much she knew. She might have had a chance on land,

but here in his domain, she felt her disadvantage both in size and knowledge.

“He is my dog and nothing more. I am a silly girl and am quite attached to him. Please, do not punish him for whatever my

transgression was.”

After a long moment, he gave her a smile that reminded her that he was not just a character from an old story, but a real

creature; a dangerous creature. “Maurits always did have a habit of befriending the broken ones, the stupid ones. You poor

child. You think that he loved you, that for all his faults and all his lies, that at least his feelings for you were genuine.

But tell me, would a man who truly loved you, go to such lengths to deceive you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He gave a flick of his tail, scales shimmering in the glow of the pearly light. “Your dog,” he said with studied disinterest. “Isn’t it funny how he appeared after Maurits left, how as soon as Maurits returned, you never saw Pim again?”

The icy water curled around her. There was much that Clara had experienced in the past months that beggared disbelief, but

what this creature was implying was beyond the pale. “That can’t be,” she said.

“Can’t it? Your Maurits is a trickster, just as many of the Old Ones are. He enjoyed playing with you, making outlandish claims

and watching you twist yourself about in an effort to believe them. You already know that he can take different forms—why

wouldn’t he use such an ability to deceive you?”

Despite the cold, Clara felt her blood go hot. “And you didn’t? Coming to me pretending to be Maurits, only to lure me down

here?”

The man with the fish’s tail gave her a one-shouldered shrug. The gesture was remarkably human, and only unsettled her further.

Even as Clara fought to deny the wretched lie, she knew it to be true. The dog with the beautiful green eyes had appeared

after Maurits had bid her farewell, and it could be no coincidence that Pim had disappeared in the flood, only for Maurits

to save her. All of her sweet memories of her companion were tarnished now. She was truly left with nothing. “Why are you

telling me this?” she finally brought herself to ask.

“Because I think it important that you understand the sort of creature you have chosen to attach yourself to. And you have

attached yourself to him, whether you believe that attachment still stands or not.”

Maurits had lied to her time and again, and she would bear the scars of those lies for the rest of her life. Yet why should she trust what this creature said? He had lured her down here using trickery and deceit, and he seemed determined on turning her against Maurits.

She studied the merman before her, forcing herself to look past the silvery skin and stormy eyes that glowed with uncanny

knowing. He was not Maurits, but she again noted the striking resemblance.

Catching the understanding that was beginning to dawn on her face, he gave a smug smile. “You did not ask who I am. I would

have thought the identity of your captor would be of more interest.”

“I do not care who or what you are,” she said, though the quaver in her voice betrayed her.

“You should care. I am King Thade, and I rule over the Water Kingdom. I have brought you here myself as my mother and brother

proved unable or unwilling to do so. You are the last child due as payment, and as such, it is important that the folk of

the Water Kingdom see you for themselves. They must know that justice has been done, and that their rulers do not take the

breach of contracts lightly. Tonight, you will stay as my guest in the palace. Tomorrow, you will appear at court, and then

meet the fate that you have so long evaded.”

All those times Clara had cursed Helma as being a nuisance, and her nursemaid had only been trying to protect her from herself.

The water was dangerous, yes, but it was Clara herself who posed the greatest threat to her own well-being. She had been unthinkably

foolish to come here. It was her own headstrong foolishness that now saw her trapped in a deadly world of which she didn’t

know the rules.

She opened her mouth to speak, tried to lift her feet, but found that she could neither produce words nor move so much as

an inch. The king gave a little tsk . “Your voice was a privilege of which you showed yourself unworthy,” he told her. He produced a bubble the size of an orange

seemingly out of nowhere, a flicker of blue light dancing within it.

It glowed softly, bobbing like a leaf on a current. Something stirred within her at the sight of it, a dull ache that started in her throat. She opened her mouth again, tried to say something, but no sound came out.

Her hand went to her throat as she fought a wave of nausea. It was her voice. He had taken her voice, trapped it in a little

glass bauble like a specimen in a university.

“A fine addition to my collection,” he said, and for a moment he was no different from her father, pinning the spoils of trade

to his wall. “Human voices, for all that they speak falsehoods and deceits, are remarkably interesting to behold.” His gaze

slid back to her as he palmed the bubble. “I have matters that need attending to,” he said as he rose abruptly from the throne.

“I hope that you will find your stay here tolerable. Never let it be said that the Water Kingdom is inhospitable to our guests.”

Two scaled creatures carrying staffs materialized and wrapped their tentacles about her arm, bearing her away before she could

try to choke out a plea for help. There was no time to take in the labyrinth of coral halls and the curious water folk who

paused in their conversations to watch as she was hauled by. Everything was dark and unfamiliar, horrifyingly beautiful in

the way of an unsettling dream. There were merfolk, both men and women, but other creatures like the guards that she could

not even begin to make sense of; tentacles and glowing jellyfish, shells that clung to the walls, and everywhere eyes that

peered at her from the darkest crevices.

The guards escorted Clara to the chamber where she was to bide until the morrow. When they’d gone and bolted the door from

the outside, Clara allowed herself the luxury of curling into a ball for a few moments, rocking back and forth on the cold

floor. The horrible reality of her situation made her want to shut her eyes, lull herself into an endless sleep, but she did

not have the luxury of ignoring it.

Uncurling herself, she stood and inventoried the small, dim room.

Perhaps of all the strange, unbelievable details about life below water, what struck Clara the most was the lack of windows.

Of course there would be no windows, for what light could they admit?

What fresh air was there to blow in? The closeness of the room pressed in around her, the only light from some sort of moss or algae that clung to the roughly hewn ceiling.

Clara rubbed at the stinging spots where the guards’ tentacles had left circular imprints on her arms. The small room was

dry, at least, but there was no warmth, no comforts other than a bucket and a small wood pallet. How did anyone tell time

down here? How did one know when the night ended and morning began?

As she lowered herself down to the pallet in the corner, she tried not to dwell on the memory of nearly drowning when she

had tried to escape from Maurits’s grotto. The way the water had stolen her breath. How it had taken and taken and taken until

her vision had gone black, her lungs empty. There was no use in trying to escape. And indeed, she did not want to, for her

prison was also her salvation, the only means of keeping her alive in this dark and inhospitable place filled with hungry

creatures until she was summoned to meet her fate.