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An overstep? Perhaps, given the hard look that came over the man’s face. “Being who you claim to be doesn’t prove that this is a matter that demands the king’s attention today of all days.”

“Would my father—?”

“And being sent by your father doesn’t guarantee that your father’s judgment hasn’t been blinded by the unfortunate accident his wife suffered. Give me the message. If it is truly so urgent—”

“No.” She would not hand over the crystal, since it contained passcodes and details of state security that Papa could not reveal to anyone but the king.

But he’d said she could divulge the basics to gain the audience.

“I am not permitted. But I can tell you that it concerns a kidnapping by the mer of a Banks girl. In broad daylight. Before half a dozen witnesses.”

The commander sucked in a breath. “That is unfortunate. Although I still don’t—”

“Send them in.”

The new voice came from behind and above.

Arden spun, her gaze flying up to the wall.

A minute ago, only those frocked officials and palace guests had filled the space.

But now two other figures stood there. One in the brown of a friar, yes—but the other was…

not. He was dressed in the pristine white tunic and blue trousers of other court officials, but he looked far more familiar somehow.

She wasn’t sure why—he couldn’t be more than five years her senior, but she knew she’d never seen him in person.

She’d have remembered that chiseled face, the shoulder-length hair of gold-kissed brown, and the eyes so blue they were striking even from here.

Not sky blue, not sea blue. Crystal blue.

Crystal . Another breath fisted in Arden’s throat.

That was where she’d seen him before. Not in person—on a data crystal.

Time after time, year after year, though she’d always looked away after a glance.

Not because she feared seeing or hearing something she shouldn’t.

But because this was the only man in the kingdom capable of taking her papa away from her.

This man was the king.

Geysers . A bit more than five years her elder, then. But how did he look like he was twenty-five after all these years? He hadn’t looked so young in some of his portraits. He’d had gray in his hair in the ones of him and his last wife, Kerina. A few lines in his face.

They weren’t there now.

And those crystal blue eyes were boring straight into her. “Commander Rellon can show you both up.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Rellon stepped between her and Storm and motioned for them to follow.

She did so, but not without darting a glance at her cousin in the hopes of borrowing a bit of his strength.

He intercepted the glance and flashed her a small, strained smile. Good news , he clicked with the small device he always kept on his belt, in case they ended up underwater. Saves time.

Sure , she clicked back . Though she’d thought she’d have a few more hours, at least, to prepare herself to face the king.

The commander didn’t dawdle. He all but jogged up the steep salt-crystal stairs, and bowed the moment he reached the top of them.

The king and his friar friend had apparently come to intercept them. Arden bowed, too, as soon as she was atop the wall.

For that split second, while her attention was downward and she didn’t have to speak the words of horror yet, she let it hit her—the blast of wind from the water, the clear blue of the sky that she could feel even when she wasn’t looking up at it, the morning sun warming her neck.

The thrill of being up so high, higher than she’d ever been in her life.

Of knowing that if she raised her eyes, she’d be able to see things she’d never seen before.

None of it mattered. She straightened as Storm and Rellon did and lifted her gaze to the king’s face.

He’d been studying Storm, but his eyes swung to her, pierced. “Arden and Storm. I’ve heard much about both of you over the years. Tell me, how is Rico?”

He must not have overheard the first part of her tale to his commander, or he wouldn’t have to ask. She shook her head. “His wife lies in a coma, her future uncertain. His daughter has been kidnapped by the mer. If you know Papa, then you needn’t ask what that has done to him.”

The king’s face went from neutral to sorrowful to alarmed. “I wondered when I saw you why he wouldn’t have brought news himself. Do you have a crystal from him?”

Arden reached into her pouch and removed the crystal, setting it carefully into his outstretched palm.

He turned it over in his hand, as if holding it could reveal its secrets.

Then he nodded toward Rellon, which must have been a signal of dismissal, because the commander saluted, pivoted, and jogged back down the steps.

The king looked from Arden to Storm. “If you would join me? And please, tell me whatever you can while we walk.”

Her throat felt too tight to admit any words, which Storm must have sensed. He started the tale as best he could, though he’d not made it far when he had to pause and turn to Arden with a frown. “I’m still not clear on what happened when you first dove.”

Arden swallowed past the tightness. “We spotted something. It looked like a blade, but not like any we’ve found before. Newer. Shining. Silver, from the looks of it, or even platinum.”

“Shape?” The king’s word emerged business-like. Calm.

“Curved.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how else to describe it, though I sketched it as best I could last night. A scan is on the crystal.”

The king nodded and increased his pace, presumably to some sort of office that would have a data reader. “A curved silver blade. An Awakening Blade, perhaps?”

She shook her head. “Different curve. And there were…I don’t know. Symbols? Runes? Some sort of etching. I don’t recall them precisely, but I did my best on the sketch to give the impression, at least.”

“All right. Go on.”

“I saw a black scaled tail. I thought it was a fish in the shadows, but it was a mer.”

The king halted, though only for a second before he started forward again. Frowning. “Mer don’t wear black tails. They’re peculiar about their color choices. Black is linked strongly to death in their culture.”

He didn’t sound like he was doubting her word but rather inviting her to rethink her statement.

She lifted her brows. “I saw a black tail. And when they grabbed her as we tried to climb back into our boat and I dove in after her, I saw four mer soldiers in black tails.”

“We all did, Your Majesty,” Storm said. “They were definitely wearing black.”

The king didn’t pause this time, but he nodded and led them through a set of open glass doors.

The room beyond had the look of Papa’s office, only more.

Bigger, more luxurious, even though the furnishings were all deceptively simple—the kind of simple that one could only achieve with wealth.

He strode to the white desk and the data reader, inserting the crystal but not starting its playback.

Instead, he turned to them again. “Go on. Or rather, go back. How much time passed between when you first spotted the mer and when they grabbed your sister?”

“Not long. A few minutes. We had to hurry back to the boat for a bandage—”

“Why?” The king leaned forward, his hands braced on his desk and the muscles of his forearms taut. “Was she cut? On the blade?”

Urgency laced his words, which made her throat tighten and her stomach roil again. Arden nodded. “We both were. Just a bit. A few drops, that was all.”

“Both of you?” He was around the desk in a flash, hand outstretched. “Where? Let me see.”

She stood there like a moron long enough, open-jawed and not quite grasping what he expected, that Storm sighed in exasperation, grabbed the hand she’d injured, and held it out toward the king.

He took it gently, examining the all-but-invisible cut on her finger—and then, for some reason, her palm.

After a moment, he nodded and released her then met her gaze again.

“These drops of blood in the water. What did they look like? In the water, I mean? Clouds and streams or flourishes and curls?”

Oh, that was why he’d examined her finger and palm. If it had been an Awakening Blade, and if she’d had any magic for it to prime, it would have left a mark on her hand. Now he was asking her if her sister had been Awakened by that blade.

But how was she to know? It took skill to read the blood in the water, skill she’d never been trained to have. She could only shake her head. “I don’t know. I think—maybe? I don’t know.”

He muttered something she couldn’t make out, straightening again. “Go on.”

She tried to get through the rest of the story quickly, but he kept interrupting her, asking for more details, clarification, or reasons she’d not paused to examine before.

Why would there have been four mer to take one nineteen-year-old girl?

Why were her legs limp the last time Arden had seen her?

Had her sister been cut again? Was the blade perchance black?

His silence when she told him about the sea hawk stretched long enough to make her wonder if he questioned her sanity. But he didn’t glance to Storm for corroboration—which Storm would have given. He let the words hover in the room for a long minute and then glanced to the side.

The friar. Arden had almost forgotten he was there. He looked older even than their village priest, nothing but a ring of white fluff around the back of his head to hint at hair, spectacles in front of his eyes, and wrinkles all around them to speak to many years of smiles.

She liked him immediately. She hadn’t known many friars in her life—their village chapel had long been served by a different order, and she hadn’t even realized as a child that all friars were priests, though not all priests were friars—but they’d all been kind to a fault, and this one looked like he was too.

The king cleared his throat, sat in the chair behind the desk, and pressed the button on the data player. “Sit, please,” he said as Papa’s official seal flashed into the air above the reader.

“Do I have to?” She didn’t mean to speak the words—they just came out, even as Storm moved to a chair. Her cousin flashed her a pleading, exasperated look she had no trouble interpreting. Arden, can’t you do the expected thing for even a second?

The king tilted his head, studying her. “Your father never liked to sit during tense situations either. And your mother, if I recall from the two times we met, hated being indoors. Please, feel free to move about as best suits you.” He motioned toward the open glass doors, the wide windows.

It was a bit disconcerting, being sized up so quickly, and based not on her, but on her parents’ behavior in years before she was even born. Still, he’d pegged her in that single glance of his. She nodded and moved to the doors while he played the message from Papa.

She didn’t need to see it again anyway. She’d helped him compose every piece of it last night, between bouts of crying over Mama and Jade.

She still heard the audio playing, of course, and she wasn’t willing to leave the doorway to escape those too-familiar, too-true, too-horrific words her father’s voice delivered.

But she was glad when the spoken message was over.

The king would be looking at the attached visual records now. Her sketch of the blade. Of the mer. Everything she’d been able to remember. She was no artist—not like Mama—but she’d been able to get down the pertinent details, anyway.

The silence stretched, strained.

And finally broke. The king’s voice spun her around again to face him. “This is serious,” he said, exactly as she’d known he would. He thought for another interminable moment before he met Storm’s gaze and her own.

Would he have a plan of action so soon? If he did, would he share it with them? Or would he thank them for coming and dismiss them back to the Banks?

She hoped for the last. Well, a combination of the two, actually. She wanted to know what he was planning, but she wanted to be home with Papa and Mama while he enacted whatever it was.

Which was why his words made no sense at all to her mind. “Did you two bring your clothing for the ball?”