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“It’s what we can do personally, anyway. My Guards will patrol the waters nearest the Sunken Cities for any evidence they can find, and I’ll put out a signal to my own spies to report.”

Well that got their attention.

“You have spies?” Storm.

“In the Sunken Kingdom? But how? Humans can’t fake acting like a mer.” Arden.

Seidon granted that with a tilt of his head. “I will say it again. Take off their tails and they are just people. Human. All of us. But your point is still valid, yes. Hence why we recruited sympathetic mer.”

They stared at him. He chuckled. “You seem surprised. You are aware, I trust, that I am half mer myself? That I have extended family living under the waves? That both my parents, each half mer, had friends there?”

“Wouldn’t those friends and relatives be the first to be suspected?” Storm asked.

He clearly had a good head on his shoulders. Seidon would have to send a message to Rico soon, asking what his hopes were for him. When Sapphire was out of the woods, of course. Recruitment could wait.

Seidon nodded. “Of course. But they are still people of influence. They run universities and academies. They sit on councils and further the arts. They meet countless people. And when they meet the right person…”

“So someone could know if Jade is there.” Arden sounded relieved at the thought.

It was his turn to pause. He didn’t want to give her false hope—but he didn’t want to strip her of it, either.

“I will ask them to watch for her. But do remember, I beg of you, that we call them the Sunken Cities . Plural. There are millions of people living beneath the waves, spread under a vast ocean. Some of them are connected, but not most. It takes days to travel between them. And then searching within the multitudes for one land-dweller…” He shook his head.

Arden sighed. “Like searching out one particular grain of sand in a sandcastle.”

“But there’s hope. I have to think, from what you’ve told me, that it’s someone with power who’s interested in your sister. That limits our search parameters. Their capital city, or where a royal is living.”

She and Storm nodded, though Arden’s face fell again. She focused her gaze on the floor, and her fingers curled into her palm, like she’d been doing when arguing with Commander Rellon. “It kills me that I can’t go after her,” she admitted in a whisper.

A feeling he could well understand. There was always, always something outside of one’s power. And it was always the thing that mattered most. He rounded his desk, stopped before her, and clasped a hand to her upper arm.

She winced, pain flashing fast across her face before she quelled it.

He dropped his hand. No doubt she’d sustained bruises from yesterday’s struggle, poor thing. He hadn’t meant to cause her any more pain. “I’m sorry,” he said, of both the physical and emotional. “But we’ll find your sister. We’ll sort this all out. I promise.”

The way Enoch shifted was a silent rebuke. Seidon shouldn’t promise to give what was in the Triada’s hands alone.

Seidon knew that. But in this particular case…he needed to find Jade as much as she did. To see if she…

Arden offered him a small, tight smile, and stepped toward her cousin. “Thank you, Your Majesty. You can’t know…you can’t know what it means to us.”

He knew better than anyone. He’d lost more loved ones than most people ever had—generation upon generation of them.

It never got easier.

He looked beyond her. “Alexei?” When one of the palace Guards stepped into the room from his station in the corridor outside, Seidon said, “Would you please see Lady Arden and Mister Bleu to the wardrobe wing? I daresay the tailors and seamstresses will have something suitable for them for tonight’s ball.

And please instruct someone to deliver them to the rooms reserved for the Bleu family afterward. ”

“Of course, Your Majesty. If you two would follow me?”

They went, and Seidon followed them out with his gaze.

He noted the uncertainty in the look the cousins exchanged— neither seemed to like the mention of a “wardrobe wing,” which made his lips twitch.

But he also noted how they walked close together, their strides matched. Friends. In sync with each other.

He didn’t miss, either, the last look Arden darted over her shoulder at Seidon. There was too much in her eyes for him to decode it all, but he could almost feel the tension in her chest.

Her sister was missing, kidnapped, and she would have to go to a ball. But she would do anything to help Jade. She was willing to trust Seidon to know how best to do that.

He prayed he wouldn’t let her down. He nodded his silent promise. Let loose a sigh only when they were out of sight. And dismissed Lee with another motion of his hand.

Enoch came to his side. “Are you thinking what I assume you’re thinking? That the kidnapped girl could be the one you sensed yesterday?”

Seidon slowly drew his air back in. He didn’t know whether to shrug or nod so did neither. “It’s possible. Or it could have been one of the mer.”

“A mer with magic that strong must be under the control of the royal house though. The queen doesn’t give them choice like you do. If that’s the case, then it would mean the royal house was behind the kidnapping.”

A possibility he couldn’t discount. “Honestly, the queen wouldn’t let a mer with magic as strong as what I felt continue to live. Not unless it were her own heir. She would consider it a threat to her power. So, I don’t think so. I don’t think it was a mer.”

“Then you have a name, at least. Jade Bleu.”

“Calimore. Jericho never adopted her, in order to preserve the name of her father.” Seidon turned back to the data crystal and flipped through the contents until he came to the image of the young woman that Jericho had included.

Alabaster skin, red hair, eyes as green as her name suggested.

Beautiful, without question. Gorgeous, even.

But that was all the crystal could tell him.

It gave no hint of her heart, of her soul.

Of her blood. It couldn’t tell him if she was already in love with Storm.

It couldn’t tell him if she were the one who had called to him.

It couldn’t tell him if he would love her.

He shut the crystal off with a swipe of his hand and tossed it into the drawer with the water lock that only he could open. “Nothing like a crisis of state to liven up a birthday celebration, I suppose.”

“You think it’s that? A crisis of state? Not just one more unfortunate kidnapping?”

“A random kidnapping wouldn’t have been done this way. No.” He strode over to the bank of windows, letting his eyes feast on the sea that sang in his veins. “They tested her for magic first. Why would they do that?”

And the black tails—that was what really gave him pause.

There had been Black Tails once before. A thousand years ago, when the first Sea King had tried to assert his authority above and beneath the waves.

When he’d enslaved every other person who showed any signs of magic.

When he’d terrorized the entire world—or as much of it as he could reach, anyway.

Before Seidon’s great-grandmother had wrested the power from his hands.

Others had tried first. On land, yes, always failing.

And in the sea. The Black Tails had arisen to embody what their color stood for—death. Death to anyone who tried to control them. Death to any who got in their way.

They’d won freedom for the mer from the Sea King but had used it only to set up their own rule. They might have put their green or blue tails back on, but the stain of blood had never been obliterated from the royal family.

And now they were back.

Seidon braced his arm against the window frame and tried to find them in the water. It was useless, he knew that. But still he tried.

“Are you going to tell me what else has you frowning so or leave me to guess? I know—it’s the dread of your new suit for this evening’s ball. Afraid the collar will be too tight?”

Seidon tossed an amused look at his old friend. “If only that were my biggest concern. No. It’s the Black Tails.”

Enoch frowned. “You say that as if it’s a thing and not merely a color choice.”

“You don’t know that history?” He was surprised. Enoch was one of the most learned men he knew. Of course, even so, he’d only had one lifetime in which to study, and there were many millennia of history to try to learn. Seidon filled him in, watching dark understanding stir in the friar’s eyes.

“The death demons,” Enoch muttered when Seidon paused. “Of course. I’d forgotten their other name and what they wore, but I remember the old stories.”

Seidon opened his mouth to argue about the demon part but stopped himself.

They’d earned the name when they’d killed without mercy.

And they’d flaunted it with pride. “I don’t know what to think about this sudden reappearance.

Is it truly another squadron of ‘death demons,’ as you call them? Commissioned by the queen? If so…”

“If so, then the lovely Jade Calimore is the least of your concerns. Because it would mean war.”

Seidon turned his gaze to the sea again. “Happy birthday to me.”