Page 15 of Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

15

Claira

S tay here?

Yeah, like I was really going to just stay where he put me.

I lifted one end of the net Leander had tossed to the floor and ran my fingers over its frayed edges. “Well, I think that merman might be the last fish you ever see, my friend.”

I pictured the shark’s lacerated skin, caught and wound up in a similar net, and suppressed a shudder. Balling the net up in my hands, I worked it into one giant knot as I peeked out from the edge of the shower curtain.

Unfortunately, it looked like some of the crowd had lingered even after the spectacle had ended. With the way the mermaids were snickering amongst themselves, it was apparent that seeing their crown prince return home naked in the middle of the night made for a nice impromptu social event. Fantastic.

Not that I could blame any of them for sticking around to see the next crazy thing that would inevitably happen now that my existence had thrown their unfortunate little castaway lives into chaos. Was Leander telling his father about what a circus freak I was right now?

I shuddered again, recalling the cold way King Eamon had addressed his son in front of the entire kingdom. Watching Leander’s usually confident demeanor crumble underneath his father’s gaze had nearly broken me, too. Why had I let him go without me?

He was clearly anxious about meeting with his father. Terrified, even. And still, I’d let him walk out of here alone.

My hands tightened around the net.

What harm was there in waiting near the storeroom door for them to finish? The net needed to be thrown out before it found its way back into the ocean anyway.

Making up my mind, I slipped through the curtain, only to pause when a small merfry caught my attention with an enthusiastic swing of her hand. Waving at me from the opposite side of the king’s platform, she poked her head further out from the bottom of a neon pink sheet and shot me a toothy grin through a tangled mane of bed-mussed hair. Although it was obvious she’d recently awoken, her freckled face was brimming with energy, as if she was absolutely elated to have a reason to be up before the sun.

The child started toward me, shimmying across the concrete one elbow at a time, until her stone-faced father threw back the sheet and snatched her up by an ankle.

“Oh, no you don’t,” his tired voice scolded, but there was a trace of humor in the curves of his eyebrows as he slid her back into the room on her belly. “It’s back to bed for you, little sea squirt.”

“Oh, come on! ” the child whined, waving her arms in dramatic exasperation. “But Papa!”

“No buts. This isn’t any business for meddling sea squirts. Back to bed.”

She folded her arms and harrumphed in defeat. “I never get to see anything!”

It wasn’t until the curtain fell back into place that I realized I’d stopped just to watch their exchange.

Papa , she’d said, and the word had struck me like a loaded cannon. Suddenly, I couldn’t help but feel anxious about a child I didn’t even know.

What if her father woke up one day and decided her spirited little personality was too much of a burden for him to handle? Would he take the easy way out and abandon her, too?

I shook the thought away.

No, not all mermen treated their children like my birth father had. Leander certainly wouldn’t.

Wait— Why was I thinking about what kind of father Leander would be?

Heat rolled up my neck as I shook that thought away, too. A couple of kisses, and I’d already lost my mind.

I had to focus on the mission. I ducked my head and hurried past the platform, weaving my way through what was left of the crowd. My nerves seemed to twist tighter with each mer I passed, my eyes darting to find anyone bold enough to stop me.

There was no way I’d let them cage me again without a fight. And if they’d hammered the walls back together, I’d already hidden knives under the cage’s bottom slats. I’d even tied a knife in the middle of the blanket Leander had left there for me, just in case. My lips softened into a grin, and I dipped my head down even further to conceal it.

Let them try to catch me. Nerida might have been a pushover, but Claira was as slippery as a mullet. They’d have to be clever if they wanted to keep me.

My eyes drifted over to the door to storeroom 2B as I passed it, and I wondered what would happen if I knocked. Just imagining how furious King Eamon would be if I interrupted their conversation made my skin crawl.

Even Leander’s hands were trembling when he’d left, and I couldn’t blame him. King Eamon scared me, too.

But he was Leander’s father, so surely he wouldn’t be too harsh with his son? Especially now that we knew the effect I had on their curse. It wouldn’t be long before the trident was back in King Eamon’s hands and I could finally put my past behind me for good.

I passed through the rolled-up door to the warehouse and hurried out onto the gravel before anyone could stop me. A car was still parked in front of the door, and I eyed the dark tinted windows as I snuck past, wondering where the king’s captains had taken the two visitors from earlier.

If they were unfortunate enough to receive similar treatment as I had, well, I hoped the captains had more pallets handy. Especially since one shadow had looked remarkably massive when the warehouse lights had flashed on, though I hadn’t seen much before King Eamon’s voice pulled my eyes away. Something about the coldness of his presence commanded your full attention. Like you couldn’t quite trust that he wouldn’t strike you down if you happened to turn away.

A “ NO SMOKING ” decal clung to the passenger-side window, and my jaw slackened in wonder. I swung around to look at the license plate, just to verify my suspicion.

A rental.

That was unexpected.

Were these visitors really from another ocean kingdom? It seemed unlikely a mer could hop on a plane or figure out how to rent a car, let alone put up the credit card to reserve one. Maybe Leander was wrong and these weren’t merfolk at all.

A strong draft hit me, and I spun toward the ocean on instinct. Moonlight brightened the clouds in the distance, and I followed their silver wisps until my eyes settled on the dark water of the harbor.

Suddenly stricken, I wondered how long it had been since the night Papa carried me out into open water. A night much like this one.

I took another step toward the harbor.

There were many things I’d forgotten about my childhood, but that was one moment I’d never forget.

Some nights, I could still see the kingdom’s amber-lit lanterns when I closed my eyes, like their magic had etched the image into my eyelids. Would they still haunt me if I hadn’t watched them glow in the distance that night, the first and last time I could remember swimming after the call of the feast horns?

I remembered looking over Papa’s shoulder as we left the safety of the kingdom’s walls, his strong tail propelling us closer to the forbidden place where the water turned into shadows with each quick stroke. I’d been so curious—excited, even—for the adventure my papa had promised me when we’d first slipped through the gates that night.

Had I been more of a burden that day than others? I’d played it over endlessly, but the answer never came.

That morning had started like any other: a trip to the palace where I spent the greater part of the day watching the royal staff swim past me like I wasn’t there at all.

I was so innocent back then. Stupid. Happy. Not a care in the world.

I’d smiled at each face that darted by, clinging to the small sack of pearls at my hip just in case some mer were to take pity on a captain’s useless daughter and indulge me with a round or two of shooters.

Had Leander come around that day? That was one detail I couldn’t recall. I’d rarely let him touch my pearls anyway, fearing he’d snatch them away from me if he lost.

Was it when Papa adjusted me, exchanging one resting spot on his shoulder for another, that I noticed I’d left my precious sack behind that night?

“Papa, can we go back? I forgot to grab my pearls,” I’d said, because if I didn’t have my shooters with me, then what else did I have? “What if I meet a mermaid while we’re gone and she wants to play with me?”

His tail had stalled, and I’d thought for one delightful moment he might turn back to get them when he shot forward again.

“… There are no pearls where we’re going.”

I let out a bitter laugh as the scene played out in my head. He’d been wrong, of course—there were pearls on land. Not a foolish merfry’s bag of polished beads or necklaces at jewelry stores, but something much more precious—Dad and Gram.

“I suppose I should thank him,” I snorted under my breath as I backtracked, heading for the dumpster on the side of the warehouse.

There was one thing I had brought to the surface with me, though. The one thing my birth father had forgotten to strip away from me before he threw me away like trash: my mother’s hairpin.

That was my one petty revenge, because if he had ever truly loved anyone, it had been her. She was practically all he talked about, filling my imagination with stories of her grace. Her loveliness. Always ending each tale by recalling the way he’d spotted her singing to an audience of jellyfish the morning they first met, as if I hadn’t already listened to the same story the night before.

As nice as that might have sounded to a na?ve child, I now saw it for what it was. Nonsense.

She was my mother, and I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t even recognize her if she stood in front of me now. Whenever I tried to recall what she looked like, all I got was a vague impression of a blank face crowned with an inferno of red hair. Because apparently, beauty and a pleasant voice was all that really mattered, and staying with your daughter and the merman you supposedly loved just wasn’t in a mermaid’s nature.

“Mermaids are like waves,” Papa had told me. “They aren’t meant to be stagnant. It goes against their nature.”

It was always nature this, nature that with merfolk. Like the excuse somehow made up for being a shitty parent.

Yeah, well, it didn’t. And the day my real dad gave me my new name, I’d used my nature of vengeance to throw that precious hairpin Papa had adored so much, along with my ocean silks, back into the sea. Then I’d promised myself I’d never dwell on them again.

And yet, here I was, ripping open old wounds.

I let my frustration out by kicking at the gravel at my feet. Rocks hit the side of the dumpster, and I sighed as I tossed the net into the opened top.

The putrid scent of stale vomit hit me, making my nose scrunch up. Well, maybe a dumpster wasn’t the best place to linger around recalling childhood traumas.

I spun around, and the odor nearly choked me.

“YOU,” Papa said, stumbling a step forward.

It was him. Right here. Towering over me.

Before I even realized it, my feet were moving me back, and my spine had flattened against the side of the dumpster.

His head teetered like a metronome as he tried to focus down on me. Dark craters sank underneath his eyes, aging him more than a hundred years could. By the way his eyelids drooped, he clearly hadn’t sobered up much in the last few hours.

“They don’t know what I know!” He bellowed out each word in an alternate octave. Honestly, with the way his breath reeked of stomach acid and rum, it was impressive he could even string together a coherent sentence.

“Oh—” My voice cracked, and I had to clear my throat. “Oh yeah?” I challenged back. “And what do you know?”

Papa tried to lean closer, but the bulk of his shoulders seemed to drag him forward, and he spun a quick circle to keep his balance.

His eyes cocked to the left and to the right before pointing in some vague direction, sort of looking at me, maybe. And then they weren’t at all.

“You might look like a mermaid , ” he whisper-shouted to the wall next to me, “but you don’t —”

“Hey there,” a smooth voice cut in, and I felt a protective arm hook around me, pulling me out from underneath Papa’s shadow. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The stranger’s arm relaxed over me, resting lightly on my shoulder like we were the very best of friends, and I had no idea what to think. Drunken bastards were one thing, but this?

“Wow. You’re a big dude,” the man chuckled in amazement as he playfully thumped Papa across the chest. There was a restless energy about his movements, which seemed to make it even harder for Papa’s eyes to pin him down. “Too bad my dude is even bigger.”

I felt the arm around me shrug as a dark silhouette came into view in the moonlight, towering above Papa’s great height.

An arm drew around Papa’s middle and holy —it looked like it belonged in a book about myths and legends. Impossibly built muscles wrapped around my birth father like he was literally nothing , and a strained sound gurgled from Papa’s throat as those muscles lifted him right off his feet.

“My—My daughter,” Papa choked out, and then he suddenly fell back as his captor flung him over a shoulder. The barge of a man began to turn, and I could feel his dark eyes rake over me as he moved, spinning Papa along with him. With a body built like that, there was no way he wasn’t a merman. Magic was the only rational explanation for shoulders so magnificently spaced apart. Wow .

“Your daughter?” the man next to me asked, and I had to rein in some drool so I could try to explain. Before I could start, his fingers began drumming a sprightly beat on my shoulder. “We just confirmed with the Atlantic’s official record-keeper that your daughter is deceased, Captain Galen. Her remains were lost to the ocean. Tragic.” He cocked his head just enough to throw me a knowing grin. “We can’t verify the records on land, of course, but I have no reason to doubt your scribe. He seemed like a pretty cool dude.”

A heavy footstep crunched over rocks, drawing my eyes back to the second stranger as he carried Papa away.

“He… he isn’t going to hurt him, is he?” I stammered, watching Papa’s arms dangle over the other man’s shoulder, flopping like wet noodles with each step.

“Barren? Oh no. He’s more bark than bite. Well, actually, he doesn’t bark all that much either. I guess you could say he’s more body than mouth. I’m Kai, by the way.”

“Kai,” I repeated, shrugging out of his friendly half-hug. “Thanks for, um, stepping in, I guess.” Eyes as clear as crystals beamed at me, and I wasn’t sure whether to run away or smile back. “But I could have handled him myself.”

“Oh yeah? My bad,” he said, grinning as he fished down into his front pocket. “But save the praise for after we rescue you.”

He pulled out a ring of car keys and jingled them in the air. “Nice to meet you, Nerida Galen. Are you ready to go for a ride?”