Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

6

Claira

L eander stepped next to me, shadowing me with his colossal height. Holy —Had he been this much taller than me when we were younger?

Swallowing my nerves, I snatched his wrist and made for the front door. He followed without protest, his gait easily matching mine. If I hadn’t been so worried about Gram seeing us, I might have been impressed by how solidly he moved on his legs.

When we reached the front door, I swung it open without incident. Without looking back, I leaped for the walkway, Leander’s heavy footsteps sounding from my flank as the door crept shut behind us.

We raced through the dunes, my eyes checking every angle for any sign of Dad as we went. A streak of turquoise caught in my peripherals, and Leander passed me with a chuckle, that infuriating grin of his smeared over his face.

How was he so quick on his feet?

Doubling my efforts, I sprinted fast enough to pass him, leaving him in a cloud of sand I’d kicked up from the heels of my feet. When we finally reached the shore, my nervousness had all but vanished. My chest heaved in breaths as we both slowed to an abrupt stop.

Lady Ochre wasn’t where I had left her, which meant either this was the day pirates had finally raided us or, more likely, Dad had taken her out on a cruise. Sadly, it was never pirates, but I held out hope that one day I’d get to watch Gram brandish her great-great-grandfather’s pirate pistol.

I froze in place, my toes planted in the dry land, as I watched the waves ebb and flow.

Idiot, I cursed, gnawing at my lip. I’d gone down to the ocean with shorts on and, worst of all, barefoot.

I needed to be careful not to let any damp sand touch my bare toes—if enough salt water were to touch my legs, the unthinkable would happen.

Damn. It had been years since I’d made such a foolish mistake. I practically lived in my boots and thermal overalls at home, but it had been so hot in my room with the heater on!

When Leander stepped beside me to peer out at the ocean, my eyes drifted over to him. Sure, exercise had brought color back to his complexion, but he still looked absolutely ridiculous.

My pajama pants were way too short for him, their stiff hemline dusting halfway down his calf. Between that and his bare, hairless chest, I was soaking up enough sun-kissed skin to make my eyes burn. Looking at him was like gazing at a freaking supernova.

I drew a line from his sandy feet up to the side of his shoulder with my eyes. That was interesting. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but how had he gotten so tan?

“You, uh, come up to land often?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

His eyebrows rose into his fringe as he turned from the ocean. “Why? Want me to come back to visit?”

I toed some sand at his feet, rolling my eyes. “You know what I mean. How are you so good with your legs?”

“There are lots of things I’m good at,” he laughed, the same velvety rumble I was growing to both love and hate simultaneously. “Besides ‘forcing mermaids to play with me whenever I wanted.’ Is that how you said it?” He kicked a cloud of sand right back at me.

“Okay, pretty boy,” I sighed. “It’s been real fun saving your life and all that, but feel free to swim on home now. I’ve got work to do on the boat later.”

“I don’t see a boat,” he said, his eyes scanning the horizon. “You mentioned catching me in a net. You were on a boat, then?”

“Yeah, I pulled you into it, though I still don’t know how I lifted you up that high. You are heavier than a freaking anchor.”

That got a chuckle, but he made no attempt at leaving. What was with the small talk? Was he stalling or something?

“So, where is it? You let other people paddle off with your boat?”

I let out a long, heavy sigh. Leander was definitely stalling. “No, Lady Ochre belongs to whoever is at her helm. When that’s me and I’m her captain, she’s my responsibility. The same whenever my dad or Gram takes her out. But seriously, are you afraid of the water now? Do you need me to push you in or something?”

I nudged his shoulder, but he didn’t budge.

“When was the last time you used your tail, Nera?”

“None of your business,” I snapped. Just like that, I’d suddenly had enough of our little heartfelt reunion.

Pivoting in the sand, I stormed off toward Dad’s house. Leander was a grown-ass merman. He didn’t need a sendoff. I had only gone down to the shore with him to make sure no one had seen him and—

“Wait.”

A hand locked around my wrist, effortlessly pulling me back to him. Oh, now I was really pissed.

“Let go of me,” I growled, visualizing going back in time and chucking him into the ocean. Hindsight really was 20/20.

“Wait,” he repeated, his voice smoothing over like he was about to work some more of that merman charm of his. “I have to show you something before you leave, since you might not know yet.”

Leander padded down the shore, attempting to drag me with him, but I sank my heels into the sand. I couldn’t go to the water; I had shorts on, and my feet were bare! I—I couldn’t .

Helplessness shattered me, bringing me down from my human pedestal and reducing me to a worthless nine-year-old mermaid.

“Let go of me, Lee!”

I struggled to pull back, but it was no use. He had the strength of a freaking bull shark.

“Please, I—I can’t.” My voice wavered as tears sprung to my lashes, but he kept pressing forward, determined to drag me closer to the tide. It wasn’t until an audible sob wrenched from my throat that he let go of my wrist, sending me crumbling in the sand.

“You asshole! ” I glared up at him through my tears. “I am not a mermaid! Whatever it is you want to show me, I—I don’t care about any of it. Go back by yourself, and leave me alone!”

When I noticed the damp sand clinging to my feet, my pulse raced, and I scrambled backward in the sand. I couldn’t change. Not now, not ever, and especially not in front of him!

I wasn’t a mermaid. I was useless as a mermaid. I was Claira, Dad’s precious daughter—nothing more and, more importantly, nothing less.

As the panic bubbled over, a hand came up under my chin. Warmth cupped my cheek as Leander tilted my face to the sky. He knelt in front of me, his eyes carefully searching mine, but I squeezed my eyes shut to sever our connection.

If I could have gone back in time, I would have never even gone out on the boat this morning. I would have traded anything if it meant I never had to worry about seeing him again.

“I’m sorry, Nera.”

For someone who had just tried to pull me into the water without my consent, his voice sounded gentler than it should have.

“Really, I am.” As he spoke, warm puffs of breath stroked over the front of my neck, kindling my outrage.

What gave him the right to lean in so close, comforting me with his soft words and stupid-pretty face? He was no better than a stranger to me, and yet he had the audacity to say we were the same and pretend we were once friends .

“Could you sit right here for me, Nera?” I jerked as his thumb brushed across my cheek, but his wide palm eased back to my chin, letting the rough pad wipe away the trail of moisture a tear had left behind. “I need to show you this before I leave.”

Leander’s hand fell away as he ambled backward, taking blind steps toward the ocean. Without missing a beat, his hands went to the waistband of the flannel pajamas. My breath caught.

Two thumbs hooked underneath the fabric, and with a flick of his wrists, turquoise and black fell away from his hips.

My hands clenched fists of sand as he stepped free from the flannel.

Kicking them aside, he continued his backward walk to the ocean. I held his gaze, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing my eyes wander. Not that they would—I didn’t give a damn about him or his bloated sea cucumber.

“Just watch,” he called back as he spun around.

A wave crashed along the shore, the water barely reaching his ankles, and his entire body shuddered.

In the time it took my eyes to span from his ankles to the rounded globes of his bare ass, Leander vanished.

“What the—?” I scrambled up in the sand, searching the water in disbelief. Where was he? The water was so shallow here that there was no way he could have darted into deep water that fast. Surely I would have seen his tail.

My eyes caught a shimmer of movement near the place he’d stood, and I took a cautious step forward, wondering what it could mean. My toes gradually sank as the sand became damp, but I pressed forward, wrestling with the urge to turn back and forget about him.

Rising to my tiptoes, I saw it.

Saw him .

A golden tail flopped in the sand, the fin connected to a tiny fish struggling on its side.

As a child, Leander’s tail had been the brilliant color of sunshine, though I hadn’t even known about the sun the first time I saw it. I still remembered how the tendrils at the end of his fin were streaked with a radiant gold that glistened even underneath the waves. Out of all the merfolk in the Atlantic, the color had made him and his father easy enough to identify in a crowd. It was a flashy, regal color befitting a prince.

Although the color was the same, there was nothing regal about how his tail looked now.

The tiny fish bounded toward me, a wave washing it forward a few inches, only for it to be sucked right back with the ebbing of the tide. The current swept the fish into a tiny puddle, and the poor thing rounded quick circles like a caged animal before flopping out onto the wet sand again.

I knew a thing or two about fish, and this wasn’t one that belonged in the ocean. No, bettas were a hardy fish, but they thrived solely in freshwater—a fact that made them a popular pet choice for children.

“Leander?” I choked out, keeping to the tips of my toes. If I got any closer, my legs would transform, and I’d be just as helpless in the water as he apparently was.

The fish kept fighting the tide, springing up the shore in frenzied spurts between waves. Inch by inch he struggled until finally, he flopped close enough for me to reach out to him. But I didn’t.

Finally free from the onslaught of waves, the little betta fish stilled in the sand at my feet.

I loomed over him, watching his tiny gills gape as he struggled to breathe in the open air.

“ Pathetic. ” I couldn’t help it. I burst into a crazy fit of laughter.

He had just stripped down in front of me so, so dramatically and—and this? This definitely hadn’t been what I’d expected from him when he insisted on showing me something.

“A betta fish!” I reeled back on the balls of my feet, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. This time, the tears were not from my emotions, but from the absurdity of it all. A fish.

His dorsal fin flared, but he stayed on his side, clearly exhausted from escaping the pull of the waves. I had to admit it was quite the impressive feat. Leander sure was a spirited little fishy.

“The Crown Prince of the Atlantic is an itty-bitty betta.” I huffed, breathless and struggling to compose myself.

I smacked my forehead, remembering how I’d caught him earlier in my net. “And I thought I’d lifted you. Damn . Well, I did lift you. But not you-you, I lifted fish-you. Man, and I was so freaking proud of myself, too.”

With an abrupt pop , a naked man was at my feet.

The force generated from the transformation hit me like a tidal wave, knocking me flat on my ass. Leander gasped loudly for air and shook the seawater from his hair like a shaggy dog fresh from the bath.

“Hey!” I snapped, but the spray of salt water had already landed on both of my bare legs. “Oh…”

My skin shuddered, the flesh ripping and pulling with a sensation that still haunted me in my nightmares.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” he sputtered out while rising onto his knees in the sand, but I was no longer listening.

Denim split with a loud rip, and my shorts practically exploded off me as my legs began to fuse. Poseidon help me.

Cerulean scales erupted through my skin, sparkling a blinding blue as they caught rays of sunlight reflecting off the water. It should have been painful. It should have torn me apart. But it hadn’t. The sensation of my legs coming together as one gave me a rush like no other, making me feel alive . Another loud snap of my bones, and the long stretch of a mermaid’s tail rested in the sand where my legs had just been.

“Nera,” Leander said, awe transforming his face. “How did you—?”

My ears were ringing. The cadence of my pulse drowned out his voice, making him sound far away. Not that anything he had to say mattered right now.

I’d been so careful up until today. It’d been years since I’d last made a mistake. Terror took hold, paralyzing me where I sat in the sand.

Now I was useless, unable to summon a single muscle that would move my fin. It was beautiful, so beautiful, but so utterly worthless . I couldn’t bear to look at it for even a second longer.

Cradling my face in the crook of my elbow, I sobbed.

“Nerida?” Arms pulled around me, dragging me somewhere through the sand, but it didn’t matter anymore, and I did nothing to stop it. I was useless, so useless as a mermaid—

“Claira?”

I flinched at the sound of my name. Leander was in front of me, carefully draping the flannel pajamas over my tail.

I knew I should have answered him, but I didn’t know what to say. He wouldn’t understand my tears. This excruciating flood of emotions. Legs or fins, he was whole and perfect. Literal royalty.

His hand smoothed over the back of my head, his fingers gently stroking through my hair. “You’re amazing,” he whispered, and the surprise of it made me pull away from his touch.

“I’m what? ” I said with a hiccup.

“You know what I said.”

As he leaned back in the sand, I sucked in a sharp breath, realizing that he was completely naked in front of me. Flinging the pajamas at him, I shielded my tear-stained eyes with my elbow again. “C-cover yourself up, pervert!”

“Oh, so I’m a pervert now?” He chuckled, his feet shifting in the sand. I silently prayed he was putting the pants back on, but I refused to look and see for myself.

“I guess it was perverted of me, thinking that you might want to put them on when—” He paused as the bones in my fin cracked, my tail wrenching in two. “Yeah, when that happened.”

I gaped at my naked legs, completely stunned. I tried stretching my T-shirt down, but it wasn’t anywhere near long enough to cover what needed to be covered. My eyes flashed back to him, horrified that he might have looked, but he wasn’t looking at my waist.

Leander stared me down, a shit-eating grin slapped across his face. His blue eyes looked brighter when he smiled like that, the image bringing me back to when he used to tease me under the waves. I hated his tilted grin so much when we were younger, but somehow now, I—

“Bet you wish you hadn’t called me a pervert now, huh?” he teased, “’cause now I’m tempted to act the part.” Balling up the flannel pajamas, he held them hostage behind his back, his mortal manhood hanging on display for any passerby to see.

My cheeks were on fire. I had never felt so embarrassed. Seeing him was one thing, but him seeing me? I wasn’t like him. I didn’t go around spewing flowery words and flaunting a pretty face.

He chuckled for a moment before dropping down in the sand next to me. Though he was respectfully keeping his chin up, the asshole didn’t even look embarrassed. Not even a bit.

“This is your fault,” I groaned, desperately raking sand onto my lap. Leander mimicked the motion and began pulling handfuls from behind us until we were both sitting like foolish children, our legs halfway buried in the sand.

The salty breeze teased through his tawny hair, and he cleared his throat, pressing his eyes shut whenever the air picked up. I watched his mouth ease open half a dozen times while we sat. Was he unsure of what to do next? That made two of us.

“So, what did you think of my transformation?”

Oh—that’s right. I’d nearly forgotten.

A vision of the betta fish sprung to mind, but instead of getting the urge to laugh, questions swirled in my mind. What had happened to him between now and when we were younger?

“I’m sorry I laughed,” I said with a shrug, not really feeling sorry at all. Whatever had caused the switch from attractive merman to pathetic betta fish, well, he probably deserved it.

Leander took a deep breath, the broad line of his shoulders slumping as he released it. “Something happened seven months ago.”

“Oh?” My head tilted. Seven months seemed like a long time to be a fish.

“No one knows why, but everyone in the kingdom was sapped of most of their magic all at once. It was like our powers were sealed off or… I don’t know.” His hands moved as he spoke, absently piling more sand over my lap. “After most of us washed up on shore, my father rounded us up, and we saved everyone that we could. We’ve been rebuilding up here on land ever since.”

“So you’re saying the Kingdom of the Atlantic was somehow cursed? ” It was absurd to think anyone possessed that sort of command over the seas. One would think only Poseidon himself could strip merfolk of the powers he’d given them. But that made little sense. Why would Poseidon curse his own followers?

Leander eased back in the sand on his palms. “Not just our kingdom, but every kingdom in the entire ocean. We’ve been in contact with the Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern, and it’s the same everywhere. We’ve been reduced to stupid fish. None of us are strong enough to swim down to see what’s left of our kingdoms.”

“Well, I mean, you were a betta fish. It shouldn’t be too surprising that you don’t do well in the ocean as a freshwater fish.” I shrugged. It made sense merfolk wouldn’t know much about freshwater fish. I hadn’t known about them either until I started living on land.

Leander brushed the sand from his palms and raised a golden eyebrow. “A betta fish, eh? Well, whatever fish it is, it’s a real bitch to use its gills underwater.”

I stifled a laugh. The pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling into place. I had a good idea of how he’d ended up in my net. Like an idiot, he’d probably tried to swim down to the palace himself.

“But that doesn’t matter anymore. Not now that we have you.” His lips broadened into a grin, and he placed a hand over mine in the sand.

“Wait, what? ”

“You just saw it, Nera! Err, I mean, Claira. Your tail. With you, we might be able to figure out what’s going on down there. Maybe even fix whatever is causing this curse,” he announced, completely serious, not a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

Snapping my hand out of his grip, I wrung it out in front of me and frowned. “You’re crazy. I’m not going anywhere near the water, and I’m definitely not going to be fixing any curses.”

Going back to the ocean? Even Poseidon couldn’t persuade me.

My fingers clenched into fists. “My tail is a curse in and of itself, Leander, and I don’t owe you or the Kingdom of the Atlantic anything.”

He didn’t look quite convinced.

So this was what merfolk were all about? Tossing the weak ones aside until they had a use for them? Figures . I’d already seen it firsthand, and yet I’d still let a smooth voice and a pretty boy face lower my guard. Well, I wasn’t a pawn to be moved around wherever the merfolk saw fit anymore. I should have never helped him in the first place.

“Listen, Nera. You have to—”

“Fuck you, Leander,” I said, shooing the sand off my lap. Who cared if I was naked? I’d let him look at my bare ass all the way to the door, ’cause it’d be the first and last time he’d ever catch a glimpse of it.

Grit fell away as I got to my feet, leaving only a fine layer covering my legs. Strong hands reached for my arm, but I swatted them away. There would be no smoothing things over with charming words this time, oh no.

Grabbing hold of a fistful of his hair, I wound my fingers in it, drawing his head back until I could see my reflection in the depths of his eyes. Leaning in close, my lips curled into a vicious scowl. “I swear to Poseidon, if I ever hear your voice again, Leander, you’ll be talking to the tip of a knife. You may think you’re a prince, but you’re no prince of mine.”

I held him there, waiting for his smart mouth to open so I could slam it back shut. A whirlpool raged behind his eyes, his jaw clenching like he was straining to hold himself back. I drew even closer, tempting him to try me.

His eyes went blank in an instant, his expression suddenly inscrutable.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I released him with a small jerk and dismissed him with a twist of my shoulders. Oh, he was pissed off all right, but what did his feelings matter to me? I’d said what I needed to say, and I meant every word.

My wrists tensed as I made my way back to Dad’s house. I halfway expected him to run up and seize me again, but the insistent grip of his hand never came.

It wasn’t until I had dead bolted the front door and sank to the floor mat that I let myself breathe normally again.

So that was it. The nightmare had finally ended.

A numbness fell over my chest, and I raked my nails over the place where my heart thumped louder than it had ever thumped before. I could hear its steady beating. Thump, thump, thump … So why did my chest suddenly feel so empty?