Page 1 of Drown Me Gently (Flipped Fairytales)

Shivers ran down Auren’s back as he pressed himself against the cool marble column. His heart thumped steadily. Not from fear, but anticipation. The thrill of the escape. He’d memorized the palace schedule. Knew exactly how long the guards, with their golden tridents, held post at the outer gate.

This was far from his first time ditching royal attendants.

The sea was velvet-dark, its silence broken only by the faintest whisper of current sliding over sand.

The palace of Atlantis loomed over him. Grand, immense, carved into the cliffside with a craftsmanship fit for a god of the sea.

Its white marble columns reached high into the gloom, wrapped in vines of glowing kelp and gilded with pearls, a testament to Poseidon’s divinity.

Braziers lined the gates, blue flames twisting inside glass globes and casting warped reflections on the marble archways.

Auren exhaled slowly, the soft tissue of his gills fluttering.

His fingers curled tighter around the strap of his satchel.

Inside were the usual tools—a dull blade and a bit of food—nothing fancy, but enough.

The blade was for cutting through obstacles at the wall; the food, for waiting out a guard rotation if needed.

He’d turned escape into a science, and tonight was no different.

The sound of heavy motion sliced through the water behind him.

“Magister, we cannot locate him, we’ve searched?—”

“Don’t bother. I’ll get him.” A heavy voice replied to the frantic palace guard.

Auren’s stomach sank.

Shit.

A moment later, the water shifted beside him in a whoosh, and he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“Auren.”

There was that voice. Auren could recognize it from leagues away. It was deep and rumbling, like the blackest part of the ocean floor was settling into place. Auren winced, letting his head thump against the column in defeat.

“How’d you find me?”

“You aren’t as clever as you think, spriteling.”

Auren grimaced and turned.

Ulric hovered a few meters away, arms crossed, hair drifting around him like ink in water. His face was carved from rigid discipline and patience worn thin. Twin eyes, black as trenchwater, fixed on Auren with all the disappointment of a weary mentor and all the judgment of a high priest.

Even the tips of his obsidian tentacles twitched with irritation where they pooled at his waist like a living sash. Nine in total, sleek and gleaming like polished jet, ringed with pale suckers that caught the blue firelight. He made for a murderous sight, but Auren didn’t flinch.

He met the Kraken’s gaze head-on. “You gonna keep staring, or do you plan to drag me back by my tail?” Auren muttered.

Ulric’s brow twitched. “Don’t tempt me.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.”

Auren scoffed. “Yeah, right. Big scary Kraken. I’ve survived your temper a hundred times.”

Ulric’s skin was coppered bronze, sunless but burnished.

His shoulders were broad and imposing, his chest inked in curling black tattoos.

Dark lines curled over his collarbones, ran down his arms, and disappeared into the inky shadows of his lower half.

Runes etched near his ribs marked oaths too old for most to remember in a language long since forgotten.

His face bore a trimmed beard, neatly kept, the same color as his hair—deep black, threaded with streaks of iron-gray.

He wore no armor—just a dark leather wrap across his chest, a long, curved fang from some deepwater beast hanging from one ear, and a carved whalebone pin holding his hair half up. The only mark of his rank was an embossed trident on the leather, a symbol that set him apart as the Court Sorcerer.

He was Kraken.

Not Merfolk.

The water shifted around Auren, vibrating in response to the Kraken’s anger.

Ulric was one of the few marked to carry Poseidon’s magic, the brands on his skin pulsing with power.

Combined with his obsidian eyes, it was no wonder most Merfolk found the Kraken unsettling.

Even terrifying. A creature of the ocean pits.

And still, Auren refused to back down.

“You aren’t as scary as you look.” Auren snapped at his mentor.

Ulric snarled, revealing pointed shark’s teeth.

“Ever the sea-sprite,” he hissed. “You know the meeting with the Tidelord begins in under an hour.”

Auren bristled at the demeaning nickname.

Ocean sprites—is that what Ulric saw when he looked at him? Not a threat, just some flitting little thing causing trouble for the sake of it. A nuisance, not a danger.

“Don’t you think it’s time to let go of the nicknames? I’m a man, not a Merling. And I’m getting tired of you forgetting that.”

“Yet you continue to shirk your responsibilities like a petulant child.”

Auren crossed his arms, gills flaring in irritation. “I’m not shirking. I’m selectively avoiding.”

Ulric raised a brow. “Ah. So you’re strategically disobedient. That must be a great comfort to the Queen.”

“Don’t act like she’d even notice I was gone. She has twelve other heirs to smother with ceremonial garlands.”

“You’re still the prince,” Ulric said, arms folded. “And it’s the prince’s duty to attend these councils.”

“My twelve older siblings can handle it,” Auren groaned, flicking a piece of kelp off his shoulder. “They live for that nonsense. They’re all too happy to grovel and gossip.”

“It is your responsibility as Poseidon’s heir?—”

“—to sit there and smile while they drone on about border negotiations and sand tariffs?” Auren spat. “Hard pass.”

“You are royalty,” Ulric said flatly. “Start acting like it.”

Auren bristled. “You’re the Court Sorcerer. Not my guard.”

“No,” Ulric muttered, “though lately, I feel more like a babysitter.”

Auren glared at him. “Haven’t you grown tired of this? You’ve been dragging me back into these walls since I was twenty.”

Ulric sighed. “And I’ll continue to do so until your magic manifests at thirty. Three more fun-filled years.”

“Do I look like I need protection?” Auren snapped, letting his arms fall to his sides as if to display himself.

He wasn’t fragile.

His body was lean from years in the sparring rings, honed by daily drills where he often bested older, stronger opponents.

His chest was firm, shoulders broad, arms corded with muscle from training with tridents and blades.

Even his tail—thick and sculpted—cut through water faster than most surface currents.

Ulric didn’t even glance down.

“It’s not about what you look like. There are powerful forces in the sea. And every one of them would smell the magic in your blood long before they ever saw your crown.”

“So you keep reminding me,” Auren muttered, scowling. “Yet thirty seems awfully late for Poseidon to grant me access to that magic.”

“Thirty years is not long.”

“Maybe not to you—fossil.”

He meant it as a jab, but his voice lacked venom. The truth was, Ulric didn’t look a day over forty. But Auren had a creeping suspicion that the Kraken’s years stretched back like trenches. He hadn’t aged a day since the moment they’d met.

“Watch your tongue,” Ulric warned, though there was a hint of amusement behind the threat. “Prince, you might be, but I’m not above dragging you to court myself if you don’t hurry.”

For a moment, Auren considered resisting. Just to see if he’d do it. To feel the Kraken’s tentacles wrapped tight around him, dragging him bodily through the currents.

He sighed instead and turned toward the palace. “One of these days, I might try to force my way past you, old man.”

Ulric’s mouth tugged into something between a smirk and a threat. “I’d like to see you try.”

The Hall of Currents was a marvel of shells and limestone. Towering columns reached toward a domed ceiling painted with grand depictions of Poseidon’s power. Shoals of shimmering fish swam lazily through archways, and the great throne of Queen Tritheya sat elevated on a shell-shaped dais.

It was beautiful.

And it made Auren want to grind his teeth into pearl dust.

He sat near the far end of the long, crescent table, one of thirteen royal heirs draped in ceremonial sashes and surrounded by floating scrolls.

His sash itched. The golden shoulder pin—Poseidon’s trident—dug into his collarbone every time he shifted.

His siblings sat upright, poised, and polished like the statues lining the hall.

Auren clenched and unclenched his fists under the table.

The nobles spoke in circles, their words as slimy as eels, winding through the ever-present concerns about territory, border strains, and the recent rise in surface pollution. They bickered politely, all sharp teeth behind gilded smiles.

They’re like scavenging wolf eels looking for scraps of power. They don’t give a damn about Atlantis.

In all fairness, Auren never applied himself enough to seem devoted to Atlantis. But at least he didn’t come before the Queen and lie about it. Listening to those nobles made him want to press a trident’s tip to their throats and watch the color drain from their faces.

His bored gaze drifted along the table until it locked with Ulric’s.

The Kraken floated near the dais, arms folded, still as carved stone.

Watching him. Judging him. Probably counting the number of eye-rolls Auren had made so far.

Auren made a show of yawning widely just to watch the Kraken’s eyes narrow.

Auren didn’t care what the court thought of him.

He was the youngest. The thirteenth. The unimportant one. A prince by blood, but too brash and temperamental to be seen as anything more than a figurehead. His siblings were scholars, diplomats, and generals.

Auren?

He spent his time in the training yards, splitting spears on sandbag dummies. He preferred steel to politics. Salt to syrupy formalities.

No one expected anything of him.

And he liked it that way.