Page 36 of Drown Me Gently (Flipped Fairytales)

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Auren winced as raindrops pattered on his eyelid.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

No. Not raindrops. These were too precise to be the scattering of rain. A steady stream of droplets fell deliberately over his left eye.

Drip

Drip

Drip

With each drop, awareness returned to him. Bit by bit, until he had the strength to flinch away from the intrusion and turn his head, sputtering. Auren coughed, spitting sand from his mouth. He inhaled—lungs, not gills.

He sat up, half expecting to find legs beneath him. He was disappointed to see a sand-covered green tail, the scales caked with blood, dry and cracked in the scorching sun.

“No, I did not transform you fully. I gave you breath, that is enough.”

The voice came a little ways down the beach, carried by the early evening wind.

The sky shifted into a pale peach and blue.

The hushed light made the sand appear flushed pink.

All except the tendrils of black curled around Auren.

It was still there, a shadow left imprinted on the sand.

All that remained of a mighty sorcerer who had dedicated centuries to an ungrateful god.

Tears sprang to Auren’s eyes.

“The sea does not need your tears. It has enough salt,” the voice said again, a woman’s.

“And what makes you think I’m offering them to the sea?” Auren snapped, anger and grief mixing in a toxic pool in his stomach. “Poseidon has taken enough; he does not get my tears. They’re for…”

But he couldn’t bring himself to even say the name.

Auren looked at the human woman, his eyes aching as though he’d stared into the sun for too long.

Her skin was dark, smooth, and her legs were bare beneath a delicate short burlap dress.

The way she tucked her knees to her chest made her appear young, almost childlike with seashells woven into a mane of flowing black hair.

But when she turned her silver eyes on him, Auren knew this was no girl. That this was no human.

“Mother.”

“Hmmm.” She hummed, with a pleased little tilt to her head that once again made her glow with youth. “I rather like that. At home, you only ever address me as the queen.”

Auren didn’t know what to say. His relationship with his mother had always been that of queen and prince. But seeing her here, in human form, something about her rigid, steely grip seemed to relax. Her muscles loosened, finally allowing for the kind of relationship mother and son ought to have.

“Why did you save me?” Auren asked, wincing as every inch of his lower body hurt.

“Does a mother need a reason to save her youngest son?”

“No. But I am sure you have one.”

She sighed, long and hard. The wind caught a few strands of hair, which danced in the air. Instead of answering him, her eyes grew distant, maybe a little tired. It was the first time he’d ever seen his mother this way.

“I forgot how nice it is. The wind. The warm breeze. Sand between my toes,” she said, wiggling her toes in solemn delight. “But I made my choice. A long, long time ago. Now, my precious son, it is time you make yours.”

At Auren’s wide-eyed look of shock, she threw her head back and laughed, a trilly sound like the call of birds. Not the Queen of the sea.

“Did you think you knew me so well?” She laughed, slender shoulders shaking. “No, I’m afraid you don’t know me at all, and I do not know you. That is my fault.”

She twirled a finger in the sand.

“As Queen of the sea, mother of Poseidon’s heirs, I don’t make it a habit to reveal my heritage. But I suppose, Auren, that as you stand on the cliffside of a choice, the same cliffside I once stood on - I can impart this wisdom.”

Auren stared at his mother, and it felt like he was seeing her for the first time. Not as an untouchable entity, but as a person. As his mother.

“I was born on land, the daughter of a sea merchant. I came into this world with legs and no tail.” She shuffled her long legs as though reveling in the feeling of them.

“When my father’s ship was lost at sea, my entire family succumbed to the ocean’s wrath.

And I would have been part of that number if I hadn’t been offered a choice.

A choice to live lifetimes, to bring about the next generation of half-gods into the world, to witness things a sheltered human girl could scarcely imagine.

I had a choice, and as I stood on that cliffside, I chose to jump. ”

Auren listened without interruption. But her words struck a sort of sorrow he hadn’t expected. Had she really been given a choice? Bear the burden of being one of Poseidon’s chosen, or drown. In Auren’s mind, that wasn’t a choice at all. Yet now, he faced a very similar fate.

“I tell you this so you know the gravity, the permanence of your choice. I gave up my human life in exchange for another. I cannot take that back.” She straightened, then, “Nor do I want to. I am satisfied with what the centuries have given me, most of all my wonderful children.” She smiled at him then, and fresh tears prickled the corner of his eyes.

“Make a choice you won’t regret, my son. I have given you temporary breath on the surface, but it is a small blessing. You must choose quickly.”

With that, she stood, brushing sand from her legs. The motion was so natural, so human, that Auren was taken aback. She approached him, all youth and elegance, as the wind rippled the hem of her dress. Her gaze drifted to the scorch-mark silhouette in the sand.

“He made his choice,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Auren’s chest cracked open. “He saved me.”

Tritheya nodded. “He did.”

“He broke his oath for me,” Auren said.

“He did.”

“He…” A fresh sob overtook him. “He loved me.”

His mother’s voice softened. “Of that, my son, I have no doubt.”

Hearing it from her broke him open all over again. He folded over the sand, weeping. Tritheya laid a hand on his back.

“Choose, Auren,” she said, her voice like a lullaby. “But do not forget… no matter the path, you are the descendant of a god.” Then Queen Tritheya bent low, placing a soft kiss on his forehead. Auren closed his eyes, sinking into the moment, and when he opened them, she was gone.

He stayed crouched over the shape of Ulric, trembling, teeth gritted against the war waging inside him. Anger and grief battled for dominance like waves pounding on a cliffside, trying to tear it down inasmuch as the rocks held their ground.

Choice. As though he had one. What was his choice? To say farewell and return as prince of the sea? To die on the sand in the shadow of his lover?

That wasn’t a choice, because no matter which way he went—Auren’s life was over.

No.

No.

No!

His hand gripped the blackened sand. He snarled, slamming his palm into it.

Fuck this.

He didn’t want peace. He didn’t want closure.

He wanted Ulric.

Auren thought of Ulric’s hands, large enough to protect him but gentle as a spring tide. He thought of the kisses. Of the whispered confessions. Of how alive Ulric made him feel. That love still existed. It wasn’t gone. And that love had power.

Somewhere deep in Auren’s blood, his magic slept. Coiled. Hidden. Waiting patiently for the sea god’s call on his thirtieth birthday.

But Auren didn’t care about Poseidon’s will. He didn’t care about any god that stood in his way. Fuck them. This magic, this power, it was his . And it was time to come out.

“Get out,” Auren growled. “Come out. Now!”

He reached inside himself—not gently, not with coaxing, but like a man ripping open his own chest. He seized the slippery, ancient thing that pulsed inside him. It didn’t want to be touched. But Auren didn’t care.

“You cannot hide anymore,” he said through gritted teeth. “You don’t get to stay quiet while he’s gone.”

He clawed at his chest, imagining his own will reaching into his blood, digging out divine power from his veins. It splashed around, trying to escape him, like a fish in a barrel. But Auren seized around its belly, squeezing with brutal strength, demanding it submit to him.

He pulled the whale bone clasp from his tangled hair—Ulric’s gift. The runes etched into its curve shimmered with echoes of magic.

Auren stabbed it into the center of the lifeless sandy shape.

“Bring him back!” Auren yelled, then shoved his unwilling magic into the bone clasp.

All of it. He wouldn’t leave even a single drop.

It was like trying to force a large bony fish through a small hole. It squirmed and resisted, pushing at the edges, fighting him.

“I said GO!”

The black grains began to sizzle.

The magic began to mold. To bend and twist through his veins, syphoning into the whale bone in his grip. It turned from a bony fish into something softer. Something easily molded by Auren’s will. Like an octopus, capable of forcing its bulk through even the smallest opening.

“That’s it— you obey me .”

Auren poured everything into it—every ounce of grief, fury, love. Every kiss. Every memory. Every whispered promise.

“I am the prince of the sea,” Auren hissed. “And I will not bow to anyone. Not a god. Not magic. Not death.”

The sand flared hot.

Then molten.

Like melting glass, it shifted, rippling under his will. It resisted. It fought.

But Auren didn’t stop.

His hands shook from the force of channeling, gripping the whale bone like it was his only tether to his realm. His blood hummed, a current surging from his chest to his fingertips. The sand began to shape. Stretch. Elongate.

It was taking form.

A shape he knew in his bones.

Ulric’s.

All nine tentacles curled outward like the petals of a great bloom, reaching for him. The body rose from the earth—man and monster in glass, hardening in the sunlight.

Auren didn’t breathe as the molten sand twisted into Ulric’s face. That jaw… those eyes.

The whalebone burned white hot in his hands, scorching his skin. The overload of magic spilled out in blasts of light and energy.

Just a little more, a little more.

Auren stood, thrusting the ball of white light towards the warping glass, demanding its obedience. He stood tall on his legs, chest heaving, hand engulfed in flames.

When had he shifted? His legs had returned. Human. Steady. He didn’t even notice it happened. His whole being had been focused on this.

On his Kraken.

At last, the molten glass stilled, hardening in the dry air, creaking and cracking as it settled in its weight. With a final pulse of light, the whale bone shattered in Auren’s hand. It was done.

Auren gasped, as though he’d been holding his breath. Maybe he had. He wobbled, the drain of magic almost sending him back to the sand. But he kept his feet under him because nothing could have taken his eyes from the sculpture before him.

There he was. Ulric.

The likeness was made of black glass, shining in the setting sun, casting rainbows at his feet. It was perfect.

“My Ulric.”

Unable to stop himself, Auren stumbled forward, falling into the glass embrace. It was ice cold.

“Come back to me.”

He pressed his cheek into black glass. Eyes closed. Begging. Auren ducked his face into the familiar crook of Ulric’s shoulder.

“Come back to me,” Auren whispered. “Come back to me… my monster of the deep.”

He shut his eyes. Held tighter.

Please.

A warmth.

A rush of heat beneath his palms.

Then a pulse.

A breath.

Glass cracked.

Cracked again.

And arms—flesh and bone and solid and warm—wrapped around him.

A voice rumbled in his ear, low, familiar, and choked with tears.

“Oh, my spriteling.”

Auren sobbed.

And gripped his Kraken.