Page 3 of Storm and Sea (Storm and Sea Saga #1)

H e should have given himself time to calm down before dashing into the darkening waters, half-blind with residual tears. Maybe then he would have spotted the figure resting on the sandbank. Nyel wiped away another irritating layer of tears when a voice made him jump.

“What has your tail in a twist?”

“Ahh!” Nyel shouted, kicking with all four limbs to put distance between him and the silent figure that watched with a raised brow.

“And here I thought after three months of having me around, you’d stop screaming at the sight of me.”

“Y-you should have said something,” Nyel said, placing a palm over his chest to ease his flailing heart.

“I take it from the tears that dinner didn’t go well.”

“I’m not crying,” Nyel said stubbornly.

“Uh-huh, and I’m the Kraken.”

Nyel regarded his half-brother carefully. Nephi lay on the sand dune in a leisurely pose, his tail swishing back and forth in lazy strokes. He chewed on a sliver of wood between his sharp teeth.

“I thought Mom sent you on some errands,” Nyel said, taking a spot on the soft sand beside him, close enough to be heard but not too close.

Nephi laughed. “I know what ‘can you do some mundane task while we have guests’ stands for.”

Nyel sighed. He knew too but pretended not to.

Nephi continued. “Bianca isn’t very subtle. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out she doesn’t want her husband’s bastard child hanging around.”

“Don’t…. say that,” Nyel said, feeling uncomfortable.

Nephi shrugged, moving the sliver of wood from one side of his mouth to another. “I know what I am.”

Nyel tried not to stare, but sitting on Nephi’s right side, it was impossible to look away. His brother was a halfling, a child born of two opposing species of Mer. Their father had an Unbonded relationship in his youth. It was taboo in every sense of the word—a crime against the Spirits. And Nephi was the result.

Nephi was half Sireni and half RaMaa . Nyel didn’t know much about them, only that the RaMaa lived in seas far to the south. Their scales were red as fresh blood, and their bodies were large and muscular. Nephi was by far the largest Mer in the village, towering over everyone else. The fins along his back and tail were twice as tall as a s ireni’s, with the potential to flare even wider when he flexed. Because of the mixing, Nephi’s body was primarily green, like their father’s, before merging into the red of a bleeding sun. His teeth were sharp, and, much to Nyel’s disgust, Nephi consumed meat.

But that wasn’t what made Nyel stare now.

Nephi’s right side bore the twisted, scarred remains of savage burns, his skin a grotesque display of seared flesh and distorted contours. The scales melted into one another, cracking in unnatural ways. In a few places, the scales were gone entirely, revealing tortured skin beneath. The fins along the right side of his head were gone, giving him a half-bald look, and the fins protecting his ear canal were nothing but stubs. The worst part was the foggy film over his right eye, as though smoke were trapped inside. His iris and slit pupil were barely visible, and he seemed to struggle to open it fully, giving one side a perpetually squinted appearance. Nyel didn’t know if Nephi was completely blind in that eye and didn’t dare ask.

“Getting a good look?”

“Sorry.” Nyel quickly turned his head.

He wanted to ask how it happened. He wanted to ask…everything. What had his brother been doing for the past three years? Why did he come back now?

Despite sharing half their blood, the Mer sitting beside him felt like a stranger. Nephi had been absent for most of Nyel’s life and was older by nine springs—a gap that only deepened the chasm between them. They had painfully little to talk about. And it didn’t help that after Nephi left all those years ago, their family pretended he never existed to begin with.

Their father included.

“You better go back,” Nephi said dismissively, “before Bianca comes looking. I’m not in the mood for her glares at the moment.”

“I’m not going back. ”

“And where will you go?” He snorted as though the idea of his helpless little brother leaving home was a joke.

“You don’t think I can be alone for a few days?” Nyel bit back.

Nephi chewed on the stick in his mouth. “I think you’re a sheltered kid with no business leaving your perfect pampered life.”

Nyel stiffened, the fins along his back flaring. “I’m not a kid. And you don’t know a thing about me.”

“Bianca made sure of that.”

“Don’t blame Mom. You could have stuck around.”

“No. I couldn’t,” he said with finality. His words dissipated in the water like a drawn-out echo. After a brief pause, during which Nephi crunched loudly on the twig in his mouth, he asked, “So none of the sirena she dragged in appealed to your tastes?”

“No sirena has ever appealed to my tastes. I don’t even know if I have tastes,” Nyel replied bitterly. “And I’m tired of being shown around the village like a prize crab at the fair.”

“Interesting,” Nephi said, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

“What is?”

“Nothing. Where are you going?” he asked again.

“The tower island. Just until mom calms down.”

At this, Nephi bolted upright, fins flared, his relaxed demeanor vanishing. “That’s a human island,” he said, his tone biting. “You’re going to surface on human land? Do you have a death wish?” The growl in his voice sent vibrations rippling through the water.

Nyel flinched and floated away a few inches despite himself. He knew Nephi had no reason to hurt him.

Probably.

Yet, the scars along Nephi’s body told a story of violence, and that visual warning kept Nyel at a tail’s distance. Even when Nephi first arrived—his wounds fresh, the pain making him whimper through the night—Nyel couldn’t bring himself to go to him. He couldn’t leave the safety of his bed to comfort the Mer, who shared half his blood. As Nephi’s labored breathing echoed through the floorboards, Nyel lay frozen, too afraid to move, too afraid to sleep. The warning to never approach a wounded animal, to never back it into a corner, rang in his mind.

There was a reason halflings were taboo. There was a reason Nyel’s mother didn’t allow Nephi into the house—a reason Nyel was secretly grateful for. When two species of Mer interbred, it was seen as defiance against the Seven Spirits, a direct rebellion against the gift of life. As punishment, the resulting child was born severed from Them.

Disconnected and cursed.

These were the stories told to him as a child; cautionary tales pounded into his mind—the monsters he grew to fear. Halflings were cursed. From their first breath, Skraith lived within them: dark spirits that drove a Mer to madness. Violent. Dangerous. Nyel was privy to many stories of halfling children turning on their families. Even killing their own flesh and blood. That’s why they were silenced at birth. It’s why everyone in the village, including his family, treated Nephi like a dangerous animal.

Because he might be.

The scars on his body were only a testament to the violence he’d experienced—the horrors he’d taken part in. And even though there was no possible way they were interconnected, the fact that mere days after Nephi arrived, his uncle Santé was found dead only served as another bad omen—a curse brought to their village by the halfling carrying Skraith in his body.

Nyel couldn’t stop himself from flinching as Nephi turned toward him—a motion his half-brother didn’t miss. For a moment, Nephi’s face softened, and a guilty knot tightened in Nyel’s stomach. But that fleeting moment of vulnerability vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the sharp gleam of fangs and slitted pupils .

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Nyel tried to correct.

“Forget it,” Nephi said, rising, “Go to the human’s den. Anywhere is safer than with a halfling monster, right?” And before Nyel could speak, Nephi was gone, darting farther from the village and into the darkening sea.

The underside of the waves rolled as the water crested and crashed in a flurry of foam. Nyel squinted as beams of light distorted with each ocean pull. He could do this. He could go up there and let Marvassa change him.

“Just go. Now… now…. now.”

He kept saying the word like it might magically transport him to the surface, and he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

The waves continued to roll above him. Sonia assured him the humans left the island a long time ago, and he trusted her. Nephi was paranoid. He was obsessed and acted like the humans were hiding behind each crevice and hollow, ready to kill anything that moved. Sireni were cautious of the land dwellers, but Nephi’s views were extreme.

Still, Nyel had never met a human, and he wanted to keep it that way.

“There is nobody there. No boats,” Nyel said to himself. “Just…. Go!”

Swishing his tail, Nyel propelled himself through the water and, with a gasp, broke the surface. A wave carried him to the shore, where he tumbled on the soft sand, sputtering. He choked a moment, the pull in his gills no longer working. Nyel opened his mouth, sucking air as something inside him inflated. It was like a blowfish, continuing to puff up and deflate with every breath. He supposed this is how land creatures breathed, awkward as it was. It took him a moment to realize that nothing about his exterior had changed.

Rain pelted him, the sky alive with tears and rage as veins of light flashed in the clouds. And when the air above him cracked, Nyel cried out in shock, clapping his hands over his ear fins. The sound was so much stronger on the surface. He had to get out of this.

Nyel ran up the shore, his taloned feet sinking in the sand. Sopping grass squished between his toes as he fled the beach. He squinted through the rain, spotting the human shelter. It was a square-shaped building with a mighty tower that supported the sky. It took him a moment to find the entrance before shoving it open and closing it behind him. Instantly, the noise muffled, and he let out a sigh of relief.

He took in his surroundings, squinting in the dim light. The home was in a clear state of abandonment. No chance of running into humans here. The longer he stood, the drier Nyel’s body became. A tingling sensation rippled across his skin—sharp, needling, like the prickling rush of blood when a limb falls asleep. He shivered as Marvassa took hold, his scales sinking into his skin and disappearing while fuzzy hair sprouted along his head. His tail retracted, shrinking smaller and smaller until it was gone.

Nyel steadied himself with one arm against the wall. His body was so heavy that even the simple task of keeping his head up was taxing. How did humans do this? How did they walk around without toppling over? Nyel needed his freakin’ tail. Shifting his weight from side to side, he tested his balance and how it felt on his hips. Hunched over, Nyel cautiously took a step forward with his right leg.

Then his left.

Repeat .

Now, he was getting the hang of it. Maybe walking wasn’t so ba?—

Razor-sharp pain tore through his leg. He cried out as he fell, a fiery ache flaring in the soft tissue of his foot, as if he’d stepped on a sea urchin. Red spattered across the floor.

Blood.

His blood.

The scent exploded in his nose like he’d been splashed with it.

Nyel whimpered, bringing his foot closer to examine the wound. A clear piece of glass stuck from the soft flesh.

“Stupid humans. Stupid humans and their stupid pink skin and stupid soft feet,” he grumbled through clenched teeth, pulling out the shard with shaking fingers. It hurt, and the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding even once the glass was out.

He ripped off the now dry seaflax vest, which wasn’t doing him any good anyway, and tore off a strip before wrapping his wound.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he mumbled, standing again, now with a limp. “As if walking wasn’t already hard enough.”

Nyel ran a hand through his (was it hair?) and watched much more carefully where he stepped. He made it to another door, this one leading to an impossibly tall staircase that went up and up and up.

This had to be the tower. He could probably see for miles from the top and find a comfortable corner to rest.

With no glass, preferably.

Driven by his exhaustion, the ache in his foot, and a pinch of curiosity, Nyel climbed. He’d had enough excitement for one day.