Page 13 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

O ne calm evening from our early arrival was all the reprieve life had in store for me. A good night’s sleep and it was back to chaos. Today was already a mess of hand shaking, tours, and meetings with local trade guilds.

My smile started to feel as stilted and painted on as a jester’s as the sun set and the water turned a light lavender around us.

Not because I didn’t enjoy meeting the people up here.

In fact, they all seemed quite enthusiastic and welcoming, which was a wonderful change.

But I could only put on my public persona for about five hours straight without feeling the strain of expectations and manners.

Far better than Bloss who was utterly impatient, but still, I was reaching my limit.

We were on hour nine and Kremos had only barely begun to show me its true colors.

Apparently, Sahar had specifically scheduled the third tournament event to correspond with Banishment, a regional holiday where dead souls were sealed off in the afterlife and prevented from returning. An ironic ceremony considering their burial practices.

Sahar’s expression was full of regret as we returned to my room to prepare for the festival, which was set to begin promptly at midnight.

“I thought we’d be symbolically banishing your mother.

Not…this.” She gestured weakly at my window, but I understood the flick of her wrist to encompass all the recent deaths.

Exhaustion and sorrow weighed down my bones, but I took a deep breath that tickled my nose as I tried to focus on the positive.

While we prepared for this evening, I had a brief reprieve from every eye in the room studying me for flaws.

I had a few hours to breathe. No sleep, but the solitude rejuvenated me.

Even if the event turned into a sad affair, the moments I got alone before would help me through them.

“You couldn’t have known everything that was going to happen.” I placed a comforting hand on my adviser’s arm before a throat-clearing noise made me turn.

Gita hovered in the doorway, golden tail flickering back and forth.

While my mer maid was normally unassuming, today she carried an air of serious intimidation.

She held two large silver cases, one in each hand, and they looked heavy.

The expression on her face was fiercer than it had been even for the ball.

“I have plans for you,” she stated ominously.

Sahar immediately rushed over to help her. “Let me help.”

“No, I’ve got it,” she insisted, lunging away from Sahar and swimming in a lopsided fashion across the room. “But you need to sit down, Majesty. There’s no rushing the work I need to do tonight.”

“Do I really need to be that dressed up?—”

“Yes,” Both Sahar and Gita cut me off with firm insistence.

“Banishment is one of the most sacred holidays we have,” Gita declared as she set the cases down on my mother-of-pearl dressing table with a loud thunk.

“And my personal favorite.” Undoing the latches, she opened each case to reveal a rainbow array of paints and tiny jewels.

“Now, sit down so I can transform you into something eerily beautiful.”

“I’ll do it on one condition,” I told her as I bit down on a grin, inspiration striking.

“What?” Gita’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“You have to spend at least an hour with Humberto at this festival.”

Gita’s eyes widened and her cheeks turned as red as coral. “He’s a competitor. A champion!”

“He’s not interested in me.”

“He didn’t withdraw!” she argued.

“Because he wants the chance to get to know you,” I countered.

She bit her lip, but I caught the hint of a smile forming anyway as she stared down at her hands.

“And I’m interested in his happiness. And yours.”

“I—I…”

“You have to agree, or we don’t have a deal,” I pushed, knowing she was close to the tipping point.

Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll say hello, but when he leaves my side, and he will, I’m not chasing him.”

“Deal. Because he definitely won’t leave your side,” I gloated as I rolled my shoulders and let my wings stretch out one last time before I dutifully sat. “Alright. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“You’re going to become a mermaid skeleton,” Gita grinned.

I glanced over at Sahar in surprise.

My adviser smoothed down her graying hair as she nodded. “To intimidate the dead, we imitate the dead.”

Briefly, I wondered what my undead soldiers would make of this holiday. I’d have to look for them later. Sahar waved goodbye as she went off to get herself ready. Then Gita’s magical painting skills took over.

Purple and blue shadows lined the edges of my face before she patterned my forehead and cheeks with green scales.

My nose and lips became skeletal outlines created by purple shadows with white teeth upon the gaping jawline she’d created over my lips.

After all of that, she adhered little jewels to my forehead, the apples of my cheeks, and along each of the painted teeth.

Staring into the mirror, I was awed by her artistry. I was wretchedly beautiful, obsessed with my own reflection as she fashioned my hair into giant buns that resembled bubbles. After she finished the buns, she added pearls suspended on pins to complete the bubble look.

Instead of simply sliding a skirt onto me, Gita presented me with a bodysuit that mirrored the painting she’d done on my face. The fabric gave the illusion of a skeleton with bones in white surrounded by purple shadows. A green scaled skirt that resembled a mer tail finished off the ensemble.

I couldn’t stop staring as I tilted my head in all directions and lifted and lowered my hands. “Gita, you’ve outdone yourself.” While I didn’t appear dead or mer in the literal sense, she’d somehow embodied both, but made them beautiful.

Her grin was smug. “I know.”

“When you marry Humberto, you’re still not allowed to quit,” I warned her with a wag of my finger.

My maid smacked my arm before realizing what she’d done. Horror filled her expression as her hands flew to her cheeks. “Oh?—”

I cut off her apology with a laugh. “I mean it. No quitting. Now, go get yourself ready.”

She scurried off with a series of mortified mumbled apologies trailing behind her as I met up with Sahar.

My adviser wore a massive black cloak with a hood stretched around a frame so that it encircled her head like a haloed shadow.

Two white stripes lined either side of the hood.

Her entire body had been covered in a black shimmering substance, only her eyes remained golden, an effect on them that was rather like a raccoon.

“What are you?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

“Orca spirit,” she replied.

“Clever.”

“Now, Kremos, with their burial practices, takes Banishment more seriously than most. They want to respect the dead and include them, but they don’t want their spirits cluttering up their living spaces.”

“Just their decomposing bodies.”

“Traditions don’t make sense. They’re a bouquet of ancient beliefs and random traditions bound together over the years.

But they are what they are, and people cling to them.

People love to know that they’re repeating something that’s been done thousands of times for thousands of years. Gives them a sense of connection.”

I nodded, remembering for a moment how all Gela’s husbands in Evaness dove into the sea to follow her into death.

Stupidity and loyalty rolled into a single ceremony that left my chest feeling bruised.

Even though they had betrayed me, though my childhood was a lie, I still loved them.

And still believed they’d come to love me.

How betrayal and love could coexist, I wasn’t certain. But they could. Just as surely as death and beauty—as evidenced by my current costume. Life was a tangle of contradictions.

As I followed Sahar out of the mayor’s house, I was lost in thought. In memory. So much so that at first, I missed the winking lights.

While the bridges were always dotted with lights, tonight, a strange path of blinking stars led around the side of the mountain, away from all the structures of the town. People swam ahead of us, most in extravagant costumes in bright colors, following the path created by those stars.

And I focused on the people at first, taking in the sight of a dozen ghostly blue jellyfish outfits, several sirens who had coated themselves in rust and barnacles and resembled aged bronze statues from above, three people swimming in synchronized perfection, holding a skeletal whale puppet that surrounded them in a cage of bones.

I’d thought that Okeanos and its costume balls had been impressive, but that was before I’d seen the lengths that the underwater community went to for Banishment.

That’s why I didn’t notice the angler fish until I’d almost swam into it.

A scream rippled up my throat when I almost smashed into the body behind the glowing little star.

I swallowed hard and used the frantic, fearful energy to flicker my wings so that I swam backward a few feet.

My hands clutched at my chest as my eyes took in the thing’s ghastly face, tiny eyes, and massive mouth full of jagged teeth.

“Oh, yes, I forgot to mention them. People catch and set out angler fish in order to scare away any lingering spirits,” Sahar said bemusedly.

My eyes glanced around at the path that I’d thought was made of beautiful magicked starlight. This time, I was able to make out the small shadows of each ugly little fish just behind the light.

“Well. They certainly do a good job. My spirit nearly left my body just now.” I gaped down at the bobbing monster, hand on my chest to calm the pounding of my phantom heart.

With a chuckle, she gestured ahead of us, where the crowd was gathering in the darkness. “Come on then. Let’s go. It’s nearly time for the shelling.”