ONE
Arelle
IN THE VAST expanse of the Blu Sea, the water always matched the sky. It never failed, and it was what Arelle enjoyed the most as she skimmed along the surface of the water and followed her two sisters.
Poe led the pack—a year older than Arelle’s eighteen—with Coral close behind and all too willing to hang off every word that left their older sister’s lips. Coral had done that for her, too.
What was it like to change, Arelle? Did you just know how to walk? Will I feel different?
Then, Coral had turned sixteen and the curse swimming through their blood took hold. She no longer needed to ask her sister those kinds of questions when she was able to experience them for herself. Instead, her questions turned on Poe. The only older sister who remained in their kingdom, and mated, that had experienced something she hadn’t.
A storm was rolling in to batter the Realm of Atlas, the Blu Sea surrounding it, and the small band of islands the three women currently called home, with their grottos safe from any hunters. Not that the storms would bother the sisters—it was the safest time for a mermaid to … well, live. The air became wet. Travel for the landwalkers on Atlas turned dangerous. The sea, too rough for their ships and nets and weapons.
Not that Arelle, or the rest of her sisters, were supposed to know anything about the humans. Their ways and motives were only whispered about when they learned something new from someone else.
“Down we go,” Poe said when bubbles burst in a small swirling pool. The only sign that beneath the dark waters of the churning sea there was a small enclave that led into her sister’s grotto. An underwater haven, private to Poe, made up from the remnants of a sunken ship, and the cave carved from one of the islands. Another entrance to the grotto waited behind the curtain of a waterfall but the sisters couldn’t use it to swim through like this one. “And then, Coral, I will tell you all about the mating.”
Coral let out a happy chirp—one that even underwater, her sisters would understand to be a pleased yes. Poe dove under the water, the shimmer of the green-blue scales with similar markings to Arelle’s on her tail and fins, slapping the surface before she disappeared into the rolling, black sea.
“You’re coming, yes?” Coral asked Arelle, her excitement vibrating in the water. “You can’t go back to the palace yet, Arelle.”
She smiled, struck by despite how young Coral was, even if she was only a year younger than Arelle, they still seemed like mirrors of each other. The same vibrant, fire-colored hair plastered to dainty features and cherry-red lips. People in their colony called the sisters of the Blu Sea the most beautiful.
Sirens of the water with wide violet eyes framed by long, dark lashes. Full lips shaped like bows that sang tempting songs capable of sinking ships, drawing in men, and even the sea creatures if they needed. Faces round like the sun when it dared to peek through the clouds, temples spattered with speckles of sparkling scales and olive-toned skin that glimmered like gold in the water.
As if that wasn’t enough to say the three were sisters—their fourth sister, Sarha, mated and gone from the Realm, shared their same, distinct features—the burned scar on the back of their left hand certainly did. Two arrows, one atop the other. The sign of royalty.
Blu Sea royals.
“I’m coming,” she assured her sister.
Another happy chirp came from Coral before the girl darted closer to the spot where Poe had disappeared moments before.
Arelle peeked over her shoulder to look for the guards the king—their father—constantly sent to watch them. The three mermen, imposing in their stature with spears at the ready, all lined up shoulder to shoulder with a watchful eye on her, waited for when she would head under the water to the grotto. At least they stayed far enough back that the sisters’ conversation remained private.
Coral slipped under the water. Arelle didn’t hesitate to follow, spiraling down twenty feet deep into dark water in mere seconds until the broken bow of a sunken ship came into view and she slipped within the hole, careful not to touch the jagged edges of the broken wood. The ship had sunk decades ago, much like the others surrounding the dangerous Atlas Islands. The nearby regions provided safe shelter to many mermaids in their colony.
Homes where the landwalkers couldn’t touch. Not without endangering themselves, too.
A few feet ahead of her, Coral was quick to hang her twisted golden crown on a piece of wood that stuck out from the wall of the ship, and Arelle did the same with her own. They ducked low to avoid the hanging netting their older sister’s mate used as a warning to anyone who entered his grotto. Skulls bunched like lumpy balls in a low-hanging net, like a morbid decoration Arelle had never quite gained the courage to ask about.
At least, not entirely.
Who did the skulls belong to?
Their kind?
The landwalkers?
Both?
They looked so much alike—when they weren’t in the water, of course—that Arelle thought it would probably be difficult to tell the difference between their skulls.
“Wish he’d take that down,” Coral muttered, quickly looking away from the netting full of skulls. “It’s unsettling.”
Yes, much like the rest of the grotto. A dark black from the walls of stone the home had been carved into just beyond the sunken ship, with bones as decoration and glowing fish trapped in overturned glass bowls to provide a little bit of light. The water in the grotto tasted of her sister and Poe’s mate as it passed Arelle’s lips and she exhaled through the gills in her throat.
She didn’t have one of those yet—a mate, that was. Although with her eighteenth year passed, it was only a matter of time. Her suitor had already been chosen, his travel to her underway, and once he arrived, she too would find herself in a situation similar to her older sister. Only unlike Poe, Arelle would not be staying in this kingdom—she would leave with her mate to return to his homeland.
It wasn’t that which bothered her. It was everything that had to come before.
Coral shrieked as the purple octopus Poe seemed to like so much flicked a sticky tentacle a little too close to her face when they passed by his small den before entering the largest portion of their sister’s grotto. “It feels dark and … where is the color or the pretty things, Arelle?”
“Tak leads Father’s royal guard but also spends his time hunting creatures in the sea,” Arelle returned, “and you think he wouldn’t have a penchant for all things malevolent? The man doesn’t go anywhere without something sharp in his hand.”
Her sister chuffed but didn’t reply.
In the water, they went back to their mother tongue. A language made up of clicks and cheeps and noises produced from their throats that traveled even in the choppiest of seas; one the humans hadn’t learned, despite how easily the mermaids absorbed their language and ways.
“Could always go back to the palace if you don’t like my grotto,” Poe said as the two entered the largest section of the underwater cave.
The cave reached so high under the island that, at the very top, a hole big enough for two allowed them a view of dribbling water and a rocky ledge.
Arelle didn’t want to go back to the palace though she wouldn’t tell her sisters that fact. There was nothing waiting for her there. Except, perhaps, the suffocating control of her father, and a court that couldn’t seem to look away whenever she was in view.