Poe didn’t give the two a chance to respond before she lifted herself to sit on the ledge. What seawater remained in her lungs exasperated in her next exhale, sliding down from the gills at her throat and over her breasts, which were covered by the long length of her hair. Just like that, with her first breath of air instead of water, her sister’s shimmering scales disappeared by the churning water where she rested her tail.
Gone was her fin.
The blue-green scales.
All the black markings.
In its place were her sister’s very human legs and bare feet. Poe stood from the edge, walking to sit where she kept all her favorite things in her grotto. Arelle followed suit, pulling herself out of the water at the rocky ledge and letting the curse—although some believed it to be magic—take hold and change her, too. Despite how it looked to see her scales melt away into legs and feet, it never felt like anything more than a tickle racing over her skin and through her blood.
Coral, on the other hand, stayed skimming the surface. Arelle passed her a look, shaking her head at the same time and asking, “How are you ever going to be comfortable on your legs if you don’t use them?”
“I use them,” Coral replied.
A bit too defensively, really.
“Not nearly enough,” Poe muttered when she picked up an old, leather-bound book from the floor. She flipped through the pages, clearly knowing where she had left off. Arelle often wondered how her sister managed to get books, not to mention, keep them from getting ruined in the very damp, earth-smelling grotto. Besides that, how had she even learned to read? “Yet, you want to take to land every other day.”
“I just—”
“Need to learn to use your legs. What if you need to run?”
Coral quieted.
Arelle dropped next to her sister’s seat, enjoying the smooth, cold rock against her skin. As naked as the day she slipped from her mother’s womb, she stared up into the hole of black overhead, considering the storms again.
“How long do you think the storm season will last this year?” she asked.
Poe grinned slyly.
Out of all of her sisters, Poe could be the most dangerous, Arelle thought. Calculating, always able to say the right thing, and capable of great violence when she knew she could get away with it. Beautiful, too, and the only one of Arelle’s sisters who had been able to pick her own mate—a merman who was just as prone to violence and dark things as she was.
“Long enough, I hope,” Poe replied.
“For what?” Coral asked.
“I’d like a child this season.”
That silenced the grotto but for the constant drip drip drip of water.
“Will Father—”
Poe’s stare cut to Coral, stopping her from asking more. “I’ve been mated for a year—why wouldn’t he allow me to have a child this season?”
She had a point.
Not that it would make a difference to their father. As the King of the Blu Sea, Zale made all the choices for the people in his realm. Because when even getting pregnant required them to change and leave the sea where they were most vulnerable … it was a risk. Not to mention, having young meant his people would protect them more than even him or themselves.
“I just don’t understand,” Coral muttered, her cheeks pinking when her sisters’ attention turned on her. “I’m not allowed to ask.”
Ah, yes.
Not even the king’s children, or his mate for that matter, were exempt from his control. The girls saw their mother more infrequently as they got older. As for them, their father believed the less they knew about the ways of their people and their traditions the less they’d want to be included.
That was never the case. He’d not yet learned.
Coral, ever curious, had no understanding of mating although she would soon gain a companion to teach her everything. Except she wanted to know now.
“How does it … work?” Coral asked.
“Which?” Poe replied.
“Sex.”
Coral promptly turned as red as the hair on their heads. She wouldn’t even meet their stare, was far more interested in making circles in the water with her fingertip.
“Anyone can fuck,” Poe said, sighing. “Fucking is just that—fucking. A bit different with your tail than in your walking form, but you should know about that, don’t you? Your cleft, Coral …”
Their stares turned on their younger sister, who still didn’t seem to want to look back at them. Coral might be the most curious, but she was also the one who wasn’t at all ready to be grown.
Arelle decided to give the girl an easy out for this side of the conversation. Only because she didn’t think Coral understood anything about sex as a merwoman because her younger sister hadn’t yet had sex. “You’ll learn soon. A companion will be picked to teach you everything. It comes easy.”
Poe sighed. “But if you want a child …”
“We can only conceive when we’re like this,” Arelle added when her older sister didn’t elaborate, waving at her naked legs. “And when we give birth, too. The curse, again.”
Beside her, Poe laughed a tinkling sound. “A curse—doesn’t feel like that when the thrall comes over you, and the heat begins.”
“And how does that work?” Coral asked, at least managing not to squeak with her embarrassment that time.
Arelle allowed Poe to answer, knowing good and well she didn’t have the firsthand experience to give Coral.
“It’s …” Poe’s gaze darted to Coral, and then to Arelle before going back to the book in her hands. “It’s instinctual, a need in your blood, Coral, and when it is your time, you will know what to do. That’s all I can tell you.”
Coral’s fingers danced along the rocky ledge of the grotto. “So, when the storms come, we take to land.”
“Right, Coral.” Poe nodded. “We have to take to land.”
“Where the landwalkers are.”
“Not always. The storms scare them. They’re not like us—they die in the water.”
“We die in the water sometimes,” Coral pointed out. “Right?”
“But the water doesn’t kill us when we can breathe. They can’t.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” Poe said, flipping another page in her book, “I want a child this season. I’ll have to ask if Father will allow me that—it’ll make others want the same, which means people will go to the land, and he might not like that.”
Right.
Their numbers were not great anymore. With each season, it seemed as though the landwalkers found more cunning ways to capture them. With children to protect, it made everything even more dangerous.
Their father didn’t like that. Disobeying him—for anything—meant punishments sometimes worse than death. It was, after all, how he kept his people firmly in line.
Arelle looked to Coral who had grown quiet, staring down at her nails, which she picked nervously.
“The landwalkers—they believe we’re like this because we’re magical. They’re wrong. This has always been a curse,” Arelle said, knowing her sister would understand she meant their shifting forms. “We’re doomed to need the sea as desperately as we need the land to survive. And now that they’ve taken the safety of one from us, they’re determined to take the other, too.”