Page 20 of Secrets Among the Tides
Maisie kept leaning closer into Geronimo’s mane the more I spoke. Her shoulders shook and her body flinched. My brows pulled together with confusion. Was she going to be sick?
My hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder when she suddenly jerked away and twisted around to glare at me with obsidian eyes. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed through her teeth.
I dropped my hand back to where it had been, calculating the hard anger in her gaze. I matched it with a hard look of my own, lips thinning into a tight line. A thousand retorts came into my mind, though only one came out of my mouth. “What?”
“I said get your murderous hands off of me,Captain.”
“Ah.” I frowned, staring at the back of her neck. A few loose strands of purple-blue hair had slipped from her hat to curl in floating tendrils. My fingers itched to move them aside but I kept them still in place. “I take it you saw what happened last night, then.”
Her silence was confirmation enough. I sighed. Of course she would see it that way. Of course she would think me a murderer. I’d been doing my job as Captain of the Royal Guard and all she could think of calling me was a murderer.
I knew that there were mer who saw me, sawus, that way. Coming from her, I felt a little insulted.
“You know those who try to flee are penalized. What would you have me do?”
Her back was ever tight, shoulders bunched nearly to her ears. She didn’t turn around to face me to reply. “Show some leniency?” she spat.
“Why? He was abandoning his kingdom. The law is the law.”
“The law is only made to benefit the royals. It does nothing but jeopardizeus.But, of course,youcan’t see that.”
I bristled, hands tightening along the reins. “The law was made to protect the merpeople of Thalassar.”
She snorted unkindly, mockingly. “Right. Keep telling yourself that, Captain.”
She was quiet a long moment after. I should have let it go, but something ran down my spine, my mind swimming continuous laps. I couldn’t just leave it alone. “We aren’t monsters, Maisie. We are just following the law.”
Maisie sighed and turned around then. I wasn’t prepared for the intense look in her eyes as she glared at me. “Following a law made by tyrant royals. A law that is meant to protectthem.Keepthemsafe while the mer at the bottom suffer and are killed in a war that no one knows who started or why it has been going on for years. If it was a law meant to protect the people, then the royal guard and soldiers would be out there fighting. Not farmers and weavers. And if your law was meant to protect us, then you wouldn’t be killing us in the dead of night to honor your Queen and King.”
Lies. All lies. What we did, we did for the good of the entire kingdom. Soldiers were out there fighting just as much as the farmers, as those selected. They were all shedding blood together for the same cause. She just didn’t see it yet. Maybe life at the palace would open her eyes to the truth.
“What we do, we do for Thalassar. We all have our part to play,” was all I said before staring ahead, promptly ignoring her.
Of course, she had to get her last words in. She sighed and turned back to face the front. “I don’t want to argue with you, Captain,” she whispered. “You’re a good merman. I can see that. But kingdoms fall when good mermen do nothing.”
I knew what the hidden message behind her words. A message she’d never dare say aloud, not if she wanted to keep her head. Thalassar could not fall. It was a kingdom of old, good and just. The mer just didn’t understand it yet. They didn’t understand what the royals did this for. They couldn’t see past their own ponds, if you asked them to look further into the future. And I hoped Maisie meant no harm by the words she’d said. Because if the mer planned to rise up against Thalassar, then I was afraid that she was very much correct.
They would fall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Maisie
WE DIDN’T SPEAK TO EACH OTHER AT ALLthe rest of the journey. I had nothing else that needed saying and he brooded the rest of the way. Besides, the further we made it into Eramaea, the tenser he got. As if he dreaded the upcoming moments as much as I did.
And despite my hesitancy, despite the rage that boiled deep in me because of the royals and the rich, I could not help but admire the capital city of Thalassar once we arrived. I was sure the water left my lungs entirely as I gazed at the entrance to the city.
A sprawling, vast expanse, the city was bustling with color and light. I’d never seen anything like it. Flurry with activity, crowds of beautiful, exotic mer swam through opened archways carved from red and white coral. Buildings, restaurants and houses in all colors and textures seemed to be pushed together closely. Nothing like the wide spaces and forests of Lagoona. Here, things glowed with bioluminescent lights. And the rays of sun that ever so slightly pierced past the surface of the water above, shone down onto cerulean-diamond castles to cast a rainbow hue over the seafloor.
The royal palace was an incredible structure, towering beautifully over everything else. It appeared to be structured from rose quartz and aquamarine, the colors spiraling through the water in spires and peaks. The light hit it at an angle that lit up Eramaea in colors that could only be described as a sunset.
The exclamation of awe that escaped my lips was involuntary. I didn’t care. The place was incredible.
We swam deeper into the city and my eyes tried following every little thing at once, darting around furiously to take everything in as quickly as possible. There were mer of all shapes and sizes. Mer with the lower bodies of sting rays, eels and jellyfish. Mostly, they had long, iridescent tails in bright, flashy colors. It was with a start, that I realized, that in appearance, I fit in more withthesemer than I ever did in Lagoona.
I pushed that thought to the side as we made our way through the sandy roads. Young mer swam about, hawking their wares, from food to jewelry to news shells. And the strangest thing, as we passed, the mer stopped to observe and bow.
It happened all throughout the trek towards the palace. Mer would stop and call out joyously to the royal soldiers, throw flowers at their fins and bow low in thanks. Captain Saber was relatively still and quiet behind me, though every time someone bowed or called out to him, he acknowledged them with a nod.
