Page 53 of Secrets Among the Tides
I spun aimlessly through the water, twirling in circles with my arms out at my sides. I laughed happily, fanning my fins out at my sides…only to have them cramp up and send me hurtling to the ground.
I didn’t have enough time to right myself as I crashed to the floor onto a pile of conch shells. Pain pierced my skin and I heard the painful sound of a crack as a conch broke beneath me. Cursing, I sat up and moved aside.
“Abyss take me,” I muttered angrily as I bent to dust away the cracked broken bits of a conch. I’d broken three. Three conch shells that held recordings of the Princess. Recordings I’d hoped had been nothing, but now I’d never know.
I picked up a cracked conch shell and was about to toss it in frustration but stopped when I noticed something sticking out of the cracks. I brought it closer to my face to examine it. Something was buried deep into this conch. Sticking my fingers in, I grabbed whatever it was and pulled it out. It was a folded piece of kelp. I unfolded it to its true size. It was long and rectangular, with pretty handwriting sprawled across the front of it in squid ink.
Why had it been hidden in there?
My eyes scanned over the page, reading the words.
“On this Starsday of the one hundredth and ninth rule of the Malabella lineage, it is hereby decreed that Princess Odessa Malabella Sanitorum of the mer kingdom of Thalassar, on the day of her twentieth birthday wed Prince Xristo Oriana of the kingdom of Brague, uniting both kingdoms in a contract that can be broken only in death. In the same note that it is hereby decreed that Princess Odette Malabella Sanitorum of the kingdom of Thalassar shall wed Prince Dorian Knoll Gennivus of the mer kingdom of Kappur that same day.”
I tore my eyes from the page to steady my breathing. This, what I held in my hands was amarriage contract.A marriage contract between Princess Odele’s mother, Odette, and the Prince of Kappur. The Prince who was now an unwed King.
Odele’s mother had beenengagedto King Dorian. The royal signatures of the old King and Queen as well as advisors and witnesses were on this scroll. So why hadn’t Odette married Dorian? I looked over the names again. It said here that Odessa had been engaged to Xristo. Odessa was the late Queen Odette’s twin sister. She’d died before any marriages had taken place. There weren’t many details regarding her death, none that I’d heard anyway.
But even if she’d died, why had Odette married Xristo instead of Dorian like she was supposed to? If this document was correct, even despite her death, Odette should have married Dorian, thus sealing ties between Thalassar and Kappur.
Had this been what the Princess had kept secret? Had this been why someone was trying to murder her? Could she possibly know the story behind this?
Kappur and Thalassar had been in a contract to join forces. A legal contract that bound them and had been broken. The question was, who had been the one to break it? This could very well be the reason why the two kingdoms were at war in the first place. A broken marriage contract was serious enough for the royals to go to war over.
I read it over three more times, memorizing every word and name on that scrap of kelp before I folded it up and tucked it into conch shell number twenty-three. I’d keep it there until I found more out. Until I knew what exactly I was going to do with it and the information on it.
“There’s a lot of secrets in these royal tides,” I said to myself. And I meant to uncover them all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Maisie
THE NEXT MORNING I WAS ESCORTEDto the King and Queen at the guards’ request. They wanted to see me, and so I’d go to them. I wore a long silk dress in purple so that it matched my tail. Today, I didn’t really care what I wore. I just wanted to get this over with, whatever it was they wanted me for.
I arrived at their sides. They were wearing fancy dress, their crowns sparkling on top of their heads. When I arrived, the Queen looked me over with disdain and ushered me forward quickly. “Suffering tides, you are slower than a sea turtle. Bend down.” I did as she told and tried not to wince as she set a small silver crown on my head. When I straightened, her gaze seemed to scrutinize nearly everything about me. “We have much to do today,” she said. “So please no more repeats of what had happened at the anniversary dinner.”
I just nodded to avoid arguing, though I made no specific promises to her. It seemed there was a royal event going on of some sort, because a moment later, Prince Kai arrived with his guards and advisors. He gave me a shy nod that I returned before we were ushered out of the palace and towards awaiting shelled carriages tethered to massive hippocampus’.
The Queen and King rode together in one while Prince Kai and I took the other one. We sat in the soft cushioning and then the beast was off, following behind the King and Queen’s carriage. “Do you know what this is about?” I asked him. Prince Kai shook his head. Interesting.
“Princess, are you well?” he asked me suddenly.
I turned away from the pretty sights of Eramaea to smile at him. “I’m fine, thanks.”
He looked doubtful. “Yesterday I was outside your room. I heard you and Captain Saber shouting.”
My face went bright red but I turned from him before he could make note of it. “It was nothing,” I said, waving his concerns off. I didn’t want to think about Captain Saber today. Not when I’d had a good night. Not when he was nowhere in sight.
Prince Kai must have noticed I didn’t want to talk about that business any further, because he kept his silence. It was a few minutes later that we made it to wherever it was we’d needed to be. It was an enormous coliseum, like an amphitheater. Had we come to see a play? I let a guard help me down and escort Kai and I to the entrance.
We were led up a flight of stairs where four thrones awaited us. Behind one of them floated Captain Saber, his posture stiff and rigid. He cast one glance at me, the expression hard in his eyes, before he turned away. Good. I didn’t want to look at him either.
We took our seats, me beside Kai and King Xristo beside Queen Circe. I leaned forward in my chair to look down. It wasn’t as big on the inside as it was on the outside. We were close to the stage below, and seats around the place were filled with mer. Seriously, not one seat was left unoccupied.
“Why are we here?” I whispered to Kai.
He shrugged. “I do not know. I was hoping you could tell me.”
I guess Princess Odele would have known. Captain Saber and I never went over this bit in our training, unfortunately. I fought not to turn and glare at him for that. I wondered if he deliberately had wanted me to fail at this.
