Page 25 of Whispers Beneath the Deep
“Imagine what?” Her voice was but a whisper.
“Three bodies.” My fingers trailed up the length of her arm. A slow seduction. A promise. “Three mouths.” My thumb swiped against her lower lip. “You, me, and Prince Kai, twisting together between the sheets…” I pulled away, letting the promise dangle between us. And Maisie? She could find no words to question me or point out the fact that Prince Kai despised me. I smiled and for the next few moments relished in the heat of her body and her silence. I knew what she was thinking, dreaming,wishing.
I thought it too.
I dreamt it too.
I wished it too.
More than she could ever know.
Chapter Fifteen
Maisie
Off and on I fell asleep in the Black Blade’s arms, the voice of the real Princess of Thalassar lulling me to sleep with the incessant details of her boring life. Eventually, I had to leave his side, letting secrets and whispers, plots of discovery awaiting until the next night.
I ventured up to my room, just as lights outside my windows began to expand in swaths of magenta, orange, and periwinkle. Phytoplankton illuminated whatever shadows the surface light could not reach, covering the ocean in a dusting of golden and blue particles.
I stopped and stared beyond the bars of my pretty prison, and even that black steel refused to put a damper on my mood. Eramaea was so beautiful, my heart ached.
Sighing, I took a stroke away from the windows and slowly peeled the dress from my body. It slid down in a tuft of gossamer and silk past my tail and onto the quartz floors. I turned and froze for a moment, transfixed on the vision of myself in the mirror.
My hair was tousled, the tips floating over my bare shoulders. There was a smattering of scales raining down my shoulders and lower back. I tried to see myself as what Elias claimed me to be. Was the mer before the mirror really beautiful? Could she be, or rather, couldIbe?
My skin held the slightest tint of pink, like it had been coated over with the dustings of a pearl. And my hair and tail… Thin aqua fins ranged halfway below my hip and nearly down to the tip of my tail on either side of my body. They fanned out at my sides, in a way I imagined a bird took off for flight, and when the light caught them, you could make out the darker tracings of veins running through. The left side was shredded, and there was the small silvery sheen of scar tissue spiderwebbing on my tail.
If it weren’t for this deformity, I could almost trick myself into believing that I was actually part of the Malabella lineage. I shook that thought off as soon as it formed. No. I was nothing. No one. Just because my hair held the undertone of blue in it, though it was on the darker side of purple, it didn’t make me royalty.
I was letting the silk gowns get to my head.
With a sharp shake of it, I turned from the mirror and waded into the bathing room. First, a scrub. I could never get enough of those.
I took my time soaking in the sands before getting out and choosing an outfit for the day. The princess had very little assortment of simple clothes, and I’d exhausted them all already. I grabbed a dress in the pretty color of purple, one that matched my tail, but glittered with diamond jewels.
I slipped it on. The dress had thin straps that crisscrossed at my upper back. There was a heart shaped neckline, and the oval cut behind the dress left my back bare. The skirts were puffy, the whole thing rather superfluous, and so like Princess Odele that I had a maddening urge to rip the dress from my body. I didn’t. I had to make up for my mistake the day before. Which meant I had to don her face. For real this time. If I wanted to make a change, discover secrets, and stop a war, I had to be her. In every way.
So I picked out jewelry and extravagant headpieces. Diamonds glittered at my ears, a necklace of purple stones, as big as a sea robin’s eggs, was heavy at the base of my throat.
I grabbed a pack of cosmetics and slid a bright dusting of ground mother-of-pearl across my eyelids, brightening my cheeks and lips with pink until they sparkled.
When I finished, a knock sounded at the bedroom door. I answered it slowly, imagining that Odele would take her time before answering, all haughty arrogance.
I moved the chair propped up against it, and opened it. Palace guards floated on the other side, among them, I noticed, was also one of Prince Kai’s own guards. They bowed low before straightening. “Princess,” they greeted in unison. “The queen requests an audience with you immediately.”
Of course she did.
“We are to escort you to her, at the behest of Captain Saber.”
Just the mention of him made my gut clench angrily. The tadpole. He’d followed Elias and I. He’d turned him in. Because of him, Elias had nearly died.
“I never want to see you again.”
I’d meant it, and he had obviously heeded the venom in my words if he’d sent his guards in his stead.
I tilted my chin up, the same way I’d seen Odele do it hundreds of times in those conch recordings. “Fine. Take me to her.”
I swam with dignity, my limp hurting a great deal less than it had yesterday. Still, if I had been in pain, I wouldn’t have let my weakness show. Especially not in front of the queen.
