Page 71 of Oceansong
“Angie, meet Adrielle,” Kaden said, his voice flat. “My brother’s lifemate. Thank you for launching us into ice-cold water.” His gills and nostrils flared as he faced her.
Adrielle swam closer to them and squinched her small face. She spoke through a clenched jaw, “Kaden,” theKsound gravelly and harsh. Angie paddled nearer, but Adrielle backed away and held out her hand in a signal of warning. “Wait.”
Angie obeyed and stopped where she was. “You were watching me theother day.”
“I was.” Adrielle tilted her head to one side, staring them down. “I had to see for myself.”
“See what?” Kaden’s skin tightened and the tip of his tail stiffened. “Did Cyrus say something?”
“Don’t blame him, but now I know that Cyrus knew and couldn’t be bothered to tell me, we will have words. I went to find you after you didn’t show up for your engagement announcement ceremony. After you missed your own banquet!” Her voice rose with each word. “What is wrong with you? Are you trying to turn the entire queendom against you?”
Kaden paled.
“King Aqilus and Queen Serapha are already branding you a traitor, and rumors are swirling that you are abandoning us for landwalkers.” Adrielle was positively seething, and Angie winced at her radiating ire piercing the cold around them. Her expression became pleading. “For a human woman?”
“There’s nothing more for you to understand. I care for her,” Kaden said, voice raspy.
“The engagement party,” Angie whispered to him. “That was today?”
A flash of hurt struck her. A reminder that he was meant to be with another. A mermaid, someone more suited for him than she would ever be.
“It’s not what you think.” Kaden kept his voice steady and assuring.
Adrielle turned to Angie, her tone blunt and sardonic. “He is not to be bonded, landwalker, so no worries for you. Not anymore. The King and Queen are furious.”
“It’s an event where they present me with mermaids who they thought were suitable and who had shown interest in me. I knew it was today. I chose not to go.” Kaden directed his glare back to Adrielle. “I resent it. Seeing mermaids corralled like they’re nothing more than animals to be inspected and one chosen to be a trophy. Now they can spend their time on mermen or other mermaids who wish for their time and affections.”
“I am a prized animal, then?” Adrielle’s shoulders twitched, and she moved toward them, extending her torso out of the water. Her intense gaze dared him to answer.
“There was no contest, and the interested mermaids and mermen knew it. I envy the love that you two have, forever and true.” He directed his next words to Angie, his expression softening and voice lowering. “I wished to only join with my true heart’s desire. I never imagined it would burn for a human.”
“Believe me, I didn’t want this to happen either. Having feelings forhim.” Angie said to Adrielle, waving a hand at Kaden.
Behind him, Adrielle scowled and rested her chin on her hands, appearing crestfallen. “Kaden, if the King and Queen find out you were a no-show because you’re romancing a landwalker, especially in the midst of what has been happening, they’ll make you an outcast forevermore. You understand, right?”
Angie sucked in a sharp breath, her heart leaping to her throat and wedging itself there.
“Are you going to tell them?” Kaden’s words were strained, breaths coming out like he’d swam a marathon.
“You’re being reckless,” Adrielle answered with a frustrated shake of her head, “but no. I won’t tell.”
Kaden’s shoulders and chest deflated at her answer.
“Oh, stop looking at me like that!” She groaned. Adrielle raised her hands, bringing a stream of seawater with her, and then dropped her face in her palms. “I need to talk to you in private.”
Kaden bowed his head and looked to Angie, who nodded at him while rubbing her hand over and over on her pant leg, still damp from when they were thrown into the water earlier.
The time that they were gone felt endless.
What were they talking about? Every possibility crossed her mind. Perhaps Adrielle was convincing Kaden to leave her, for his own good, she would guess. Or it could be as innocuous as her asking questions about Angie. Time passed and her mind wandered to darker thoughts. Persuading Kaden to kill her, even? She shuddered and squeezed the horrifying, uncalled-for thought out into the Mariana Trench where it could stay.
Finally, Kaden and Adrielle returned.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
He scooted to sit beside her, wrapping his tail around the front of her legs in a protective gesture. “It will be.”
“Angie?” Adrielle’s voice joined theirs. Angie sat up to attention, listening to her. A raging storm brewed in the mermaid’s eyes. “If you ever do anything to hurt him, or any of our people, I will hunt you down myself and kill you.”
