Page 79 of Midnightsong
Kaden
“Brother?”
Pointed pressure on his left tricep roused Kaden.
Groggy, his eyes fluttered open and he groaned. Hadrien was beside him, and poked Kaden again with a small finger.
“Susu wake!” With glee, the merboy propelled across the room, doing a flip midway.
A silky hammock enrobed Kaden’s tail and shoulders. “Wh-what? Hadrien? Cyrus? Where am I?” His torso felt tight, a gelatinous bandage wrapped around the middle of his tail and abdominals, with extra padding on the sides.
His brother sat in his chair across from him and raised a thick, dark eyebrow. “In Adrielle and my bedchambers, where our sentinels brought you three tidal cycles ago.”
“Why am I here and not in the infirmary?” Kaden tucked his tail under him and used his arms to walk himself up onto his elbow and rubbed his face.
“Cyrus and I requested you be brought here for private treatment.” Adrielle glided by. Libbi hung onto her tailfins, giggling, letting her mother bob her up and down with each tail kick.
“Thank you, I appreciate you both doing that.” Kaden’s abdominals protested and clenched as soon as he sat fully upright, curling his tail under the hammock to keep him in place. “That much time passed? Cyrus, you slept there all this time?”
“I’ve learned to find comfort in this hard thing.” With his tail, Cyrus thumped against the seat’s rocky base. “Adrielle slept beside our children in the guest chambers.” He clasped his fingers together. “I also wished to talk to you about the last time we spoke.” His older brother’s comment was another pointy coral piece to his heart as he recalled Cyrus’ blunt words. “I’m sorry.”
Kaden cocked an eyebrow and he couldn’t resist a smile cracking over his face. The last time Cyrus apologized to him was over ten tidesyears ago, and only because he had injured Kaden when they were rough housing and their parents had demanded he apologize.
Perhaps becoming a lifemate and father had softened him a touch.
“Look, I could have worded my own concerns better.”
“Did Adrielle put you up to this?” Kaden continued his teasing, and Cyrus’ smile never faded.
“She might have.”
“Yes, I did. We can’t be driving each other away, not at a time like this.” Adrielle stopped swimming and Libbi let go, swaying with the currents.
“You’re right though. I need to apologize to Angie. I was wrong to hide my health issues from her, and she rightfully felt betrayed.” The second part of Adrielle’s statement hung in his head.
“Did I miss something new while I was out?”
What Cyrus said next might as well have been another spear in his healing wounds. “Our aunt and uncle are planning a simultaneous attack on human shores. The word spread of humans attacking you, brother. Their betrayal knows no bounds. First our queen and our mother, then they try to assassinate you. And my condition?” Cyrus gestured vaguely over his body. “Humans.”
Tensions with humans were going from bad to worse. “So that’s why Uncle had been refusing to take me to his military meetings. He couldn’t have me dissenting.” Kaden blinked as the rest of his face went slack, a shudder in his core. He touched his bandage again at one of his sides where the divers speared him. “Couldn’t risk me turning the Shangjiangs to my side. That rotten xia of a merman.” A wayward yu, or in Angie’s words, a sablefish, nipped at his caudal fins, and he jerked his tail away. The dark-colored yu meandered away. “I was a fool to ever believe I could make a difference. Being his high advisor is a title, nothing more.”
Adrielle shook her head in disgust. One of her hands was in Cyrus’, and her fingers curled around him, her knuckles paling. Cyrus nudged her and she loosened her grip. “Now you understand my aversion to him. He’s a charmer on the outside, but a haishe on the inside.”
A healer swam to Kaden, handing him a stone bowl with a thick paste inside. “Eat this, Your Highness.”
“Perhaps, Your Majesty soon?” Cyrus’ tone had lightened and Kaden grunted. The notion of becoming King appeared to be more and more of a necessity, especially if both his uncle and aunt were planning war.
But how? Uncle had set the events in motion, and Kaden had to find some way to get him off the throne. It seemed like an impossibility he could achieve before the two monarchs struck land.
“Quiet, you.” Kaden stifled a chuckle while scooping out the paste with a small spoon, and gagged at the gritty, bitter taste. Still, he forced himself to swallow it. “Just as foul as the first time I took it.” The aftertaste stuck to the back of his throat, and no amount of swallowing got rid of it.
The healer’s face remained impassive as she took the empty bowl from Kaden and left the bedchambers.
A brief thought came to Kaden, of whether their healer would go to Saeryn and tell him of his desire to take the throne.
He pushed the thought away. The healers were sworn to maintain their patients’ privacy, unless they deemed them a danger to themselves or others.
“Try taking that for close to three tidesyears straight. The taste grows on you after a while. Like the taste of accidentally eating rotten kelp.”
