Page 8 of Midnightsong
The villagers stopped what they were doing when he arrived and clamored to greet him.
“Your Highness! You came to our humble, little town for a visit?” a mermaid with a sapphire tail asked, holding a squirming merling in her arms.
“I did. Some food for you.” Kaden opened the bag holding sweet, salty, and bitter seaweed, edible kelp, sea lettuce, sea truffles, and sea caviar—salty, gelatinous pearls made from kelp and seaweed.
“You came!” Mermen and mermaids and their children swam to him, each taking a portion and leaving enough for the rest. “Thank you, Prince Kaden!”
“Thanks are not necessary. Your being fed is.” Kaden hung back, shaking hands and conversing with the villagers until the tides shifted again, the hour growing late.
A drought from pollution. He’d have to bring it up to Cassia and Varin to ask for more assistance there. Hope swelled that Angie would be able to pull through with her project and clean the ocean’s litter.
He and Cyrus loved visiting the small villages and towns on the outskirts and keeping abreast of the happenings outside the queendom. The commoners’ problems were their problems, the two princes liked to say.
A call to Angie’s seaflute resulted in her silence, likely because she was still at school. He would try again later and set off for Haibei.
Kaden had made it halfway to his home queendom, two tidesdays later, and having just come down from summoning a powerful wave that propelled him two nautical miles, when the currents carried a disembodied voice into his ears, along with the incessant hum of his seaflute on his waist.
“Kaden? Kaden, you better be there.” The voice came clearer and louder. Princess Adrielle’s, his brother’s lifemate.
Kaden stopped and untied his seaflute. “What’s going on?”
Even before Adrielle spoke again unseen breaths whispered across his skin, making it crawl as if a hundred tiny parasites crawled beneath.
“It’s the queen.” Her voice dropped low, tremulous, and apprehensive.
“What happened?” Kaden’s voice pitched higher and faster with each word. The waters might as well have slowed to a standstill around him.
“She was—she...” Adrielle coughed and went quiet.
Kaden blanched, the growing silence between them unnerving. “Adrielle, tell me.”
“Sh-she was killed.”
The rest of the blood drained from Kaden’s organs, leaving him cold and hollow. Adrielle’s wobbly voice, so close to him a moment ago, sounded as if she were somewhere far, far away.
“Kaden, the throne sits empty.”
Three
Angie
Angie sat cross-legged on the flooronce she entered her apartment three evenings after she met with Kaden and told the Mer-King and Mer-Queen about the unauthorized divers, his words a death blow to her heart.
“My mother is dead. Killed.”
When did it happen? Who killed her? Did this have any connection to the unauthorized divers Stefan saw?
Damn it, why didn’t he text her back?
Her family said they hadn’t seen Stefan since her chat with him. Kaden had no answers and was on his way back home; He said he would update her again once he reached the Northern Queendom’s palace.
Goosebumpsarose on the back of her neck, the air from her open window suddenly feeling close to glacial, but she was apathetic to the temperature.
The tragic notion rang in her mind. The proud, resilient Mer-Queen was gone.
Angie had visited with her several times after the war was over and when she returned to Creston during school breaks. She wasn’t sure Serapha ever fully trusted her, or any other human for that matter, but she had become more receptive to her with each visit. Two months ago, she’d started sharing stories of her own and the two would sit and talk until Angie had to leave, or Serapha was called away to her duties.
More than that, Kaden lost his mother, only two years after his father was slain.
