“You do have irresistible charm,” Sera teased, smiling.
He pulled her close and kissed her one last time. “I’ve got to go,” he whispered.
Sera nodded and released him. “Good-bye, Mahdi,” she said. Tears blurred her vision. She hastily wiped them away. Reginas didn’t cry. Not for themselves.
“Good-bye, Sera. Please stay safe,” he said. “You have my heart and my soul. You are my heart and soul. Never forget that.”
Sera watched him swim back into the orchard and fade into the trees. And then he was gone.
“Will I ever see him again?” she whispered to the ancient trees. “Will I ever return to Miromara?”
She took a deep breath, pulling the waters of home deep into her lungs, imprinting the scent of water apples, the glow of the moon, and the warmth of Mahdi’s touch in her heart, where she would keep them always. No matter what happened.
Then she turned away and began the long journey north.
MASSIVE IRON GATES, twenty feet high and encrusted with ice, protected the passages that led to the Citadel’s interior.
Astrid, swimming fast, approached the entrance now. In the glow of the large lava globe that hung above it, she could see two creatures, both nearly as tall as the gates. They looked like ice come to life. Their bodies and limbs were as solid as a glacier. Their long hair and the beards on their broad faces were like the spikes of an icefall. Pale blue light glowed in their eyes.
They were members of the Fryst, a clan of giant ice trolls. Their kind had protected the Citadel ever since it was built.
As Astrid neared them, the Fryst advanced menacingly. One raised a club made of a boulder lashed to ship’s timbers. Then he recognized Astrid and called out a greeting. The trolls’ language was all groans and creaks—the sound pack ice makes as it moves over the sea. Astrid called back and the Fryst waved her through.
She continued on, speeding through labyrinthine passageways, past the modest dwellings of the Citadel’s poorer citizens, the graceful mansions of its more prosperous ones, and the palaces of the military elite until she finally arrived at the towering admiral’s palace.
Soldiers nodded solemnly to her as she entered the palace and sped to the west wing, which contained offices on its top level, dungeons in the bottom, and a private hospital. When she reached the hospital’s spacious foyer, she spotted Kolfinn’s doctor. Together they swam to Kolfinn’s room.
“Your father is not the merman he once was,” the doctor cautioned as he led her through the hospital corridors. “The poison has ravaged his system.”
“Why haven’t you stopped it?” Astrid asked angrily.
“We’ve tried. We’ve given him every antidote we know, but nothing’s worked. The poison may be a new formulation. Or he may be unusually susceptible to it.”
The doctor stopped at a chamber flanked by guards. He put his hand on the knob.
“Prepare yourself, Astrid,” he said as he opened the door.
Astrid thought she had, but nothing could have readied her for the sight that greeted her. Kolfinn’s body was wasted, his face now just thin, sallow skin stretched over a skull. His hair was stringy and dull.
Where was her strong father, with his powerful black-and-white tail; his riveting ice-blue eyes; his long, thick locks, the color of the winter sun? Where was Ondalina’s fierce admiral with his black tattoos—the mark of his rank—circling his thickly muscled arms?
He was dying, Eyv?r said. But he couldn’t be. He was the admiral. He’d kept Ondalina safe for two decades. He’d kept her safe. It was hard enough being a mermaid who couldn’t sing with a powerful father to protect her. What would her life be like without him?
Kolfinn was propped up in his bed, his eyes closed. As Astrid’s gaze swept over him, it came to rest on three jagged stripes across his chest. Scars inflicted by a mother polar bear.
Astrid remembered all too well how he got them. As a child, she had once strayed too close to a pair of cubs on an ice floe. She could still hear the mother’s roar, see her bared teeth, as the animal charged straight at her. Having no magic to call on, Astrid hadn’t been able to defend herself. She couldn’t cast so much as a camo spell.
Then there had been a black-and-white blur in the water, and Kolfinn emerged, spear in his hands. When he put himself between Astrid and the bear, the creature swiped her mark into his flesh with her claws. Kolfinn didn’t kill her, though he could have. She was a mother protecting her young, like he was doing. He’d just driven her off and scooped up a sobbing Astrid.
He still protected her now. From whispers and glances. Laughter. Cruel remarks. It was how he showed his love. Astrid loved him, too, though she sometimes feared him and often disappointed him.