Next to us, Iker clears his throat. Nik gives my hand one last warm squeeze before we part, and he bows to Annemette.
Nik and I joke about Iker’s status as Prince Charming, but Iker certainly lives up to it tonight in every way. My heart was already pounding, but seeing him now causes the blood in my veins to grow hot.
Sweeping navy trousers top high-shine black boots. A crisp white shirt peeks from underneath a pressed coat that glows with golden thread and the crest of Rigeby Bay. The sun-kissed highlights in his hair shine in a way that only serves to make the ice blue of his eyes more stunning. The ruby crown is a symbol of his status, yes, but even in rags—even in nothing at all—he would look like a prince.
Iker takes my hand and kisses it, as he’s done with all the girls in line. His lips are gentle; the rasp of stubble at his chin makes my skin tingle and the flush deepen.
He straightens to his full height, broad shoulders back, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth—a subtle movement that makes my knees weak. “I am very much looking forward to dancing the night away with you, my lady.”
There’s a mischievous look in his eye as he leans into my ear. “Tonight you are the spitting image of a komtesse, but you have the grace of a queen. And in your blood is the sea woman I have fallen for.”
It’s all I can do not to kiss him right there, in front of everyone. But there will be time for that after all of this. After tonight is the rest of our lives. Together.
SIX DAYS BEFORE
The difficulty wasn’t in surviving the humans—it was in returning to the sea castle, slipping into her old life like nothing had happened, when everything had changed.
The little mermaid knew who she was. And as she swam through the sea castle’s ornate coral doors, past schools of fish new to this water, she could only think of one thing.
How to get herself back.
She hadn’t had magic on land. That much she remembered. But Evie had. She hadn’t seen it when she was a girl, but now that magic coursed through her own veins, it was easy to spot in her friend’s home, especially with that peculiar aunt of hers.
Oh, what a delicious secret that would been for Anna to have known. Ever the loyal friend, she wouldn’t have told anyone.
Magic existed, but it was illegal. A danger to the balance and order of things—at least in the eyes of the ?ldenburgs.
Which made the little mermaid’s revenge easy. Obvious.
She’d use Evie’s magic against her. Force her to perform magic in public. And even better, force the people she cared about most to lay down the punishment.
Nik was trickier. Evie’s punishment would torment him, she knew, but it wasn’t enough. Evie’s punishment would be the start of his, but it wouldn’t be all.
And Iker, well, his confidence might kill him before anything she did would touch him, the oaf.
But before any of her plans could fully form, she needed to learn how to go above. She knew the stories of “their” mother. She’d been human once too—a witch they tried to drown off the coast of Hirtshals. But Father—the sea king, not her real father—had gotten to her first. Made her his queen. He said it’d been something he’d never been able to do before and hadn’t done since.
He’d lied.
They’d all lied.
Which meant there were more secrets. And she knew just where to look.
The day her sisters had turned fifteen, the sea king had made a big show about writing their names in the large ledger he kept on his desk—the kingdom’s official listing of every merperson allowed to go topside. The sea king ruled with order and regulations as a way of protecting his people from discovery.
Thoroughness was his safety net, and so far, it had worked.
He made note of every magical transaction. Thus, if there were a way to get topside, it was likely he would have recorded it.
And so, with the scent of Nik still upon her skin, the little mermaid returned to the castle and immediately snuck into her father’s chambers. He kept his business papers in a particular parlor room, one with a view of the great reef below, the million colors of his kingdom shifting in the ocean light.
His snores drifted in from the bedroom. She didn’t know how he could sleep so soundly. Not only because he’d lied but because of the chaos taking over his waters. Magic had upset the natural course of things. A spell of abundance was pushing faraway creatures into their seas, creatures who were devouring the scarce resources already eroded by a strange sickness that had attacked the waters only a handful of years ago. The black plague, they’d called it. Most believed it had been magic too.
But the little mermaid knew that soon the sea’s problems would no longer be hers.
Quietly sweeping past the sea king’s copious bookcases, the little mermaid pulled herself up tight to his grand desk. With deft fingers, she opened the ledger and paged to four years before.
It had been no one’s fifteenth birthday that day, so there wasn’t a name. Simply a few entries from the sea king about that day’s regulated magical activities. On the very bottom line of that day, written so plainly it shocked her, was her birth.
Annemette joined us on this day, her eleventh birthday. Her sisters and myself brought her to the kingdom with the same magic that brought me Mette. For the first time in thirty years, that spell found success.
If this was written, why had they lied? The truth was there and everyone in the kingdom knew it. Why hadn’t they told her?
Just as fury began again to creep up her spine, the little mermaid realized exactly why they’d lied to her face.
They knew I’d want to go back.
So there’s a way back. There has to be.
She skipped forward, stopping for any longer entry, hoping for details of how he’d done it.
But she found nothing. Just page after page of dull business—“brought down a ship, the tally is twenty-two men, five barrels of oil, seventeen casks of wine, and ten pallets of silk.”
The little mermaid racked her mind for a better guess. Any guess.
A shot in the dark: she turned to thirty years before, looking for the entry marking the “birth” of the dead queen, Mette.
She found the passage dated February 17, 1833—an awful time to drown anyone. Hypothermia might have killed her before water claimed her lungs. In the three-page entry, the sea king went on and on about how the magic he’d used to save Mette had worked, but nearly killed him, leaving him so weak he could barely hold an inked feather to document it all. The magic had indeed been a typical exchange—he asked and he received—but the toll was so great, he’d nearly died.
And in his weakness and burgeoning love, he’d told Mette how she’d come to be a mermaid. He wanted the beautiful stranger to recognize his personal expense in having saved her—maybe that would make her love him, too. Instead, his admission initiated a flood of memories—memories that left her yearning to go back right away.
She’d been a witch. She’d known magic above. And he knew magic below.
And because he already loved her, he told her she could go.
The little mermaid’s heart began to pound. Fingers shaking, she turned the pages.
Finally, after lengthy paragraphs documenting weeks of the king’s recovery, she found what she wanted.
Today Queen Mette began testing a spell to bring mermaids to land in human form. In previous weeks, the queen had run tests on loyal subjects but failed to send them topside, as the magic stalled out, exhausting her and tormenting them, despite all her knowledge of the ways of magical barter. But this morning, she had an epiphany.
This spell is unlike any other. The magic needs assistance—the energy it uses is too great and deadly otherwise.
Only a life added to the exchange will fill the void. I was powerful enough to save her without sacrificing myself—and love may have pushed me through—but another try could kill me. Which means that to go above, she needs to take a life—a human life.
There were no entries for three days.
And, after that, no entries about it at all. The little mermaid paged ahead.