The Mermaid Trials (The Mermaid Trials Series #1)
Cameron Drake
Prologue
I shifted my fins, hidden behind a heavy curtain of intricately woven kelp. My formal dress was made of something called linen, and it was similarly scratchy. I couldn’t stop itching where the seams pressed into my skin. I hated the black dress with the gold trim. I hated the reason I had to wear the dress. I hated everyone in the room, which might be unfair, but I felt that way all the same. It was why I was hiding myself. I couldn’t handle the cheek-pinching fingers and pitying eyes. It felt like I’d been hiding there for hours.
But my eyes were dry.
I couldn’t cry here. I wouldn’t. Not now. Not until I was alone in the dark where no one could hear me.
One of the guests laughed, and I scowled, my fingernails biting into my palms. The room was filled with tittering Mers, each one richer than the next. The upper class. They hadn’t known my father well, other than seeing him on the arm of one of their own.
They didn’t know how he would take me night swimming through the bioluminescent algae. He’d do it when I was a tiny Mer and couldn’t fall asleep. Or sometimes, he’d cradle me in his arms, swimming faster than should be possible, until I could hear the water roaring in my ears.
They didn’t know him, so they couldn’t know all the ways he would be missed.
Not one of the guests is here to mourn.
My stepmother was smiling, pressing her rounded belly. She didn’t even make an effort to look somber. For my father’s sake, I had done my best to love her. She was pretty and smelled nice, which went a long way with little Mers like me.
Despite all of my best efforts, it didn’t stick.
Besides, that’s not what she wanted either. She didn’t want a snot-nosed, clingy, half-wild Mer with unruly hair and a stubborn streak. She didn’t want my grubby fingers on her fancy things or my face at the dinner table.
She caught me spying and my stomach dropped. Her face got that pinched look she had whenever she was displeased. She often wore it these days, especially whenever she looked at me. She gestured and whispered furiously to the servant who’d come running to her side.
The next thing I knew, my nanny, Gerin, was bearing down on me. She yanked me out from behind the curtain and carried me up to my room. She gripped me firmly, so I eventually stopped squirming. Gerin wasn’t gentle about it, but she wasn’t deliberately rough either.
“I hate it here.”
She gave me a knowing glance.
“You won’t be here for long.”
“She’s not even sad! He’s gone forever and she’s not even sad!”
She just sighed, pulling a bag from the wardrobe.
“Pack your things. You are leaving.”
“I am?” My heart quickened with hope. Had they found another relative? Someplace for me to go? “Where am I going?”
“It’s best not to ask.”
She laid her hand on my head.
“I am sorry about your father, wild one.”
She sometimes called me that because of my hair. It was red and unruly, to say the least. But it was my mother’s hair, the only thing I had left of hers other than the silver locket at my throat.
Tears suddenly filled my eyes, threatening to spill over. I blinked them back, furious at the sign of weakness. I was still a very small Mer, but I knew I had no true friends here. Even that small act of kindness had me ready to crumble.
But I didn’t.
I packed the few things I’d come here with. My old clothes. A few unusual seashells my father had brought me from his extensive travels. A comb found in a shipwreck that had been my mother’s. The silver necklace she had loved was already in place around my neck.
“Do not pack your fancy things, Katriana. You won’t be needing them.”
I nodded my head and changed into simpler clothes. I left the dark and uncomfortable dress I was wearing on the bed. They could use it as a rag, for all I cared.
I was ready.
Whatever was coming, I knew I would survive.
I took Gerin’s hand and followed her from the room.
Chapter 1
twelve mer years later
I cut through the water, twitching my fins in annoyance. I had been pushed well past my limits today. Enough was enough.
I swam upward toward the shallows, flaunting the rules. The surface was forbidden—it was dangerous—but I didn’t care. I exhaled as I broke the surface, glaring at the shore.
Usually, I could stare for hours. I was endlessly fascinated by the colors, the greens, yellows, and reds. Even the sky was a shade of blue you never found underwater. Everything was so bright compared to the muted world I lived in. But today, the sight of the shore only made me angry.
It was so very far away.
I’d waited forever for this chance, and now she was going to ruin it!
I’d been minding my own business, scavenging for oysters in a favorite kelp bed. She must have known I was there. She probably followed me, the little sneak. My red hair and the bright blue green of my scales made me far too easy to spot, which she frequently did. It was something she had done ever since I could remember. It would have been cute if Thalia were an ordinary little sister.
But she wasn’t.
Only a few years younger, she had never been a real sister in any sense of the word. She was wanted. I was not. She was allowed in the main house, and I was not, unless it was to serve the two mistresses of the manor. We may have had the same father, but that was where the similarities ended.
We lived under the same roof, technically speaking, but our circumstances could not have been more different.
She was spoiled, petted, praised, pampered, and adored. Beautiful clothes, a bounty of delicious food, tutors, and fun and friends were hers for the taking.
Meanwhile, I was relegated to the servants’ quarters. I was what they call in polite society ‘a poor relation.’ Only, I wasn’t really related to any of them. Only Thalia and I shared blood, so I supposed that my stepmother didn’t really owe me anything. I was there on her charity.
And Thalia loved rubbing my face in it.
In fact, it seemed like it was her life’s mission to make me feel awful on a daily basis. She constantly insulted me, but I could handle that. It was all the sneaky little things she did to make my life more difficult that drove me mad.
Following me. Telling lies to get me in trouble with her mother. Even stealing my few possessions. She was so determined to make me miserable that nothing was beneath her.
I did my best to ignore her, as I had for years.
But today, she had gone too far.
Thalia would not stop preening about her new armor and weapons for the Trials. She usually limited her torture to home. Now, she was even haunting me out here, the one place I was usually free of her.
As usual, she was not alone. She’d even brought her awful friends along. Thalia never traveled without a school of sharp-tongued harpies. The Mean Mers, I called them. I didn’t think she even knew all of their names. I certainly didn’t.
They were only there to serve as an audience. It gave her someone to talk to, I supposed. Someone to make sure her barbs landed where she wanted them to.
On me.
Her mother’s family was one of the wealthiest in the Northern Waters, which was a part of the Atlantak Ocean, as the two-leggers called it.
Well, one the wealthiest other than the Royals. No one could match their wealth and privilege. I imagined them to be even more spoiled than my half-sister. More spoiled and more powerful.
Not that I’d ever met any of them myself, but they didn’t live too far from where we were now, an hour’s swim or so further north from the rocky cliffs that marked the edge of the sea.
Or at least, an hour at the speed I usually swam.