“They’ll get the answers they want to hear. Even if they’re not the truth. One way or another,” he muttered softly. Something brushed against my back, and I looked down to find one of his fingers wedged under the heavy door. It wasn’t a lover’s touch. Just a link between us in the abyss, proving that he was there. “No matter what they have to do. When I first started working for the king, I thought it would be an honor. The other guards are my brothers. I’m proud to fight and train with them. But the king… the king is crueler than anyone I’ve ever known.”
I squeezed his finger. “If I have to leave…” I couldn’t say die, even though it seemed inevitable. “Promise me you’ll take care of my Mama?”
“Like she was my own.” Then he pulled his hand back and the jellyfish’s light dwindled as he swam away.
Ten
Once, Vigdis and a group of her friends had cornered me after our lessons with the historian who kept the clan’s records. I could still hear the squealing pitch of her voice, teasing me about the dullness of my scales, my skinny arms, and the way I wore my hair down and wild. At eleven, all I’d ever wanted to do was explore with Havamal. I wasn’t like the other girls I knew. Most of the time, I didn’t care how I looked when there were exciting things to do. But still, the screech of Vigdis’s laughter and the way the other girls spat out more insults in agreement had sent me fleeing from the glacier to the safety of one of our secret wrecks.
When I’d reached the ancient ship, I went straight for the captain’s abandoned cabin. Slamming the door behind me, I sank to the moldering floor. Grateful for the privacy the open archways of the glacier didn’t provide, I braced my back against the door. I don’t know how long I cried there, bringing my fists up to my mouth to stifle the noise, before I heard someone flop down on the other side of the door.
I never wondered who it was. I knew it was Havamal by the way he stayed silent, just being there with me as my friend while I sobbed out my misery. Finally, when I choked back the last of my tears, he pushed against the door. I scooted along the rotting floor to make a space for him to come inside.
He approached me like a scared animal, moving slowly with one hand raised. Then he lowered himself to the floor beside me and wrapped his scrawny arm around my shoulders. At the time, his small arm felt impossibly strong and unendingly reliable. I laid my head on his chest and let the steady rise and fall of his breathing comfort me. He brought a little of his inner heat to the surface of his scales, warming me gently, even though he didn’t have any spare fat and doing it must have cost him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered into the dim light. “What they say doesn’t matter.”
“Why? Because they’re stupid?” I joked, pawing at my eyes. “It’s not just them. All the adults think it, too. I’ve heard what some of them say to Mama.”
“But I don’t think it,” he said, and flashed me that gap-toothed smile I loved so much. At the time, his words were the only thing that mattered. “And we’re going to escape, right? Just you and me. So let them say what they want.”
I nuzzled under his chin while he held me. Together, we stayed like that until we fell asleep, leaving only after morning came.
Now I leaned my head back against the ice wall in the dungeon. These memories sometimes seemed like a dream, now—or a nightmare, given the amount of bittersweet pain they brought with them. Even if Havamal apologized every day until our dying breaths, there was no going back to the way things had been. Back then my trust in him had been absolute. When we were kids, I couldn’t see anything in him but the good.
I wondered what the boy Havamal had been would think of me now. He’d always seen the best in me, too. How would he have reacted, knowing what I’d done to Vigdis? Knowing what a selfish person I’d become? I could almost look into the young, hopeful face of his past and see the disappointment flickering in his bright eyes.
Sometime later, I heard scuffling outside the door. I moved toward it, half hoping that Havamal had come back. The ice boulder was shoved aside and, before my eyes could adjust to the new light, a pair of rough hands grabbed me by my arms. A harpoon pressed into my back.
“Get moving,” a voice hissed in my ear. I recognized it as the king’s enforcer, the bailiff who handed out judgments and punishments. Leif was a merman the size of an orca calf, with a neck so thick it blended into his jaw. His fins were blood red. We all knew and feared his voice.
Even though Havamal had said they wouldn’t mark me, I swallowed hard. “Where… where are we going?” I stammered. “Is it the trial already?”
“The king and I just want to ask you a few questions.”
If I’d had anything left in my stomach, I would have thrown up. I let the guard drag me along the hallway as the bailiff swam behind us with his weapon raised. I couldn’t help thinking that Havamal was wrong and they were going to torture me anyway.
He ushered me into the main hall. It was empty except for the king, perched on his throne with his midnight-blue tail tucked behind him. His dark eyes fixed on me, unblinking. The absence of his guards made me more nervous. What were they going to do to me that they didn’t want anyone else to see?
“I am going to keep this brief,” the king said, steepling his fingers and sitting back on his throne. “Tell the physicians how to fix Vigdis, and I may be more lenient with you at your sentencing.”
I took a deep steadying breath. Maybe I wasn’t here to be tortured? It surprised me that Calder cared about Vigdis. I didn’t know what had happened, much less how to help her.
“My guard said she was pregnant?” I said cautiously.
The king sat forward on his throne, an incredulous scowl forming on his face. “She has a monster growing inside her.”
It was the worst outcome I could imagine, and Loki had made it true.
“There isn’t a way,” I whispered. “I made the bargain with a god…”
“You made a bargain with a god to hurt a fellow mermaid?” The king tilted forward and stared at me. “Everyone is talking about it. And it makes me look bad if I can’t even get to the bottom of what happened.”
So it was about his appearance, not Vigdis, after all.
“No, for a mate, for her.” My voice was so tiny. I couldn’t look at him.
“You expect me to believe that all of this was for her benefit?”
Close to tears, I shook my head.
The king made a noise of disgust, then motioned to his bailiff. “Take her back to her cell. I’ll get the real answers out of Havamal.”
*
At the trial, Vigdis stood in the corner, apart from the rest of the court. Her belly bulged, covered in a network of blue-violet veins, though she’d been carrying only a week. The doctor testified that there was no egg, even though the shapeshifter had appeared in his merform while he seduced her. Her pregnancy was almost mammalian, with the creature connected directly to her womb and wrapped in a sack of tissue. Its veins had woven too tightly alongside hers—to cut it out might kill her, the midwives said.