Lyric
I’d never quite seen the ocean like this, in a boat and headed toward open water. I was on the surface. It was hard to believe.
I have legs!
Staring down at my two new body parts, I wiggled my toes and grinned. I’d done it. I’d gone to the sea witch and made a deal, although I couldn’t quite remember what happened. The memories were blurs, like flashing images that I couldn’t get rid of. I didn’t know why, but I remembered the sea witch’s voice, deep and condescending as he asked mewhyI wanted to go live with humans.For love.He’d thought my answer was ridiculous. He’d laughed. We’d made a deal, but I couldn’t remember what. It must have worked, though, because here I was, on the boat with my human, and I had legs. But I didn’t have a voice.
I opened my lips, tried to sayanything, but nothing came out. Silence. Frowning, I glanced back at my human, the man I’d given it all away for, Ethan. He was as handsome as I remembered, tall and dark haired with eyes that melted my insides. He’d kissed me, too, so passionately, and I’d felt a strange stirring down below.
As soon as I’d woken in that hospital bed, I’d gone to thebathroom—that’s what the nurse had called it—and examined my new body. I still had the same chest and face, but below was different. I had a phallus, exactly the same as the see-through treasure I’d found, and long legs. My tail was gone, and I couldn’t decide if I missed it or not. The human body parts were so plain, the same color as the rest of my skin, unlike my tail which had been red and scaley, glimmering under the diffused ocean light. I doubted my legs would glitter the same way.
Now I was on theboatwith my human and the smell of fresh ocean water assaulted my nose. I closed my eyes and breathed it in.
“Do you remember anything?”
My human’s voice startled me, and my eyelids flicked open. I glanced at him with a gentle smile and shook my head because that’s all I could do without being able to talk. Even if I could speak, would he understand me?
He rocked on his feet and placed his hands in the holes in the sides of his pants. I didn’t know what they called them, but I was sure they’d have a name. “We’ll travel for an hour or so, keep an eye on the weather. We’re searching for anything abnormal with the radar, something that doesn’t look like an animal. It’s hard to tell sometimes because sharks can have a similar shape to what you’d expect mermen to look like underwater.”
I cocked my head and furrowed my eyebrows. I didn’t understand what he was saying, not really. He was hunting merfolk.Me.
“Don’t look at me like that. They’re real. I’ve seen one.”
I widened my eyes at him.
“Yeah. Little more than six months ago, my dad and his crew, including me, were hunting them. A storm came out of nowhere and our boat overturned. I was the only one to survive, and I don’t really know how, but I remember a merman. A fucking merman with a bright red tail swam me to shore.” He shook his head and rocked harder on his feet, his mouth pressed in a thin line. The ocean wind fluttered his hair and it was a little longer than I recalled from when I saved him. “They’re the reason Dad’s dead, so I’m going to find them and hunt them all down.”
I swallowed around my fear and sat straighter in my seat. Would he kill me, too, if he knew the truth? I went to stand, but I couldn’t feel my legs and I nearly collapsed. He grabbed me before my face could meet the floor of the boat.
“Careful.” He laughed and it was so deep and melodic, better than any mermen’s laughs in Atlantia. It sounded different on the surface, too. Lighter, somehow. “Your legs get numb?”
Numb? I didn’t know what that meant, but I nodded.
“We need to find a way to communicate. Do you write?”
I shook my head. I understood now that what the lady had passed me at the hospital had been a pen, I’d seen my human write with it when he signed me out. They wrote their language with it, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.
“You need to learn. I’ll teach you.” He stood me upright, and I stared at him. He was so much taller than I was.
We gazed at each other, and I couldn’t look away from the brown depths of his eyes. I didn’t know any merfolk with that color.
“Do you like dudes or something?” he asked, and I startled.
I nodded, although I didn’t know what he was asking. Dudes was a new word to me.
“I don’t. Never been with one.” His gaze roamed down my body, and I shivered at the intensity of it. Did human males mate with other males like mermen did? Even though the same gender couldn’t result in children, merfolk happily had connections with everyone, no matter their sex. “You been with a guy before?”
I shook my head and smiled. At twenty-five, I was considered too young to have physical connections with other merfolk, but I’d had heard rumors of my people starting early. I’d been scared, too. Being a prince meant I needed a certain decorum.
“Right. Fuck, you’re a virgin.”
Virgin? I’d never heard of that word, either.
“Who’s a virgin?” the other young human male I’d met earlier climbed down the rungs of the boat ladder.Joey, I reminded myself. My human had introduced him. I didn’t know where he’d come from because I hadn’t moved from my spot on the seat since we left land. I was curious what this kind of floating device looked like all over, though.
My human snorted. “He is.”
“Shit. He’s never been with a woman? He remember that, did he?”
