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Heath rolled his eyes. “Small detail,” he muttered.
“So dragons don’t hunt mermaids?” Merletta asked cautiously.
“Hunt them?” the dragon replied, his tone surprised. “Speaking for myself, I’d never even heard of such a creature before now.” He considered the matter for a moment. “But I wouldn’t have thought so, in any event. I’ve never heard of a dragon eating a creature intelligent enough to be capable of speech. Killing, yes,” he clarified. “Eating, no.”
“Reka is definitely not going to eat you,” Heath said firmly. “Or kill you,” he hastened to add.
“Is that how you flew here?” Merletta asked, putting the pieces together. “With the dragon?”
“My name is Rekavidur,” the dragon said, his tone reproachful. “Your manners are lacking, to refer to me as ‘the dragon’ after we have been formally introduced.”
“My apologies,” said Merletta, taken aback by the reproof. “I didn’t think a creature such as yourself would have any interest in a proper introduction with me.”
“That is understandable,” said Rekavidur, inclining his head regally.
Merletta examined the dragon for a moment. He was nothing like she’d expected. Which was in keeping with everything else that had happened that day, really. She looked from him to Heath. “Are you his pet, then?” she asked curiously.
The spark of humor leaped back into Heath’s eyes, but it was extinguished a moment later, as the dragon answered for him.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking.”
“In a manner of speaking?” Heath repeated, his tone outraged. He glared at Rekavidur, who just gave him a strange kind of rippling shrug. Heath turned to Merletta. “No, I am not his pet. We’re friends.” He shot a glare at the dragon. “And equals.”
Rekavidur gave a snort of laughter so pronounced that a tiny spurt of flame actually shot from his mouth, extinguishing immediately in a miniature puff of smoke. Merletta edged backward in the water, her eyes widening slightly.
“Equals,” the dragon repeated quietly, chortling to himself.
“You know, I defended you when someone called you my pet recently,” Heath told him, clearly disgruntled.
“What?” The dragon’s mirth disappeared instantly, and he puffed himself up to an impressive height. “Who dared to refer to me in such a manner?”
Merletta edged even further back. The creature was majestic, no doubt about it, and he looked incredibly dangerous in his anger.
But Heath just rolled his eyes, evidently not impressed. “Never you mind.” He returned his attention to Merletta, pointedly turning his shoulder on Rekavidur. “To return to your original question, yes. Reka agreed to carry me here, which is what I meant when I said I flew. I come from Valoria, a kingdom far to the west of here.” His eyes grew curious. “Where do you come from?”
Merletta hesitated for a moment. She was aware that any of her fellow merpeople would see it as an enormous betrayal for her to give any information about their kind to a human, let alone a dragon. Even this conversation would probably be enough to have her expelled from the Center forever.
But she pushed the thought aside recklessly. Why, she couldn’t say, but she felt a connection to this Heath that she had rarely felt with other merpeople. She couldn’t be sure of course, but she suspected that everything he’d so far told her was the truth, which was more than could be said for anyone in the Center.
“My kingdom is in the depths of the ocean, not far from here,” she said. “We call ourselves the triple kingdoms, because we’re made up of three small kingdoms, which have merged into one, in a manner of speaking.”
“Incredible,” Heath murmured. He frowned suddenly. “But you say that no one in your kingdom even knows about this island?” She nodded, and his eyes searched hers. “So you have no idea if anyone still lives here? Or what happened to them if they don’t?”
“None whatsoever,” said Merletta. “I don’t even know what this place is called.”
“It’s called Vazula,” said Heath absently. “This is—was—the island kingdom of Vazula, I’m almost certain.”
“Vazula,” repeated Merletta. She studied the human’s face. “You look disappointed.”
“What?” Heath shook himself out of his abstraction. “No, no, I just thought you might know…I was hoping to find out more about the history of this place, to find out if it was possible to co-exist…” He trailed off, smiling at her in a way that set off a strange feeling in her stomach, like she’d eaten old squid. “But that doesn’t matter now. Believe me, I’m not disappointed to have met you instead of finding my answers.”
She gave him a smile of her own, uncharacteristically shy all of a sudden. “Well, I was hoping to learn something of the inhabitants of this place, too, but I’m certainly not sorry to have encountered you.” She looked past him, letting out a huff of frustration. “I wish I could explore properly, but as always I’m blocked.”
“Maybe I can help,” said Heath brightly. “I can be your eyes up here. What do you want to know?”
Merletta tilted her head to the side as she regarded him. She couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm. “I want to know who built those structures, for one thing. Do you think it was humans?”
“Oh yes, definitely,” Heath nodded. “But I haven’t been able to find any sign of them still being here. I searched for hours last time, after I saw you. I assumed you were from a settlement on the island somewhere.”
