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“I suppose so,” acknowledged Heath.
“Well, I’m glad to see that the culture here is helping you open your mind, at least,” his grandmother said, with a touch of humor.
“Is that why you invited me to visit?” Heath asked suddenly. “To encourage me to embrace our Kyonan heritage, and my magic?”
She let out a sigh. “Not exactly. I thought that you, like my younger self, might feel in need of some…space. I was deeply concerned to hear that you wouldn’t tell your parents how you acquired your life-threatening injuries.”
Heath fidgeted, and she continued in her calm way.
“I don’t mean to chastise you. But it’s not in your nature to be mutinous, or secretive for the sake of it. I knew you must have a reason for your silence, and to be frank, I have been extremely apprehensive about what that reason might be.”
“It certainly wasn’t out of a desire to cause anyone grief,” said Heath quickly.
She smiled. “Knowing you as I do, it is quite unnecessary to tell me that.”
Heath averted his face, unable to bear the warmth in her eyes. “I’m not as wonderful as you seem to think, Grandmother,” he said heavily. “I’ve made a lot of stupid decisions. It’s because of me that…”
He broke off, unable to go on. His mind was overwhelmed with an image of Merletta, tail swishing as she moved through deep water, eyes alert and determined as they’d always been. A purely imagined scene, as he’d never actually witnessed her swimming while fully submerged.
“Tell me, Heath.” The words were gentle, but it was an order.
“I can’t,” he choked out. “I promised someone that I wouldn’t tell anyone about—”
“Do you trust me, Heath?” his grandmother interrupted.
“Of course I do,” he said, frustrated. “But I trust my parents as well. The story I have to tell involves information that…that can’t be taken back once it’s been exposed. My father would be honor-bound to tell King Matlock what I know, and I swore to…someone, that I wouldn’t reveal—”
“I am a princess of two kingdoms, Heath,” his grandmother said, once again cutting him off. Her voice was more serious than he’d ever heard it. “A power-wielder born into a world where such a being was utterly unprecedented. I understand more about divided loyalties than you might think. And I’m asking you to trust me when I tell you that—where the safety of our kingdom is not at stake—my loyalty to you as my grandson is greater even than my loyalty to the crown of either Valoria or Kyona. You said that you have a story to tell. I can see that you’re bursting to do so. You can trust me.”
For a long moment, their gazes were locked, Heath feeling almost mesmerized. Then his senses as a power-wielder suddenly latched on to something. Her magic, while emanating from her in the constant flow that was common to all power-wielders, wasn’t reaching out, wasn’t wrapping around him. She had a potent ability to effect change—she could change his mind without even using words if she chose to. But she wasn’t. She was simply asking him, person to person, to trust her. And he found that he did.
Without warning, the story poured out of him. He told her how a chance reference in an old captain’s log had sent him and Reka searching for Vazula. How they’d found it, surrounded by a magical barrier that an ordinary human wouldn’t be able to pass through, like the ones around the dragon colonies. He told her about his first sighting of Merletta, and how he’d gone back hoping to find her again. When he revealed the incredible truth he’d discovered on their second meeting—that she wasn’t human at all, but a mermaid, something in his listener’s eyes made him stop.
“What?” he asked, unsettled.
“I didn’t speak,” his grandmother said, her voice not sounding quite natural.
“I know you didn’t, but I saw something,” Heath pressed, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Some…reaction.”
She gave a weak smile. “Did you expect me to have no reaction to the information that there are real mermaids living in the depths of the ocean?”
Heath shook his head. “It wasn’t just astonishment. Why are you alarmed? Why are you afraid?”
She drew a shaky breath. “To be perfectly frank with you, Heath, I’m not sure if I should answer that. Please, finish your story first. You said Rekavidur was with you when you discovered that this Merletta is a mermaid?”
Heath nodded, his throat feeling strangely tight at hearing Merletta’s name on someone else’s lips. It made her feel more real, less a figment of his imagination.
“Of course. He was always with me when I went to Vazula. How else would I get there?”
He hurried on, telling her about the months where he and Merletta had met on the island every week, and the months where he’d been prevented from meeting her, first because he was detained in Bryford, then because Rekavidur stopped responding to his call. He couldn’t help but notice that his grandmother seemed particularly interested in the dragon’s behavior, but he didn’t ask her about her reaction again. He’d reached the part that was hardest to say but that he most desperately needed to get out.
Haltingly, he told his grandmother what had happened a month before, when he’d finally returned to Vazula to find Merletta under attack by a group of her own kind. How he’d attempted to intervene, only to be attacked himself. How she’d sacrificed herself to pull him to the relative safety of the shore, drying herself out in the process. How Reka had refused to go back, to give her the minute it would have taken to return her to the water and save her life.
There was a long silence after he finished, and he found he couldn’t look his companion in the eye. He felt depleted, empty. But a certain lightness came with the sensation as well.
“I’m sorry, Heath,” his grandmother said at last. “You lost Merletta, and your closest friend in one blow.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Although I trust Rekavidur isn’t lost to you forever.”
Heath shrugged one shoulder, unable to find words.
