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He broke off at Merletta’s mischievous grin. “Watch this,” she said, before turning and jogging, in a slightly uneven way, toward the waterline. Once she was up to her knees, she dove forward gracefully. For the briefest of moments she was fully submerged, then her head once again broke the surface, with a flash of purple and green shining in the shallows behind her. Heath stared in amazement at the golden tips of her fins protruding into the air. This was the Merletta he knew.
She flipped herself over, diving under the surface again and propelling herself into deeper water. Heath found himself moving forward without realizing he’d decided to, everything in him drawn toward her. But before he could splash into the water, she reappeared.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been above for hours, and I wanted to cool off. Now let me show you my new trick.”
She’d just about beached herself by the end of her speech, and with a strange waddling motion, she used her hands to walk herself almost all the way out of the water. Then she flipped her tail up and to the side, so that it was fully on the sand. A strange ripple passed over her scales, and before Heath’s eyes, her tail split in two and her fins shrank and solidified. One more blink, and he was looking at a very human girl, sitting on the sand with her legs curled around her, and a skirt of scales fitted around her hips.
His astonished gaze passed up to Merletta’s face. “That’s quite a trick,” he said faintly.
“And it doesn’t hurt anymore, thankfully,” she said, her voice cheerful. “That first time I was as convinced as you were that I was dying. But I guess my body just wasn’t used to the sensation. It is now, though. For a month after that day I stayed on the island, changing back and forth several times a day, and now the process is quite commonplace.”
“Commonplace,” Heath repeated. “Of course.”
She laughed. “All right,” she admitted. “It still blows me away every time.” She pushed herself to her feet, taking a step toward Heath. Her eyes were shining. “When I dry out, I’m human, Heath. Like you.”
He stared back at her, suddenly finding it hard to swallow. His conversation with his grandmother flashed vividly across his mind. He remembered the deep embarrassment, almost shame, he’d felt when she accused him of being in love with Merletta, or at the very least drawn to her.
But this…this changed everything.
He was still self-conscious, but for quite different reasons. He certainly no longer had any hope of convincing himself that he wasn’t drawn to Merletta. He was drawn to her with a magnetism that was unnerving. He remembered the spark of connection that had passed between them the first time they’d met, and how he’d sensed something familiar in her, some reflection of his own restlessness. Some deeply buried part of him had known she was like him, he realized. Something in his core had recognized her as human, as his own kind.
He suddenly realized that Merletta was watching him in concern, probably because he was standing there staring at her like he’d lost his wits.
“What about you?” she asked, softening her tone to match his mood. “I was afraid you would die of your injuries. I didn’t know whether a human could survive losing that much blood.”
Heath swallowed. “My injuries healed. They just needed time.” He couldn’t quite keep the intensity out of his voice. “The guilt wasn’t so easy to recover from.”
“Guilt?” Merletta repeated, looking genuinely startled. “What would you be feeling guilty for?”
Heath stared at her. “For leaving you here to die, of course!” His eyes searched hers, begging her to believe him. “I tried to get Reka to turn back, I swear.”
“Heath.” Merletta’s eyes were suddenly as intense as his. “You had no choice. You were on death’s door yourself. Reka did the right thing by taking you back to your kingdom with all possible speed.”
Heath’s brows lowered. He couldn’t agree with her, but he didn’t want to argue about it.
“Besides,” said Merletta, in a practical spirit, “if he’d helped me back into the water, Ileana would probably have finished me off. As it was, she thought I was dying too, and she left me be.” She flashed Heath a smile. “And as you see, I didn’t die.”
“But what does it mean?” Heath asked, still unable to comprehend it. “How is it possible that drying out gets you legs?”
Merletta shook her head. “I don’t know. But I can only assume that the history we’ve been taught isn’t accurate. At the very least, there must be large chunks missing.” She grimaced at him. “I know for a fact that what they’re teaching us about humans isn’t true. And from what I’ve experienced, everything we were told about dragons was false as well.” She glanced up at the sky. “Where is Reka, by the way?”
Heath cleared his throat. “He’s not here. I came by sea.” He gestured back toward the boat, pulled up on the sand, and Merletta blinked at it, apparently noticing it for the first time.
Her eyes passed from the boat to Heath’s face, their expression shrewd. “I think you have a great deal to tell me, as well.”
Heath let out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I do,” he acknowledged.
He thought about his strange visions. Merletta was alive after all. Did that mean his grandmother was right, and he’d been somehow seeing her from afar, by use of his magic? He wondered how Merletta would feel about him having watched her, however unintentionally.
“Come on,” said Merletta, taking his hand and pulling him over to sit on the sand near the boat. As usual, she seemed to feel no awkwardness about touching him, but Heath’s hand tingled from the contact for minutes afterward.
The mermaid-turned-human shifted so that she was facing him, her legs under her and her eyes compelling. “Let’s talk.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What happened to the guards wasn’t your fault,” Heath said softly.
Merletta was still sitting with her legs curled under her, but now she was facing out to sea, her penetrating eyes fixed on the horizon. Their tortured expression tugged at Heath’s heart as much as her confession about the guilt that had been eating at her since that day. She’d been just as anguished over the events as he’d been, but she had handled it much better. No descending into surliness, or risking her life with pointless pranks. He was both ashamed of himself, and more proud of her than he could say.
