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“Before what?” Merletta cut in sharply. “You could never keep things from me, Tish, so don’t even try. What’s happened?”
Tish squirmed, her fins curling underneath her in a way Merletta knew meant she was deeply uncomfortable. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” contradicted Merletta curtly. “Tell me, Tish.”
Tish pushed out a long stream of water. “I had a visit, a couple weeks before your birthday. I guess you were on your break, after your first year test. Two Center guards came and asked me about you. They didn’t exactly make threats, but…I don’t know, Merletta. Something was so off about them. I felt afraid from the moment they arrived.”
Cold dread was clutching at Merletta’s insides. She’d been worried about something like this, which was why she hadn’t told Tish all she knew. And yet her gentle friend had been in danger anyway.
“What did they say? Did they hurt you?”
“Of course not,” said Tish quickly. “I told you, they didn’t even make threats. They asked about you, and whether you were staying with me during your break.”
Merletta swallowed, not daring to ask Tish what her reply had been.
“I wasn’t sure what to say,” said Tish pleadingly. “Obviously I knew you hadn’t been staying with me, but I wasn’t sure you wanted them to know that. So I gave a kind of non-answer. I said that I wasn’t able to accommodate guests in my actual building, but there was accommodation nearby.”
“That was very clever,” said Merletta, impressed. “Did they swallow it, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Tish. She was hugging herself again. “They were impossible to read. They asked me a few more questions about you, then they left.”
Merletta frowned, thinking it over. “And you said they were Center guards?”
Tish nodded, then paused. “Well, I assumed they were Center guards. They didn’t actually say.”
“What did they look like?”
Tish frowned in thought. “I don’t know, Mer, it was months ago now. One of them was tall and thin, the other very muscled. They seemed a little mismatched to me somehow.”
Merletta nodded, locking the words away and resolving to search the guards during her next training day. She wasn’t hopeful. The description didn’t give her much to work with.
“I’m sorry I put you in that position, Tish,” she said earnestly. “I never wanted to make you feel unsafe.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Tish. “And I’m sorry I haven’t been more loyal. But the truth is,” she twisted her hands again, “I think I’m better out of it, whatever it is you’re caught up in. I mean, look at us.” She gestured between them, her eyes passing over Merletta’s ever-present spear and resting on the arm that held it. “We don’t belong in the same world anymore.”
Following her friend’s gaze, Merletta realized how different she must look to Tish from the friend of her childhood. And it wasn’t just the weapon, or the armband that marked her as a trainee. Her very muscles showed the strength that she’d gained through relentless training. And Tish was the same pale, timid mermaid Merletta had grown up with.
Merletta’s heart sank. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the realization that Tish was probably right, or the flavor of goodbye to her friend’s words.
“I understand,” she said, as evenly as she could.
“I still want to see you,” Tish said quickly, her eyes searching Merletta’s face with their familiar kindness. “You’re my oldest friend, Mer. You always will be.”
Merletta nodded, her throat too thick to form words.
“I should go,” Tish said, after an awkward moment. “I only have a half day off today, and I need to get back to Tilssted.”
Merletta did her best to smile as she embraced her friend, and waved goodbye. But as soon as Tish was out of sight, she sank back onto her bench, feeling small and forlorn. It was as though her last link to her old life had just been severed, leaving her drifting aimlessly. Ibsen’s task was forgotten as she faced the unpleasant reality. She’d started down a path that endangered not only herself, but everyone close to her. And she could no more turn back from it than Tish could become a record holder.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I’m telling you as a courtesy, Lord Heath.” Prince Lachlan’s voice was even, but his face was implacable. “I wasn’t asking your opinion.”
“I thought the whole point of our partnership was to share such opinions,” Heath argued, frustration rising in him. “I thought you wanted to find a solution to the tension that—”
“This is a solution,” said the prince tonelessly.
“With respect, Your Highness,” snapped Heath, “it’s not a good one.”
