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I knocked an oar against the side and the boat rocked. Deus gasped and clutched the sides.
“It’s all right,” I tried to reassure him.
Deus nodded, but his throat bobbed as he gulped for air.
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. The boat’s made to rock. It won’t tip over.”
Not unless we did something drastic. Hades, it wouldn’t even flip if we did something crazy like have sex in the boat…
My whole body flushed and my tentacles stirred inside me. Sex in the boat didn’t sound like such a bad idea, as long as we got rid of the candles first. Maybe that was what Deus had been planning?
Deus’ brow was still creased, and a fine sheen of sweat coated it. Maybe hewasn’tthinking about sex in the boat.
He gestured to the dark water beneath us. “Is it anything like home for you?”
I thought of the Deep and chose my words carefully. “It’s a lot colder where I live, which means we have different marine and paranormal life. But on the other side, we do have iceberg palaces for the mermaids.”
“Iceberg palaces?”He leaned forward, and the shine in his eyes was not just the tealights.
“They—er,we—carve them out so that we can have air or water. We also use them to trap little pools of fish to eat fresh whenever we’re hungry.”
As I spoke, homesickness poured into my chest, and I found myself telling him everything I could risk telling him.
How the seagrass rippled and the eels told rude jokes, how the turtles and sharks came to us when they needed help, how the undersea currents could be used as a highway and how we played hide and seek in old wrecks.
I told him about my family, to the extent that I could. He listened while I explained my parents’ struggle to run a clan that was slowly dying out, their attempt to get their children to marry outsiders and transform them to live under the sea.
“You can’t do, like, a cross-agreement with some of the other mermaids?” Deus asked.
“It’s complicated.” That was the understatement of the century.
I described the underwater volcanoes and the imposing walls of the Deep—our home. Lit by magical jellyfish and enchanted to divert any submarines, the Deep had been our great secret for hundreds of years.
A little too secret.
“I want to turn it into a haven for endangered marine paranormals.” My excitement began to bubble over as I told him of my dreams.
“There are a lot of places on earth where paranormals can gather and hide and make a community together, but only the kra—” I cut myself off and hoped he hadn’t noticed my slip. “Um, only certain clans have the space and power to make something like that under the sea.”
“It sounds beautiful.” Deus leaned back. He’d relaxed, little by little, and now he was no longer white-knuckling the boat. He stretched out his long legs. “I can see why you—Crap!”
Flame licked up the side of our picnic basket. He’d nudged a tealight a little too close to the wicker. I leaned over to cup some sea water in my hand, tipping the boat slightly to one side.
“Ah!” He practically threw himself in the opposite direction, causing the boat to rock violently.
Every tealight in the boat slid to one side.
“Cut it out!” I shouted, drawing in my legs to avoid the flickering flames of the candles.
Unfortunately, the more we moved, the worse the rocking got. Deus’ eyes were wide with fear. He tried to move away from the candles, the boat, and the water. Causing him to clamber to one side—
It was too much.
The boat tipped further… and flipped.
Everything in the boat tumbled into the water, including Deus and me.
The fire was extinguished with a hiss. I gasped in a shocked breath as my gills activated. Below me, I could see Deus flailing as he sank, disappearing into the gloom.
