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Looking surprised, he rubbed a hand over the hard line of his jaw as if he were deep in thought.
“All right, but I need you to hear me out. Tomorrow, my father is going to offer you an arrangement in exchange for your freedom. I know you hate being here, but I’m going to need you to take him up on it.”
“An arrangement, huh?” I huffed. “So he’s going to tell me to get his trident or he’ll kill me, right? Sorry, but no deal. I’d rather die.”
Even if I agreed and went into the water, I’d surely die anyway.
Leander’s shoulders straightened, and his eyes darted back toward the curtain. “No, not your life. Your father’s life.”
“What?” The image of Dad and Gram sitting and laughing with me at the dinner table appeared in my mind. “He couldn’t.”
“But he can. You know he can. He’s the king, Claira, and your father is one of his captains.”
“Wait, I—I wasn’t even thinking aboutthatfather.”
Papa.How was I supposed to feel about practically sentencing him to death? My eyes glazed over, an onslaught of conflicting emotions dulling my other senses.
“But after you accept, you’ll be compensated for your service to the kingdom.”
What was he going on about? I was barely even listening.
“Claira,” Leander said, and my eyes snapped up to where he stood. “If you help us return the trident to my father, we will release you, and any time you cast a net in the ocean, we will fill it with more fish than your boat can carry. Every. Single. Time. For as long as you and your family live on the Atlantic. Your land family, of course.”
Now that sounded tempting. So much fish that Dad wouldn’t have to work out on the boat until his hands were numb and his fingers bled. The leaks in the roof could get fixed, and Gram wouldn’t have to wake up early every weekend to make pies to sell on the strip. With that much fish, we could—
But what did it even matter? My tail was useless.
“You know my tail doesn’t work, Leander,” I said weakly, grasping for the words and feeling more desperate than ever. It wasn’t a matter of accepting arrangements. Even if I wanted to give my family enough fish to live comfortably together forever, I still couldn’t.
“I’ll teach you.”
I heard the words, but I just shook my head. There was no point in trying. I’d already spent nine years obsessed with getting my fin to work.
“Think about it tonight, and give your answer in the morning. Like I said, I need you to accept the arrangement.”
He slipped back through the curtain, leaving me in a stupor. It didn’t really feel like I had much of a choice at all.
Drinking glasses clinked in some far-off corner of the warehouse, inciting a round of laughter. My eyes kept watch on the curtain as it swayed lazily, and I prayed Leander remembered he’d agreed to keep the harpies away.
As the swell of voices grew louder, I drew my boot back and beat down the side of the most rotten-looking pallet slat with the weight of my heel. Wood splintered and cracked, and my pulse quickened. Another stomp, and the wood pried away from the nails. I could practically taste my freedom already.
One last push, and the other side wrenched loose. My lips curled up into a devilish grin.
“Bingo.”
9
Leander
“Leander.”
My mind awoke, but I kept my breathing steady. I recounted the layout of my surroundings, recalling each curtain, my box of clothes, and where every adjacent neighbor slept less than a tail’s length away. This wasn’t the ideal place for a murder or a meeting. Not with the entire kingdom packed together tighter than clams. Any spoken words would easily be overheard, and one good yank of a curtain would send every neighboring room collapsing to the ground.
The intruder crouched closer, and their warm breath wafted over me, bringing with it the scent of a faint ocean breeze. For someone so dead set on pretending to be human, Nera—or Claira, as she now preferred—had no idea how fucking easy it was to tell she was anything but.
Intentional or not, the ocean moved with her wherever she went. Water seemed to stream through the salted waves of her hair and balance on the curves of her shoulders even on land. I’d felt the ocean’s vicious sting clearly when she cast me out and dismissed the curse that threatened the rest of our kind.
I’d begged. Pleaded for her to see reason and return with me. Yet every time those deceptively soft lips of hers moved, they summoned tempests that could tear through a merman’s heart as easily as sink a vessel.
