Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Kaden
They were absolutely thinking the same things.
Kaden rolled to his side and used his tail to back himself against one side of his hammock.
He imagined she was there with him, her soft lips grazing his, the brush of her breasts against his chest. A fiery blaze raced through him.
“Angie, you hold entirety of my heart and soul, and I can’t take all the politics and insanity anymore.
” The fire spread, and he dropped his hand to his pelvic fins.
“I want nothing more than to lose myself in you.”
“I’m thinking about when you were here last. The way you touched me, kissed me.
The way you use your hands and your lips.
” She spoke in between quickening breaths.
Angie’s voice was ragged, her breaths hitching.
“How you know exactly where to put your hands and fingers and tongue to send my heart racing.”
Kaden’s heart raced and he moved his hand to the thickened scales between his pelvic fins, and he strained to break free of them.
He let himself go, filling his hand. Ecstatic shudders raced haphazardly through his veins and nerves, and he imagined it was Angie’s hand working him, and he let out a throaty moan.
“Keep going. Tell me what you would be doing with me.” A soft whimper from her.
Goddess. The sensations rushed to his head, and he firmed his grip, his body pulsing and nerves shooting in jagged spurts.
“Anything. Everything. Feeling your warmth on my hand, my mouth, and imagining myself enveloped in you...” He let himself descend into bliss, his pleasure riding and building higher and higher on the husky timbre of Angie’s voice and luscious words.
The seas felt unbearably hot when Kaden awoke.
No, it wasn’t the sea. It was him; his blood still warmed from hearing Angie’s voice.
Still wrapped in euphoria, Kaden moved away from his hammock.
He stopped at the palace archives; he made the two seamile trek there, pausing at the pantries for a kelp and salted sea grapes.
He hesitated when a wiggling motion caught his attention from below. The sentries had gathered a litany of information, but he had to know for himself if there was something they missed. That couldn’t have been all there was to Saeryn’s records.
A dull pink and black-spotted creature with a paddled tail slithered on a rock under him, meandering between corals and making their way to the seafloor.
The mangman stopped and looked in his direction and Kaden backed away. Slime was already emerging from their sides, and he didn’t want to be in their way when they finally decided to expel their mucus.
He kept moving. There were no mer there, and he found himself surrounded in unnerving silence. A blue shayu brushed past him, its long pectoral fin nudging his arm as it passed.
Once the shayu was gone, Kaden moved into the caves.
Pieces of a shipwreck littered the seafloor, indiscernible as to what type of vessel it was from. Kaden furrowed his brow. The area was isolated and he hadn’t heard of any other recent attacks on human ships.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss as he moved through the cavern. The tunnels seemed never-ending and he knew why mer didn’t frequent the area. The archives were a pain in the tail to get to.
An unexplainable force crawled beneath his skin.
Worse, when he finally reached the archives, his tail and arms were sore and fatigued. It was one of the largest cavern spaces he’d ever laid eyes upon, and if he had to guess, it could house all thousand mer who worked at the palace, and they’d all have enough room to comfortably move around.
He searched the rows and rows of stone slabs housed on each shelf. It seemed as if no mer had been there in ages, with the slabs and rock walls covered with haixing, deep sea barnacles, sponges, haidan, and the various segmented worm making their appearance.
No archivists in sight.
Kaden chewed on his bottom lip and moved to where they kept records of his family’s history.
One slab after another, and another, and another, and another.
Low suntide turned to high suntide, and he had found nothing useful.
The slabs contained information about their family tree, Saeryn’s date and location of birth, and his education.
The same information that was available to and for all mer in their queendom, organized by tidesyear.
The same information the sentries had gotten for him.
With a grunt of frustration, Kaden slid the last stone slab back into its place, and he slid out a piece of kombu kelp from his waist bag, where he inscribed the names of Saeryn’s tutors when he was an adolescent.
They were his final hope to dig up some of Saeryn’s secrets. The council hadn’t specified when the monarch needed to have committed a crime, only that they had to.
He set off back to the palace.
The tides changed and Kaden floated before Adrielle and Cyrus’ room, holding a fistful of sour eelgrass blades and chewing on them. Saeryn’s tutors offered nothing useful, and all he wanted to do was rest his weary muscles and bones.
He needed to talk out another plan, and perhaps they would be available to brainstorm.
Adrielle slid the door open, beckoning Kaden to enter.
Cyrus sat on the edge of the hammock, and Adrielle swam back to him, sitting beside him and lacing his fingers through hers. He rested his head on her shoulder.
“Any luck with the council and Saeryn?” Adrielle asked.
“No. I only have information that he abandoned his lifemate,” Kaden replied, curling his tail around the usual stalactite.
“What?” Adrielle and Cyrus cried in unison. “He did? Did you go to the council with this?” Cyrus’ jaw dropped open.
“They told me they can’t expend resources to look for her.” Kaden folded his arms over his chest, tailfins brushing up and down the stalactite. “I’ve talked to his old villagers, tutors. Looked for information on him in the archives. I have nowhere to go from here.”
“Then we need another angle,” Cyrus said, resolute. “He and his staff are driving us up the wall. They’re disrespectful, avoidant, and no surprise here, but they’re his loyalists. Uncle has became emboldened since the attack.”
“What else can we do? He’s physically and mentally able, so our last option would be trying to prove he doesn’t follow Sanyue’s teachings. But that will be a tough seamount to scale, and he already pledged himself to Her service when he was coronated.”
Adrielle put her free hand over her face.
The three remained silent.
A commotion burst through the doors, and Kaden whirled around. Adrielle sat upright and bolted over his head.
Marina, the twins’ keeper, propelled through the doors behind Libbi and Hadrien, holding an armful of what looked like trash.
“Princess Adrielle, Prince Cyrus!” She ushered the twins ahead of her, and Adrielle grabbed their hands.
“What’s wrong?” She looked at her children, both of whom shrugged.
“I took them to a series of caverns outside the balance because they wanted to play there. But look at this! They could have gotten seriously hurt.” Marina held out the items to Adrielle and Kaden, and Kaden tensed.
It wasn’t trash.
A human diving outfit floated to them, along with a coral tube. The oxygen tank stayed afloat, and Kaden reached out to clutch it. It was empty.
“This is a diving suit,” Adrielle stated, befuddlement marring her features. “And a piece of coral?”
“Yes. They were in the cavern the merlings played hide and seek in. Which means landwalkers were in the area.” Marina waved at the suit. “I had to bring them back, because what if the landwalkers are still lurking about?”
“Is nowhere safe now? We can’t let the children out of our sight.” Adrielle sounded resolute. “I’ll take them from here.”
Marina bowed. “I’ll return at the turn of the tide.” She left.
“Odd that there were humans down there. What were they doing, keeping their diving equipment in the caverns?” Cyrus remarked, studying the suit.
When he turned it to look at the suit’s back, Kaden’s hand flew to his mouth. His brother stretched the suit out, revealing a gaping cut across the abdomen. Where he had sliced one of the divers that attacked him.
“Brother, may I see that? I believe this belonged to the diver I incapacitated, one of the two who attempted to assassinate me.”
Shock crossed Cyrus’ features and he handed the suit to Kaden.
What had happened? “This is strange. Did this human escape into the caverns and abandon their diving suit? With their oxygen tank empty?” Kaden murmured to himself.
“It doesn’t make sense. How did they make it back to the surface? Unless they got magic from one of us?” Adrielle arched an eyebrow.
“I was thinking the same.” Cyrus wrapped one arm around Hadrien and the other around Libbi when they snuggled up to him.
Kaden inspected the rest of the diving suit. “The legs area. One is unnaturally stretched out, like–”
It can’t be.
Wordless, Adrielle took the suit from his hands and slid the stretched pants leg over her tail.
It was still large on her, and Kaden exchanged a stunned glance with Cyrus and Adrielle. “Try it,” she said, hoarse, handing it to Kaden.
Kaden took it from her and slid the pants leg over his own tail. It fit snug. It wasn’t a human who attacked him, but a merman.
“How could I not have noticed? I thought they moved too smoothly for humans and used mer magic.” He slipped the suit off his tail, holding it like it was a decomposing animal.
“Why would mer try to assassinate me disguised as humans?” He looked at the coral log floating out of the bedchamber’s open window.
That must have filled the other leg, else he would have seen one pants leg flapping around as the attackers struck him.
“Because you were fighting for your life?” Cyrus shifted at the hammock edge. “I doubt you were studying these divers when you were struggling to survive.”
“Fair point,” Kaden grumbled. “I still don’t understand why mer dressed as humans would–” He cut himself off. There was only one mer who would benefit from having him dead.
“But how are we going to prove it?” Adrielle asked.
Cyrus’ features reflected a deadly riptide. “We have a long trench to navigate ahead.”
Kaden’s fists clenched at his sides.
Saeryn, that bottom-feeding yu-shit eater.