Chapter 57
Fifty-Seven
Kaden
The banquet was a success. Upward of four thousand mer were present, all of his palace staff, nobles, and a thousand citizens had attended, filling the tubular, open banquet hall.
Angie, to his delight, had arrived partway through the banquet, Shangjiang Narea escorting her in, after they dropped Zixin off at the infirmary.
Kaden approached her toward the banquet’s end as she took another piece of candied kelp from a server’s hand, and chewed on it, closing her eyes, appearing to be relishing the taste.
“This is so good. I never knew sea fruits and plants could be prepared in so many different ways.” Her legs scissored beneath her. “Candied, dipped in honey and sugar, salty, spicy, sour, it’s all so good.”
Kaden beamed with pride for their chefs and their talent in extracting various flavors from plants to create succulent pastes for their food.
The wonder in her eyes was adorable as they made their way down the row of servers, each offering a dish.
“Did you try everything?” He reached for a handful of spiced seagrass flowers from a passing server and handed it to her. “This is one of our delicacies.”
She side-eyed him while taking it and nibbled on the petals. “Huh. I thought it would be spicier, with how red it is. But it’s delicious.”
As they moved down the line of servers, a broad hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Cyrus!” Kaden threw his arms around his brother in a tight hug, and Cyrus returned it, thumping his back. “You’re free.”
“Yes, for now. I have to go back after the banquet.” Cyrus grimaced. “I’ll be happy when I never have to see the healers again.” A healer who was coming up from behind him stared at him with his face squinched. “I mean, with all due respect to you. You’re doing a great job.”
The healer swam away with two fistfuls of honeyed eelgrass, and Kaden held back a peal of laughter. “Bad timing.”
“In all honesty, I did not know he was behind me.” Cyrus watched the retreating healer’s back. “But I wanted to ask, well.” He glanced behind him again, where Adrielle approached, and Cyrus greeted the princess with a kiss. “Where are Libbi and Hadrien?”
Adrielle pointed toward her right. “With Angie.”
Kaden followed the direction of her pointer finger, where Angie had continued on without him.
Adrielle was putting it mildly. His niece and nephew were swimming circles around her, poking and prodding at her legs. Though she jerked her legs back when they pulled on her toes, she was laughing. His heart soared at the sight.
“What were you going to ask?” Kaden directed his question at his older brother.
“Now that I’m recovering, I wished to ask if you wanted to keep the throne.” Cyrus’ back and tail were ramrod straight, like one of their sentinels floating at attention.
“We only want to give you the option. If you wish to keep it, you know you have our full support,” Adrielle added. “Turns out you’re a great king, after all.” She gave him a playful smirk.
“Well.” Kaden cast another glance at Angie, who was still playing with Hadrien and Libbi.
He didn’t have the first idea of what they were playing, and they carried on some sort of conversation he couldn’t hear.
“I’ve gotten used to ruling, but I don’t want to do this forever.
I’m exhausted already, and it hasn’t even been that long. So yes. I want to give it up.”
Cyrus gave him a firm nod. “Then we will go to the council at high suntide.”
“You will be our high advisor, yes?” Adrielle raised a thick eyebrow at him, urging him to say yes. “Since you travel so much and can advise us on the goings-on in the seven seas.”
Not that he had any intention of saying no. Being high advisor to Cyrus and Adrielle would be much more preferable than when he was Saeryn’s. “Absolutely, I accept. Queen Adrielle and King Cyrus have a nice ring to it.”
“Then it is settled.” Cyrus returned his attention to Adrielle. “Should we get our merlings?”
Adrielle agreed, and the three of them swam to Angie and the children.
Angie leaned in to kiss Kaden, and he gave her hands a tug, pulling her flush to him and enveloping her in a warm hug.
“You look like you’re having fun,” he said.
“I was.” Angie motioned with her head to Hadrien and Libbi, who dutifully returned to their parents.
Kaden chuckled. “When you’re ready, let me know. We’ll go for a swim?”
Angie swallowed before speaking again. “I’m good.
Ate way too much.” She reached back to fix her long ponytail, which she had tied back with a cut piece of elastic kombu.
A small seashell rested above her ear, which Kaden had given to her before the banquet, bringing out her high cheekbones and the luscious curve of her lips.
It killed him that he hadn’t been able to ravish her yet.
He tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear, only for it to be carried away by the sea’s grasp shortly after. “If you’re good, let’s slip out.” Kaden unraveled his arms and tail from around her, and keeping her hand encased around his, they swam above the mer’s heads to leave the hall.
“You, okay? Didn’t want to stay to say goodbye to everyone?” Angie asked with a chuckle, putting her hands on his chest once they were out in the open sea.
“I’d rather be with you.” He drew her into a long kiss, savoring the sweet, salty, and spicy notes on her lips and tongue.
“I’ll say my goodbyes later. Much later.
” Kaden forced himself to pull back, the things he wanted to say swirling in an endless infinity loop in his mind.
She watched him under hooded eyes. “Now that we have a breather.” He kept his fingers entwined with hers.
“Can I talk to you? About what lies in store for us?”
He swore Angie jerked her head and shoulders back. “Uh, sure. What about?”
Kaden’s next words caught in his lips. To gather himself, he made a noise not even he knew the meaning of, and he led her another half-seamile west, farther from the palace.
Branching, fan-shaped and feather-shaped deep-sea coral beds decorated the seafloor beneath them, a lovely garden to behold.
Shibanyu and yanyu danced around them, darting in and out of their hiding places and from the darkness.
“Remember how I told you if we committed to each other, I would be yours for life?”
“I, um. Yeah, I do.” Angie’s eyes had popped wide open, resembling what she would call a tattooed emperor fish as she drew her shoulders to her ears.
“Do you ever want children?” Why was that question so hard for him to ask? Fear they might not want the same things, perhaps? He fumbled with the small pack slung around his hips, holding a precious gift inside.
“Oh.” Her chest and shoulders deflated. “No, I don’t want to bring another life into the world if I didn’t want them with all my heart and soul.”
So, she felt the same as he did, and the notion was a swell of comfort in him.
“But we can’t even have biological children, anyway,” she added. “Right? I mean, has there ever been a mer and a human who tried?”
“Yes, over three hundred tidesyears ago, before we closed ourselves off from humans, we had a mer-human ruling couple. The only one there ever was,” Kaden replied.
“But they could not conceive, though they were both healthy and fertile. The healers told them mer and human biology is incompatible for reproduction.”
“Why are you asking me about kids?” Her smooth brow wrinkled.
“I was asking more toward adoption.”
“My point still stands,” Angie said. “Are you okay with that?”
His Angie. Always forthright, and he loved that about her. “Yes, very much so. I’m indifferent about having my own children and agree with your sentiments.” He kissed her forehead. “I love the idea of the two of us against the world, like it’s been from the start.”
“Can’t believe it’s been more than two years since we met. It feels like so long ago, but at the same time, no time has passed.” A forlorn shadow crossed her beautiful face.
Kaden chuckled. “It’s been a lot. Sometimes I think it’s a wonder you’re still here with me.”
“What’s with the sappiness? We’re here together now, aren’t we?”
That was true. But he might be so sentimental because he was leading up to a question that would change both their lives. Above their heads, a large northern sea nettle haizhe drifted by, and Angie moved her arm away from the vicinity of their tentacles.
This was his chance, and he grabbed her hand, following the boneless, tentacled creatures.
“Where are we going? Are you okay?” A note of concern spiked her tone.
“I’m okay.” A bloom of bioluminescent crystal haizhe gathered overhead, brightening the blackness with cyan lights.
Before him there was a makeshift gazebo carved of stone, seated at the base of a seamount.
“You know, when I nearly died protecting you and my mother, two tidesyears ago, you could have moved on without me. You didn’t know if I was going to live, back then. ”
She gave him an earnest smile.
“Will you choose me every day?” His heart was beating faster and faster, and he opened and closed his mouth, taking in more water to keep thoughts straight.
It didn’t work, and his head spun with the lack of oxygen.
“I’ve told you before that I never want to be apart from you.
My heart and my soul have been yours since I fell in love with you.
And I will never have them back.” This was much too difficult, and whatever way Angie was staring at him, whether it was curiosity or like he had two heads, he wouldn’t know. “You’re my partner, my life, my world.”
“That’s sweet, and I feel the same. But seriously, if you’re not feeling well, we can head back. I know things have been stressful.” He understood what she was saying, though in his spinning mind, her words sounded garbled. “Did you eat a bad piece of red algae, or something?”
No, no, no, he couldn’t pass out here. “Angie Song, will you do me the highest honor and be my lifemate? Erm, I suppose in human terms, will you marry me? So, I can call you my wife for as long as I live?”
For a drawn-out moment, she didn’t respond.
If Kaden were on the surface, he was sure he would be sweating profusely by now. Instead, a clammy, unbearable warmth flooded him.
Finally, her lips found his, and when she pulled back, the sweet affirmation carried on her exhale. Kaden’s world brightened, and his heartbeat slowed to a normal cadence. He hugged her again, pressing his lips to the top of her head.
She dropped a kiss over his gills when they were closed, and the sensitive area tingled from the touch of her lips, sending a shiver down his shoulder and arm.
“Kiss me there again?” His voice dropped to a tremulous whisper. She did again and again, bringing pleasurable shudders through his torso and down his tail. He’d have to ask her to kiss him there more often.
“I didn’t know that would feel good to you. I mean, after the last time I accidentally jabbed my finger in there.” A light laugh from her.
“I didn’t know, either.” He clutched her hand. “We can continue this later. But for now, dance with me?”
“I’m not much of a dancer. But I’m willing to give it a chance.”
He put one hand over his heart and bowed his head to her and held out his hands. She took them. Holding on tight, he pulled her to him and spun around as she floated with her legs behind her, and he let her go.
Angie seemingly caught on as she pumped her legs and arms to move backward, scattering a school of pacific xueyu passing through.
Kaden swam to her with one strong flick of his tail, catching her in his arms. His tail and upper body moved in perfect harmony to twirl and whirl her, inverting and righting, before lifting her by her waist. “I’m going to lift you.
All I need you to do is arch your back, and the currents will do the rest.”
She bit down on her lower lip, giving him a cheeky grin. “I’ll try.”
Kaden tilted his head and calculated the distance between him and Angie, and the drifting haizhe. “That’s all I ask.” He grabbed her feet, pushing her above him, careful not to send her into the haizhe tentacles.
The intent was to guide her into a somersault, but she ended up in a part backflip, part twist position, and they were both laughing when he reached her again.
On her own, she kicked herself into a horizontal position, log rolling into a perfect three-hundred-sixty-degree turn, and she floated on her back, swaying with the currents with her arms held out beside her.
He curled the tip of his tail around one of her ankles, lifting her leg to wrap around him before releasing her, and he used the water’s resistance to his advantage, inching back.
Angie’s upper body extended backward, and he cradled the back of her head, effectively dipping her, and he leaned in for a kiss. “We can do this again at our wedding.”
“That was surprisingly fun. And a little dangerous.” She motioned to the idling haizhe above, their tentacles dangling above her head.
“I was careful, wasn’t I?” Kaden brushed a hand over her flushed cheek.
“Never doubted you.” She dropped a kiss on his collarbone.
Beside them, a pod of mer swam past, each cradling bundles of red algae, kelp, seaweed and eelgrass from the light zone in their arms. It must be time to replenish the kitchens’ stocks.
“Your Majesty, Angie.” They greeted Angie and Kaden in unison as they passed.
“You know, with all the algae and seaweed you all eat, no wonder your skin is gorgeous.” She ran her fingers down his forearm, sending electric jolts through him, making him self-conscious about the way he looked.
“My skin has seen better days. As has the rest of me. I wish I could heal faster.”
“You’ll get there; it takes time.” She ran her fingers down his arm. “Besides, you are beautifully imperfect.”
“Using my own words on me, I see,” he said with a low chuckle.
“Did it work?”
He pulled her to him and pecked her temple. On their way back to the palace, he produced the item in his pack, a ring sized for her studded with rare seaglass and jewels.
“For you, my love.”
Her eyes and expression alight, she held out her left hand, and he shook his head. “Your right hand. Mer custom dictates items meant for bonding are to be placed on the right hand or wrist. It’s a symbol of giving. I pledge to give myself to you, as you give yourself to me.”
Angie held out her right hand, and he slipped it on her index finger, before raising both her hands and pressing his lips to her knuckles.
She was beautiful, radiant, and brave. A fighter. Tenacious and yet, a calming presence.
He couldn’t wait to call her his lifemate.