Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Their quick reflexes were no match for the wave’s fury. Forceful water swept them off to the side, hurling them like two cannonballs back into the sea. Loose debris from the island followed, twigs and rocks and dirt assaulting and splattering onto them.
Grimacing, she plucked a plastic bag with a smiley face on it off her head.
“What in the black depths?” Kaden clutched Angie’s wrist and led her back to the shore.
“What happened?” Angie exclaimed as soon as they were back on dry land.
A mermaid’s head emerged above the water.
Oh, she was what happened.
The mermaid followed them, swimming like she was in a sprint, and caught up before they reached the island.
The pearls around her neck and bust shone like they were brand new.
Her ivory tail glistened beneath the sunlight, a tendril of dark hair falling on the side of her face while the rest of her long braid fell down her back.
Angie recognized her. The mermaid she’d seen with Cyrus while scuba diving, what felt like years ago. She seemed more familiar than that.
“Angie, meet Adrielle,” Kaden said, his voice flat. “My brother’s lifemate. Thank you for launching us into ice-cold water.” His gills and nostrils flared as he faced her.
Adrielle swam closer to them and squinched her small face. She spoke through a clenched jaw, “Kaden,” the K sound gravelly and harsh. Angie paddled nearer, but Adrielle backed away and held out her hand in a signal of warning. “Wait.”
Angie obeyed and stopped where she was. “You were watching me the other day.”
“I was.” Adrielle tilted her head to one side, staring them down. “I had to see for myself.”
“See what?” Kaden’s skin tightened and the tip of his tail stiffened. “Did Cyrus say something?”
“Don’t blame him, but now I know that Cyrus knew and couldn’t be bothered to tell me, we will have words.
I went to find you after you didn’t show up for your engagement announcement ceremony.
After you missed your own banquet!” Her voice rose with each word.
“What is wrong with you? Are you trying to turn the entire queendom against you?”
Kaden paled.
“King Aqilus and Queen Serapha are already branding you a traitor, and rumors are swirling that you are abandoning us for landwalkers.” Adrielle was positively seething, and Angie winced at her radiating ire piercing the cold around them. Her expression became pleading. “For a human woman?”
“There’s nothing more for you to understand. I care for her,” Kaden said, voice raspy.
“The engagement party,” Angie whispered to him. “That was today?”
A flash of hurt struck her. A reminder that he was meant to be with another. A mermaid, someone more suited for him than she would ever be.
“It’s not what you think.” Kaden kept his voice steady and assuring.
Adrielle turned to Angie, her tone blunt and sardonic. “He is not to be bonded, landwalker, so no worries for you. Not anymore. The King and Queen are furious.”
“It’s an event where they present me with mermaids who they thought were suitable and who had shown interest in me.
I knew it was today. I chose not to go.” Kaden directed his glare back to Adrielle.
“I resent it. Seeing mermaids corralled like they’re nothing more than animals to be inspected and one chosen to be a trophy.
Now they can spend their time on mermen or other mermaids who wish for their time and affections. ”
“I am a prized animal, then?” Adrielle’s shoulders twitched, and she moved toward them, extending her torso out of the water. Her intense gaze dared him to answer.
“There was no contest, and the interested mermaids and mermen knew it. I envy the love that you two have, forever and true.” He directed his next words to Angie, his expression softening and voice lowering.
“I wished to only join with my true heart’s desire.
I never imagined it would burn for a human. ”
“Believe me, I didn’t want this to happen either. Having feelings for him.” Angie said to Adrielle, waving a hand at Kaden.
Behind him, Adrielle scowled and rested her chin on her hands, appearing crestfallen. “Kaden, if the King and Queen find out you were a no-show because you’re romancing a landwalker, especially in the midst of what has been happening, they’ll make you an outcast forevermore. You understand, right?”
Angie sucked in a sharp breath, her heart leaping to her throat and wedging itself there.
“Are you going to tell them?” Kaden’s words were strained, breaths coming out like he’d swam a marathon.
“You’re being reckless,” Adrielle answered with a frustrated shake of her head, “but no. I won’t tell.”
Kaden’s shoulders and chest deflated at her answer.
“Oh, stop looking at me like that!” She groaned. Adrielle raised her hands, bringing a stream of seawater with her, and then dropped her face in her palms. “I need to talk to you in private.”
Kaden bowed his head and looked to Angie, who nodded at him while rubbing her hand over and over on her pant leg, still damp from when they were thrown into the water earlier.
The time that they were gone felt endless.
What were they talking about? Every possibility crossed her mind.
Perhaps Adrielle was convincing Kaden to leave her, for his own good, she would guess.
Or it could be as innocuous as her asking questions about Angie.
Time passed and her mind wandered to darker thoughts.
Persuading Kaden to kill her, even? She shuddered and squeezed the horrifying, uncalled-for thought out into the Mariana Trench where it could stay.
Finally, Kaden and Adrielle returned.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
He scooted to sit beside her, wrapping his tail around the front of her legs in a protective gesture. “It will be.”
“Angie?” Adrielle’s voice joined theirs. Angie sat up to attention, listening to her. A raging storm brewed in the mermaid’s eyes. “If you ever do anything to hurt him, or any of our people, I will hunt you down myself and kill you.”
“You and my brother are truly two of a kind, even down to your threats,” Kaden muttered.
Angie swallowed hard. So, Adrielle was worried she would hurt Kaden. “I won’t. I promise.”
“Good.” She addressed Kaden next. “What am I supposed to tell the King and Queen?”
“You never found me.” He took her hand and squeezed it.
“Whatever happens from this, it’s on you.” Adrielle set her jaw. She moved her hand out of his and ducked underwater.
“What did she say to you?” Angie asked. She had to know if she had anything to worry about.
Kaden rubbed his cheeks. “She believes you may have clouded my mind. Brainwashed me.”
Angie jerked her head back, skin tingling and nerves firing icy shock through her system. The merfolk would really believe that humans had mind control powers?
It made sense to her that they were as much of a mystery to them as the merfolk were to the humans. Somehow, it made them seem more sympathetic to her. There might be hope yet, that if the two races could truly understand each other then a truce might be reached.
Kaden continued. “She asked me to look out for myself, that your people will show no mercy on me. As my parents would not.” A heavy sigh from him. “She also offered to tell my parents and the queendom that you altered my mind.”
“And what did you say?” Angie narrowed her eyes at him. Some feet away from her, a wave crashed on the shore, and she flinched. Her clothes hung heavy and wet from her skin.
“That I’m with you because I want to be.” He sat up, his back ramrod straight with resolve.
Angie pursed her lips.
So much trouble just to be together. She could part ways with him, as she originally planned. Make it easy on herself and find a man whose people weren’t actively murdering her colleagues and friends.
Kaden deserved better, too. The thought of him putting everything on the line for her made her heart ache.
“Is this worth it? You could be exiled. I could lose everything I worked so hard for. I could lose you.”
Kaden’s facial muscles went slack. “Is it for you?”
Was it worth it for her? She had to think about her answer for a moment.
“I’m not sure,” she finally croaked. “I want to say yes. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
“Then don’t.” His voice was soft, and he laid a trembling hand on her thigh.
“But knowing what we both could lose. I wish it wasn’t this way.” Tiān, she had never thought love should be hard. But this was hard. At the same time, she was drawn to him over and over, and didn’t want to let him go.
“I wish it wasn’t either. I told you I would keep trying. And I will.” His grip on her thigh tightened to a firm grasp. “I’ll show you that being with me is worth it.”
“Then when are you going to talk to the King and Queen? They have the power to stop this, right?” Her tone grated like sandpaper and came out sharper than she intended. “Can’t you do something? You’re a prince; you must have some kind of power.”
She didn’t regret what she said; she was tired of waiting for Kaden to appeal to the mer-king and mer-queen.
“I do, but anything I rule or decree must be executed by the current rulers, and speaking of the King and Queen, I tried. Yesterday.” His voice volume dropped a notch.
“I approached them myself, without waiting for their sentinels to give me the go-ahead. When I arrived, two sentinels blocked me, told that they were not seeing anybody else.”
“But you’re their son.” Angie folded her arms across her chest. “How could they not want to talk to you? Aren’t they concerned at all?”