Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The tea was bitter. Why humans preferred to drink water seasoned with grass was beyond her.
Ursula had been raised to stand on ceremony with foreign dignitaries.
Now that she was queen, she set the cup down and didn't pick it up again. It wasn’t the drink itself that bothered her—she’d swallowed far worse things in her life—but rather the company that soured the experience.
The ladies of the court sat in their lace-trimmed gowns. Their pearled fingers rested delicately on porcelain cups. Their false smiles arrowed sharper than fishhooks. They were circling her like sharks, their whispers darting just beneath the surface of polite conversation.
“How exotic it must be,” one of them—Lady Helena, Ursula thought her name was—said with a demure little smile, her voice laced with carefully placed venom. “Coming onto land after spending your whole life under the sea. It must be so disorienting.”
“Oh, quite,” another agreed. Ursula had no idea of the barnacle’s name. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to adapt. Why, walking alone must be exhausting after all that swimming.”
“You're quite right," Ursula agreed. "The human body is so… delicate. The wrong touch, and a bone snaps. The wrong step, and you’re sprawled on the ground, limbs akimbo. I've always liked that word, akimbo. The sea, you see, does not coddle weakness.”
The air thinned, the tension shifting like an undercurrent.
Lady Helena straightened her spine, plastering on a faux smile. “How fortunate, then, that you’ve married our prince. He’s so… generous to take in someone from such a different background.”
"Eric is no longer a prince." Ursula’s lips curled. "He's your king, and I am his queen. But you are right; he does so love taking care of me, in all manners.”
She let her words hang there, let them think of exactly what that meant. A flicker of discomfort passed through the gathered women. Some shifted in their seats. Others cast quick, unreadable glances at one another.
Good. They needed to get it in their heads that they weren't dealing with a pawn or a prawn. Ursula been raised as royalty in dangerous waters, and her teeth were far sharper than any shark's.
She tapped her fingers against the settee, trying to determine the best way to get out of this luncheon. The ladies continued their idle chatter. Their gossip-laced voices washed over her like the ebb and flow of the tide. She hadn't been listening—not really—until she heard it.
"Such a dreadful inconvenience," Lady Helena was saying, tapping a jeweled finger against the rim of her teacup. "The merchants are already in an uproar over taxation, and now with this delay of the ocean liner full of grain, the commoners are getting restless."
The ocean liner. Ursula had nearly forgotten about it.
And she'd been right. The ship was now filled with useless grain.
If barrels of grain sank to the bottom of the sea, it would do nothing for the seafolk.
But Flotsam and Jetsam with their pea brains would only see opportunity and not think it through. Not without her.
Eric needed that shipment. If it didn’t reach the docks, his kingdom could be thrown into further discontent, unrest, weakness.
Hungry people did stupid things. She would simply have to make sure that the humans were fed and the sea cretins kept their scales to themselves.
She huffed, realizing she had more plotting to do.
No, actually she didn't. She could go to Eric. She could tell her husband to send a cutter out to intercept the liner and divert its route away from where she knew the eels would be lurking. The craziest part of the plan… Ursula believed Eric would listen to her.
The heavy doors swung open, and Grimsby stepped inside, his expression grave. “The delegation from your father has finally arrived, Your Majesty. They are waiting in the grand hall.”
“The… delegation?” Ursula echoed, keeping her voice light, careful. "From my father, you say?"
“Yes,” Grimsby said, looking weary. “Your father's emissary, Sebastian, is eager to see you.”
Of course, he would be here. Her father’s ever-loyal lapcrab, the one who had watched over Ariel since the day she was born. Sebastian would take one look at Ursula, and he would know.
“How wonderful,” she said smoothly, though her nails dug into the fabric of her dress. “I’ll be along shortly—I just need a moment to prepare.”
She turned before Grimsby could argue, gliding out of the room, pulse thrumming in her throat. She had to think.
She could face Sebastian as herself. She was queen now. But she was Queen of the Coast, not of the sea.
She could make a dash for it. Head back to the docks. And what? Slink back to Flotsam and Jetsam? No, she was not going back to that tide.
Not when Eric was building her an indoor pool filled with sea water.
Not when Eric would be waiting for her each night with salt in hand to rub her tired legs and delight when they turned into a fin.
Not when Eric took her hand whenever he was near her and did the sexiest thing any male had ever done for her by giving her his ear. And listening to her.
Ursula had to admit it; the man was a prize. One that she had earned. One that she would not be giving up.
She was near the back entrance of the castle, where servants came and went.
Ursula turned on her heel, ready to ascend the stairs to her husband.
She would tell him the truth. He wouldn't turn her away.
He'd said he wouldn't when she'd semi-confessed. He might be angry, but he’d promised he would stand by her.
There was a silly part of her—a big, shining, silly part—that believed him.
As she stepped a toe onto the first stair, a door behind her opened. A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Ursula turned, preparing to give the audacious servant a tongue lashing.
The words caught in her throat. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth went slack. Because she was looking at herself in the mirror.
"Ariel?"
The girl looked nothing like the pampered sea princess she'd once mocked. Her red hair was a knotted mess, wild as seaweed in a storm. Her gown was torn, streaked with mud and soot. There was a desperation in her that Ursula had never seen.
“What—” Ursula began.
Ariel clapped a trembling hand over her mouth. She shook her head violently and pointed.
Ursula followed the gesture to a heap in the far corner of the closet. A body. A woman. Blond hair matted with blood. Pale limbs curled protectively. There was a rough bandage tied around her head, soaked dark over her ear.
Aurora.
Ursula stepped into the closet. Ariel shut the door and began waving her hands in the sign language she spoke out of the sea. They’re hunting us. The Forest Folk. Maleficent’s guard. We tried to kill her. And Phillip.
This bit had not been in Grimsby’s report.
I couldn’t marry Eric, Ariel said with her hands. One of those hands found Aurora’s, lacing their fingers together tightly. We love each other.
Ursula decided the best course for the moment was to play dumb. "The two of you? I thought you were just friends. You should go to your father and—"
He’d chain me to a rock in the Mariana Trench before he let me shame the kingdom, her niece signed.
Ursula crossed her arms. “So what do you want from me?”
Ariel squared her shoulders, that old royal fire rekindling. Money. Safe passage. We need to get to the Frost Kingdom.
“And if I say no?” Ursula asked coolly.
Then I’ll tell Eric who you really are, since you're pretending to be me.
Ursula stared at her niece, a slow smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “Look at you. You’ve grown teeth.”
Ariel’s chin lifted. She did not let go of Aurora's hand. In fact, she took a step in front of the girl, shielding the bloody princess from Ursula.
As if Ursula had a care about the bloody beauty.
The two of them had just delivered the answer to her problems on a silver platter.
Ursula reached for the necklace where it rested against her collarbone—the sea-glass and sapphire chain she’d stolen from Ariel’s own bedroom the night she’d taken her place.
She held it up between two fingers. It shimmered in the dark, a siren’s ransom.
“This will buy you safe passage and ten years of soft pillows. But if you take it, you vanish. Forever. You and your sleeping beauty both. You never write. Never sing. Never show your faces again. You are ghosts.”
Ariel snatched the necklace, her fingers squeezing it possessively as she stuffed it into a hidden fold of her cloak. Ursula watched the necklace disappear and felt relief. She gave her spoiled niece and her lover her back as she slipped from the closet and shut the door behind her.
She didn't worry about the two being discovered as they fled. Not when they prized their freedom and their love so much. Just a couple of days ago, Ursula would have scoffed at them. But that was before she'd pressed her lips to her own sleeping beauty.
Now she didn't have to tell Eric she'd lied to him. She could just go on being Ariel. She could send Sebastian away without receiving him and never speak to her brother.
She could say goodbye to the Sea Kingdom. She liked the Coastal castle better. It had her favorite treasure just upstairs.
Ursula still might take the Sea Kingdom one day. If she left Triton to his own inept devices, it would continue to decline. If she simply kept whispering in her husband's ear—no.
She didn't need to whisper to Eric. He would listen to her. He would ask her opinion. He would talk it out with her.
The sudden urge to see him, to hear his voice, to taste his lips, overwhelmed her. Ursula made her way up the stairs, up to his office. She didn't bother knocking. She was his queen. More importantly, she was his wife.
She pushed inside, breathless. Eric stood near his desk, speaking with a man. Her husband's face lit up the moment he saw her, as if nothing else mattered.
“Ariel,” he greeted warmly. “I’d like you to meet my friend—”
A man dressed in steel and leather, a sword at his hip, turned with a friendly smile.
The moment his gaze rested upon her, the man's expression turned lethal.
Before Eric could finish his introduction, the man's hand went straight to the hilt of his sword.
The tip of the blade pointed directly at Ursula's neck, where her necklace had rested just moments ago.