CHAPTER 36
She lay awake in her bed, sure that she would hear the dropping of her pebbles before she managed any sleep.
For her father, she had carved his name on a wooden cross and the trading company had then commissioned an actual stone.
Father had commissioned one for Mother as well, expensive though it was.
With both of their markers stone, she could hardly have Kallias’s mother’s on wood, especially with no body.
But even though she probably had enough savings for it, how could she commission one without everyone growing suspicious?
They all knew her. They knew her family and probably everyone she had ever come in contact with her entire life.
There was no subtle way she could ask them to make a tomb stone for someone they had never heard of, lest they think she was killing off imaginary friends.
But she had gotten Kallias to tell her a name: Arete. She imagined Arete had been as beautiful as Kallias.
Kallias had told her to go inside when she started shivering, and it was only once she had been in bed in dry clothes sipping warm tea that she realized that he had originally offered to spend this night holding her, and she had never felt so cheated in her entire life.
Her and her big mouth! One moment they were having a romance rivaling legends and suddenly she was leading them down a road of painful subjects full of tears.
But in truth, she knew it was still good for their relationship. Romance without substance was more fickle than the sea.
And clearly, there was so much more for her to learn about him and his past; there were chasms of pain behind his gentleness that she wouldn’t have guessed.
She hadn’t realized how harsh the ocean could be.
It always looked so beautiful from the outside.
The dolphins looked so fun and friendly, the fish so carefree, the rays so relaxed, the gulls so free.
She had never thought such hurt could lie beneath the surface.
Apparently looks really could be deceiving.
She hoped that was not true of anything else, especially her mermaid.
She chided herself for even thinking it. In every way, Kallias was proving to be even kinder than he perhaps ought to be being raised in such a harsh world.
But no more. She would not let the world hurt him anymore. They’d stay here near the lighthouse, together forever and happy.
She suddenly wondered how long mermaids lived or how old he even was now, but the thought faded from her mind as sleep claimed her, thankfully before the pebbles rang the gong, and she fell asleep to thoughts of Kallias.