Chapter 52 Kai
Kai
Hulder sat hunched over on the floor while mashing the buttons on his Xbox controller.
“You’re not concentrating,” he grunted after a moment.
My on-screen character died in a hail of virtual gunfire, but I didn’t care. About anything.
“No,” I agreed.
He threw his controller down and headed toward the small refrigerator we kept in our room.
“Rumelk?” I nodded. He threw me a cold bottle before grabbing one for himself. Then my friend drifted off into his room, happy to give me some space.
I turned the TV off and lay back on the sofa thinking about home. I missed my family, but most of all, I missed the ocean.
The saltwater pool here was better than nothing, and some of my classes were interesting, but spending so much time out of the water had been a lot harder than I’d expected.
Merpeople had adapted to living on land. Some merpeople spent more time on land than in the water these days, trading with the wider community on the islands and working in the tourism industry.
But to protect me, my mother, the queen, had locked me in the Emerald City until I came of age and manifested my powers.
She’d warned me it wasn’t safe to venture to the surface while I was still defenseless.
And even after my powers manifested, she didn’t let me leave the city without a Royal Guard.
I no longer needed a guard following me these days. My powers had grown exponentially since coming here, and I was now more powerful than my mother.
Attending Starfall had given me a chance to hone my power. It was the only reason she’d let me come here. As islanders, we were exempt from mandatory attendance at one of the magical schools. The ruling elite didn’t like us mixing with the higher-tier magicals, as they liked to call themselves.
It was bullshit, but none of us islanders really cared. We had our own communities and rarely paid much attention to what the Supernatural Council said and did.
There were no merpeople teaching at the academy, but the school had a selkie professor, and she’d been very generous with her time. She’d taught me how to better control my powers. Some of them anyway.
I’d been very careful not to reveal the true extent of what I could do. My mother had warned me to watch my back. She and I both knew the mages were plotting. The fall of the vampires had been suspicious at best, even if the shifters didn’t seem to be worried.
And with the increasing number of feral shifter cases, it was obvious which way the wind was blowing. Not that Coral Delmar, the leader of the Lesser Species Council, agreed.
Delmar refused to accept the mages were a threat, but since she had been democratically elected, there was nothing my mother could do. Royals no longer wielded the same power as they used to. Our role was more ceremonial than political, which sucked.
I flicked through the TV channels and found nothing worth watching. Outside, night had fallen, and the campus was quiet. The faint sound of music trickled in through the open window, probably from the shifter dorm, but I heard nothing else.
After twenty minutes of miserable self-flagellation about a witch I couldn’t have in this lifetime, I admitted defeat. The only thing that could help me relax was being underwater, in my natural form. So I grabbed a towel and headed to the pool.
Steam rose from the still surface, condensing in the cool air. Winter solstice was only a week away now, and the temperature had dropped significantly. Snow would soon blanket the campus.
As a merman, I was used to the frigid temperatures of the ocean depths. I still enjoyed swimming in the warm pool, however.
It reminded me of the tropical oceans further south, where mermaids and mermen went on vacation.
My mother had gone to the Caribbean before she ascended the throne; she’d met one of her mates while exploring the coral reefs off the coast of Aruba.
The waters there were warm, filled with colorful fish.
In an ideal world, I’d take my mate to explore coral reefs, but my mate wasn’t a mermaid, and worse, she couldn’t even swim.
I stripped off my shorts and dove into the warm water, sinking down into the dark depths before swimming into the cave. I had no clue how long I sat there, letting the water currents soothe my anxiety, but the minute the tether tugged in my chest, I knew she’d found me.
For a few minutes, I stayed put, unwilling to leave my safe place. Swimming to the surface would force me to talk to her. Part of me hoped she’d leave me alone if I refused to acknowledge her presence.
But the longer I hid in the dim light of the cave, the more the bond urged me to go to her. I blew out a stream of angry bubbles. Why had fate made my life so fucking difficult?
I had seen some of what lay ahead, and none of it was good.
Unlike my mother, I wasn’t a fighter. Sure, I had power, but violence didn’t come naturally to me. I would defend myself if necessary, but attack someone? No, that wasn’t my way.
Much to my mother’s disgust, I’d always preferred music and art to combat lessons. She’d tried all my life to train me for war and failed miserably.
Thanks to the combat lessons she’d forced me to endure since childhood, I could defend myself and also fight if necessary. If war came, then I would fight alongside my family. We merpeople were a peaceful race, but we could and would fight if our way of life came under threat.
I doubted the mages would try to steal our territory, as they couldn’t survive underwater, but their thirst for power threatened the island communities.
There were many valuable natural resources on and around the islands.
If the Supernatural Council had its way, the lesser species would lose their homes and livelihoods in the mindless pursuit of wealth and power.
The tugging in my chest grew more painful as the incomplete soul-bond tried to force me up to the surface. With a frustrated sigh, I swam out of the cave and up to the surface.