by Starla Night
“He was a rising salesman at the first firm I worked. We were sleek and selfish and rising stars together. Then, an accident happened. I got pregnant.”
“And he did not treasure you.”
“No. He did not.”
Balim stared out at the strange lights in the human city. So much of the human world had become familiar, and yet so much would never make sense.
Bella made a frustrated noise. “I shouldn’t have said that to Caro. I would feel bad if one of her kids got sick.”
“Your words were accurate.”
“Yeah, but I would hate for anything to happen to them. Or anyone. I mean, maybe Chaz is right, and he’d be in the millionth percentile of people who go healthy into a hospital and end up dead.”
“You do not believe this.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m trying to talk myself out of going back and murdering him.” She tapped the steering wheel with her palm. “Freak accidents could happen. Like the guy who went crab fishing, stuck his finger, and contracted flesh-eating bacteria.”
“Crab-Cut Disease,” Balim identified.
“It’s a known illness?”
“One of the mer one hundred seven, also known as ‘Warm Seas Disease.’ It is common and terrible if untreated.”
“I bet. It was terrible even when treated.”
“He must drain the poison, pack the wound with astringent gel, and rest against the Life Tree until the streaking descends into the wound and disappears.”
“Yeah, well, we have antibiotics. I think the guy lost an arm.”
“He experienced a mild infection.”
“Mild!”
“Although inconvenient, an arm will grow back.”
She blinked. “No, it won’t.”
Oh, he had forgotten. An unfortunate problem. Humans could not regrow missing pieces. Their robotic limbs were very interesting.
“Grow back…” she muttered. “Limbs don’t just grow back.”
“They do with the healing sap of the Life Tree.”
“I wish we had a Life Tree on land. Then we could cure everything.”
He let her believe that for a short time, but it was inaccurate, and so he forced himself to say the truth. “Almost.”
“Oh, so you do have cancer?”
“Rare diseases do not respond to the Life Tree.”
“So what do you do?”
“Nothing. They are ancient diseases that have never left their cursed grounds.”
Except once.
Never again.
To avoid any follow-up questions, he reached back into Bella’s purse, removed the envelope, and examined the plastic tube. “How does it work?”
“How does what work?” She glanced over, saw the tube in his hand, and her expression flattened. “You want to test yourself for a match?”
“Yes.”
Her soul light flared and her chin wrinkled. She sucked in several breaths and cleared her throat, but she continued driving one-handed, the other pressed to her mouth.
“Why does my action make you so sad?”
She answered, muffled by her hand. “You’re not even Jonah’s… You, an absolute stranger, would offer to help him and the people who should care refuse…”
“He is your treasure,” Balim pointed out. “And I am your soul mate.”
Bella dropped her hand, pulled a U-turn at the next intersection, and drove the opposite direction.
“I have upset you.”
“No. No, no. This is just… I can’t let you affect me like this. So I won’t. You’ll see.”
Her soul fluctuated between bright and dark, and she ripped off her jewelry—earrings, vibrating metal piece, necklace, and hair clips. Her hair descended and brushed her shoulders.
“You must calm.”
“No, calm is the last thing I need right now.”
She drove to a parking lot, got out, and walked to a railing. Beyond it, mist blew off a slow-moving river and a giant bridge roared with traffic. Bella gripped the railing with hands covered by the thick sleeves of her sweater.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re still in Buffalo. This is Black Rock Canal. That’s the Niagara River. It drains from Lake Erie over there. And that’s the Peace Bridge. The other shore is Canada.”
How strange that humans had no real markers between cities or countries. They bled into one another, sharing resources. Cities beneath the sea were much more separate. Above the ocean, everyone crossed between countries by a simple bridge. Such freedom of movement was impossible undersea.
“I was going to take you to the Niagara Falls because the light show is so impressive, but this can’t wait.” She turned to him. “The first time I transform after drinking the permanent Life Tree blossom nectar, my body will experience ‘extraordinary’ healing. It’s not affected if I transform after only drinking the temporary Sea Opal elixir?”
“No. They are separate.”
“So I could transform right now and still try the nectar trick later with Jonah?”
His heart thudded, sudden and hard, and a lump formed in his throat. He had to clear it, and his voice broke when he spoke. “You wish to transform?”
“I feel too much to stay confined within this skin.” She clenched her fists against her chest. The gesture was a horrible insult beneath the water, and it fit the intensity of her feelings. “It has to come out. Right now, right here, or else I will go somewhere with you and—”
She broke off, but her gaze lingered, hot and fiery, stroking his pectorals and abdomen and centering right on the hard, throbbing center of his rigid cock.
His cock tugged under her heated gaze.
“Go somewhere with me,” he said, his voice thick with hunger.
She jerked her gaze away.
“We have no elixir here, Bella.”
She turned away. Her breath emerged as fog and joined in with the mist above the river.
He stood beside her and rested his bare hand on the damp metal rail.
She glanced at his shirt. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Rarely.”
“Are you serious? Like, not even in the Arctic?”
“Never in the water.”
“Never cold. I’m so jealous.” She gazed out over the mist. Her soul fluctuated a bunch. “Jonah’s been sick over a year. Do you know the worst part? Sometimes I want to escape it all. Pretend I’m single. Start over. Isn’t that awful? He’s my child, no one else is fighting for him, and what happens if I give up?”
Her question chilled his heart. “You have not betrayed him yet.”
“Yet,” she agreed and rubbed her chest. “But I will. Someday. Does that disgust you?”
He studied her. She was a mystery. “Are you trying to disgust me?”
“It would be easier.”
“What would be easier?”
“If you would just go away.” She dropped her head on his shoulder. Her temple was warm, and her hair caressed his cheek like ghostly fingers. “Then I could stop feeling guilty.”
He allowed himself to reach up and touch the soft tickles. His fantasies from before washed over him. During the drive. Thinking about sliding kisses up her arm, resting on the parking brake, across her chest. Kiss every one of her freckles. His cock pulsed hard in his pants, ready and thrusting for her. Her long curls, her large sunglasses, her jeans. She called her dress casual, but she amazed him. He had plotted his own betrayal for years.
“I will never force you to choose between me and your son,” he said.
“Yes, you will.”
She straightened, pulled off her sweater, shirt, and shoes and tugged down her pants. Her curves were exposed to the chilly air, and she shivered as she stepped out in generous undergarments humans called a bra and panties.
Then she ducked between the rungs and shivered, hugging herself, on the edge of the small embankment next to the river. “I’m already betraying you.”
“Wait.” He leaned on the railing to gr
ab her arm. “Do not enter this water.”
She leaned out of his reach.
“Stop, Bella. You have drunk no elixir.”
“Actually, that’s not true.” She squinted out on the water. “Your idea to have me drink the nectar and then give my blood to Jonah wasn’t the first time someone suggested that. I drank half a gallon of elixir a few weeks ago.” She shivered. “Let’s see if it’s still in my system.”
“This is a dangerous test.”
“Does it anger you?”
“It worries me. Do not treat yourself so savagely.”
“Savage.” She laughed, her teeth chattering. “But that’s who I really am.”
“No.”
“I’m so ‘nice.’ Diplomacy is my bread and butter.” She shook her head. “This is what happens when I break.”
“Bella—”
“Am I a mermaid, Balim? Am I your destined bride? Soul mate?”
A wave of tenderness crossed over him. She shivered and pretended to be hot. The spell uniting their souls circled his heart. He was as much a prisoner as she was.
“Yes.” He pressed against the railing. “We could resonate more.”
Her soul light flickered as her gaze lowered, dropping down his chest, to his belt, and then up again. Her lips quirked. “Sometimes, Balim, you just have to make a leap of faith.”
“You are not safe!”
“Darn right. Don’t I infuriate you?” She tipped backward into the water. A splash collapsed over her body. The frigid waters cut off a horrified shriek.
She had not transformed.
Now, she was drowning.
Chapter Fourteen
Bella self-destructed hard.
In the moment before she’d leaped off the too-high embankment, in a moment of flawed judgment, desire to let Balim in had overwhelmed her. She’d needed to jump out of her skin before she bared everything.
Before she let him into her soul.
And if she couldn’t transform, he was a doctor and a mer. He’d fix her.
“No!” he’d shouted.
Icy water slapped Bella hard. Her head rang and her lungs shuddered.
Her urge to be wild and crazy, to shake off her feelings for him, evaporated beneath the cold, hard ice of reality.
Why was she so stunned? It wasn’t that far of a drop. She twisted in the black water and struggled to figure out which way was up. Her lips and fingertips numbed.
Everything was going wrong.
She had done irresponsible things in her life. Once, when a crush had asked her to be his girlfriend, she’d jumped off the back of a motorcycle in the middle of traffic because her feelings had been too intense and she’d just needed to get away from them. Another time, she’d climbed up on a balcony and spun over a sixty-foot drop, laughing at the people she’d scared.
She dropped her responsible act to throw them off. Prove she was the one in charge of her destiny. Not feelings, not their expectations. She was in control.
Now she refused to yield herself to Balim. What better way to shock him than by drowning herself? She could be vulnerable while he raised his own defenses.
This wasn’t supposed to kill her.
New icicles fingered her intimate crevices.
Why was it so cold?
Her diaphragm spasmed. Ice water filled her mouth and seared her lungs. She clawed at her throat. Panic turned the world to blackness. She was dying. Literally dying.
“Hold on to me.” Balim’s voice was somehow echoing inside her own chest, hot and demanding, as he clasped her frigid hands with his warm palms.
She thrashed for the surface, for air—
“Hold. I am with you. Calm.” His arms tightened around her upper back, pinning her arms, and his powerful thighs clamped hers. “You have gills. Use them.”
Gills? She had gills?
Bella writhed. His words could not overcome the dark, deadly weight in her lungs.
He nuzzled her forehead with a gentle sigh. “Why does no patient listen to me? I am the medical professional.”
She stopped writhing.
Probably people didn’t listen because he promoted regrowing arms.
“It is possible now for you too,” he murmured, replying to her unspoken remark, “at least temporarily. You have transformed, Bella. Feel my fingers along your gills?”
No. Now that she’d stopped struggling, she would drown here, alone, in the dark.
“You are not alone.” He tightened his hold on her and skimmed one broad, warm palm down her back to rest at her hip. “And it is not dark. Open your eyes.”
She obeyed.
Balim looked watchful, cautious. A serious wrinkle between his brows hid the little vein of red tattoo. His dark hair waved, and her red hair floated in a watery, free tangle.
No…
“Do not fear.”
He pressed his lips to hers. Their kiss. Hot and tingly and utterly different from the surface. More intimate, more intense.
Did his kiss give her the power to breathe underwater like him?
“You already have this power,” he rumbled while his mouth continued its exploration of hers, replying in his rumbly chest to words she had not spoken aloud. “You are using it to breathe and hear me. Feel it now.”
Powerful rightness filled her. He was correct. Bella was no longer cold. The water swirled over every bit of her body and invaded her intimate places. It felt wild and free and dangerous.
Just like her.
His worry smoothed. He looked at peace, and that twisted her heart into knots of tenderness she did not want to feel.
She could stay with him forever…
No. She broke away. Too much remained unspoken between them. But she no longer felt about to die.
In fact, she would finally live.
She released him and twirled, savoring this one and only temporary transformation.
The lake opened up like a massive underwater room. The surface above was opaque, with distant flat lights, a colorful drink, and the bottom spread out in perfect, rocky and seaweedy detail.
Fish wove between reeds and darted at the surface bugs, flipped, and splashed. The ground moved with crustaceans, worms, crabs, and a hundred creatures she’d never seen or thought about but were as ubiquitous as flies, pigeons, and squirrels. The world was upside down. She flew in the watery “sky” and the surface was “ground” above her.
“It is disorienting.” Balim’s chest thrummed, and she heard his words in a space inside her own chest. His mouth remained closed as he spoke. “Orienting is easier once you are farther from shore.”
Right, because the ocean was much larger.
“That is not the only reason.”
She kept hearing him in her chest. It was strange.
He tilted his head at her. “I am guessing at your words. It was frustrating on the surface, but at least underwater, I can understand enough to guess. Will you not speak and be clear?”
Her own chest cavity echoed with his words. She tried mimicking the vibration. “I’m never doing this again.”
“You must. Only your passive senses have transformed. Do you feel your confidence growing? As you grow confident, you will develop your human toes into mer fins. Believe, Bella. Your soul is freed now, and your passions are rising. This is how you claim your destiny as a powerful mer queen.”
She felt it. She felt it in her bones, lifting her from the muck and rinsing off frustration, turning to beautiful connection. Vibrant life flowed through her still-human fingers, swirled around her still-human toes.
Temporary. This was all temporary.
“I will never be a queen,” she insisted, even as her heart soared with the healing movements of the currents and fresh, clear water, like standing under a glacier waterfall while all else fell away. “I can’t join your world.”
“You already have.”
“No.”
His brows lifted. “Then why did you enter?”
She couldn’t answer.
>
Aloud.
Because it was her only chance. She’d lost her mind tonight. Balim had ensnared her with his words and made her remember who she used to be. Before she’d compromised, grown up, lost her way.
He waved her protests away. “By now, your unpredictable behavior should be predictable. Stay close.”
She paddled toward curious spires. “What are those?”
“Watch the riptide.” Balim grabbed hold of her.
A current of water—which was visible too! Like a mist upon the water—picked them up and carried them deeper into the lake like a hand picking them up and tossing them.
It was exhilarating, releasing her control and just existing. She clamped down on her scream and gave in to its power.
Balim flowed with the current and carried her deeper to calm water.
The spires grew in size. It was the broken mast of an overturned shipwreck. “I forgot this was down here.”
“Do you know this body of water?”
“I should. I grew up a few miles away. Can we see the name?”
He kept her in his arms, flowing in whichever direction she wanted. His suit bunched around his joints and water moved along his hard, masculine body. His feet below his trouser cuffs extended into long fins like a scuba diver in a casual business suit. Two separate legs pumped the water, arching them over the wreck.
She pointed. “There’s the helm.”
He hovered over it.
“I used to dream about going on yachting tours. I never wanted my own. I just wanted to be rich enough to be invited.” She let go of his hand and gripped the barnacle-crusted wheel.
“Bella, no!” He yanked her away.
Hard barnacles sliced her hands. Blood spotted the water.
“Ow.” She tried to put her cuts in her mouth.
“No. You must let them flow.” He held her wrists firmly in the current to drag the blood away. “Cleanse the wound if this graveyard is infected.”
“Infected?”
“The disease that cursed this battleground could still be dangerous.”
Battleground?
Wrecks lay in every direction. A shadow of a hull silted over and turned into caves for animals, others preserved as if the boat had lain to rest on a beach.
