I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. His eyes grew haunted, and I knew it wasn’t just memories of Jayne that he was thinking about. More than any of us, Todd had seen the underbelly of humanity’s worst. He’d barely survived to tell the tale.
We turned towards the portal that led to the tunnels inside Shephard’s Mountain, and that opened to the path leading down into the town of Breathless on the other side. Fern left us there, moving along a different path that continued into Bitterroot, where her Aunt, Feather Hodges, lived.
A long slim arm draped over my shoulders, and I looked up at Kimmy. She gave me a broad grin. At least one of us seemed to be in high spirits.
“Guess what?” she giggled.
I rolled my eyes. Kimmy was naturally easygoing. Usually she almost always lifted my spirits, but today I just wasn’t in the mood.
“Do tell,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Nope, don’t be a downer. I have news too good to squash. Guess what it is,” she said.
I felt the bones in my jaw grind together. “Just tell me.”
She rolled her eyes. “No fun! Well, I have a date. With Sam, you know, from potions class?”
I frowned, trying to put a face to the name. I had a vague recollection of a tall, gangly youth. “A leopard shifter, right?”
She nodded, “He’s dreamy.”
I gave a forced smile. “I’m happy for you. What are you doing?”
“Shearing sheep.”
I gave a double-take, scowling, when I realized she was laughing at me.
She added, “Well, pay attention, then. You’re like in outer space or something. We’re going fishing, taking the kayaks out for a turn around Bane Lake.”
I started thinking of my untimely visit from the Seascrill the week before. “Be careful,” I cautioned, snapping my mouth shut before I said more.
Her eyes narrowed. But before she could ask me why, Thomas squeezed in between us, moving his sister aside and gaining an irritated elbow in the side from her for his intrusion.
He grunted, ignoring his disgruntled sister. “Do you want to meet for breakfast at Bob Evans in Breathless on Sunday?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Sure, if everyone else does.”
His tentative smile slipped, and his brows drew together. “What, you wouldn’t go if it were just me?”
My temper sparked. “Probably not. I want to be around people that don’t snap at me all the time.”
He swallowed and looked away. “Yeah, well, sorry. I guess I’ll ask them, then.”
We reached the fork in the path and waited for Kimmy to pull the set of bushes aside concealing the road leading up the mountain towards the Tuttle homestead, and the oversized cabin in the woods nearby that my father had built after our house in town burned to the ground.
I glanced over at Sadie and Nick, who hadn’t joined us. “Aren’t you coming?”
Sadie shook her head. “I want to get to Shephard’s Mountain Sporting Goods. I need new bolts for my crossbow.”
Nick nodded. “And I decided to go with her.”
Sadie glanced at him sharply. “Did you now? And when did that happen?”
“Three seconds ago. Keep up,” he ground out, his eyes heated.
I held back an amused grin. “Have fun.”
The mutinous look in Sadie’s eyes said it was going to be anything but. I watched as they continued down the mountain towards Breathless without us.
That left the Tuttles and me. At the turnoff to my cabin, about a mile through the woods from theirs, Thomas and I stopped. Todd and Kimmy confirmed Sunday breakfast in Breathless and kept going.
I looked up at Thomas, his dark face creased with nervous perspiration as he shuffled from foot to foot.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you Sunday,” he mumbled.
“I guess so. Was there something else you wanted?”
He gulped, his eyes bugging. “Um. No. I’ll see you then.”
Only he made no move to turn away, staring at me like I was his favorite meat-lover's pizza.
“Thomas?”
He blinked and cleared his throat once more, sounding like a sick bear. “Right, then. See you.”
He turned and trotted up the path. I stared after him until he disappeared over the hill.
I shook my head in confusion. For a moment there, I actually thought he was going to try to kiss me. But that was just me, thinking silly and wondering.
#
Sometimes my father surprised me, and this was one of those times. I opened the door to the cabin and stopped dead, my nose wrinkling at the sharp smell. I’d expected him to be where he always was: in his basement lab. I pictured him with his thick glasses perched on the end of his nose, working on some experiment or another. I sniffed the air. Daddy had made clam chowder for me. I knew this as it was my favorite and he, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t abide the stuff. I moved to the stove and lifted the lid and gave it a stir, wondering where he was.
But beneath the pleasant aroma of supper was the different, sharper smell of fresh paint. I followed my sniffer down the hallway to my father’s bedroom. He stood on a low stool, rolling a light cream color over the primer on the walls. We’d been in the cabin since early spring, but we hadn’t finished the walls or added any homey touches.
A second brush lay beside the pan on the floor, and I picked it up.
“So where do you need me?” I asked.
He started, turning to look at me with a wide grin. “Sirris girl. You’re home. We should take a break and eat first. Finish this after.”
He came down off the stool and moved in my direction, drawing me into a warm, one-armed hug. I leaned in, burying my face in his thin shoulder and giving a contented sigh. My father was my world. We’d been taking care of each other for as long as I could remember.
He set his brush down, and we moved towards the kitchen.
“What are you going to eat? You hate clam chowder.”
He nodded. “Ayup, I do. That’s why God made peanut butter and jelly, for just such occasions.”
I laughed. My father never changed.
A half hour later, I was pushing my second bowl away and sitting back with a groan. “I don’t get it. You hate the stuff. How do you make it taste so wonderful?”
“It’s all the love I put in each little bowl,” he teased.
I rolled my eyes. “The malarkey is more like it.”
He chuckled. “What do you say we finish painting the room and then light a fire out back in the new pit? Maybe see what’s in our fall sky?”
“I say you know how to read my mind.”
By the time we finished storing the painting supplies and lit the first match on our last fire-starter, the sky beyond the faint ridge our cabin sat on was a pastel watercolor of pinks, purples and grays, the sunset fading into darkness. We settled back in silence to wait for the fire to catch and the stars to take over the heavens. It was a cloudless sky and should make for a decent night of identifying the constellations that lit up our Montana sky in early fall.
I smiled as Ursa Major emerged, the large constellation otherwise known as the Big Dipper. It was the first set of stars my father had shown me when I was just a child. It was still my favorite.
“Orion’s belt is there. Can you pick it out?”
I nodded. “And Taurus, do you see that as well?”
“I do.”
Night deepened, and I watched the sudden light trail of a shooting star. It arced across the horizon. I smiled with wonder when it disappeared behind a frothy ribbon of purple and green. “Look, Dad. Can you see it, just there?”
He looked at where I pointed, a pleased smile lighting his face. “The aurora borealis.” He sighed. “All those colliding electric-charged particles and the gases in our own atmosphere. Spectacular.”
I grinned. Only my dad could turn such a stunning natural phenomenon into a science lesson. My smile faded as I remembered what I needed to tell him.
I didn’t keep
secrets from my father, and he’d want to know what I’d seen.
“Daddy?”
“Sirris,” he teased back, his smile halting when he saw my expression.
“What was it like? Raising a mermaid in a human world?”
His smile turned whimsical. “It was the best, Sirris.”
“It couldn’t have been easy keeping who and what I was a secret.”
“It wasn’t.”
“What really happened to Mom?”
I could tell I’d surprised him. The sudden silence loomed heavy.
When he spoke, I wished I’d kept silent. “She left me and went back to Tarus. She left you behind.”
The words were harsh on the night air, but something about them didn’t fit.
“And…” I prompted, sitting forward, elbows on my knees as I stared into his face across the fire.
“What do you mean? She couldn’t stand to be away from her home and figured you, being half human, would do better here, with me.”
“I know that’s what you always said. It placated me when I was a kid. But I think there’s more, and I’d like to hear the rest of it.”
He looked away, and I was sure he wasn’t going to answer.
“Well, you know Tarus is run as a monarchy?”
I nodded. I did.
“Well, even more powerful than the Royal Family, is the league of elders. Tarus Council they call themselves.”
“Was Mother a Royal?”
“She was next in line to become queen.”
“Oh. Then how did you even meet? How did any of this happen?”
His face grew dark. “I found her on the shore of Deep Lake where she’d been left to die.”
“What?” I asked, aghast.
“She’d been taken hostage by a rebel group of Seascrill. Her own people, members of the court, had given up on finding her. Somehow, she escaped to the surface. I was camping nearby, searching for a rare plant that grows only in the high country. I didn’t know what she was, not at first. I brought her back with me, tended her wounds…and fell in love.”
“What happened then? Did she love you back?”
“She was pregnant, Sirris.”
A shiver of shock rolled through me.
“What happened to the baby?”
“The baby was part Seascrill. It wouldn’t have mattered to the Council how it came about. She would have been banished from Tarus. To return would have been a death sentence for Mirra. She decided to stay with me, and we would raise your sister together. We were married and a year after your sister, you were born, too. And we were happy for a while, until you were five and the Council paid us an unexpected visit.”
“What did they want?”
“Your mother. The reigning queen had died, and she was next in line to sit the crown.”
“She said no, of course…didn’t she?”
He hesitated. “Mirra was having a tough time living out of the water. Her skin wasn’t meant for a land environment. You’re different. You can go weeks if you have to. For Mirra, it was days. She was sick all the time. Your mother cut a deal. She would return and take the throne in exchange for your sister’s safety and allegiance to the crown.”
“She left you. Surely she was able to come back and see you—and me?”
“The Council is very set in their ways. Their laws forbid intermingling with Onlanders, as they call us.”
“So you never saw her again?”
He gave a wry smile. “Not exactly. Once a year she would go on “vacation” to visit her cousins for a weekend away from court.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“She didn’t visit any cousins. She came to see me, and you. She kept the subterfuge up for several years…”
I nodded, remembering soft hands and a gentle smile. “I have her sea eyes.”
He smiled bitterly. “That’s right. One year she didn’t come. Nor the next. And then one day Mirra showed up at my door. I do not know how she even found me. She was just a kid, still. She stayed long enough to tell me my Ami was dead.”
I gasped, my fingers clutching at my throat. “How?”
“There’s something else you should know.”
“I think maybe you’ve told me plenty.”
He continued anyway, his expression grim. “They needed an acceptable heir. They didn’t know about you and couldn’t consider Mirra because of her heritage. They’d forced your mother to marry, and she had one more child before she died, your younger sister, Pinna.”
“I have two half-sisters?” I couldn’t hide my shock.
“You do, but you will probably never meet them. They are forbidden to come above. Council rules.”
I gave a shiver of dread. I had to tell him.
“I went swimming in Bane Lake last week and had a visitor, a bald eaglet. He gave me an Echo Stone. It was a summons from Tarus, and my grandfather there.”
“That’s impossible. They don’t even know you exist.”
“And when I was coming back, I was followed. I hid, but I heard and saw several Mer-men talking about preventing my return.”
Father frowned, looking puzzled. “What did they look like?”
I shrugged. “They were…purple, for one thing, really light with dark hair and eyes.”
He shook his head. “That can’t be right. Why send you a summons and then go to the trouble to stop you. And those weren’t Sylvan. What you described are Seascrill, and they are no fans of the Royal Family. Something is wrong.”
“I think I have to answer the summons to find out what. I won’t stay, but I owe it to you… and to Mom, to find out the truth.”
Dad was already shaking his head. “You don’t know them. They won’t listen to reason and they will demand your compliance in whatever plans they have. No way. It’s too risky. Besides, if the Seascrill have their fins in this, your well-being isn’t in their best interests.”
I didn’t answer, holding my council as I sat back and looked to the night sky, picking out the band of stars that made up Cassiopeia. He was right. I shouldn’t go. I had no idea what I was walking into, and it wasn’t like I could drag my friends along for this one. Still, I had sisters. Was it so wrong of me to want to meet them?
CHAPTER TWO
Almost as if he’d been waiting for me, Thomas appeared at the fork in the trail that led to our homes. He fell into step beside me without a word and we walked that way, in silence, for close to a half mile. My skin itched, and I ran my nails along my arms. I needed my water fix in a bad way. We were meeting everyone else at the hot springs, and the soothing warmth of those healing waters was all I could think about. The rich minerals would hold my Mer-maiden genes in a happy thrall for close to a week.
I glanced up at Thomas. His light brown eyes were perusing our surroundings intently, looking for anything that didn’t belong. He’d been more like that of late, watchful and intense. I stared at his broad shoulders, heavy with muscle and that mobile mouth I couldn’t look away from. My thoughts wanted to go somewhere else if I’d let them. We’d been friends since we were children and I wished for those uncomplicated days back.
I sighed. It was a relaxing walk, and I was about to ruin it. I needed to tell Thomas about my visitors. As with my father, Thomas and I didn’t keep many secrets from each other, and he deserved to know this one.
His stride had lengthened, putting him ahead of me and leaving me struggling to keep up. I reached out and laid a hand along his arm, feeling the muscles bunch. A shiver of awareness rumbled through me, and I found it hard to breathe. “Thomas, slow down. We aren’t in a race, are we?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.” He slowed a spell, and I removed my hand.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
His heavy brows rose, forming an M over the bridge of his nose, and I wanted to smile.
“A week ago, or maybe it’s a bit more now, I went swimming in Bane Lake. I was stressed, and it was late at night…and I needed the wat
er.”
“Not safe, out at night alone like that…” he began.
I rolled my eyes. “Just listen and hush, will you? You can be all grizzly bearish when I’m done.”
“You mean wolfish,” he interrupted.
“Thomas,” I said sharply.
His mouth snapped closed, and he eyed me suspiciously. He knew when I wasn’t playing.
“When I was done swimming, there was an Echo Stone next to my clothes. It was a summons to come back to my mother’s home—to Tarus.”
He frowned and started to say something. We’d come to a halt in the middle of the path, and now I reached up and placed my fingers over his lips to still his words. More tingles sprang up beneath my fingers, made worse by his soft gasp. I jerked them away, rubbing them along my thighs to still the strange sensation.
“When I was coming back, I was followed. Three Mer-men were looking for me. I hid myself. I don’t think they wanted to just talk, Thomas. They were armed to the teeth.”
Thomas’ eyes flashed, and his mouth tightened. I wasn’t surprised. I knew he wouldn’t take it well.
“It’s been over a week and you just now thought to tell me you have someone on Shephard’s Mountain stalking you?”
He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Instead, I shot back, “I’m not the only one keeping secrets, Thomas. What about you? You don’t talk to me anymore. I know why you moved to the room in the barn, but you haven’t told me anything about how that’s going? Have you had your first change yet?”
He growled, “It’s a private matter. I don’t want to bore you with the gory details. I don’t need you fussing over me. And we aren’t talking about me. What’s Tarus, anyway?”
We began walking again, this time side-by-side. I tried to rein in my temper. “Tarus is the Sylvan town beneath Deep Lake where I come from. My grandfather is king there. They apparently want to see me.”
His scowl deepened, and he walked faster, clearly agitated. “I don’t like it. If it’s beneath the lake, I can’t go with you. No way are you going somewhere I can’t get to and save you if you get into trouble. And what about those guys after you? Any idea who they were?”
“I believe they were Seascrill. They are another race that exists in Deep Lake, not quite the same as Sylvans.”
Rule 9 Academy Series Boxset: Books 3-5 Young Adult Paranormal Fantasy (Rule 9 Academy Box Sets (3 Book Series) 2) Page 52
