I kneeled in front of him, in the pool of blood at his side, and smiled. “That’s from the human lover, papayah.”
“Lyr—” He wheezed, but I stood and stalked over to the side again.
I jumped back into the water, my feet slicing through the surface first before my body went under, and when I came back up again, the witch was right in front of me, eyes narrowed in thought.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Lyric? The king is furious. Believes this human has corrupted you.” The witch reached for me and then stopped and snatched back his hand. “Is the human worth it?”
“He’s my human,” I murmured. “If father has hurt a hair on his head, I will destroy them.”
He smirked and the twist of his mouth pulled at one of the scars on his face. “I like to hear it.”
“And you? Would you destroy them to help Wily?” I asked.
The witch’s smirk disappeared, and his face turned dark with a furious expression. “How did you—”
“It’s not hard to figure out. The way you talked about him before…. The way you talk about love. He used to disappear for long periods of time, but Father never asked him where he went. He trusted Wily. I don’t care what’s happening between you and my brother, though, witch. I want to go to my human.” I swam closer, jaw tight. “Take me to him.”
“You’re a lot like Wily. More than you know. Obsessive about love. Possessive, too.” The witch grinned and reached up to touch my cheek. Magic danced from his fingertips and rushed through me like jolts of human electricity. I gasped as my heart seized, and then the witch was shoving me under the water.
Blackness seeped through me, and by the time I came around again, we were deep in the water, the witch dragging me behind him.
“Are you taking me to my human?” I asked, and then realized I could breathe underwater.
The witch threw a sneer over his shoulder, flicking his tail at me in irritation. “You came around a lot quicker than your human lover,” he said. “Yes, little prince, I am taking you to your Ethan. Your father, too. Be prepared.”
I thought about saying something but kept silent instead. There was nothing else I could say to the witch that would help. The merfolk may hate him, but they chose to use him when they wanted to. He was nothing but a tool to them, like one of Ethan’s knives or a saw. I hadn’t realized until now. I had to wonder who asked for his help though—Father or Wily. The witch didn’t seem like the kind of person to follow my father’s orders, king or not.
“What’s your name?”
The witch nearly faltered in his swimming, and after a quick glance toward me, he kept moving.
“I only know you as the witch. Surely you have a name.”
“I do,” he said sharply.
“Tell me. I don’t want to be like my father or the other merfolk. I won’t call you the sea witch if you have a name.”
For a while, I didn’t think he’d answer me. The eerie silence of the deep sea was the only thing I heard for a long moment before he sighed.
“Taya. My name is Taya, little prince.”
“Hello, Taya, I’m Lyric.”
He shot me a smile over his shoulder. Maybe the one that the merfolk always wanted me to be afraid of wasn’t the scary monster after all. That was the irony, wasn’t it? The ones you trusted might have been the real monsters.
It didn’t take us long to get to Atlantia, and when we arrived, it was clear to see they were waiting for us. The moment we reached the underwater city’s outskirts, the mermen and maids stopped what they were doing to stare at us on the way past. The ones who used to smile at me now glared or cowered. Soon enough, I’d be part of their nightmare stories as the one who abandoned their people to be with a murdering human, no doubt.
The witch—no, Taya—snarled at anyone who looked like they were coming toward us, and like scared guppies, they skittered away. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so worried about Ethan.
Taya dragged me toward the castle, and this time the guards didn’t greet me with a smile and ask how my day was. They stiffened and pointed their spears at me. I smirked at them in return because there was something exciting about having them afraid of me.
“Welcome to the dark side, Lyric,” Taya murmured with a chuckle as he dragged me through the open doors of the castle.
“Can you teach me dark magic then?” I teased in return, and it earned me a wide-eyed glance from him.
“No, not while you have legs and are human.” He smiled anyway and by the time he’d stopped tugging me behind him, we were in front of my father’s throne where he sat, Grandfather floating beside him. Wily and Pru were on the other side, but they drifted a little farther, which wasn’t odd for something as dire as this. Father and Grandfather were the most important merfolk in the ocean.
I didn’t bow my head like I once did, merely let myself float to stand on the rocky and sandy floor. Unlike humans, merfolk didn’t need to worry about having flooring in their homes, they floated through the water. There was no reason for them to care. Now I had feet, though, and I winced at the feel of the stones on my delicate skin.
“Father.” I raised my chin at him.
“What have you done, Lyric?” Father asked, shaking his head. “You have betrayed us.”
“Have I?” I smiled and the thrill of standing up to my father sent a spike of excitement through me. “I like to think of it as living my life.”
Father’s face turned red and he swept up from the throne, pointing his spear at me menacingly. “I didn’t raise you to be this way.”
“No, but I chose my own path.”
Grandfather sighed sadly. He looked older than ever, the lines of his face more prominent and tired. “Killing your own people, Lyric?”
“I killed three who deserved it.” I straightened my shoulders and stood how I’d seen Ethan do it more than once when he was faced with those who thought he was crazy. Like him, I wasn’t going to be seen that way. “They made my life hell and they got what they earned.”
“They were searching for you,” Father hissed, his mouth curled in disgust. “And you killed them.”
I shook my head, refusing to feel an ounce of guilt. Not for them, not ever. “No, they weren’t looking for me, they were looking for your praise. They wanted the merfolk to worship them as heroes when they found me. I won’t apologize for what I did.”
Father jolted back and his hands curled into fists at his side. “Is this what you’ve become because of this human, Lyric?”
“No,” I said without hesitation. “I became this because I wanted this revenge, and Father, if you hurt my human, I will destroy Atlantia.”
I didn’t miss the wide-eyed expression on Wily’s face, but it changed to mildly impressed. Pru, on the other hand, looked stunned with his mouth ajar. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ever seen him like that.
“Why would you do this?” Father swam closer, and I raised my chin higher so I could stare up at where he floated in front of me.
“Because I love him and he’s mine, just as I am his.”
He laughed and it sounded cruel and mocking. “Do you think he will love you after finding out who you really are? He didn’t know your name, Lyric, or that you were one of us. His hatred for mermen will stop him from loving you.”
Fear became stuck in my chest, and I swallowed around a lump that formed in my throat. It was a thought I’d considered, and it terrified me, but I’d always thought he’d never find out. I wasn’t going to let that stop me, though. I loved him, even if Father never understood. “If that is the consequence of saving him, I will accept it, Father, but I will not back down. Give me my human, or I will destroy this city.”
He shook his head and glanced at Grandfather, like he’d have answers.
Grandfather frowned at me. “This is not you, Lyric.”
“It wasn’t me, no, but I’ve learned things while being a human, Grandfather. I am not weak or crazy, and I will not be stared down on becaus
e of my love for humans. I never realized how weird I was to our people, and how they’d only smile at me because I was their prince. If you take away that title, what was I to them? The….” I smiled. “My human calls it freak. You see, Ethan is a freak to his people, too. They call him crazy, but to me, he’s perfect, and I won’t leave without him.”
“You will not be leaving. You are staying here, and the witch will give you back your tail. This is not a request, Lyric, it is an order.”
I laughed, and it startled my father. He jerked back. “You seem to think you have control of me. You don’t. Give me back my human, or I leave now and bring back an army to destroy this place.”
“An army?” Father snorted. “You think you’re powerful, but you said it yourself, the humans think your Ethan is insane. What makes you think they’ll follow you?”
“Because I’ll make them.” I shoved my feet against the ground and floated higher so I was face to face with him. “Try me. See what happens. Ethan’s taught me quite a lot in the time I’ve been with him. He’s taught me to be confident in myself, and I’d do anything for him.”
Father’s nostrils flared, and he raised his hand as though he was going to strike me. Wily shot forward and grabbed his wrist in a tight hold.
“Father, stop!” Wily shot a glare at me, and I backed away. “Do not underestimate Lyric. He is one of us and you know what we are capable of.”
“You mean drowning those humans who were washed off their boats in storms?” I sneered.
Wily shot me a look I knew well by now. Surprise. They were so quick to assume I was innocent to what they were doing, and I hated that. Before Ethan, I hadn’t realized how much I’d disliked it. I’d gone along with their life so easily because I’d thought it was my only option. Well, in Ethan’s words, fuck that!
“You are no more innocent than the humans that you claim are murderers.” The more I spoke, the more confident I felt. I surged forward until I was in my father’s face again. “You’ve probably killed more of them than they have of us.”
My father’s jaw twitched and he shook Wily’s hold off his wrist. “I did what I had to in order to keep you and our people safe.”
I grinned. “No, Father, you murdered because you hate them. Well, I’m one of them now, and the witch, whose name is Taya by the way, isn’t going to change me back. I won’t allow it.” I poked him in the chest, and both Wily and father’s eyes widened comically. “Get my human. Now.”
Grandfather swam forward, but Father raised his palm to him, stopping him from coming any closer. Father huffed. “You want your human so badly, Lyric? You can have him.” He waved his hand and the guards came fast behind me. I hadn’t even noticed them until they had a grip on each of my arms. I struggled, but they were stronger than me. They had to be while living in the ocean with strong currents.
“Let me go!” I hissed, but Father sneered.
“Take him to his human. He’ll be happy in the cell next to him.”
“Fuck off,” I yelled, but I realized none of them would know the meaning of the words. It was so… human. The guards dragged me toward the back of the castle where I knew there was a path that led down into a deeper part of the ocean where Father had specifically put barred cells for the merfolk who gave him trouble. There hadn’t been many over the years because my father was feared. I never understood why they were scared of him, not until the day I saw him drag that human down to drown.
I struggled against the guards’ hold, but there was nothing I could do to win against them. The hardest part about being a human was my lack of strength compared to the merfolk. Beneath the surface, humans didn’t hold the same power as they did.
They opened the door to the cell and threw me in, although I floated back rather than crashed to the floor like I would have on land. I raced forward, but by the time I got to the door, they’d already slammed it closed and locked it.
“Fucking assholes!” I screamed at them.
“So that’s how you talk.”
I froze at the familiar voice and turned toward the cell next to mine. I couldn’t stop the gasp from escaping my mouth even if I’d wanted to. “Ethan?”
He stepped closer, and I chewed on my bottom lip as I got a better look at him. There weren’t any words to describe how he looked right now, with his face beaten and swollen, crisscrossed cuts over his face very similar to the ones Taya had. His right eye could barely open and the sight made me sick to the stomach.
“You can speak,” he said with a narrowed glare out of the one eye that was open. He wrapped his fingers around the bars between our cells until his knuckles turned white and the urge to vomit worked its way up my throat. This wasn’t my human that had fallen off the boat.
“The witch made it possible. He took my voice to begin with.” I shifted closer to him, unafraid of him and the anger washing over his face. “Did they do this to you?”
“What do you think?” He sneered.
I flinched away. He’d never spoken to me like that before.
“When were you going to tell me you were one of them, Lyric?”
I touched his knuckles, but he jerked them from me and floated back, away from the bars that separated us. “I couldn’t speak, how was I to tell you?”
“You could have found a way,” he snapped. “You found ways to talk to me about other things.”
I hated that he spoke to me like I was one of his enemies, and it didn’t settle right with me. Pressing my forehead against the bars, I reached out for him, but he didn’t come any closer. “We’ll make them regret touching you.”
He snorted and ran a hand through his hair before making an annoyed sound at the back of his throat. “This speaking and breathing underwater shit is weird.”
“Hopefully you won’t need to get used to it,” I said, smiling sadly at him.
Ethan laughed and turned to sit on one of the rocks in the corner of his cell. I’d grown so used to seeing him above water, that watching him now through the ocean seemed bizarre, and I didn’t like it. His injuries only made it worse and anger coursed through me. I’d make Father pay for ever touching my human.
“It was me who saved you,” I whispered, and he jerked his head up again to stare at me. “That day when your boat went down with your father. I saved you. I was watching you when the boat overturned. There was no chance of saving both of you. The choice I made was you.”
“You?” He leaned back against the deteriorating stone walls that the cells were built from and huffed out a surprised breath. “You saved me?”
“Yes, as a merman. I saw that girl find you, and I wanted to be there when you opened your eyes, but I couldn’t. I could barely breathe above water, and I certainly couldn’t walk on land.” I swallowed around the emotion clogging my throat and glanced away from his angry eyes. “I knew then that I wanted to be with you, and I needed legs to do that. So I went to the witch and made a deal. He took my voice and gave me legs instead.”
“Fuck.” Ethan sighed and threw his head back, but it didn’t have the impact he was probably expecting, not without the gravity that above water had. “You really were obsessed with me.”
I smiled and tightened my hold on the bars. Something dug into my right palm but I didn’t move. The pain felt good, a reminder that I was human right now. Blood floated from between my hand and the bar, drifting higher and dancing in the water, and I watched it curiously. I’d never bled as a human before.
Ethan shoved himself up and floated toward me, gaze narrowed on the blood, and then to my hand. He didn’t come in arm’s length of me, though, and emotions warred across his face, as though he was fighting with himself on what he wanted to do.
I pouted at him. “I’m sorry. Your dirty little whore is so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
His eyebrows shot up, and I didn’t miss the twitch of his mouth, even though the bruising swelled his face. Father would regret ever touching my human. “Oh yeah, how?”
“Any way
you want me, you can have me. You can fuck me wherever you want, Ethan. You’re my human, and I’d do anything for you.” I licked my lips before gnawing at the bottom one. “I love what you do to me. I want you to fuck me like that for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah?” His mouth did stretch into a smirk this time, but he cringed in pain. “Fuck.”
I reached for him again, and he moved closer so I could caress the fresh cuts that stretched across his cheeks, chin, and forehead. Anger stirred low in my gut as I imagined all the ways I was going to make my father pay for this. I would destroy Atlantia if I had to.
“I’m gonna be an ugly asshole now,” he whispered, and I quickly shook my head in response.
“No. You’ll always be handsome to me.” Wrapping my fingers into his shirt, I dragged him closer, which was a lot easier to do in the water. He leaned forward so his forehead nearly touched mine. The only barrier was the steel bars between us. “We’ll destroy them for this. I promise.”
He nodded. “You bet your cute ass we will, Boy.”
I shivered and gasped. “I love it when you call me that. Please, when we leave, I want you to fuck me.”
His laughter startled me. “You really are fucked up. You still like me when I look like this?”
“How could I not? You’re my human.”
Someone cleared their throat, and I turned my head only slightly, keeping my fingers curled in Ethan’s shirt. I glared at Wily, Taya, and Pru, but sighed because as much as I wanted to be angry at all of them, my brothers and the witch were the most innocent.
“What did Father do to my human?” I hissed, baring my teeth at them angrily.
Taya huffed. “What he’s known for. Punishment.” Wily sent Taya a sad expression of his own, and I felt for them. But they weren’t my concern, Ethan was. “You give him a knife, and he’ll cut every traitor or enemy he can,” Taya continued with a grunt.
“Did he do that to your face?” I asked. The patterns were too similar to be a coincidence. Not only did it have the same design, but the depth and cuts were similar too.
A Merman's Tail: A dark gay retelling of The Little Mermaid (Grim and Sinister Delights Book 14) Page 10
