“What happened? What’s going on out there? And what are those things writhing around you like tentacles?”
The weariness was back. “I’ll explain everything, Inaja. I promise. But right now…suffice it to say Coda is fine, Brax is gone, and I’m here to let you out. Where are the keys?”
He jutted his chin toward the far wall. “Hanging there.”
Retrieving the keys, I tried a few in his lock before the door clicked open, and I moved aside as he flowed free. He slowed before completely passing me up, casting me a grudging sidelong glance.
“Thank you,” he offered curtly, and I nodded. “Now, where is he?”
“He doesn’t want to be bothered. He’s…processing everything that happened.”
He stared at me. “So–any hints? Or should I just find a corner and tread water until someone decides it might be prudent to fill me in?”
I sighed. He wanted a hint? “Secret ambition and love potions, Inaja. That pretty much sums it up.”
“And the tentacles?”
I searched for a simple explanation. “The ocean’s way of equipping someone to counteract the madness?” It was more than that, but that seemed to satisfy him for now. For once I was thankful Inaja was so short in his interactions. It lent itself well to not wanting to hash it all out again.
Accepting those tidbits, Inaja claimed his freedom, and I followed him back up the winding passage into the main halls of the palace.
The aurora shimmered gold through the dome skylights, drawing my face up into a dazzle of light reminiscent of a winter sunrise. The dawning of a new day, I thought.
A new day, and a new season of change for Atlantis.
* * *
I found myself a balcony–a half-moon platform nestled between one wing of the palace and another, high above the bottom floor–and wafted idly above the mandala emblem that made up the ancient stone tiles. There I bathed in the wavering golden light, reveling in the bittersweet feeling of this new dawn. Over the ornate railing I could peer into a far-flung sliver of Atlantis, visible between the close-huddled walls of the fortress. Lacy bridges framed my view, spanning the palace alleyway to connect one wing to the other.
My tentacles curled like slow billows of fog around me, matching my reflective mood.
If I had looked, I would have noticed the tiny blot that ballooned closer through the haze of the city, but as it was I was absorbed in my reflections until it stroked into the alleyway and spidered across one wall. Only then did its turquoise, melon-sized mass draw my attention, and I turned just in time to be tackled by the spongy mass that was Pastel. He tangled me in his enthusiastic array of tentacles, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the assault.
“Hey, Pasty,” I greeted affectionately. “Did you miss me?”
He tightened two tentacles around my neck and made a strange cooing sound, squeezing my cheek to his, and I patted him on his gloppy head. Evidently he wasn’t bothered by my transformation in the slightest. If anything, it probably made me more relatable to him.
It was there, with my quirky pet tied in a bow around my neck, that Coda found me. When he was good and ready he sought me out, hovering in the archway where an intricate, wrought-iron style gate lay open against the fortress on its half-crumbled hinges.
I rotated as a single whispering ripple announced his presence.
He loomed, grave and silent. Once again, even in all my transformed glory, I was struck by how tall he seemed. He just had such a presence about him.
When he didn’t speak, I hurried to fill the silence. “Coda, I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to–”
He rushed forward, a single undulation that collided into me. I was caught up in the flourish of the motion, our bodies twining in a half-circle on the balcony, Pastel scrambling to extract himself from the assault and take refuge in an arched crook of the balcony railing. I didn’t even realize Coda’s intentions until his lips were ravaging mine, his sea-salt kisses flooding my senses.
Fin tangling with my tentacles, he went rigid all at once and recoiled just as quickly as he had rushed me, alarm flashing across his face as he swished back a pace. “Oh, I…” he stammered awkwardly.
Only then did I realize it might indeed be alarming to brush against the electric appendages, which ordinarily would sting him senseless. I chuckled. “It’s okay, they’re not quite as lethal as when they belonged to Old Jelly. Maybe because I’m merely a hybrid and so they’ve lost their potency. But I also have a brain–whereas Old Jelly didn’t–and I can actually control whether or not they sting.”
The tension in his face dissolved into relief. “Oh. That is handy.” Then I realized how quickly and fluidly the relief lent itself to sheepishness.
Was Coda, son of Atlas, regent of Atlantis flustered in the wake of kissing a girl?
An amused grin pricked at the side of my mouth, but I had mercy on him, deciding against teasing him for it. A little lightheartedness might have done some good in light of all that had transpired that day, but it didn’t quite seem appropriate. It was too soon.
“So I can…touch them?” Coda sought to confirm.
By way of an answer I sent them forward, the whole frothy cluster of them, to slither around his waist, his whole torso, and reel him back in to me. His eyes locked on mine–blessedly, beautifully silver–and I slowed the tightening of my many-layered embrace to a taunting closing of the last margin of space between us. Tantalizingly gradually, like glaciers shifting toward one another across a great expanse of open sea, I drew him in until our chests beat against one another and I could see the moon-like texture of his irises. His lashes shimmered as he searched my gaze.
“Is there any chance you would still want me, like this?” I asked almost fearfully. Like there was some chance he might see me as a freak. It wasn’t just that, though. What if it occurred to him, as it had occurred to me, that this could mean the ocean had already chosen me, that in fusing with the sacred forces of the depths I had essentially already been named the equivalent of queen?
If he was not duty-bound to choose a queen, would it change the fact that he’d decided he wanted me as his bride? What if he hadn’t really wanted me at all–or had, but only as his most favorable option compared to the other slew of suitors he found unsavory?
Insecurities I couldn’t ignore, in light of the way things had changed.
But the smoldering look that burned brighter–and somehow darker at the same time–the longer he gazed into my eyes told me I needn’t fear his attraction to me.
“Do I want you like this?” he repeated in sultry ridicule, and I could feel the beat of his heart grow more intense against my chest. Inking Abyss, if he wasn’t radiating the desire to stop fighting his affection for me more than ever. “I’ve never been more enchanted by a creature in all of my immortal years.”
My gills fluttered shut, a fleeting, giddy malfunction, and I grew light-headed from oxygen deprivation. A slightly strangled sound flitted out through my lips.
“Breathe, Stargazer,” Coda urged, reading me too easily.
“I can’t,” I murmured, and his face split into a grin of affection.
“Have you changed your mind, then? About being my queen?”
I swallowed, the faint feeling increasing tenfold. I’d already accepted the responsibility unofficially, finally done fighting the signs when Old Jelly took it upon himself to transform me into a twice-cursed goddess of the Deep, but officially… It made me hot and cold and dizzy all over, ready to say it out loud.
Without warning, my eagerness was curbed by one enduring snag. I’d wondered it before, fleetingly, but had quickly slammed the thought aside to avoid the embarrassment: could we… That was, were we even anatomically compatible, as husband and wife?
Short of broaching the subject, I realized it was a silly question. I was the product of a mer-human affair, so that was answer enough. Obviously the mechanics worked just fine. Not to mention, a stirring awareness of my ‘goddess’ powers left me c
onfident I could change forms to practically anything under the sea, at will–that would be interesting–so there was little to worry about. I had a creeping, instinctive hunch that I could fade into little more than water itself, if I wanted to, enveloping Coda entirely within the sinew of my being.
In the same sense, I became cognizant of my newfound immortality.
It was all too much, too fast, and suddenly I needed to solidify the one thing that made perfect sense in all this, the one thing I could lean on while the rest left me staggering
‘Have you changed your mind? About being my queen?’ I re-centered myself on that axis.
“I have,” I confirmed, and an elation like nothing I’d ever seen from Coda before lit him up from head to–well, to what I could see of his torso, the rest of him all tangled in my tentacles. It was like his already radiantly-golden tan flushed with twice the gold. But he saw I wasn’t finished, and restrained himself while I searched for the rest of my acceptance speech. “But it’s more than that. I thought about what you said–about walking between worlds. And I think that’s why I was chosen, Coda. Why the sea presented me as a candidate. Because it doesn’t just need a queen. It needs an ambassador. The things I saw in the visions at the pit… So much of the ocean’s plight is because of us–Surface-dwellers. We treat it like a black-hole dumping ground–out of sight, out of mind. If there’s any hope for the ocean to be saved, I have to affect change above the Surface.” As I said it, I absently tested the dynamics of retracting my tentacles a small margin, just to be sure I could even return to land as something resembling a human. The roots slithered obediently back into my torso, and, reassured, I relaxed the experiment.
He thought about this, seeing the wisdom of the notion. After he’d mulled it over, his eyes creased in that look of sweet admiration that he wore so well. “I wish I’d tried harder, sooner, to convince you that you were the being for the job.”
“I never would have listened.”
“I know.”
A moment of silence swirled around us, but it was comfortable–a moment I paused to cherish.
“But yes,” I continued where we had left off, once the moment had packed up and drifted on its way. “I will be your queen.”
There. I said it.
He beamed down at me. “My bride,” he tacked on, wanting me to say that, too.
I swelled with joy–finally, fully acknowledging how good his company, his companionship, made me feel. “Your bride,” I treated him to the sound of it, enunciating each word for optimal effect.
I could see it was a challenge to contain the light swelling inside him, but he kept his composure, clinging to the dignity of the moment. “Then welcome back, Sayler, Stargazer, daughter of Vel-Di’yah–Queen of the Sea,” he hailed officially. “Welcome home.”
And finally, at last, the Call of the Deep echoed with a chant that needed no decrypting–a chorus that rejoiced at my long overdue acceptance of my destiny, applauding my ascension to the throne of Atlantis.
As if alerted to the communal jubilation, Pastel sprang from his nook and shot off fireworks of ink in the water surrounding the balcony, tripling the heady feeling in the atmosphere.
There are moments in your life when you’re left marveling: how did it come to this?
How did I end up here?
It was another such moment as I realized fully that I’d just inherited the ocean–and something that ran even deeper, reflected in the eyes of the man before me.
My ‘forever love’.
Inking Abyss.
About the Author
Harper Alexander is a USA Today bestselling author of young adult, dystopian, fantasy, paranormal romance and various other crossover genres. She lives in southern California with her husband Chad and their three feline companions (Moo, Charlie, and Wolf) as well as a cuddly bearded dragon named Gabby.
OTHER BOOKS BY HARPER ALEXANDER:
Paradise
Wonderland
COMING SOON:
Things That Go Whoosh in the Night
Things That Crawl Out of the Stardust
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www.hubofharper.wordpress.com
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