by Starla Night
“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 grab 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, turnin
g 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.
No wonder he thought they had fought a war here. But the wrecks were from different eras. A steamboat, a small galleon, a paddleboat, a speedboat. Canoes. A fancy yacht with broken stained glass windows. A shallow hull.
“The disease that felled these humans could hurt you,” he repeated, his gaze boring holes into her cuts as though he were lasering any dangerous viruses away. “A single touch—a single mouthful of tainted water—and the disease awakens, spreading its deadly name once more.”
Subtle tremors afflicted the hands holding her wrists too tight.
He was terrified.
Her cuts throbbed, but Balim’s caring squeezed her heart. “This isn’t a battlefield, Balim. Storms rise suddenly on the Great Lakes, and this was a main port in the old days.”
“Then why are these vessels abandoned?” He jerked his chin.
Beneath the rusted wheel, an overturned coffee mug was still visible. Funny little artifacts of the fishermen who had piloted the vessels that had survived, intact and unmoved, despite whatever storm or failures had sunk these dreams.
“It’s more expensive to dredge the boats out than to leave them in their watery graves. You must have seen wrecks on the bottom of the ocean.”
“We avoid human wreckage. They crash in barren rock.”
“Disease didn’t kill these people,” she repeated, pulling him away from the dark memories. “This reminds you of something. What?”
“The Battle of Oannes Field.”
“I don’t know it.”
“No human would. It was a field where the coral grew into perfect uncured tridents. Two great cities, Atargatis and Derketo, claimed ownership. Warriors fought for a generation over the same ground. After too much blood had been spilled, the warriors sickened. A chain of interlocking blue rings emerged on their chests, arms, shoulders, and legs. It ravaged the field, spread to the cities, and killed both Life Trees.”
Balim swallowed and focused on her cut hands once more.
“To this day, any warrior who enters the field to honor the dead, study the disease, or pluck a trident will succumb before escaping the basin. No warrior contracts the curse and survives.”
She tried to soothe him. “That place is far away.”
“It is abandoned. The greatest tridents and daggers of the ages are lying out in that battlefield like these cups and plates, tempting any fool to take them.”
“This is more of a too-many-sandbars or inexperience-meets-stormy-weather cursed lake. Nobody died from anything here besides drowning.”
He loosened his grip on her wrists as though coming back to himself, but fears continued to battle. “There are…other illnesses even in fresh water.”
She tried to meet his eye and soften his fears with a smile. “You won’t let anything happen to me.”
“It is not always my choice.”
“Mitch said you’d never lost a patient.”
“I have never lost one.” His emphasis was strange, and his gaze diverted from hers.
Wait a minute…
“One incurable disease decimated two kingdoms. To this day, the abandoned field seethes with death.”
He inspected her small cuts, unrolled the tools he’d taken from his jacket pocket, and administered medicine. “Reject me and reject Atlantis, but never reject caution. I cannot save you if I am not there.”
Balim released her and, still avoiding her gaze, rotated, casting his wary gaze over the wrecks.
She gathered her thoughts. “What are you looking for?”
“I do not know this area,” he said. “It is a large body of water. Do mer colonize it?”
“I have no idea.”
“What animals live here? Lotar is better at evaluation. He is in Atlantis.”
Cold seeped into her once more.
He felt it before she did and pulled up. “Bella?”
“Let’s go back to the car.”
He blinked in surprise and then collected her and flew across the lake to their exit point.
Just before he reached the rocky beach nearest her jump and clambered out, she stopped him. “When you said before that you’d never lost a patient…”
His expression turned taut.
She pushed through the fear. It was important to know him. He’d stripped her bare and yet he’d cloaked a shocking secret. “Did you mean you lost someone who wasn’t your patient, or you deliberately killed one of your patients?”
His dark gaze told her the answer before his chest vibrated the truth. Both. But his actual words skirted her question. “I am not a human saint, Bella.”
“You save lives every day. Every life, in fact.” Except one.
“By choice. The mer follow no code like your Hippocratic oath.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your doctors vow to heal. Always. The mer do not.”
“You always try.”
“I must atone.”
He had killed someone. And not saved someone. Both. “Is this why you don’t mind that I never go to Atlantis?”
“It is not surprising that your soul has sensed my darkness.”
“But I’m not rejecting you.”
He nodded as if she
twisted the knife, rejection dulling his gaze.
It made her heart hurt. “Not because of you as a person. Because of you as a mer. I can’t leave Jonah. So, it’s because of me.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” She grabbed his cheeks. “Why aren’t you disgusted with me? I’m trying to push you away, not hurt you. I’ve told you time and again I’m betraying you.”
“With the metal and the cameras.”
“Not—well, in a way, but not the one you think. Why don’t you give up on me?”
“My soul is blacker than yours.”
“I’m sure it was a mistake. An accident. Not in cold blood.”
“I planned his death for a long time.” He held her gaze so she could not dismiss his confession. “My blood and my mind were cool.”
“But you’re not speaking straight. You didn’t murder someone for no reason.”
“No.”
“My victim could not be injured by ordinary means. It took all my ingenuity to effect his death.”
She’d made it worse. Trying to dismiss Balim’s crime, which darkened his heart and still tore him up inside, had hurt him more than facing it headlong. Bella tried to fix it.
“What do you mean, your victim was untouchable? If he committed a crime—”
“He did.”
“See? So—”
“He committed a crime against me.” Fury snarled his face. He slammed a fist into his chest. “A crime against my city. A crime against the mer. But no one would make him pay that debt, so I assumed responsibility. And I had to be clever. No one must blame me. If they did, I would be exiled from Atlantis and hunted for the unforgivable crime.”
He’d murdered someone beyond the law. He sounded like he’d assassinated a president. But the mer didn’t have presidents. They had kings.
“Who did you try to kill?” she asked slowly.
“My king.” He confessed as if he no longer had any stakes, as if he were even freer than she was. As if he was trying to push her away.
That was it. He was trying to push her away.
“But nobody’s beyond the law, right? Not even a king.”
