Ursula stared at her niece, a slow smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “Look at you. You’ve grown teeth.”
Ariel’s chin lifted. She did not let go of Aurora's hand. In fact, she took a step in front of the girl, shielding the bloody princess from Ursula.
As if Ursula had a care about the bloody beauty. The two of them had just delivered the answer to her problems on a silver platter. Ursula reached for the necklace where it rested against her collarbone—the sea-glass and sapphire chain she’d stolen from Ariel’s own bedroom the night she’d taken her place. She held it up between two fingers. It shimmered in the dark, a siren’s ransom.
“This will buy you safe passage and ten years of soft pillows. But if you take it, you vanish. Forever. You andyour sleeping beauty both. You never write. Never sing. Never show your faces again. You are ghosts.”
Ariel snatched the necklace, her fingers squeezing it possessively as she stuffed it into a hidden fold of her cloak. Ursula watched the necklace disappear and felt relief. She gave her spoiled niece and her lover her back as she slipped from the closet and shut the door behind her.
She didn't worry about the two being discovered as they fled. Not when they prized their freedom and their love so much. Just a couple of days ago, Ursula would have scoffed at them. But that was before she'd pressed her lips to her own sleeping beauty.
Now she didn't have to tell Eric she'd lied to him. She could just go on being Ariel. She could send Sebastian away without receiving him and never speak to her brother.
She could say goodbye to the Sea Kingdom. She liked the Coastal castle better. It had her favorite treasure just upstairs.
Ursula still might take the Sea Kingdom one day. If she left Triton to his own inept devices, it would continue to decline. If she simply kept whispering in her husband's ear—no.
She didn't need to whisper to Eric. He would listen to her. He would ask her opinion. He would talk it out withher.
The sudden urge to see him, to hear his voice, to taste his lips, overwhelmed her. Ursula made her way up the stairs, up to his office. She didn't bother knocking. She was his queen. More importantly, she was his wife.
She pushed inside, breathless. Eric stood near his desk, speaking with a man. Her husband's face lit up the moment he saw her, as if nothing else mattered.
“Ariel,” he greeted warmly. “I’d like you to meet my friend?—”
A man dressed in steel and leather, a sword at his hip, turned with a friendly smile. The moment his gaze rested upon her, the man's expression turned lethal. Before Eric could finish his introduction, the man's hand went straight to the hilt of his sword. The tip of the blade pointed directly at Ursula's neck, where her necklace had rested just moments ago.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eric leaned forward, elbows braced against the heavy mahogany desk, fingers steepled as he regarded the man across from him. “I owe you for the work you've done along the borders. The trolls won’t be encroaching again anytime soon.”
Prince Phillip inclined his head. “And I owe you for the troops and supplies you sent. If not for your ships, we wouldn’t have lasted through the first siege.”
Phillip had always been Eric's closest equal—same age, same crown-shaped burden pressing against his spine. But where Eric had been forged in the fires of diplomacy and endless councils, Phillip had been honed by steel and bloodshed. There was a sharpness to him now—a lean, hardened edge beneath the noble polish.His broad shoulders bore the memory of armor, his hands the faint calluses of a blade too often drawn.
And yet, despite the scars of war—despite the faint tension that lived in his jaw and the dark bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes—there was a softness there too. Not weakness. No, it was something else.
Love.
Eric recognized it the way sailors recognized the tide: instinctively, without question. It was in the barely there smile that ghosted his lips when he spoke of his bride. A bride who was not the one chosen for him. That same smile lived in Eric’s own chest now, stubborn and undeniable. He'd only ever seen Phillip bloodied or brash. But now… now there was something gentler threading through the prince’s war-forged armor.
They had grown up side by side as future kings. Now they sat, both in love with women they weren't supposed to choose. Maybe that was what made rulers into men worth following—not just the battles they won, but the ones they chose to fight for love.
Phillip sighed, rolling his shoulders as if the weight of the past weeks still clung to them. “I only wish I were here under better circumstances.”
Eric leaned back in his chair, fingers tightening against the wood. He had a good idea of what Phillip had come for. The signs of battle still clung to him—hisclothes, though fine, were worn at the edges, his sword strapped to his side as if he hadn’t dared part with it for even a moment.
“You need more aid,” Eric surmised.
Phillip exhaled sharply, nodding. “We barely had time to regroup after the trolls before we were blindsided again. But this time, it wasn’t monsters in the woods. It was the sea.”
“What I don't understand is why would Ursula attack your people?”
Phillip frowned. “Ursula? The sea witch? It wasn't her.”
Eric felt something in his chest loosen slightly. He'd seen Ariel's expression when her aunt was accused. He would be happy to deliver this news of the sea witch's innocence to his wife.
The relief was short-lived. Eric opened his mouth to ask an explanation of his ally. But before he could speak, the door to his office swung open.
