“Wow, this is terrible. Who painted it?”
There was a long pause before Alaric scowled. “My mother.”
Oh. Oops. Kill me now. Glynda stuffed her fist in her mouth and choked. She edged toward the door as if she wanted to leave. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. If I carried on opening my mouth and sticking my foot in it, Alaric might murder me.
“Well, um, I know nothing about art, so it’s probably amazing! Yeah…” My voice trailed off as I stared at the horse with five weird legs and crazy eyes.
He burst out laughing. “No, it’s fucking awful. My aunt painted it, and Dad made me bring it to keep her happy. I hate the stupid thing, but Arron thinks it’s amusing, so we’ve kept it on the wall.”
I exhaled in relief. At least the drama had successfully distracted him from my embarrassing improv. Dragging my eyes away from the painting, I focused on the stupidly handsome mage and contemplated my life choices.
All of them had been questionable up to this point.
Aside from meeting my bear.
“Have you collected all the ingredients?” Alaric asked with a frown when he saw my attention had drifted away into a sexy and very sordid fantasy involving my bear and… the mage.Bad witch!
I smiled brightly. “We have all the herbs, but we’re stuck on the pegasus feather and mermaid scale.”
Alaric handed the list back to me. His fingers brushed mine and sparks flew into the air, but we both pretended it hadn’t happened. Glynda fixed me with a look that promised I was in for an interrogation later, but I ignored it.
“My father has a few pegasus feathers. I can steal one this weekend. I don’t think he has any mermaid scales, however. You could try asking Kai Seathorne. He’s the male version, but one of his scales should be enough.”
“Will it hurt to take a scale?” I gulped. Honestly, hurting people was more Alaric’s specialty, not mine.
“Yeah.” Alaric smirked.
Goddess, save me. The last thing I wanted to do was cause the gentle merman any pain.
52
Kai
Hulder sat hunched over on the floor while mashing the buttons on his Xbox controller.
“You’re not concentrating,” he grunted after a moment.
My on-screen character died in a hail of virtual gunfire, but I didn’t care. About anything.
“No,” I agreed.
He threw his controller down and headed toward the small refrigerator we kept in our room.
“Rumelk?” I nodded. He threw me a cold bottle before grabbing one for himself. Then my friend drifted off into his room, happy to give me some space.
I turned the TV off and lay back on the sofa thinking about home. I missed my family, but most of all, I missed the ocean.
The saltwater pool here was better than nothing, and some of my classes were interesting, but spending so much time out of the water had been a lot harder than I’d expected.
Merpeople had adapted to living on land. Some merpeople spent more time on land than in the water these days, trading with the wider community on the islands and working in the tourism industry.
But to protect me, my mother, the queen, had locked me in the Emerald City until I came of age and manifested my powers. She’d warned me it wasn’t safe to venture to the surface while I was still defenseless. And even after my powers manifested, she didn’t let me leave the city without a Royal Guard.
I no longer needed a guard following me these days. My powers had grown exponentially since coming here, and I was now more powerful than my mother.
Attending Starfall had given me a chance to hone my power. It was the only reason she’d let me come here. As islanders, we were exempt from mandatory attendance at one of the magical schools. The ruling elite didn’t like us mixing with the higher-tier magicals, as they liked to call themselves.
It was bullshit, but none of us islanders really cared. We had our own communities and rarely paid much attention to what the Supernatural Council said and did.
