Blondie and Fern appeared out of nowhere on either side of him.
“Want to stay for tea?” said Blondie.
“We have strawberries,” said Fern.
Ben glanced from one to the other. He ran a hand over his short hair. Then he smiled. “Why not?”
Fern looped an arm through his and dragged him away.
I shook my head, turning to Evagore.
“Your Majesty,” I said, “what about all of Adaro’s supporters? What about the anti-human beliefs? Will a treaty be enough?”
“I believe that once his supporters realise the atrocities Adaro committed—from the labour camp to the Nereid prison—they will start to understand how misled they were under their former king. It will take work, but I am confident we can rebuild the Pacific Kingdom.”
Dione placed a hand on the queen’s shoulder.
“If you’ll excuse us, Meela and Lysithea. We have to get the queen into proper care.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Your Majesty,” said Lysi.
She cast us a gracious smile, looking more queen-like than ever beneath her pale blue crown.
Medusa was nowhere to be seen. She had gone. I wondered if we would ever meet again—and whether Lysi or I would ever be welcome in the Atlantic.
My parents and Nilus were deep in conversation, sitting in the retreating tide. Everyone else waited on the beach, chatting excitedly about the dead leviathan. My friends were climbing the lava rock, poking at the molten streams. By the looks of it, Tanuu had melted a shoe. He caught my eye and we exchanged a grin.
Lysi and I drifted a little ways away from everyone else, our tails brushing under the water. I looked with relief into her sapphire eyes, having been terrified of never seeing them again, and she leaned in and kissed me.
I drew back a moment later, eyes burning with tears.
“What is it?” she said.
“It’s … a lot.”
She gave a sad smile. “Tell me. What happened?”
I hesitated. Everything Adaro had said to me before I pulled the trigger was prickling in the back of my mind.
“Adaro told me something before he died.”
Lysi raised an eyebrow. Without meeting her eye, I told her what he had said about setting us up. I told her how the fishing net she’d gotten stuck in as a kid had been part of his plan, and Panopea had been an innocent victim, and worst of all, how this meant every piece of both our lives had been determined by Adaro. When I finished, I felt sick and angry all over again.
“Mee,” said Lysi.
She didn’t continue until I raised my eyes to meet hers.
“Mee, I don’t care whether we met because of him, or a random pull in the tides, or because I was being a cod and got stuck in a net, or—”
“I don’t want him to have anything to do with us!”
“Who cares? It doesn’t matter how we met. The point is that we did.”
“But—”
She covered my mouth with a pearl-white hand. “Think about it.”
