I thought for a long moment, weighing the many things that could go wrong no matter what we decided to do.
“How will we sneak into the city once we get there?” I said.
“We don’t need to sneak. The city’s huge. No walls, no border.”
“That seems … unsecure.”
“Before Adaro, merpeople had a peaceful history. There are a small number of kingdoms, and the queens kept to their respective oceans. We never went to war, so there was no need to build walls.”
I slumped. “All right. But if I freeze to death …”
Lysi smiled, her eyes glinting in the rock’s shadow. “I’ll keep you warm.”
Galene was right, I thought, as a wave of heat rose in my cheeks. Lysi did have beautiful eyes.
CHAPTER TEN - Meela
Laws of Fae
We left for the Atlantic in the middle of the night. Nilus diverted anyone who happened to be awake so we could sneak away without having to explain where we were going, or why. He vowed not to tell Dione he knew anything about our disappearance.
We carried our new weapons: my crossbow and Lysi’s black longblade. She’d sharpened the edge so thoroughly that I wondered if she stripped it down to molecular levels.
“We might have a problem at the Bering Strait,” she said, once we’d travelled out of hearing distance. “It’s only about sixteen leagues across, and Adaro said he stations the army there to keep the Atlantic out. But he wants to keep all of us in just as much.”
She said ‘sixteen leagues’ as if referring to the length of a bathtub, but I supposed merpeople could sense up to a league away in the right conditions. It would be easy for an army to guard the entire Strait.
“We’re going underneath, then?” I said.
“Uh, it’s also less than thirty fathoms deep.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “Don’t tell me we’re trying to force our way through.”
“We’re going over top.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Part of the Strait should be covered by ice,” said Lysi.
I squeaked. “We’ll literally be fish out of water!”
“First of all, never call a mermaid a fish unless you’re trying to insult her. Second, we’ll be fine. Nothing will be able to get us. Well, unless we encounter a ship. Or whales breaching through the ice. Or a polar bear. Or—”
I groaned. “Why did I agree to this?”
She kissed my cheek and pulled me along.
We travelled in silence, keeping our feelers out for anything strange. The sun rose. Our path was crossed by squid, cod, and the occasional whale. Chunks of ice formed overhead, small and slushy, reminding me of the shaved ice Annith’s mother made.
It pressed on the back of my mind that we would need to discuss what, exactly, we were going to ask of Medusa. Lysi would probably feel differently about how much we should share with the Atlantic Queen. But I was too relieved that we’d stopped arguing to bring it up. Lysi must have felt the same, because the sun crossed the sky and touched the horizon, and still, neither of us had mentioned a plan. We might as well have been taking a holiday, for the lack of discussion about the business we’d have to attend to once we got to the Atlantic.
The temperature dropped significantly by the time we parked on a tiny island for a few hours’ sleep. I was uncertain about stopping. Though my new body handled the cold impressively, I worried a chill would set in if we stopped moving. Maybe I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t want to ask. I tried to gauge if Lysi was afraid or worried.
She caught me staring and smiled.
I frowned. “Why is your aura so hard to read?”
“What do you mean?”
