To others, this lair was dark and ominous, but to me, it was warm and strange. As I swam in, I was greeted by cracked seashells, swirling sand pools, driftwood shelves full of jars, and bioluminescent jellyfish floating around.
“Aunty Lorelei?” I hadn’t reached her when the tears started pouring.
“Oh dear.” My aunt quickly pulled me into her arms. We weren’t actually related, but she felt like a dear aunt. Her skin was the color of ash, and her hair a dark brown with an emerald tint. Her scales were green and her tail was a dazzling iridescent display of green and gold. Since she had been under the sea for so long, her skin turned an unnatural gray color. To others, she was quite terrifying to look at. To me, she was safe. “What happened?” She stroked my hair and I cried. I sobbed as I shared what had just happened.
“You’re to be wed?” Aunty Lorelei sounded more shocked at that than my impending prison.
“I’m going to be caged in.” Fresh tears blended into the saltwater around us. “And I don’t want to marry King Malinoakea. He keeps his people and his wife trapped on the sea floor.” More tears.
“I just want to run away,” I admitted. “I’m so tired of this, and father lifted his triton.” It felt like my insides were being squeezed at the thought of being under father’s wrath. “I just want to see the human world,” I said. “I want to learn. I want to read. I want to explore the land. Climb their mountains. Feel their fresh water. I don’t want to be stuck here anymore.”
“You don’t have to run away to belong.” Aunty Loralei’s voice was calm and soothing as a sea harp singing the ocean to sleep. She stroked my hair. “You can stay, use your gifts, love bravely, and be exactly who Akua made you to be — both ocean and land, past and future.”
“I’ll be happier if I leave,” I said quietly. My aunt’s gaze softened, her green eyes shining like the sun on the lush mountains in the distance. I could feel the weight of her years in those eyes, the quiet sorrow of someone who had once wanted more but had been bound by magic.
“I wanted that too, when I was younger,” she said. This is why I loved her. She’d told me many stories, and the risks she took to evenwalkon land, to shed her tail and have legs even for one day. That very action had made her an outcast, but she seemed to have seeneverythingthere. And now she was trapped here, just like me.
When father found out she’d created a potion that allowed her to walk on land,andshe used magic to aid with that potion, he imprisoned her here… just as he was going to do to me if he ever found out I went to the surface again. My heart seized up at that thought. I loved my adopted aunt, but I didn’t want to be trapped here like her. And she understood that.
"Aulani," she said, her tone soft but knowing. "I see the fire in you, the same fire I once had. But that worldisdangerous. There are things humans do that you will never understand.” She smiled gently. “You should listen to your father’s counsel. It’s safer down here.”
I wiped my eyes and nodded, but I couldn’t help looking past my aunt to her driftwood shelves with jars of strange items and potions. An idea entered my mind, one so forbidden and dangerous, I did not have the courage to say it aloud to my aunt.
But she seemed to understand anyway. “No, Aulani. I willnotmake you a potion to walk on land.”
“But I don’t belong here,” I pleaded. At that, she gently pushed me away.
“Go home, sweet girl. I love you, but I will not entertain that.”
I grabbed my hair in frustration.
I loved my aunt. I loved my parents and my family… but…I have to leave.If I didn’t, I’d be imprisoned in the Brine, sweeping up the ocean floors, feeding on whale bones, and living in darkness for the rest of my days.
No… I could not fathom it. I had to get out.
CHAPTER THREE
EZRA
The royal garden was all order and symmetry: tiny hedges, prim fountains, and swan ponds lined with marble tiles. I always felt like a guest in it, not a gardener nor an owner. The roses here didn’t bloom wild. They obeyed. There weren’t even any native plants here–no plumerias, hibiscus, ti leaves, not even a gardenia. Tavo had put together this garden, because he wanted the foreigners to feel like home when they came to our palace.
I glanced behind me at the terrace garden behind the palace, waterfalls pouring out of crevices in the mountain, and the lush, chaotic forest that came from it. Just yesterday I was there, planting koa trees. And after that meeting with my father, the council had been intense. I somehow persuaded them to let the armies hunt the coqui frogs.
They’d gone out last night, and reported killinghundredsof frogs. We burned the frog remains that morning, and I grimaced at the thought. I hatedkillingthings, but this was a necessary step. If there was ever a bad time to be a frog in Kaiora Kingdom, it was now.
My attention turned to the clicking of my companion’s slippers on the stone ground. The princess of Windmere hadspent the night at the palace, but now we were officially meeting. Cressida held my arm, her parasol in her other gloved hand, her eyes focused on the path ahead. She was the picture of restraint: her pastel-blue gown cinched at the waist, its corseted bodice boned with pearl-studded seams. Pale blonde hair glinted like polished silver under the sun, and when she looked up at me with her icy blue eyes, they had a distant look to them.
We had strolled through the garden for a while, and neither of us could seem to find any words to speak. My meetings exhausted me that day, and her journey seemed to exhaust her. Yet here we were, fulfilling our political obligations.
We had just signed betrothal papers. But I didn’t even want to think aboutourmarriage. She probably didn’t want to think about it either. It was awkward, really.
She was the youngest princess in the Windmere family, a spare.
Just like me.That should’ve helped us find some solidarity, but I couldn’t help feeling her bitterness. She had visited twice and courted Tavo, not me. But with him gone, and her being the “spare” princess, her father quickly sent her here to sign new betrothal papers to marry me.
I thought about declining to sign the papers but my counselors advised me otherwise. “This is the role of a monarch,” said one of them. “Marriage alliances strengthen foreign ties, open doors to new allies, and improve our political and economic trade.”
So, with no thought of myself or my feelings, I signed the papers.
