Once the queen passed the threshold, the doorman waited irritably for Yemi to do the same. She took a deep breath and reminded herself why she was here before going inside and letting the doorman shut the door behind her.
“You’re a rude creature, aren’t you?” Helene said in her hollow, booming voice. The saintly facade was shed quickly, but that voice remained. She took a position on the far end of the high-ceilinged, blue-walled room between ornate stone stacks that acted as the arms of a chair. Her posture seemed to bow under the weight of her crown, her head dipped forward so far it seemed she was only being held upright by the will of her shoulders.
“My apologies. I meant no disrespect,” Yemi assured her.
“And yet.”
Yemi waited in tense silence for her to continue, but Helene stared flatly from hooded black eyes, either insisting or daring her to get on with it.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “My mother, the Bear Queen Circe, is dead.”
“My sister’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
Helene’s spindly fingers thrummed thoughtfully against the stone. “We have not received her, the sea.”
Yemi frowned, confused for a moment. She’d always dismissed the Kept’s rituals as the busywork of idle elders. Apparently, the seaexpectedto collect its dead. She wondered now what it did with them.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” she explained. “She was poisoned. Turned to stone. Her body is still on the grounds at the palace.”
Helene stared, unblinking. “Then why are you here?”
Yemi wasn’t sure what she’d expected by way of a reaction, but it wasn’t a complete absence of one. “I—we… She wanted me to reconnect with the Mer side of our family.”
“?‘Family,’?” Helene repeated, as if that word, too, was foreign.
“Yes.”
“But why areyouhere?”
“I don’t understa—”
“If she wanted connection, she had her entire life to do it. You are here instead, after her death, trading your life to parade around in that costume the Mother Witch put you in, for what? To relay apologies for her failure? Tuh!” the queen scoffed, the corners of her mouth dropping suddenly as if she hadn’t meant to smile. “Why. Are. You. Here?”
Very well.Yemi sighed and set her jaw. She could be hard, too.
“My throne was usurped by a very anti-Mer contingent of our population, and I need your help to get it back.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry?” Yemi blinked.
“No.”
Yemi’s mouth fell open and she found herself having to close it repeatedly when words wouldn’t surface. All of this effort, the pain of her transformation, half a world’s journey for ano? She almost laughed as delirium set in. This would be the end of all things: her aspirations, her life ruling with Nova, what remained of her identity. She would leave this chamber no more significant than the flecks of beingsthat gave the room light. How easy it was to crush her entire existence, all on the wings of ano.
“?‘Anti-Mer contingent,’?” the queen said suddenly, biting thet’s in the words as if there was something delicious about them. A smile twitched on her lips. “What is that? You mean my beloved sister, the Jewel of the Sea, the very heart of whimsy, failed so extravagantly to charm her way into the hearts of Men that even her granddaughter is shunned as an abomination?”
“Men are fickle in their allegiances,” Yemi replied, relieved at least that the conversation was still going. All she needed was a reason, something she could counter. Negotiate. “Arielle was a good queen. As was my mother. But you mean to tell me you’ve never heard of the Ixian wars? My grandmother never returned, never spoke to you again after she left? Did you know I even existed?”
“Yes, we knew you existed. No being on the planet can be completely ignorant of Men’s tantrums. And no, Arielle never returned here. She fled the responsibilities of her birthright. Imagine being the custodian of your family’s legacy and leaving them and your people to suffer. What reason would she have had to come back? To flaunt her joy while we cleaned up her mess? And here you offer us another mess. If nothing else convinces me you are hers, that reckless selfishness is unmistakable.”
The familiar heat in Yemi’s chest began to grow the way it always did when the insults turned from her to her family. She tried not to glower. “Ixia’s new Harpy Queen is aligned with Ursla. She will become a problem for you, too, if we don’t unseat her.”
Helene drew herself up and breathed deeply, hands gripping tight the stacks of stone. Yemi thought the queen might strike her. “The sea will always remain!” she bellowed.
The swishing sound of someone entering behind Yemi startled her, and she turned to see Minevra with her permanent, polite smile nod her bow at the queen.
