1
Iris
Iris broke the surface with a flick of her pearlescent green tail, sending droplets scattering like diamonds in the morning light. Humming softly, she pulled herself up onto her favorite sun-warmed rock, arching into a lazy stretch that set water rolling down her arms, the salt water glistening on her skin.
Was there anything better than a refreshing swim in the summer sea? Perfect temperature. Perfect lighting. Zero responsibilities.
She reached back to wring the water from her hair and felt something crinkly in the strands. Not seaweed—unless seaweed had started using packaging.
With a sigh, she pulled out a plastic wrapper, the logo faded to oblivion by sun and salt.
“Seriously?” she muttered, crumpling it up. She reached back into her hair, this time encountering a length of broken fishing line. Once again.
“Oh, come on.” She carefully untangled it from her pink waves with the patience of someone who had done sowaytoo many times, then folded it up with the wrapper like she was collecting ocean-trash trading cards.
For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why it was so hard for trash to make its way into a garbage can.
Humans.
Flopping back, Iris closed her eyes and tried to forget the trash as the sun dried the water on her skin.
There was a flutter above her, interrupting her perfect solitude. Sure, it could be a random gull. But nope. She didn’t even have to open her eyes to know who it was.
Montague Featherington.
Monty, for short. Drama, for long.
Iris had named him herself when she’d been eight and going through her ‘everyone deserves a ridiculously formal title’ phase. Right before she’d stolen an enchanted pearl—that she totally wasn’t supposed to take—that, when gifted to the pelican, granted him the ability to speak.
He had been loving the sound of his own voice ever since.
“Hey, Monty,” she said, shading her eyes with one hand. “How are you doing?”
“How am I doing?” he repeated, already winding up. “Emotionally adrift. Spiritually soggy. And some thieving seagull stole my favorite thinking rock. What does he have to contemplate? Which human he’s going to mug today? The gulls have no interiority. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.” He nodded his giant beak for emphasis. “But I am hanging on by a feather. And sheer spite. Allow me a melodramatic sigh.”
Iris smiled. “You can borrow this rock if you promise not to monologue at it.”
“Tempting, but I prefer the acoustics by the cliff. Better echo.” He ruffled his feathers. “Shouldn’t you be with Her Majesty?”
“My mother?” Iris blinked. “Why?”
“Because, dearest sea spawn, you mentioned asuper importantmeeting last week. With capital letters and everything.”
“That’s today?” Iris yelped, the edge of her tail slapping the water and sending droplets flying.
“According to my internal calendar and innate sense of dramatic timing—yes. And you’re thirty-two minutes late. Not that anyone’s counting. Except me. And your mother.”
“For Triton’s sake!” Iris yelped, vanishing beneath the waves like a startled fish and launching into a desperate, splashy sprint.
Her mother, Tatiana, was a lot of things: powerful, elegant, and entirely over Iris’s shenanigans. Being late to a meeting she’d had a week’s warning about was just another notch against her.
If she wasluckyshe would be sentenced to eel duty again. The royal singing eels were a barbershop trio who couldn’t harmonize to save their slimy lives and never, ever slept.
If she wasn’t lucky, she’d be forced to massage the crabs at the royal spa. And they were entitledandpinchy.
By the time Iris reached the seafloor, her stomach was in knots as she pictured her mother seated on her seashell throne, tapping her fingernails against her arm in irritation.
“Hey, Carl,” she called to the palace gate guard, who pulled open the massive whale-boned gates with the weary look of a merman who’d seen too many late princesses in his time. “Don’t say it,” she added.
