He wasn’t sure why, but Finn felt like he’d somehow just stepped into some sort of trap.
Though he was relatively sure that he wouldn’t mind being trapped with someone like Iris.
Or so he thought at the moment.
3
Iris
“You are so lucky.” Shelly punctuated the statement with a disarmingly effective pout. Iris had stopped falling for the look ever since the whole octopus incident that had left her punished for a month and Shelly walking free, despite being just as guilty as her big sister.
“Yes. So lucky. Who wouldn’t want to be bartered off to a stranger? A human, nonetheless.”
“You can’t say things like that,” Juna, Iris and Shelly’s older sister—the heir to the throne—scolded. “Not on land, anyway. It sounds speciesist.”
Juna held out Iris’s bag.
“If Iris screws this up, can I marry the human?” Shelly asked.
“She’s not going to screw anything up. And that is not appropriate language for a princess. You know you are too young to marry.”
“Can I at least go with Iris? She knows nothing about the land or people.”
“And you do?”
“I’ve been studying them my whole life.”
Shelly might have been one for dramatics, but on this, at least, she was telling the truth. Shelly was constantly missing dinners, parties, and important council meetings because she got so engrossed with watching the humans at the beach.
Iris suspected that Shelly might have even done more than merely watching from the water. Sisterly affection kept her from tattling to their mother. Even if she did worry that Shelly idolized people that she couldn’t possibly relate to, the way she did to the other merfolk.
“Mother wants you nowhere near the land,” Juna said. Her chin lifted in that regal way that reminded Iris so much of their mother.
“It’s like she wants us to suffer,” Shelly grumbled. She threw herself backward, arms folded over her chest.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Juna said.
“She does! All I have ever wanted is to go on land, but she’s keeping me here. All Iris wants is to be in the sea, and she’s forcing her to go on land. It makes no sense, unless she just wants to hurt us.”
“Or,” Juna said, her tone taking on a frustrated edge, “she is an incredible ruler who knows what is best for her people. And sometimes what is best requires a sacrifice.”
Iris was starting to feel just like that: a sacrifice. Someone handed over to a man she’d never met, knew nothing about, on a silver platter.
Here. Isn’t she pretty? She’d look lovely standing silently at your side.
Iris shook off those thoughts, knowing she wouldn’t be able to play her part even halfway convincingly if she let herself get too bitter about the whole situation.
“Anyway,” Juna said, looking at Iris. “You remember where you are going?”
“You’ve told me four times already.”
“Mother has it all arranged. There will be a change of clothes for you. And you will need tobathe.”
Juna tripped on the word. It wasn’t one most merfolk were familiar with. They didn’t, after all, need to bathe.
“Which, again, is a process—” Juna started.
“Where one submerges in water then rubs a slippery substance known as ‘soap’ all over their bodies.” Then, as she understood it, the water went down the drain. It sounded like a monumental waste of water to her.
