“No,” Oliver said simply. “I just don’t think you love me either. Isn’t that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who’s your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night. Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning.”
Seraphima,Oliver thought.
“I’m not your destiny. I’m just someone who happened to fall into the ocean.”
Marina shrugged. “Grooms are few and far between,” she said. “We can’t afford to be picky.”
“What if I could promise you each a faithful groom? One so delighted to be in your presence that he’d never leave?”
Kyrie’s eyes flashed green with curiosity. “How would you find such men?”
“Well,” Oliver said. “I’d need my compass back, for starters.”
The mermaids circled, creating a small whirlpool as they whispered, heads bent together. “We need to be sure you’re telling the truth,” Marina said.
“You have my word,” Oliver vowed. He was starting to run out of oxygen. Whatever happened was going to have to happen soon.
“We need something a bit more concrete.” Kyrie’s hair swirledaround his chest, pulling him toward a giant pink clamshell that was filled with thousands of keys. Some were rusted, some were covered with seaweed. Some were still shiny, as if they’d just dropped into the ocean this morning.
“Honesty is as rare as a man who can breathe underwater,” Ondine said. “Pick a key.”
Oliver reached into the half shell and waited, letting the keys sift through his fingers, hoping one might burn its silhouette onto the palm of his hand.
He fought to stay conscious. “What happens if it’s the right key?” he gasped.
“Then you’re truthful. You get all the riches inside, and we give you back your compass so you can find us mates.”
“And if it’s the wrong key?”
Kyrie shrugged. “The oxygen spell wears off. And you drown.”
How on earth would he know which key to pick? One wrong choice here would be his last. Oliver blinked, struggling to swallow his panic.
“Come now,” Ondine snapped, leaning over the half shell. “We don’t have all day.” Annoyed, she overturned the bowl of keys, scattering them into the sand at Oliver’s feet.
There was the tiniest flicker in his fading vision—perhaps a ray of sun slanting through the sea, maybe the reflection of a fish’s silver scale. At any rate, it drew Oliver’s attention to his father’s compass hanging around Ondine’s neck.
Very slowly, as he watched, the needle began to jump, quiveringto the right until it seemed to be an arrow directly indicating one key that had drifted and fallen a distance away from the others.
It points you home,his mother had said.
Oliver leaned down and grabbed that key. He felt his vision fading as he slid the key into the padlock. It slipped easily, effortlessly, and the hinge fell open. A black cloud of squid ink billowed from inside.
The contents were not gold, or jewels, or anything that would be considered treasure by any stretch of the imagination. The mermaids brought him, one by one, each item from inside the chest.
A fire extinguisher.
A megaphone.
A shark’s tooth.
Oliver blinked, his vision blurred. “But these aren’t riches,” he forced out.
“What makes a treasure a treasure,” Marina replied, “is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most.” She reached toward Ondine and ripped the compass from her sister’s neck, pressing it into Oliver’s palm.
Oliver considered her words. And as he passed out, he thought that maybe this was the best advice one could ever be given about love.
