Chapter 1 Worlds Apart
It was wicked of her heart to ache for him so. Wicked because she could never hope to have him. His crown made him unattainable. It sat atop his golden hair like a warning sign, and the rippled sunbeams that penetrated the water from the surface world above glinted off it, making it almost wink at her, mocking. His friends, sons of royal guards and wealthy families, surrounded him like a barricade as they swam down from the second level of the palace to the large atrium where Serena scrubbed the polished stone floors with a rough sponge, scrapping free the algae, polyps, and coral trying to take root there.
Her scrubbing slowed as Prince Triton and his friends drew nearer. She snuck eager glances at him under the cover of her dark brown hair as it swirled around her head in the water. Each time she found herself in the same room with him, she felt as though she had a strong current at her back, pushing her toward him. Everything about him drew her in, and her heart thumped until she thought he must surely hear it calling for him. His tail and eyes were the same rich blue of the ocean—fitting, since he would one day rule it. His thick, golden hair brushed his shoulders, and she longed to touch it and find out if it was truly as soft as it looked. He had recently started to grow a short beard, and she thought it was a good choice. It hugged his jawline, accentuating the strong lines. He exuded power, from his thickly-muscled arms and chest and broad tail, to his high forehead and the intelligent light in his eyes. He held himself with dignity, raised from birth to be nobility. He was sure and determined in everything he did. From the day he was born he was told he was important, special, and it showed in the way he moved and talked.
Serena hoped he would look her way. She hoped he would notice that she'd rubbed down her royal blue tail with jellyfish extract to make the iridescent scales shine. She hoped he would notice that she'd swapped the light blue shell top she usually wore for a new coral-orange one. She hoped, but she knew she was kidding herself. Even if she wasn't a maid he wouldn't notice. She wasn't his type. She was too thick in the waist, too broad in the tail, too dark in the hair and eyes, and too full-bodied in the brain. Triton liked his trysts to have curves, but small curves. He preferred redheads above all others and, despite his considerable intelligence, seemed partial to girls with a head full of bubbles. He grew bored of them quickly, though, and Serena knew eventually he would quit playing around and settle down with someone who could match him wit for wit—something she would have no trouble with. Unfortunately, she didn't see him changing his taste in appearance any time soon, unless she could somehow convince him otherwise—a tough feat, since the only words she'd ever spoken to him were, "Yes, your Highness," "No, your Highness," "May I fetch you anything, your Highness?" and, "The Queen wishes to speak with you, your Highness." But she watched and listened. She was good at that, always had been, and it was easy to observe and go unobserved as a maid. And all the while her heart went on aching.
"I remember you being much better at Fifty Clams, Triton?" Ira, one of Triton's friends, said, a teasing half smile on his face as he jangled a bag of pearls in his hand—his winnings from the betting game.
The other young mermen laughed good naturedly, and Triton grinned.
"I'm still not convinced you didn't cheat," he said.
"Of course he cheated; his father's an urchin salesman," said another of his friends, whose name Serena didn't know, and that got them all laughing again, even Ira.
"How about we have another go at it again tomorrow?" said Ira. "If you catch me cheating, you can get back everything I took from you today."
"Funny, how he's not saying he doesn't cheat," said Kale, who had recently become one of the Royal Guard just like his father. "He's just saying we're not going to catch him."
Ira shrugged and smirked again, which set off another round of laughs.
"Get out of my house before I hook you like a trout, your dirty cheat" said Triton, a grin on his face.
They all exchanged a few more insults before saying their goodbyes, leaving Triton alone in the atrium with Serena. He spared her his first glance, and she snapped her eyes back to the floor and revitalized her scrubbing. His eyes only rested on her for a moment. He looked absently around the large atrium. The entire palace was carved out of a rock that was once a mountain before it was eroded and submerged by the sea. The water gave the grey stone a pleasant greenish hue. The atrium was the main entrance that the people of Adamar flocked through when the palace doors were opened for balls and coronations and audiences with the king and queen. The palace was very open with very few doors. Light poured in from oval windows not quit large enough for a merperson to swim through. The atrium had no ceiling and the very roof of the palace could be seen from the floor. Triton's eyes flitted up past the seven different stories of the palace, denoted by the carved banisters that ran in circles up and up to the base of the largest central spire of the palace. The balconies all led off to corridors and countless chambers, all with stone ceilings, but the atrium was wide and open like the ocean itself.
Triton seemed to be deciding what leisurely activity he would do next. Serena snuck another look. He caught her eye and gave the smallest of nods with his head. Her heart leapt to her throat and continued pounding there, making her short of breath. He began to swim off across the atrium to the corridor leading to the kitchen, and a crazy, desperate idea took hold of Serena. He had acknowledged her, but it would mean nothing if she let him swim away without some other form of contact. He was already forgetting her; she could feel it. She had often tried to get his attention in small ways: stopping her work to fuss with her long hair, swimming into his field of vision as often as she could, shiny her scales and making new tops. That wasn't enough. He'd never once even asked her name. When he needed something he addressed her as "maid," or "you there."
She swam as fast as she could without looking odd, shooting across the atrium with her stone scraper held in her right hand under the pretense of going to scrape a barnacle off the far wall. She watched Triton's powerful tail from the corner of her eye and made sure to swim too close to the two back fins on the end of it. As his tail swept upwards in an arch, preparing to thrust down again to propel him forward, his fins smacked into her arms and she dropped her scraper and her sponge. The scraper sank to the floor with a small clank, but the sponge hovered near her tail, it's descent to the floor much slower. Triton whirled around, confused and then surprised.
"I do apologize, miss," he said. "I didn't see you there."
"Oh no, Your Highness," she said, feeling the blush on her cheeks, brought on by the racing of her heart at the sound of his voice and being so close to him, "it's entirely my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going. I beg your forgiveness."
"It is you who must forgive me, miss. You aren't hurt, are you?"
"Not at all, Prince," she said, struggling to keep up the nerve to go on looking him in the eyes.
"I'm glad. I would never want such a pretty face to come to harm."
He gave her one of the flirtatious smiles he bestowed on all his lady admirers who flocked to the palace for balls and dinners. It was mischievous and playful. It was not even her favorite smile of his (her favorite was the beaming, caring one he gave to his subjects when they came up to him to shake a hand or wish him well), but just the fact that he was smiling at her threatened to make her faint, or perhaps vomit up the kelp she'd had for breakfast.
"Your Majesty is too kind," she said, her smile so full of joy it hurt her cheeks. She stifled a nervous giggle, refusing to be anything like the bubble-headed girls he usually surrounded himself with.
"Nonsense, just speaking the truth. Now please grant my wish and give me your forgiveness. I won't sleep well if you don't."
"Your Majesty had it before he even asked it."
Triton smiled her favorite smile and stooped to pick up her scraper and her sponge, which had finally completed its slow descent. He offered them to her, that same smile still on his face, and she took them with shaking hands.
"Thank you, Your Highness."
"You're most welcome…"
At first she didn't understand his pause. Mostly because she couldn't believe it was real, but it was. He was asking for her name. She forced herself to look at him confidently, rather than turning her face into her hair or shoulder in nervous delight.
"Serena, Your Majesty. My name is Serena."
"You're most welcome, Serena. Good day." He gave her an easy, friendly smile and headed off toward the kitchen.
By the time she managed to whisper, "Good day, Your Highness," he was already gone.
Serena had always loved living in the kelp forest. The green and brown stalks grew up to two-hundred-and-sixty feet tall, reaching for the sun from their roots in the sand. She loved to feel them brush against her, soft and ticklish. The shadows they cast as they waved back and forth, and the dark green tint they gave the surrounding water as the sun filtered through them was eerie to some, but she found it peaceful and beautiful. Fish of every color darted amongst the leaves, eating, laying their eggs in the shelter of the massive stalks, and talking with one another. All talk would cease and all the bright colors would vanish as the fish took shelter if a barracuda or a small leopard shark wandered through, but Serena was a regular and welcome sight. Many fish paused mid-conversation to greet her. She answered them all with an extra bright smile and cheery note to her voice.
She heard a merman's voice as she approached the mouth of the cave her family lived in. Most merpeople carved their homes from rock or constructed them from sediment and ocean plants. Others lived in reefs. If they decided to make a home out of a cave, they usually carved out windows and doorways to let in the light (or petitioned the royals to do so with the magic of the king's Trident to speed up the process considerably). Serena's mother, Moira, did nothing to change the integrity of the cave. The opening was a rounded, natural mouth. The four chambers and the corridors were eroded by time, not magic or tools. The lights in the cave were her mother's creations, extracted from the fluorescent skin of deep-sea creatures. They glowed blue, purple, green, and red from orbs that floated throughout the cave, suspended by her mother's magic. From out of the dancing, multicolored glow of the cave opening, a merman emerged, his eyes darting around nervously. He let out a small scream when he saw Serena.
"Oh, it's just you," he said.
Serena recognized him. He wasn't one of her mother's regular clients, but he'd come before. He held something wrapped in giant kelp leaves. She gave him a look of disgust and swam past him, not wanting to know what sort of potion or magical relic he had in the package, and absolutely refusing to think about what he'd had to give up to get it. Her mother's cruel games and hard bargains churned her stomach.
Moira was sitting on her favorite chair in the foyer when Serena entered. It was the preserved husk of an orange sunflower starfish she'd enlarged with magic before drying it out and killing it. Its sixteen limbs stood up on the ground, arching its large, round, velvety back for Moira to rest on. Serena had always thought it looked as though the starfish was arching its back in dreadful, writhing agony. Moira perched atop it, her pitch black tail flipped out in front of her, with all the air and dignity of the queen she so wanted to be. Her long hair, just as black as her tail, whipped around her violently no matter how small the current. It seemed to be alive, and it had always reminded Serena of a roiling hive of sea snakes. A three pronged crown of purple coral that she'd fashioned for herself (which looked suspiciously like the crown of Queen Amphitrite) sat perched atop her swirling mass of hair. She had the features of a barbaric queen, sharp and aquiline. Hers was a fierce beauty, almost too terrible to look at. She looked like a predator, her strange violet eyes (just a shade darker than her shell top) assessing everything and everyone with voracity. Strange symbols and patterns—Celtic knots, sea flowers, sea serpents, and ancient Atlantian runes— tattooed in squid ink wrapped themselves around her arms and torso, in stark contrast to her milky skin. Staring at them too long made Serena's eyes hurt. They seemed to move too, almost vibrating, if she concentrated on them too hard.
In front of Moira was the stone cauldron she'd shaped from a stalagmite with magic. It looked like the top of a jellyfish flipped upside down and rested atop a thin pedestal. Potion ingredients in bottles she'd salvaged from shipwrecks were scattered on the floor against the wall behind her. Only a few were still on the shelves or in the recessed holes in the walls where they were supposed to be. Whatever she'd cooked up for her client had been something big. Serena shuddered to think what he had paid for such a tall order. His darting eyes and nervous scream had told her enough. Perhaps he'd promised the scales his first born. They were a rare and powerful ingredient Moira was always trying to get her hands on. She had the most luck with foolish mermen who hadn't even thought about having their firstborn yet. Oh, how they would regret it later. Moira's contracts were eternally binding, and breaking them was close to impossible and required terrible suffering and usually bloodshed. Of course, she made far less serious deals on a regular basis, otherwise she would not stay in business. Many people flocked to her for simple concoctions like anti-aging potions, talent-granting spells, and healing balms, and chose to ignore the nervous whispers of dark tales about her harsher bargains.
"Where have you been?" said Moira. "I was expecting you an hour ago. I could have used your help with my last client. Surely you don't like scrubbing floors so much that you stick around after hours doing it for free."
"Perhaps if you like it that much you could scrub our floors, too," said Hazel, Serena's younger sister, appearing from the corridor leading to her bedchamber. Her laugh was shrill and had all the charm of a seagull's call. When she realized Moira was not laughing along with her, she pouted. "What did you need her help for anyway? I helped you like I always do."
"What you do can hardly be called helping," said Moira. "Your magical ability is so limited and so faulty you can hardly call yourself a witch."
The hurt on Hazel's face and the way she shrank back from their mother, slightly raising her arms as if to protect herself, made Serena both furious and disgusted. Furious at the pain her mother caused her sister; disgusted at the way Hazel went belly up and took it every time. Hazel looked about as frail as her mental state. She was stick thin. The only curve she had was the slight size discrepancy of the width of her tail meeting her waifish torso. Her hair was the same color as Serena's, but it looked a shade lighter because it was unhealthy and dull. Serena figured it was the stress of being under Moira's fins all the time. Her hazel eyes (for which she got her name) and dark green tail were the only colorful things about her. Even her shell top was a bleak black.
"I didn't work for free," said Serena, challenging her mother with her eyes, hoping to draw Moira's poisonous gaze away from Hazel. "It's called overtime. And yes, I do like scrubbing floors, at least more than I like being in this horrible place where people slink in and out in secret. This place wreaks of greed and vanity and people's deepest darkest fears, and I don't think I can stand it much longer."
"So you're going to live off a maid's salary?" said Hazel with another shrill, derisive laugh. Her eyes darted to Moira in excited anticipation of the explosion—directed at Serena—that was sure to come soon. But Moira's face was neutral and unreadable. "Honestly, Serena, you're twenty-years-old and you're still a maid."
"You have a gift, given to you from birth," said Moira. Her voice was level and seemingly calm, but Serena detected the cold edge underneath that boded ill for both sisters, despite what Hazel thought. "A gift of power, a gift that offers you a lucrative career, and you turn your back on it and on your own family for what? A job fit for filthy bottom feeders!" A violet flame was dancing in Moira's irises, a sign that her anger was making her magic build up inside her. "I will not have a daughter of mine scrubbing the dishes and licking the fins of those moronic, pompous, spineless shrimps who call themselves royalty! You have potential, Serena! You are strong-willed and intelligent, unlike your sniveling sister. You showed great power as a child. I know you'll make a talented witch, also unlike your worthless sister, who can't even skin an eel or mix together a simple sleeping potion. I've had enough of this maid nonsense! You're going to…"
Hazel had fled the room, her chest heaving with sobs, her tears invisible as they mixed with the salt water around her. Serena clenched her hands into fists, staring at the corridor after Hazel.
"You've had enough?" Serena said, her own anger matching that of her mother. She clenched her fists harder, feeling the power inside her threatening to burst free and refusing to let it. "No, Mother, I've had enough! I've had enough of you ripping Hazel to pieces. Maybe if you would actually teach her instead of yelling at her all the time, she'd get better at controlling her magic. Just because you can't bully me into doing what you want, doesn't mean you can just take it all out on her. She worships you! Don't you see that?" Serena rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Of course you do. You love it. You love to watch her grovel at your fins begging to be loved. Well I've had enough of it, and I won't allow it anymore."
"Allow it?" said Moira, her voice like a violently crashing wave. Her hair stood on end around her head in writhing snake-like tendrils. The tattoos covering her body started vibrating, making Serena avert her eyes. "You won't allow it? Ha! You think you can command me?"
Moira floated off her seat. Her eyes had dancing flames where the irises once were. She lashed a hand out at Serena in a diagonal motion, her index finger pointed out, her long nail like a little dagger. Moira's hand did not make contact, but Serena gasped in pain as a small gash appeared across her cheekbone. Her blood leaked out into the water and floated in front of her eyes.
"You know what I can do, girl!" said Moira. "You do not command me. I am power itself. As long as you refuse to use your own power, you will kneel at my tail like the helpless little maid you are. Get out of my face. I don't want to see you again until you decide to take up your birthright and be the sea witch I know you truly are."
Powerless against her mother's magical fury, realizing she was beaten, Serena retreated, but she kept her head high and her features hard. She swam down the corridor after Hazel, pumping her tail hard in her anger, hoping her furiously flicking fins would translate her feelings to her mother better than words.
The hallway glowed with strange green light from the little orbs floating on the cave ceiling. Hazel preferred the green lights over the other colors and thus lined the corridor to her bedchamber with them as a way of staking her claim. Her bedchamber glowed green as well, the light dancing off her tail, the color of seaweed, making her iridescent scales even more dazzling. In this light, here in her safe haven, she was beautiful.
She was sprawled out on her bed that was shaped like a giant jellyfish and woven out of hundreds of jellyfish whose stingers Moira had removed for potion ingredients. Even though jellyfish were brainless, and thus unable to communicate with mermaids, Serena still felt uneasy every time she sat on the bed. In bobbed underneath her weight and felt much too alive. Hazel had her back to Serena, her head buried in her arms as she sobbed.
"Don't let the old hag get to you that way, Hazel," said Serena.
Hazel inhaled in surprise, and her head shot up from the bed. She gulped down another sob and her face pulled down into an angry look of reproach.
"Go away," she said, "I don't want to…" Her eyes opened wide, and the angry set of her brow and jaw softened as her eyes rested on Serena's cut cheek. "Did she do that to you?"
"Yeah, she gave me the 'I am power itself' speech and threw a tantrum," said Serena, shrugging her shoulders and smiling easily at Hazel. "What's that? The third time this week?"
Hazel laughed weakly and said, "At least."
"You need to make her an 'I am serenity itself' potion. Maybe a little sea slug slime in her morning anti-aging potion; that'll slow her down, don't you think?"
Hazel's mouth turned down, and she looked as though she might start crying again.
"You know I'm no good at potions. Don't make fun of me."
"Who says you're no good? Mother? She just likes to beat you down so you don't stand up to her— so you think you have to depend on her so she can keep you around to do her errands."
"No, I'm really no good. Whenever I try to make a potion by myself it's a disaster. She's right; I can't even make a sleeping potion, and it only has two ingredients. It's just every time I try, the instructions get all jumbled up in my head and I forget things, or I don't prepare the ingredients properly. When I try to say incantations I get all tongue tied."
"Where's Mother when you're doing those things?"
"Watching me, so she can tell me what I did wrong afterwards so I can learn."
"She doesn't stick around to teach you, Hazel. She hangs around to intimidate you. You mess up your potions and your incantations because you're so afraid of displeasing her that you lose your nerve. You have to learn to ignore her."
"I try! I just…oh, what do you care anyways? You think magic is stupid and wrong," said Hazel, hanging her hand and fidgeting with her nails.
"No I don't. The king does good magic with the Trident. He helps people with his magic. I think the way Mother uses her magic is wrong. She only uses it for her own gain, and she loves to play games with people's minds and trick them into terrible deals. What did she make that last man give her? I saw him leaving, and he looked terrified. What did she give him?"
"She helped him," said Hazel, her voice defiant. "She gave him a potion to cure his dying brother."
"And what did he have to give her?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does, Hazel. I want you to say it. What did her give her in return?"
"The…the heart of a pirate." She averted her eyes from Serena's and said in a high, desperate voice, "Sinner's hearts are very special ingredients that can make lots of good potions to help people. Besides, pirates are thieves and murderers anyways."
"Hazel, do you hear yourself? You know it's wrong. You can't keep letting her shove that nonsense down your throat. She's influencing your mind without even needing to use her magic."
"Let me fix your cut," said Hazel, swimming over to the recessed holes that held her things on the far side of her room. "It looks like it hurts."
Serena sighed. Hazel had shut down. She wouldn't hear any ill words spoken against their mother. She so desperately wanted to control her magic like Moira, to be confident and powerful like her, and so desperately needed to be loved by her that she couldn't see Moira's considerable dark side.
Hazel pulled a small clam shell full of a clear balm from her wall and brought it to Serena. As she rubbed the balm into Serena's cut, sending a warm, pleasant feeling radiating across her cheek, Hazel said, "Our magic is much better than the Trident's magic, you know. It comes from within us, not from an object. If you think the Trident's magic helps people, I don't see why you won't learn to control your own magic and use it how you think it should be used." Pressing her finger onto Serena's cut hard enough to make her wince, she added bitterly, "Mother seems to think you could be a whole lot better at it than me."
Sea witches were born with the ability to work magic. Potions and incantations were useless to regular merpeople; they only worked for those who had magical power in their blood. From infancy, Serena had shown great magical ability. Before her fins developed enough to swim, things she wanted—toys, food, even her mother—would come zooming into her little hands as if she'd pulled them too her with an invisible rope. When she cried, the ground beneath her would shake, or objects around her would explode. As she grew, she learned to keep her magic bottled inside herself, but she refused to learn how to properly use it. Children often tease and bully those they don't understand, and being the daughter of a sea witch with a dark reputation was bad enough in school without adding her own magical ability to the mix. She didn't want her mother's reputation.
"Who cares what Mother says," said Serena. "How can I possibly be better than you when I don't even do magic? She just says things like that to hurt you and to try and convince me that I should get into the witch business."
According to Moira, Hazel hadn't shown as many signs of power as Serena. Objects she wanted would fall short of her crib. When she cried she just tipped things over. Serena wasn't sure she believed it—perhaps it was just another of Moira's manipulations to convince Hazel she was second rate—but Hazel took it to heart. Hazel just shook her head in rehearsed disbelief at Serena's words of encouragement.
"And I would like to use my magic to help people," said Serena, "but you know as well as I do that it will take a lot of training to learn how to properly use my power, and I refuse to be taught by Mother. I won't do magic until I have a teacher I trust."
Serena looked hard at Hazel, hinting with her eyes and a small smile. Hazel looked back with the same level of intensity, and for a fleeting moment, Serena thought Hazel would offer to be her teacher. Then Hazel's eyes narrowed in a bitter look that Serena was familiar with and that always made her sad. She knew how needlessly jealous Hazel was of her—how it drove them apart when they should be banded together.
"I guess you'll just have to go on being a maid then," said Hazel, a snarl in her voice.
Serena sighed, and Hazel turned away from her. That say that way, Serena studying Hazel's dull hair under the green glow of the orbs while Hazel studied her bedroom wall, for a long time. Serena longed to reach out and touch her sister, comfort her, but knew instinctively that she needed to wait and let Hazel come back to her.
"You know she's just in a bad mood because of Queen Amphitrite's ridiculous declaration," Hazel finally said. "She didn't mean any of those things she said about me." She turned back to Serena with a small smile, looked at the already fast healing cut on her cheek, pointed to it, and said, "She didn't mean that either."
Serena knew Moira had meant every word and had relished giving Serena the cut, but pressing the issue would only push Hazel away again. She said nothing.
Hazel was right about one thing, though. Moira was in a horrendous mood over the royal declaration given by Queen Amphitrite a fortnight before that said it was now illegal for merfolk to deal with sea witches, punishable by imprisonment. A lot of Moira's regular clients were not returning for their weekly anti-aging, anti-stress, and talent-granting potions or healing balms (like the one on Serena's face now). Some, those who were the most desperate for the perks Moira could give them, still showed. She would still make the same amount of dark, under the table deals, but losing a large chunk of her daily revenue made her absolutely furious.
What Serena, Moira, and Hazel knew, unlike the normal merfolk, was that Queen Amphitrite had suspected King Poseidon of cheating. When she discovered him sneaking off one day a fortnight ago, she followed him to Moira's cave and overheard him buying his usual anti-aging potion—yes, even the king used to come to Moira. At first she was relieved that he was not going to meet a lover, but then she deduced from Poseidon and Moira's conversation that he came there weekly for the potion. She realized he had never once shared the anti-aging potion with her, and this made her wonder if he was trying to look younger for another woman, that perhaps he was planning on replacing her with someone who didn't need to use an anti-aging potion. She even began to suspect that perhaps he made weekly visits because he had a thing for Moira herself, with her fierce beauty and mysterious lifestyle.
Amphitrite had caused quite a scene in the cave, slapping Poseidon with her hand and her tail and knocking over Moira's ingredients containers. Moira had gotten the gist of the situation during Amphitrite's tirade. Serena and Hazel had heard it all from their bedchambers. Moira had called the girls out after the king and queen had left, and they had watched the fight that had ensued at the palace as well, from the depths of Moira's cauldron. Moira said an enchantment and the water inside the cauldron became like a one-way window into the palace. They had learned the rest of the story through watching that fight. Serena felt terribly guilty about eavesdropping, especially alongside her mother, but her curiosity had gotten the best of her.
But talk of Amphitrite made Serena remember why she had been so happy on her way home.
"Oh, Hazel, you'll never guess what happened today," she said, ignoring Hazel's comment that Moira hadn't meant anything by her rage.
"What?"
"I spoke with Prince Triton; a face-to-face actual conversation…well sort of. He was mostly apologizing for bumping into me."
"He bumped into you?" said Hazel, a smile brought on by Serena's infectious excitement forming on her face, despite the familiar twisting feeling of jealousy rising in her gut.
"Well really, I bumped into him on purpose, but he doesn't know that," said Serena with a sly smile, wiggling her eyebrows playfully at her sister, who giggled. "Anyways, he was so kind and charming, and guess what, Hazel."
"What?" said Hazel when Serena paused, her lips pursed in an attempt to hold back a giant smile. "You're killing me here."
"When he was apologizing, he asked me if he hurt me," said Serena, speaking quickly and breathlessly now, "and I said no, and he said 'I would never want such a pretty face to come to harm.' And he smiled at me! Just like he smiles at all those wealthy, eligible girls. Can you believe it, Hazel? Prince Triton called me pretty and he smiled at me! And he asked me my name. He knows my name, Hazel!"
Hazel's smile had grown with Serena's, but when her sister finished her story, Hazel's neck and cheeks felt hot despite the cool water all around them, and she had to bite her lip to keep from saying, "Great, now he can address you directly when he needs you to fetch him something." The jealousy warred in her gut. Whenever Hazel looked at Serena, a battle between love and hatred clashed inside her. Between interactions with her mother and her sister, Hazel was always in the midst of inner turmoil. Jealousy usually won out, but Serena had been so kind to her, and she looked so very happy.
"That's amazing, Serena," said Hazel, forcing the smile back on her face. "I can't believe it. It must have been like a dream."
"Oh, it was," said Serena, tilting her head back and lifting her eyes to the green orbs above them. "Just like a dream, Hazel. And maybe that's the reason that I'm starting to believe it can actually happen."
"What can happen? You and Prince Triton?" Hazel wasn't able to hold in her derisive laugh. "Serena, you're a maid. It's never going to happen no matter how many pretty smiles he flashes you."
Hazel's words seemed to have no effect on Serena. She just looked over and gave Hazel a knowing smile that seemed to say, "Just you watch, Hazel. Just you wait and see," and then she swam to the doorway with that same dreamy look on her face. She turned around with one hand resting on the stone archway.
"Think about what I said, Hazel, please," she said. "Don't let Mother make you feel bad about yourself. You're better than her, Hazel—a better mermaid. Don't let her tell you otherwise."
As Serena swam into the hallway, Hazel thought, Being a better mermaid means nothing. I want to be the better witch.
Serena took the back corridors to her room, not wanting to cross the foyer and run into Moira again. Whereas Hazel had chosen green orbs to line her hallway and room, Serena had chosen blue to match her own tail. Serena's bed was a stone frame she'd packed with blue and purple sea flowers. An enchantment kept the flowers fresh even though they were plucked. Serena had asked Hazel to perform the enchantment, and she had done a perfect job. Serena often reminded her of this, but Hazel just said the spell was child's play and that if she couldn't do that then she shouldn't even call herself a witch. Serena wasn't sure Hazel was even aware of copying their mother's words when she said it.
But now, as she lay back on her bed, her arms splayed behind her, her tail flipping slowly up and down, she wasn't thinking of Hazel. Behind her closed eyelids, she saw herself at Triton's side in the throne room, sitting in the queen's throne, the one shaped like a dolphin holding itself up out of the water. She sat in the curve of the dolphin's tail, her back resting against its belly. Triton sat beside her in the king's throne, shaped like an octopus, with six legs attached to the ground serving as the chair and two held up as armrests. The Trident sat in the curl of the right side tentacle of the throne.
Subjects were lined up before them, Queen Serena and King Triton. They listened to the merpeople's needs. They cared for all merfolk, giving priority to those in the most need, caring for the little people, even the maids.
She would be a just queen. She knew she could be everything Triton needed in a bride. He had a noble sense of duty. She had seen it in him. When he was outside the palace, he always stopped to speak with those who called out to him. She had heard him make speeches about making Adamar a peaceful place to live where royalty did not hold themselves above all other merfolk, but instead took time to understand their needs and desires. She was sure he would deliver on his promises when he became king. The people who whispered that it was all just talk were wrong. He was a great and noble merman, and she ached for him so fiercely it was physically painful.
She thought of his smile, the flirtatious one and the caring one. Though she loved the caring one best, it was the flirtatious curing of his lip that she held onto. It made her heart flutter with hope. He could want her too. It was possible. Now she just had to make it happen.