Chapter Seven
Born To Say I Love You
Eliza Cullen
"Why do you think I should give you a chance to explain yourself? You have corrupted my son, made him believe he belongs on the land with you!" Poseidon yelled at me as if this was all my fault.
"I didn't corrupt your son. He was the one to come up to me first. I almost shit my pants when I first saw him!" I exclaimed at Poseidon, "If anything he corrupted me! But he didn't! We can't help been drawn to each other, Poseidon. I have no friends off the island and he ran had a controlling prick of a father who won't let him explore the world like he wants to! Of course we're drawn to each other because neither one of us is allowed what we want. All we want is freedom!" I growled at him, letting my anger radiate outwards so I appeared confident and powerful to the king rather than just a bumbling child as he viewed me.
"The Maris don't get freedom! Especially the royal family! We have duties, obligations! I've lived for over three thousand years as the Maris king! Kailani is my one chance to die with my beloved wife and I won't let some land creature take that away from me by taking my son!" Poseidon yelled. I felt my eyes narrow.
"So you'd sacrifice your son's happiness for your own." I spat at him, "That's despicable and disgusting!" I narrowed my eyes at him and then I felt his anger increase.
"How dare you speak to me like that you insolent child!" Poseidon yelled, and then he began to laugh, like really laugh, his face turning into a beautiful smile. "I get why my son is infatuated with you. You are strong and you definitely look like you have the profile to grow into a beautiful woman. I forgot how entertaining you land people can be." He smiled and then sighed. "Look, you can't carry on seeing my son. He has duties to uphold and we can't break tradition just because my son has decided to fall in love with a land person."
"He hasn't fallen in love with me. All we wish to do is keep seeing eachother as friends!" I yelled at him my temper boiling over the edges at how annoying this man was.
"How can you be so naive? He is risking everything to come and see you. Of course the boy is inlove with you. I know my son, and I know he doesn't make decisions likely." Poseidon said to me swimming over to his large throne which was carved out of milk coloured stone into the shape of a clam, it was encrusted with beautiful diamonds, rubies and gold.
He sat in the throne and looked down at me from it, looking truly like a king, "One day my son will rule over this very kingdom I rule over now. He will have a son that will rule and then that son will have a son and so on and so forth, because that is the way of our world."
"Your world sucks if those are the expectations! First of all we're not in love, and second of all, if we were as a father you should have accepted your son for what he was and you should respect his decisions!" I growled at him, he was such a prick! He seemed to consider what I had said and then he looked away from me.
"When I was younger I fell in love with a land person, a human to be exact. She was beautiful, I was young and foolish. She was killed for me falling in love with her by my father and his followers. I killed my father soon after, but I learned that day that I shouldn't have fallen for a human because it was wrong. We should only fall in love with those of our own species. Especially royalty who are first in line to the throne." He said to me, sadness filling his voice as he spoke and he reached up to take his crown off and put it at the side of his throne.
"So what you are saying is because your father was a dick to humans you have to be a dick to me and your son and make the law change just so we can't be friends?" I asked him sceptically, not hiding the loathing in my voice.
"No, what I am saying is that for the good of our kind and for your life you can't see my son any longer. Do you realise that if you see him again that you could cause an uprising of the Mer people? The Maris couldn't fight off all of the Mer any longer. Our numbers are dwindling beyond them and they wish to take over the oceans for themselves, and we can't have that happening. Once they see how insolent my son is and how he can get away with breaking the law, they would undoubtedly start and uprising. Please, understand." He sounded like he was trying to reason with me, which shocked me slightly.
"I can't stop seeing your son, Poseidon. He's my only friend, I don't think you get how lonely my life was without him." I whispered to him, lowering my voice due to the fact that he was sounding a little more understanding now.
"Eliza, I have lived for thousands of years. I have watched every loved one I have die, every true love I had been destroyed by disease or age. I have lived many more life times than I was supposed to. Believe me, I know what it feels like to be lonely. My wife died years ago, as soon as Kailani turns sixteen he will resume the throne and I will finally start aging again so I can die." Poseidon looked at me with eyes that were filled with loneliness. I actually felt sorry for him, knowing that he had lived thousands of years watching the people he loved die. That was the curse of been mortal. That is why I loved having an immortal family.
"But does that really give you the right to choose who your son is friends with? Why can't we just be friends? We don't have to be mates like you are presuming we are." I said in desperation trying to convince the king that we could still see each other without it been a problem.
"Friendship between a man and a woman is not conventional in the Maris world as it always leads to love. I can see the flame within you, Eliza. You're the kind of woman my son would want to fall in love with. You're crazy, head strong and independent. My son hates the females here because most of them abide by the rules and are submissive. One of the rare exceptions is my wife and her defiance is what got her killed. Of course I killed the people who killed her after her death. Nobody gets away with killing a queen. Especially my queen." Poseidon said with a growl as he talked about his wife. I saw the pain in his eyes as his eyes scanned the room and his guards seemed to wriggled under his gaze.
"I need time to think. Please just let me and Kailani talk one more time. I promise that if you let him take me home we'll never see each other again. I understand now. You just don't want your son getting hurt." I said as sincerely as I could, but what I was saying wasn't true. I was already formulating a plan in my mind to keep on seeing Kailani, and if that mean that I had to run awayd with him, I would because I couldn't live in a world without him.
"Fine, Kailani can take you home and then he will come back here and he will never come to see you again. Believe me it is for the best. I can't have Kailani living his life like I have mine, always wanting what he can't have. He is young now and he will eventually get over you." Poseidon said with an understanding look, "If it was different, I would have no problem with my son falling for a girl like you, but this isn't the way of our world, Eliza. You have three hours. I want my son back at the end of those three hours. That gives you enough time to get home and say your goodbyes."
Poseidon then got up out of his throne and then he swam out of the door. Kailani came swimming in at a very fast pace as the guards finally let him in.
"Kailani, we need to go now. Take me home and then leave." I told him, his face dropped and he looked upset but he nodded in agreement and then began swimming towards the door.
Kailani
We swam in an awkward silence until we were pretty close to Eliza's island. Then she suddenly stopped swimming. I stopped with her and looked at my best friend as she began to swim to the surface of the water.
She surfaced and so did I, there was a moment where we both just stared at each other and then she said, "Do you want to carry on seeing me?" She asked.
"Of course I do Eliza but you made it pretty clear to my father that we would have nothing to do with each other." I said a little too coldly to her.
"That was to get him off out backs, Kailani. I wanted to ask you something serious, now don't freak, but I want you to run away with me to the mainland." I saw how vulnerable Eliza looked in that moment as she floated atop the water. There was only one answer I could say.
"Yes." I swam to her and took her hand into my own, feeling a smile forming on my lips, "Yes." I said again, pulling her into a hug.
We began to swim towards shore together, I began to think of the future now that I had agreed to something so radicle. I knew that Poseidon wouldn't let this go likely. He would send search parties, he would have Eliza killed for this, but the prospect of living in a world without her over rode all of those other thoughts I kept thinking.
It wasn't long before we got to the shore of Rio, I had to be careful here, I would have to find a deserted piece of the beach to come up and change my form on so no humans saw me.
"Eliza, how do you expect me to change my form on that beach? Look at it! It's packed! And I have no clothes!" I exclaimed suddenly realising that I had no pants to put on here.
"I'll go onto the beach first and I'll steal you some pants and then we'll move up the beach near the cliffs into a cave or something and you can change there." Eliza said to me, it seemed like a good enough plan and a simple enough one to execute.
"Right, come back though. The sun is hot here so once we are out and I'm changed we should dry off pretty quickly even if we are wet through." I smiled at Eliza who now looked nervous.
"Kailani, I've never been around humans before and I can smell their blood. It's so nice… I can hear their hearts and see their veins... their hearts pulsing in their chests…." Eliza began to shiver a little.
"Eliza, I'm human when I come out of the water. You are fine around me." I reassured her simply and I saw her relax a little.
"Yeah, you're right. You're totally right. I can handle this. Experience for the future right?" She asked me with a hesitant smile.
"That's exactly right." I smiled at her and then leaned forward, kissing her forehead before she swam off into the unknown.
