Chapter 25 Ariel
"Prince Ellian!"
Ariel recognized the guard's voice now. It was no wonder Joe had managed to fool those two. Earl and Brawn hardly knew a flipper from a foremast.
"Didn't you just come out of there?" came Brawn's unmistakeable grunt.
"Hoy, you're not going to start up this again, are you? You wanna argue, convince this barnacle to get off my hilt, it's making my blade look dull," said Earl.
"You don't need a barnacle to look dull!"
Joe said nothing to them, opting to swim right past, which she only knew because the arguing ceased at the sound of the far hallway door thumping shut.
Ariel lay awake in the hours between the eclipse and sunrise, and was almost relieved when the sound of her collection approached her door.
The heavy latch slid back, and Earl and Brawn were evidently making a show of undoing the lock because a loud scraping and two muttering voices preceded the heavy door creaking open once more.
"King Ezra," she said in surprise.
Ezra was wearing his finest ceremonial regalia, complete with the wrought-iron crown of eight tentacled points that he had so rarely sported in her father's presence.
"Come with me, Princess. Your wedding awaits. At long last, no?"
Ariel plastered that same delirious look on her face, remembering just in time that not only did Ezra know about her curse, he would surely know that by now, it would have to be permanent. A pang of disappointment that she'd been too distracted to entertain the night before slithered through her ribs as she allowed her so-called brother by marriage to help her upright and swim down the hallways toward the ceremonial ballroom. She had liked Ezra. Truly, and actually liked him, even if he'd always seemed to her a strange match for her sister. After all, Adriatta always seemed happy with him. They'd shared games and riddles, and a love for the sciences so often ignored by her own palace tutors. He'd been her friend, or so she'd thought. She'd allowed him to advise her.
And so did father, she realized, her sadness finding reason to deepen without her permission.
The sigh escaped her unbidden, turning Ezra's attention more fully on herself than she'd planned for. He leaned in to be heard over the banging of the opening doors, and the regal music filling the ballroom within.
"This is perhaps not how you imagined being united with your…beloved," said Ezra with a quiet distaste, bringing her to approach the ceremonial contingent ready to precede their entrance.
Ariel had to admit that Sebastian had done an excellent job for only having a day to plan the thing. The center of the ballroom featured a crystal-clear dance floor, framed by lush kelp and seaweed cascades. Overhead, the shimmering sea glass dome created a stunning visual display, refracting the ambient light of sunrise.
In the corners of the ballroom, hastily arranged floral arrangements showcased a brilliant assortment of underwater blooms—sea lilies, and anemones—all gathered to add a touch of natural elegance. The fragrance of the sea and the floral scents intermingled, filling the water with an aroma meant to be calming and sweet. In the corners of the ballroom, hastily arranged floral arrangements showcased a brilliant assortment of underwater blooms—sea lilies, coral flowers, and anemones—all gathered to add a touch of natural elegance to the venue.
Seating for the esteemed guests was arranged upon intricately carved clamshell thrones and coral benches, adorned with lavish cushions and drapery made from fine silks. The tables were adorned with glistening shells and mother-of-pearl accents, where an abundance of delicacies from the depths of the ocean were laid out for the royal feast.
Not only were at least half the nobles that had been at the royal engagement ball present, but most of her father's guards, and several unfamiliar faces—including many of Ezra's own citizens. Ariel found herself trying not to look too hard amongst the uncommon number of tentacles for Joe's tell-tale black ones, but found she couldn't place him in the brief glance she had before Ezra began his personal escort of bringing her up to the stone altar at the base of her father's empty throne.
"This wedding… it's all so sudden," she whispered, half sincerely.
"Still breathless, my dear? I admit, I was not pleased to hear how your prince….stored you."
She acted as though she hadn't heard him.
"Sudden…" she muttered. "And must it be?"
"What you cannot hear above this music, Princess, is our people's discontent just outside these walls. We need this wedding to stabilize the people. You are the people's princess, after all. I'm sorry it has to be this way, my dear. You always were my favorite."
There was a heavier lilt in his voice that she certainly wouldn't have caught had her head still been under the pull of that cursed potion, but as she was, Ariel could hear it. There was real regret. And rigidity.
But he was either too cowardly or too cruel to have acted on that regret, she reminded herself.
"I understand. We do what we must," she said evenly, looking at his face as he steered them forward with complete calm.
Ezra tipped her an odd glance, but said nothing more. They'd arrived at the altar, and with no hesitation, he placed her next to a smirking, leering Ellian. To her very hard-to-conceal disgust, Ellian wasted no time wrapping one hand about the place where her scales met skin, using far too much grip. He was going to expose her back to the full crowd of guests with narry a care, and she wished that it hadn't so clearly been three men who had planned this event. At least if someone had thought to put her in a dress in place of her plain white blouse, she would have been at far less risk.
Why was this marriage so rushed?
Fortunately, Ellian's woeful attempts at affection were interrupted by Sebastian clearing his throat. Ellian turned his attention from her to the dilapidated old sea-mage priest struggling his way to the other side of the altar, his anemone-encrusted head-gear threatening to flop off his very gray head.
"Ahem," the priest cleared his throat. At last, the guests stopped muttering, and though the music died down, a more somber tune took up the room, which Ariel found entirely appropriate. "Ah-hem hem-hem hem!"
It took the priest several more tries to get his throat clear enough for his shaky voice to ring out over the room.
"I suppose this old thing is the best your crab could do on short notice," Ellian muttered unforgivingly under the priest's nose.
For once, Ariel could agree with him, even though she still felt the heat of mortification that he would say such a thing right in front of the poor mer-man. His stuttering was nearly unintelligible, and though his struggles were doing an admirable job of drawing this thing out, she was quite ready for Joe and Adin to make their moves.
But they didn't come. The hall quieted enough to hear the priests's voice over the music, and the ceremony started.
"Mermaids and Mer-men, fins and flippers, carapaces and c-c-claws… we assemble to witness the miraculous, yes, truly miraculous binding of her royal highness, astronomer of the kingdom of Atlantis, favored of her people, the Crown Princess Ariel, to the Puh-puh-prince—erm…"
A cough sounded from the back of the ballroom, and the pause stretched into a silence so uncomfortable, Ariel caught a few kuo-toa knocking back a few glasses of brine snitched from the waiting refreshment tables. Not a few of the guests looked very uch as though they'd like to do the same.
"Ellian," Ariel muttered under her breath,
"EEL-LIAN," the priest stuttered back into motion. "Eel-lian of the erm…of some significant waters…yes."
Ellian glared, but at least had the sense not to make a scene in front of the ballroom—yet.
"Let us speak of love, my dear people! Love is stern stuff. Toughest in the seven seas sort of stuff. Indeed, love is like cement. It is the stuff that cobbles together all of the sandy what-not and detritus of useless drivel and turns it all into something strong and useful. That…that rather unappealing thing that bonds as a kingdom. As a family."
Ariel though the priest was almost romantic, until he said:
"And just like cement, love is blind, and in this case—" he glanced blearily between Ellian to Ariel, "maybe it's also partially deaf. And has a mild case of rheumatism?"
Ariel bit her lip to fight back a cough of her own, not daring to look over at Ellian, though she could practically feel the heat of the water radiating away from him.
"Love is like a clam, dearly gathered. Sometimes, it is hard to pry open for those looking for pearls, but the reward for that sort of effort doesn't amount to much. Any mer worth salt knows that pearls don't grow in clams, which is a valuable lesson for our youngsters present to take forward."
Ellian cleared his throat next to her, managing to make that tiny sound venomously annoyed.
"Ah, yes, yes," the priest stumbled behind the altar, bowing. "But we were talking about love. Love! It's like the tide, dearly gathered. It can be unpredictable, and might wash strange things ashore. Just so, today, it's brought these two together. Now, our princess is a beauty that would make Poseidon himself blush, and our prince is a bit like a starfish—you're not quite sure what it does, but it's there. He might not be the brightest mer in the sea, but at least he's got…well, a tail."
Ariel's jaw dropped. Sniggers were starting to echo about the undercurrent of the room behind them, and there was nothing Ariel could do to keep Ellian from hearing it.
"Indeed, love is like—" the priest warbled again.
"The vows," Ellian snarled, voice hardly contained. Angrily, and with more force than necessary, he snatched up Ariel's hand and yanked her painfully about to face him. Ellian's face was flushed with angry orange patches across his cheeks. His haughty composure replaced with the flustering beginnings of rage.
"Love," said the priest again, clearly trying to continue his disastrous speech.
"Vows!" Ellian snapped, a little too loud. "Just say the vows!"
Ariel was beginning to be truly nervous. Things weren't supposed to have gotten this far.
"Ah—vows," the priest stumbled. "Do you Prince Eel-lian swear to love and respect your wife? To proclaim complete fidelity to her and eschew all of your current inter-palace dalliances—yes, even the maids—and to uphold the Princess's original Atlanean rights, such as happiness, and freedom of thought throughout your marriage?"
"You bet Poseidon's scaly arse, I do," Ellian lied unattractively, to the mixed shock and amusement of the palace's current 'polite' society.
The priest nodded solemnly and turned to Ariel's open-mouthed position. Ariel's head was reeling. Joe had promised not to be late, and here she was about to sign her life away to Ellian of all eels.
Where are you, Joe?
"And do you, Ariel of Atlantis vow to accept this prince with perpetual laughter, patience, and….more patience. To support him in his dastardly schemes, even when they are too feeble to be successful on his own, and to tolerate seeing his unpalatable features day after day?"
"I—ah—"Ariel was distantly aware that the look on her face must be supremely unattractive, but her jaw didn't seem to remember how to pick itself up off the ground. "No. I don't."
"There, see now? We are married. Do feel free to have the festivities without us as we will be otherwise—wait. What did you say?" Ellian at last caught up with himself.
"Of course you don't," the priest said, in a voice devoid of stuttering, stammering, and in a much deeper tone, entirely unlike that of the rest of the ceremony. "Seeing as your precious prince has already broken his vows. And seconds into the marriage, too. Truly impressive, your highness."
The crowd gasped, perking up considerably. An appreciative "ooh!" echoed from somewhere in the mass. A quick sideways glance told Ariel that the onlookers relished this turn of events the way a seabed might dive on fresh chum. Trust a pack of socialites to value drama more than ceremony.
"You dare—" Ellian snarled, swimming high enough that the shriveled priest was a head or so below his sightline.
"Oh, I very much do," said the priest, letting go of the last of his facade.
The coloring, and even a large portion of the image of water behind the old mer-man shimmered away like a mirage. Looking wholly healed, Joe's impressively scarred torso emerged from the camouflage, exposing eight powerful black tentacles, broad shoulders, and finally, the sharp, almost otherworldly angles of his jaw, cheekbones, and arched silvery brows. To say Ariel was relieved to see him would have been an under-exaggeration the size of the great barrier reef. The tension palpably flowed from her scales at the sight of him, although that sight of him, lance and flowing, black tentacles included, angered more than just Ellian.
King Ezra shot from his luxuriant seat on the throne above them, tentacles flaring in a wide, looming threat gesture that threw the marriage altar in shadow.
"You have the Inkthral," Ezra said with a hiss so vicious, the whole front row of guests darted back, regarding the new high king with the sort of apprehension one might give a barracuda in season. "Give it to me!"
Joe hardly humored Ezra's demands with an ill-humored tsk as Ezra raised the trident toward his throat. The water around them grew palpably hotter, starting to fizzle threateningly around the corners of the throne.
"Planning on turning yourself to soup, my king?" Joe said with an answering calm that sounded…almost regal. Certainly moreso than King Ezra, whose anger was making his tentacles flush an ungainly shade of dark purple. The heat went down marginally in the water around Ariel's face, but rose in the color of Ezra's face.
Obvious that Joe had no intention of following orders, Ezra had no hesitation. He dove for Joe, teeth and trident bared.
Ezra's reaction, at least, was predictable. Ariel seized the hunting knife from Ellian's belt, and dove in front of Joe.
"Stop!" she ordered fiercely, shoving the knife against her own throat.
Mere feet before Ezra's tentacles could tangle around Joe, he stopped, glaring at her with a heat that actually rose the water temperature a few degrees again.
"I am the people's princess," she announced far more calmly than she felt. "This wedding has happen, King Ezra; no? My terms have changed."
Ezra's terse silence was confirmation enough.
"Well, I don't care what the terms are. Clearly I should have been more thorough about killing you the first time around!" Ellian snatched up his broken spear, and lunged at Joe.
Joe simply watched, a placid look smoothed over his features. Ellian hadn't so much as had time to take a threatening stance before a noble in an ostentatious hat from the side-lines lunged forward and had him around the middle.
Ellian's thrashing knocked off the paltry disguise, and Ariel almost didn't recognize Adin.
Adin shoved his spear into Ellian's ribs far enough to draw blood.
"Give me a reason," he said coldly, just loud enough that Ariel could hear. "Any excuse, you pathetic excuse for royalty."
There was no mistaking Adin's ruthless intent. Looking sour, Ellian gritted his teeth, not once removing his glare from Joe. Nevertheless, his orange spear clattered to the ground.
"You seem to have escaped your curse, Princess," Ezra said quietly, bringing her attention back to her father's trident, still aimed squarely at her tail. She knew the whole situation was probably making Joe itchy. "But you cannot stay there with a knife to your neck forever. You are outmanned, and outnumbered. What did you hope to gain from this charade of power?"
It was not Ezra, but the wedding guests, edging toward the back of the hall, that Ariel addressed with her answer.
"I am the last unclaimed princess of Atlantis. My sisters have precedence over their own kingdoms. I stand alone at the end of my father High King Triton's line to claim my kingdom by right of blood and championship."
Ezra actually laughed. "You want to fight me, little princess? You will lose. Convince your friend here to give up that weapon. It is not his. Do it and I will conveniently forget this display of insolence."
It was then that Sebastian decided to poke his head "The trident is hers by blood, King Ezra. You made a promise to give it to the heir when—"
"Should have thought of that before you gave it to me, crab. She must challenge me fully. Someone do cook this creature into something useful!" he barked.
Ariel could see the attention of the onlookers slipping, as well as caught a few of them trying to slip past Ezra's entry guards. She was losing her witnesses.
"I challenge you by right with the agreement of my selected champion." She pulled back, and presented Joe, who took the first opportunity to place himself between her and Ezra's dangerous magical weapon.
Ezra's eyes raked greedily over the lance in Joe's hand, looking as though he would rather roll over in a watery grave than put a dent on the beautiful crystal weapon.
"Afraid not," Ezra declined. "I do not accept your challenge.
"Oh, but you do."
Any 'witnesses' that had since tried to escape the wedding debacle flooded back into the room in the wake of Ursula and a small army of the ne'er-do-wells of the slums. Ariel nearly gasped with the crowd as it took in the infamous sea-witch's presence. She had never seen Ursula outside of her cavern, but something about the sizing of the room made her look larger and more threatening than Ariel's memory did justice. With a tentacle-span just short of Joe's, hers were thicker and more spindled on the ends, and unlike any other cecaelia she'd seen aside from Joe, were a leathery, inky black that seemed to suck the light out of whatever portion of the room she chose to occupy.
Any questions that Ariel had about how she possibly could have found her way in so quickly were answered when she saw Krill leading the whole entourage. She was so happy to see him healed and safe that she nearly lost her stern stance and fled to him. As it was, she couldn't resist meeting his proud look with a small smile of her own.
"You've come then, Ursula. At last," said Ezra, opening his arms to welcome the sea-witch. Ursula merely brushed away his gesture with a curdled sneer.
"Sea-witch! Your potion was a bottled lie! The whole of this situation is your fault."
Ellian wriggled out of Adin's grip, switching targets from Joe to Ursula, but not before Adin made good on his promise. With a ruthless efficiency that Ariel had ever seen from him, Adin slashed at Ellian, landing a deep cut in his spotted orange tail.
The ensuing happened so fast that Ariel made to protect Adin without thinking. It was only after it ended that she realized Joe had held her back.
Ellian stopped short of his attack on Ursula and instead lost focus once more, instead rounding angrily on Adin. Several palace guards lurched forward to stop Adin, but Ezra with his speed, beat them to him. He made a show of protecting Ursula, swatting Adin down into the ballroom floor, hard, and at the same time knocking Ellian back from the altar, and away from Ursula in his haste. It was all Ariel could do to keep from crying out, until she saw Adin prop himself up painfully. He was alive, and where she expected to see his usual boyish anger, there was only cold calculation.
"Foolish boy. This is a matter for your betters." Ezra didn't see Adin's recovery, or if he did, he gave no sign. He turned himself to Ursula as if expecting her support, only to be met with a horrible, unamused sneer.
Adin used the moment's inattention to make for Ellian again, only to be pinned down this time by one of Ursula's long-reaching arms.
"Ah-ah, boy. I do applaud your blood-thirstiness for this wretch, but today, he is mine." Then, with an efficiency that Ariel almost had to admire, Ursula had Ellian about the throat. "Break the rules of the challenge, Ezra, and I snap his neck."
"Ursula, stop!" Ezra wore the look of a king watching years of scheming unravel before his very eyes. "Killing him would start a war. Think about it. After all Triton's wretched promises, and this travesty of a week, this marriage has to happen! You won't survive an attack from the Aegeans any more than I will, and neither would your sons."
Ellian latched onto that particular fact with all of the hope of a prince whose fate depended on how hard an angry sea-witch felt like squeezing. "Y-yes, sea-witch. My people will rain blood on this kingdom like—"
His words were promptly strangled as Ursula tightened her hold about his vocal chords.
"Then you'd best not lose, Ezra…" Ursula purred. "If my boy is who that spear marks him as, then he certainly would survive. If not…well, why don't you find out? My boy has the support of the depths, the heart of the princess, and he will kill you like the coward you are."
Ariel dared a look at Joe, who seemed quite as surprised as Ezra had been for Ursula's sudden show of motherly support, or murderous restraint, or the miraculous combination of the two. Ursula had thrown her challenge. So had Ariel. In front of so many. It was Joe's turn.
"Ezra, High King of Atlantis, I challenge you," he said, true to Joe form, he didn't mince words. If the situation wasn't so dire, Ariel might have smiled. As it was, her heart leapt to her throat as the two cecaelia faced each other fully—Ezra, having realized the inevitability of the need to show strength in front of the bulk of high society in the kingdom, and Joe, looking more dangerous than she'd ever seen him, but still. He was about to face the trident armed with what amounted to a very pretty, brittle stick. "Krill, keep Ariel from interfering, would you?"
Krill, who had been hovering between Ursula and the angsty rioters she had brought with her, snapped to a hearty salute. Far more trusting in Ursula's capacity—or propensity—to keep them in line, he spiraled to Ariel's side, and had her snugly fastened to the spot with his tentacles. THough Krill wasn't as strong as Joe, he was more than enough to restrain one little princess.
"Hey," Ariel whispered, feeling the hit to her royal presence—or there would have been if anyone was still looking at her.
"Maybe not right there," Joe muttered, as he rose to meet the king. "Somewhere out of the line of possible debris."
Krill nodded happily, and yanked her, most unwillingly, behind Ursula to swim with the rioters, who looked as though they would love to tear all the guards and nobles in the room apart if the opportunity arose. The only thing keeping either group from attacking was probably how even they were in numbers.
"I accept your challenge!" Ezra roared, a wealth of anger in his yell as he leveled the trident directly at Joe's central heart.
The violent blast that boiled from the trident's tip could be felt halfway across the ballroom.
Joe slipped around the blast's core narrowly, using the current it stirred to propel himself toward Ezra. The king let out a feral hiss as the tip of Joe's lance nicked the side of his arm.
Ariel blinked hard. The blue lines of magic she had become accustomed to on her journey to the depths had faded somewhat since her curse had been broken, but they were still visible if she tried. Now, she didn't have to try. The lines were exploding from Ezra, sharp and blinding through his channeling through the trident, that was responding to his motions like an angry slave. Joe's were calmer, and better-aimed, but only just. He had never fought with this lance before, and she could tell that he was as surprised as the rest of the onlookers when it responded to him.
Ezra arced the trident over his head to send another blindingly magical jet at Joe. This time his dodge was more narrow. Joe's motions were less graceful than Ezra's. Less practiced. But they were far more efficient. Ezra's swooping, arcing lunges were obviously the result of years of training, but Joe wasted no time on graceful transition. Jab. Dart. Lunge. He inflicted scrape after scrape on the king, but landed no heavy wounds. Ezra was getting quicker.
The Inkthral did not have the shooting power of the trident, but when it made its first deep gash the king's tentacle, he let out a strangled scream. A dark energy, the thickness and texture of turpentine leaked from the wound in place of blood, and the scent of Joe's magic incensed through the water.
Temporarily stunned from the wretched wound, Ezra shoved his magic through his weapon again, much too forcefully and with no care for aim. A heated shockwave that knocked the closest guards back and shattered the glassware on the reception tables, spilling brine and splatting sushi hors-d'oeuvres over the floors, and against the back wall.
Crack!
Ariel, along with the rest of the ballroom, snapped her attention upwards.
A long, spindly line was snapping its way across the sea-glass bio-dome like some angry, crawling creature, turning deeper and more jagged until with a horrible crashing noise, the whole thing cracked, and the air was smashed forcibly out as sharp shards and icy water plunged into the room.
"Cover your eyes!"
"Swim!"
"My dress is ruined!" came the anguished cries of those unlucky or stupid enough to still be loitering in the middle of the room.
Krill threw himself over Ariel as the glass rained down, and Ursula covered him, making Ariel both very grateful and uncomfortable when Ursula used Ellian to bodily shield them from the bulk of raining shards. Several tiny cuts erupted from his scales, and he let out a mumble of something that sounded suspiciously like: "My favorite spot! You've scarred my favorite spot!"
The rioters took the crash as some sort of signal, descending on the palace guard wielding curious such as some of the silver wedding platters, what looked like illegally-procured table legs, and in the case of one, one very disgruntled-looking fish. The nobles responded in kind, and in an instant, the ballroom was
"I always thought a royal wedding would look something like this," Krill said in a low voice somewhere near Ariel's ear as he pulled her away from the worst of the fray.
"Funny, me too," Ariel said agreeably. Ezra was proving an easier fight than the colossal squid. "Except for the sushi."
"Hm?" Krill said confusedly.
She shrugged under his grip. Krill still hadn't let her go, and was definitely making sure he followed Joe's request to the letter. "I'd rather have served kelp-cakes."
"It's not over yet, young ones," Ursula scolded without looking at them, and suddenly, Ariel could see why.
Ellian wasn't the only one marked by the dome's crashing. Joe was now covered in lightly bleeding marks, which made his next move nearly ineffective.
It seemed Joe had used the distraction of the collapsing dome to camouflage himself. Impressively, he was doing it fast enough to swim with his usual speed circling Ezra, and still maintain most of his invisibility, but he was now sporting enough holes to successfully mark himself as a sieve, and the light trickles of liquid coming from his skin and tentacles were enough to give away his position with little trouble. It appeared that even the Lance of Prophecy couldn't camouflage his innards.
"Look at me, boy!" Ezra hissed, one hand on the trident, and the other on his chest as he traced Joe's path around him, allowing no room for an attack. "Look!"
To Ariel's horror Joe slowed down right in front of Ezra, not moving even when it was clear that Ezra had a clear shot at his chest. In fact, it seemed that the only reason Ezra wasn't scorching Joe on the spot was a fear of damaging that lance.
Joe came to a halt, gazing at Ezra as though faced with a particularly troublesome puzzle. Ariel watched as a darker line of magic connected from Ezra's chest to Joe's eyes, and frozen, he began to lower his weapon.
"What is he doing?" Ariel gasped.
"Getting cheated," Ursula growled, but didn't move to interfere.
"Aren't you going to make things even?" she said, as Ezra reached out for the lance's shaft. "Aren't you going to help?"
"No one else in this room can see the magic. If I interfere, his legitimacy will be questioned," Ursula said flatly, eying the dire situation with far more calm than Ariel could udnerstand. "Patience. It's not over yet."
But Ezra's hand closed over the lance, and he began to pull it from Joe's limp hand.
"Joe!" Ariel yelled, unable to stop herself. "Fight it!"
Joe twitched at the sound of her voice, but he didn't move away from Ezra. Fortunately, that tiny twitch was all he needed for his fingers to find proper purchase on the lance handle. In a shimmering, watery display, Joe's tentacles, form, and face disappeared once more, but instead of trying to make himself invisible in the room, he was replaced with red, shimmering scales, a matching crimson dress, and perfect blonde hair down to the waist of the mermaid he'd imitated.
It was Ezra's turn to freeze in place. The vision of his wife, Adriatta, swam before him, looking mournful, covered in the cuts and wounds he, himself had caused. Something in him wouldn't run his own wife through, and Ezra's momentary loss of focus was all Joe needed.
Hand now firmly gripping the lance, he plunged it through one of Ezra's lower hearts, sending him buckling over. The second the king's chest came within reach, Joe ripped off one of the dozen pendants adorning Ezra's chest.
Once the chain snapped, it dissolved into shadow and dissipated into the water.
"No!" Ezra gasped, his breath impossibly strained.
"Oooh!" The rioters, nobles, and guards alike noticed the moment the duel was decided.
"This is mercy, your majesty," Joe said, loud enough that the room could hear. "Princess Ariel does not deserve to witness death on your count. And death for you is too easy."
With that announcement, Sebastian peeked his ead out from where he'd been hiding behind the throne—the safest place now that Ariel thought about it, considering the king had promised to eat him.
"The king is—" Sebastian's announcing voice cried.
"Punctured," said the fish-wielding rioter, whose brawl-weapon of choice was now sporting doubtless many concussions.
"Definitely not throwing that dinner party he'd promised tomorrow," a noble woman who had taken to buffeting her attackers with a clamshell purse sighed over her dubious priorities.
"—defeated," Sebastian said firmly.
"So he is," Ursula purred as Joe firmly removed the lance from Ezra's lower torso.
With his other two hearts, Ezra would survive the encounter, but the blow was decisive. The king would be fighting no one anytime soon. Unable to keep himself up, and clutching at his side, he sank slowly to the floor.
"Ursula…" Ezra pleaded weakly in a final desperate attempt for her attention. "Think of the power I could offer you. The position! Tell me you are tired of living alone, stranded in that wretched cavern!"
Ursula only smiled, a pleased, devilish smile that wouldn't have been out of place in the expression of someone gifted a table-sized platter of succulent fish at the end of a day with no food. "Had you come to me years ago, Ezra. When I was young. When I still felt so keenly Triton's theft of my rightful place in Atlantis, perhaps… but haven't you heard? I've lost my taste for politics. And you led this imbecile to my doorstep and then had the gall to lie to me."
Ezra knew he was beaten. Ariel saw the moment the fight went out of his limbs, replaced by shaking when a horrible, cackling laughter that rattled the glass on the floor.
His eyes went wide, and, seeing where his pendant had fallen from it's disintegrated chain, he edged toward it looking truly and wholly panicked, before it dissolved into nothing as well.
A voice, belonging to no one rang throughout the room.
"YOU HAVE BROKEN YOUR END OF OUR DEAL, EZRA," the voice, a condescending, grating, female had the attention of everyone in the room. The remaining brawlers broke off, searching for the source, but, as Ariel realized with a shiver through her scales, it seemed to becoming from every shadow, every reflection, and every corner. Ursula alone seemed undisturbed by it. "LET YOUR PENANCE TAKE YOU! YOU WERE WARNED."
Then it faded away just like the shadow, with a terrible laugh.
From the place where the pendant dissolved, a murky substance slithered out, and parted into several portions. One slithery shadow darted out of the ballroom, down the hall and out of sight. The rest dove into the eyes of guards, upper-tier nobles, servants, and even Ariel herself, and when it did, hidden memories poured into the forefront of her mind.
Ezra ordering her to forget Adriatta's anger over his decision to leave his kingdom so long. A scene overheard outside her father's room as Ezra demanded an expansion of his kingdom's borders. Ezra mind-wiping her father into obeying his request to be put in the palace. Ezra putting something suspicious into her father's drink. Again and again and again, these memories played, and she could tell that a similar experience was happening to the others whose memories were returned.
"Arrest him!" Ariel ordered, before the scene could turn even more bloody.
Her order was taken up as an angry cry among the guards, but to her relief, they obeyed without deviation.
"Arrest the traitor!"
"The coward!"
"The fiend!"
"Murderer!"
So she wasn't the only one who knew now, then. His fate would be complicated, and not a decision for now, before two angry mobs.
"Take him to the dungeons, and fasten him to a cot…with some medical attention," she added ruefully. "Adriatta is going to want…words."
Ezra had the sense to blanche.
"This—this wedding still needs to happen!" he made one last feeble attempt at persuasion "For the good of the kingdoms! We need to do this officially. It's the only way to win this war before it starts—ah!" The 'tying up the guards had elected for—using the kitchen's formal tablecloths—pulled Ezra's hand away from his side, and fortunately one of his own guards saw fit to bind him up.
"Indeed, I might still be persuaded to marry…"
Ariel shouldn't have been surprised to hear Ellian's shaky tones, that still managed to be arrogant even considering his position in Ursula's clutches.
"You might have won. If you hadn't attacked my boy," Ursula said to Ezra, almost pityingly, "And you…" She dangled Ellian before her face to give him a full view of her poisonous grin. "You tried to kill my boy and now, nothing can save you."
Ellian never had a chance. His guards could never have saved him, and he never had a moment to escape Ursula's tentacles. In a whirl of long black tentacles, and unearthly speed, Ursula hurtled with the prince out of the palace, not leaving him so much as the breath to scream.
What was left of his contingent left quite soon after that, most certainly to bring news of what had happened to their king.
With the disappearance of their leader, the rioters and ne-er-do-wells of Atlantis realized their weakness as a collective, and sheepishly headed for the exits as well. Exhausted and confused, the palace guard let them.
"Sebastian, would you please go and get Adriatta and tell her what's happened? I can only imagine she'll be angry. And then confused. And then angry again…" Ariel shook her head, realizing that she could only predict a fraction of the headache that was about to descend upon her head. THere was so much to do, so much to fix, so much to—
"Begging your pardon Your Highness, but there be something you should address…with me here."
Ariel jumped as Joe cleared his throat next to her.
He was bleeding from random places in his silvery skin, and his hair was mussed as though he'd been dragged through a trench current. He also held the Trident of Seven Oceans, and the Inkthral lance of prophecy—for one choice moment, the most powerful cecaelia alive.
"For you, Princess," he said, a touch of his familiar amusement, and a deserved amount of relief in his simmering purple eyes. He presented the trident, holding it out before her, the most magical gift that could be given, and he had won it for her.
"Don't call me that," she all but whispered, and took it.
The trident flashed a brilliant blue, lines flaring out in all directions, and seething through her veins and scales as though in anticipation. It took the slightest of nudges for her to release it, and release it did.
A magical surge, just as powerful, though far more gentle than Ezra's surged through the room with a soft light, mending glasses, righting tables, and reattaching the legs to chairs. With a sound like a giant sucker popping, the glass reformed on the dome. The sushi stuck to the walls even managed to replate itself, although Ariel swore she still wouldn't touch the soggy stuff.
Sebastian addressed the people, rioters, slum-dwellers, nobles, merchants, tradesmen, and weaponized fish alike—all of them. Her people.
"All hail Her Majesty, Queen Ariel of Atlantis!"
A/N: Another chapter is coming. Too many loose ends are untied. Especially final…moments with the Princess and the Hero, of course. Last chance to let me know in the reviews if there is anything I've missed. It's been a pleasure adventuring with you. Cheers!
Also, a grand thing to announce! I've started to post this on Ao3 and the spicy ending will be posted there FIRST. So go take a look.
I have also at last written enough of the story to get complete copyright rights to an original version. YAY! Someday, I'd like to start actually publishing, and then I will let you all know.
Let me know what you thought about this last chapter!