The Surface Breaks(18)
“Do you mind?” I asked her again when she didn’t answer me. I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation between her and Grandmother that I had stumbled upon; Nia’s despair, her pleas that our grandmother do something to help her. Both of us remained still then, listening to each other’s breathing. We were waiting for the other to be the first one to tell the truth. “Do you love Marlin?”
Nia was quiet for a long time. “Muirgen,” she said eventually, “you can’t always get what you want. We should know that better than anyone else.”
“Zale?” I ask now. “Do you…” I am unsure of how to phrase this. He moves through the water until he is floating in front of me, reaching out to caress my hair. Something heavy pulses in my throat.
“Delicious,” he murmurs, examining each bare inch of flesh and scale. Next he will ask me to show him my teeth so he can check for cavities. “What were you asking? Do I what?”
“Do you love me?” I need to ask him this. If Zale feels the same way about that me that I do about Oliver, if he dreams about me, if he can spend hours thinking about holding my hand, maybe it will all be okay. He will treat me with kindness when we are bonded. I could learn to be content if I was treated kindly.
“Love you?” he says. “What has ‘love’ got to do with anything? This isn’t one of those nymph-tales your grandmother has filled your head with, Muirgen.”
“I don’t think it’s the most absurd question in the kingdom,” I say, anger rising in me. “Considering we are to be bonded on my next birthday.”
“Don’t be such a child,” he says. “You are the Sea King’s favourite daughter. Your beauty is unrivalled and therefore you are the correct choice for a man like me. He has no sons, so once we are bonded, the Sea King will have to honour me as rightful heir to the throne. I shall make certain improvements that need to be enforced around here.”
He has never spoken so freely about his ambitions for the future before. There has always been a chaperone present, an elder there to safeguard my purity. But in a few short months, there will be no one there to protect me from this man. I will be alone with him, for ever.
“But I am the youngest,” I say, ignoring the pain in my chest, my lungs feeling as if they are too big for this body to contain. “If this is what you want, surely Talia would be a better match. She is the first-born. Or Cosima, the way it was supposed to be. Zale, she still adores you, she would—”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, his mouth tightening at the mention of Cosima’s name. “You are just girls. Your looks are the only thing that distinguishes you from one another, and I want the best.” He touches my face, as if testing my beauty to ensure it is worthy of acquisition. “You remind me of your mother,” he says. “I wanted Muireann myself, you know – every mer-man did at that time – but the Sea King had first priority.” He smiles at me. “But you’re the next best thing, little Muirgen. With you by my side and the Sea King’s trident in my hand,” he closes his eyes, as if imagining the power flooding through him, “the kingdom will be mine. All of it. I will make sure of that.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Yes, I do,” he says, opening his eyes again. “It is time to be rid of the Salkas for good. We were so close to victory the last time; if your father had remained resolute instead of allowing a mermaid to persuade him to concede. We had nearly destroyed them when he agreed to this joke of an armistice.”
The armistice that my mother was so anxious to achieve. A crown of white lilies in her hair, my father’s hand on hers. Peace, that was what Muireann of the Green Sea wanted, the stories go. She wanted peace so badly that she gave her body to a man old enough to be her father. I would not see that legacy so carelessly dismantled.
“That ‘joke of an armistice’, as you put it, has worked for so long,” I say. “No one wants a return to the times of war, Zale. The mer-folk nearly died of starvation before. Why would you want such a thing to happen again?”
“It won’t happen like that this time. This time, we shall be the victors.”
There are no victors in war. “But why would you want to take such a risk? When things are peaceful now…” We have heard the stories of the Sea Witch, and the atrocities that she is capable of. If provoked she will eat our young, she will send her Salkas to scalp our women, shave our hair and wear it as their own. And they will kill every last mer-man they find in the kingdom. There is no guarantee of our victory, no matter what Zale might think. He is so blinded by prejudice that he cannot see his own foolishness.
“It is not a risk,” he says. “The Salkas are an abomination and must be destroyed.”
“But—”
“Enough back talk, girl. I am a man, not a fish,” he says. “And men go to war.”
“Why do you hate them so much?” I ask him. “What did they ever do to you?”
“Muirgen. They came from the world above, from the human world.” I am silent; that is all he needs to hate, I think. A human touch is enough to make him venomous.
“Besides,” he says, and there is an amused smile on his face, “a war should make you happy. Are you not afraid that they will come for you? They must have been most displeased at your little … intervention.”