How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(26)

Finn shot me a look, his expression telling me to take it down a notch.

Oceanus pushed himself off his throne and floated down to me, his hair swirling in the water like some sort of watery ghost. To my credit, I held my ground as he came towards me. In fact, he came right up to me and grasped my chin. I fought him at the gesture, taken aback by his hands on me. He held on, ignoring my struggle, and lifted my chin up to see my gills.

“A merwalker,” he said slowly, “is a creature that can live in the sea with fins as a mermaid and on land with legs as a human. Merwalkers are dangerous. They aren’t to be trusted. You’re the first one in my kingdom in a long time. If my people knew that you were in their midst, there would be a panic.”

He released my chin and I swam back a few feet, shaking my head while I rubbed where he gripped me. It hurt.

“I don’t recall ever having fins,” I said defensively.

“You were changed.”

I thought back to waking up underwater both times. Both times I’d been breathing underwater. So it had to have happened while I was unconscious. Nereia did say that she had to do a few things to put me back together. Was turning me into a merwalker one of them?

“I’m sure my sister did that,” Oceanus continued tiredly. “Although how you ended up in her care...?”

“That was my doing,” Finn said, inserting himself back into the conversation.

“Your doing?” Oceanus asked, looking at him curiously.

Finn held himself a bit straighter as he addressed his father. “Last night, I went to the human prison, the Aquarium, to release Prince Kai. Tara here was at the prince’s cell.”

“What were you doing at his majesty’s cell?” Oceanus demanded, whirling on me.

I was shocked, speechless that Finn had casually dropped the fact that Kai was a prince too. I’d had no idea until that moment that Kai was royalty.

Was everyone here some sort of prince? I gulped, realizing how bad it looked that I was by Kai’s pool when Finn found me. No wonder he thought I was a kidnapper. I would have thought I was a kidnapper too.

“She was trying to help him,” Finn interjected for me. “She was startled by my appearance and injured herself. I had to abandon the mission in order to save her.”

“Heh,” Oceanus sneered. “Save a human instead of a prince?”

I now knew where I stood in Oceanus’s eyes. Although I couldn’t blame him, knowing that Kai was a prince and important, I felt even worse that I had gotten in the way of his rescue.

“I wasn’t about to let her die,” Finn said evenly. “Kai agreed with me that it was the right thing to do. She was trying to help him, after all.”

“Then you are both fools,” King Oceanus sighed. “So that’s when you took her to Nereia. That was foolish on everyone’s part, I hope you see that, given the deadline.” The king stroked his beard in thought. “So why did you bring her here where other merfolk could see her?”

“She doesn’t want to be a merwalker,” Finn replied. “I thought you could help.”

Oceanus burst out laughing. “Son, the only mermaid who can help her is out in the trenches looking for a fire flower. It was a waste of time to bring her here. I have an impending war against the land dwellers, and the last thing I need is a panic over an intruder on my hands.”

“Impending war?” I squeaked. “What?”

Finn shot me another look. Before there could be any further discussion, however, a tiny seahorse, no bigger than the width of my finger swam the distance up to Oceanus’s ear, speaking to him in hushed tones so I couldn’t hear. The king paused, tilting his head to hear the little guy better. He reeled back in horror, thundering, “What? They’re here?”

I heard the seahorse eep something like an apology as the clamshell doors to the throne room were thrown open. I shrank back, conscious that I was a stranger in a strange land. If more merfolk were coming in here, they would notice that I was different, and there might be trouble. My only saving grace was that Prince Finn had, so far, granted me his protection.

Two dolphins came in, one of them the size of a killer whale, while the other one was more petite, yet still possessing an air of authority. An entourage of creatures came with them into the room, clownfish, snappers, crabs, eels, and more. By sheer luck, there were no merfolk in the group though. This was a decidedly different crowd than before.

Finn put a protective arm across me, which told me all I needed to know. We were not in friendly company. He was tense, ready to bolt or fight if it came to it. And I’d be caught in the middle because I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

“You!” the smaller dolphin shouted in my direction.

At first, I thought she was talking to me, that I’d been discovered. Yet as the smaller dolphin—a female—swam towards us, it dawned on me that she was addressing Finn.

“You said that you would bring him back!” the female dolphin cried shrilly, in hysterics. “You said that you would bring my son back!”

Finn’s cheeks colored, the only indication that he was flustered. “Queen Nadia, I am doing everything I can at the moment.”

“No!” she sobbed. “No you’re not. You wouldn’t be here otherwise! You would be trying to bring my Kai to me!”