How to be a Mermaid (The Cotton Candy Quintet #1)(38)

He gave me a sidelong glance and gave a short chuckle, which he covered behind his hand. “How do you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Make everything make sense and not make sense?”

I leaned into him, playfully looking up into his eyes. “I learned from you. Nothing has made sense since I met you.”

He pulled me into his embrace again and kissed me. And this time, he didn’t pull away.





CHAPTER 10


Not sure of what the etiquette was for entering rooms, I knocked on the door to Nereia’s chambers. She had told me that as the sister of King Oceanus, she had her own quarters in the lower levels of the palace, not too far from my prison. After the meeting with Levi and Nadia, she had holed herself up here to create the potion.

“Nereia?” I called.

“Come in! Come in, Tara,” came her voice from within.

I opened the clam shell door and with a quick flick with my tail, entered her chambers. Even though most of the palace was light and airy, Nereia’s rooms were dark and gloomy, much like my prison last night. Every nook and cranny in the cave was filled with shells, coral, sand dollars, and even human artifacts like empty plastic bottles and pieces of shipwrecks. More of those weird glowy plants lit the space, although I felt like my eyes could never fully adjust to the dim light.

Nereia was perched on the equivalent of a desk, mixing things into something that roughly resembled a cauldron. Beside her was a red, seven-petaled flower that glowed with red, orange, yellow, and blue colors. The fire flower.

“This dark place looks a lot like the place where you healed me,” I told her wryly, crossing my arms. “When I first woke up in this world.”

It seemed like such a long time ago.

“You don’t need much light when you’re working on instinct,” Nereia said without looking at me. She grabbed a pestle and ground the ingredients together into a paste. After a minute, satisfied with her work, she glanced at me. “You looked scared.”

“I am,” I admitted. “But I know I can do it.”

She smiled wistfully at me. “I have complete faith in you.”

I nodded with my head towards the flower on the table. “Is that the fire flower?” I asked.

Nereia picked it up and looked at it like she had never seen it before. “Yes,” she said reverently. “The rarest bloom in the world. Possibly even more rare than merwalkers like yourself.” She carefully placed it into the cauldron and began folding it into her potion, each movement measured and precise.

My fingers played with the mermaid pendant around my throat. Long ago, it had set me on this course to bring me here now. Perhaps it was always meant to be that I would end up here, that I was always meant to save Kai.

And meet Finn.

The thought comforted me. No matter what happened from here, I knew that Dad would be proud of me.

Nereia scooped up the concoction and gently wrapped it within a bed of kelp. She secured it with a knot and hefted the small package, no bigger than the palm of my hand. She gave it another once-over and nodded with pride.

“Finished,” she said.

“That will make Kai fly?” I asked incredulously. It didn’t look like much.

She grinned at me secretively. “All you need to do is feed him this like you would a fish, and he’ll surprise you. Like you’ve surprised yourself.”

She handed it to me, and I took it in both hands. I couldn’t tell if it weighed more than I expected or if I could feel how important it was, but it felt heavy.

“I can do it,” I told her.

Nereia wagged her finger. “One more thing, since you’re going to be back on human legs again.” She flitted away and swam up towards a shelf on the ceiling. She pulled out a shimmering cloth that rippled like a rainbow as she brought it down to me. The cloth was longer than her arm span and just as tall.

“That’s beautiful,” I murmured, entranced.

Nereia grinned at me. “This...” She threw it around me and secured it around my waist like a sarong one would wear to the beach. “This is for good luck. We can’t have you walking around naked and expect no one to notice you.”

I blushed as I felt the material between my fingers. I guess once I got my legs back, I would have been naked from the waist down. I didn’t have the heart to tell Nereia that I would still draw attention like this, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that it wouldn’t matter. I was going to be at an aquarium close to the ocean; I’d even seen some people at the aquarium in swimsuits before.

I’d be fine.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Let’s get going,” Nereia said. “You don’t have much longer until Levi’s deadline is up, and we can’t have that.”

I nodded, dumbfounded.

***

The plan was to deposit me on a beach near the aquarium. I hated to admit it, but unlike Finn, I didn’t have the body strength to climb up the side of the cliff to Kai’s tank. I had to go in another way, and this was the easiest. Good thing I’d be human the entire time, and that I knew the aquarium. I had gone over everything with Nereia.

It all made sense, and everything had been worked through. I was confident that I would be able to get to Kai. The rest of it was iffy.

A small group of mermaids and sea creatures followed me towards the shore. Finn, of course, led the way as we raced to get to the shore. I clutched the package to my chest, fearing that I could accidentally drop it at any time. The potion was the most precious thing I’d ever held.