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  I find him in the same interior courtyard where we sometimes play spillu. Fortunately, he’s alone, clipping leafy tendrils off a winding vine of fairy finger seaweed with large lobster-claw shears and placing them in a satchel strapped across his broad chest.

  “Is that for sore-gill serum?” I ask, nodding at the stock of fairy finger tendrils.

  “Melusine, hey!” His face splits into a smile. For me? As much as I want to think so, he’s probably just relieved to have a distraction from his chore. “I’m gathering some specimens for my grandmother. She’s replenishing some of the family healing potions this weekend while she’s got some time. How’d you guess?”

  “My … father was a medic. Before we moved Above. And afterwards, he—”

  “Right,” Caspian says, before I have to say that once we moved Above, my family’s udell reputation meant he was restricted to the lowly, dangerous profession of deep-sea ingredients collection. “I remember.” Caspian tucks his shears away. “You look like you want to ask me something.” He swims closer on his silver tail.

  For a moment, my mind is blank as windswept sand. “I … oh, um, do you have any red algae leaves I could use? And ink, and maybe wax? I asked the librarian, but … she doesn’t seem to think I deserve them.”

  “What do you need them for?” he asks, brushing a strand of this blond hair away from where it’s floated onto his forehead. His tone is casual, but suspicion slinks beneath its surface. He must wonder if I’m planning to sneak a message to my father or something. The question stings, but I can’t blame him for it. It means he’s smart. Careful. If our positions were reversed, I’d ask the same thing. Of course, my acting would be better.

  “It’s for an assignment,” I say. My voice dips lower. “From my human-sensitivity therapist. You can check with her if you want.” She told me to record the assignment in a seashell, but I don’t think she’d put up a fuss.

  “No.” He shakes his head, and disappointment flares in my chest. Can he really dislike me so much? I thought he wasn’t like everyone else. I thought … I set my jaw.

  “Fine.” I say. “I’ll make do without it.” I spin around quickly so he’s looking at my back instead of my face, because I can feel it twisting into an ugly mess. A strong hand grasps my upper arm, gentle pressure urging me to turn back around.

  “I meant … no, I don’t need to check with your therapist. If you tell me you need the leaves for an assignment, then … I trust you.”

  He trusts me? “You …” I search his face, his unburdened blue eyes and the determined set of his mouth. My own gaze lingers there.

  “I’ll go get you some right now. Wait here.”

  Then he’s gone, but the skin of my arm is warm from his touch.

  It stays that way until he returns with a slender, wireweed bag that he loops around my wrist. Waxed algae peeks out the side, beneath the ties.

  “I, uh, put some ink and a few other things in there, too.”

  “Thank you,” I say. The librarian’s sneer flashes into my mind again. “Thanks.” I press my hand to the back of his, my palm against his knuckles as the bag dangles from my wrist, filled with evidence that he does indeed trust me. Even if it’s just with writing supplies, Caspian trusts me.

  It isn’t until I sit at my desk and unpack the bag that I realize how generous Caspian has been.

  More algae leaves than I could fill if I wrote every day for months, along with two pots, one of squid ink and another of magically infused wax with a brush clipped to its lid. But it’s the item at the bottom of the bag that makes my mouth fall open. With careful fingers, I pull out a gluss. Since writing went out of style in our culture thousands of years ago, a gluss is hard to come by. It’s like a cross between a human pen and a quill; you dip it in ink like a pen, but it’s made of fish or seagull bone. This one is expertly crafted, light and with an intricate coral pattern that must have been hand carved. It looks like something Caspian would own, like something he would cherish.

  Carefully—very carefully—I dip the tip into the small, suctioned hole in the top of the ink pot, then bring it to the pristine leaf I’ve spread across the desk and weighted down at the corners with a set of heavy, blue larimar stones.

  I write the human date in the upper right-hand corner. Then, gluss poised, my hand freezes.

  I’m struck again by the seeming lunacy of trying to explain my actions, or even just my feelings, to the one person I’ve hurt more than anyone. Why would Clay possibly care what I have to say? MerMatron Estrella implied the whole point of this exercise was for me to voice my emotions freely, without restriction, but she didn’t know I’d be writing the exercise in an English letter that he could really read.

  Well, I tell myself, if it comes out sounding as stupid and sentimental as I think it will, I never have to give it to him. I can rip it up afterwards if I want to. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly before touching the tip of the gluss to the leaf again. I can rip it up afterwards.

  The deep green ink soaks into the crisp algae.

  “Dear Clay,”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lia

  I’ve put off this conversation as long as I can. But if I’m really going to do this, waiting will only make it worse.

  “What are we doing here?” Lazuli asks, futzing with the knot of her pink sarong.

  “I told you. I need to talk to you about something.”

  “But what are we doing here?” She gestures around the lab I’ve brought them to. It’s one of the palace’s new dry rooms, and it’s not hard to see why the dehydration spells were necessary. Electronic human artifacts litter every surface, from an old submarine radio to a battered 80s-looking TV set with a cracked screen that must have been tossed as garbage and settled on the ocean floor. On one long, metal table rests a newish laptop. Does it still work down here? The palace scientists use this space to study human electricity, which they’re working to replicate with eels and sponges. Mega cool. But I haven’t brought my sisters here after the lab closed for the day to marvel at the coolness of the research.

  “I needed to bring you somewhere private,” I say. The dry rooms still wig out most of the palace staff, so they stay far away when they can help it, plus the magical barrier blocks sound really well.

  “Anywhere is preferable to the upper conference rooms,” Em says, sitting primly on a stool, her legs crossed at the ankles. “I’ve just come from six hours straight of negotiating terms for the new constitution.” She rubs her left temple.

  I feel bad for dragging her here—for dragging them all here—after a long day, but her words reassure me further. Since we’re not surrounded by water, we’ve all intuitively switched to English, which adds another layer of protection against potential eavesdroppers.

  “How’s it going?” I ask Em.

  “It’s a long process, but we’re nearing the finish line. We’d be there already if the council didn’t act like a bunch of …”

  “Guppies?” Lapis supplies. She stares at the reflection of her staticky hair in one of the tabletops. “Awesome,” she whispers to herself with a rocker-chick smile, crimping it with both hands so it stands up even more. Lazuli, who has been trying to pat her own blond strands into submission for the past few minutes, raises a disbelieving eyebrow, but Lapis shrugs at her and turns her attention back to Em. “It sounds like a high school group project from hell.”

  “That’s … oddly accurate,” Em says. “But we’ll get it done.”

  “Of course you will,” Amy says, dragging a stool closer to the center of the room. “Your parents never would have put you in charge of it if they didn’t think you could.” She trips, and I offer her a hand. “I’m out of practice,” she says, glancing down at her legs. Once she’s settled on her stool, she adds, “I think this place is neat. Stas is in here all the time for her internship. When Lia said she needed somewhere private to talk to us, I told her about it, so you can all blame me for you
r hair.” She smiles at me. “So, Lia, what’s up?”

  Four sets of eyes focus on me, and I swallow. Here goes. “I have some things I have to tell you. Big, important, big things.”

  “You said big twice,” Em points out.

  “Oh, well, they are. Big. Ginormously big.”

  “We’re listening,” Amy says.

  “Okay, so you know how the Tribunal blocked Clay’s memories of Merkind and he forgot me?”

  “I think we all vaguely remember that, yeah,” Lapis answers with a roll of her eyes.

  “Well, I … uh, he kinda … He has his memories back.”

  “What?” Em says, jaw dropping.

  Amy squeals. “Really?”

  I nod, and she holds out a hand toward the twins. Lapis reaches into the side pocket of her siluess and pulls out five cowries, which she places in Amy’s upturned palm. A moonstone bracelet unclasped from Lazuli’s wrist soon joins them.

  “You win,” Lazuli says to Amy, with a wistful look at her bracelet, then an intrigued one at me. “How did you do it?”

  “Wait, you guys took bets on my future with the love of my life?”

  Amy shoots me a half-guilty, half-excited smile. “It’s a really nice bracelet.”

  “How did you know?” I ask Amy at the same time Em asks her, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were too happy after you got back from that school,” Amy says to me. “I knew you couldn’t get over Clay that quickly.” She turns to Em. “And I didn’t tell you because,” we all know it’s because Em would have worried her head off wondering whether it were true, but without skipping a beat, Amy says, “I didn’t know for sure-for sure, and you didn’t have any jewelry I wanted.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Em asks me, her eyebrows swimming together with what might be hurt.

  “I didn’t tell you before because I had a really good reason not to, but now I have an even bigger reason why I should.” Before she can interrupt, I add, “I know I said big again.”

  “But how did you do it?” Lapis asks.

  “Yeah, how?” Amy asks.

  “I … had help.” I launch into the truth about Ondine, how she and her students helped me use an ancient spell to destroy the block on Clay’s memories. And what they tried to force me to do afterwards in return.

  “They wanted you to … to siren?” Amy whispers, her earlier smile gone.

  I nod. “To protect the secret of Merkind’s existence. Demanding that I siren Clay’s dad was just to test my loyalty to them. Eventually, they wanted me to siren other human military personnel and scientists and politicians—anyone who was asking too many questions, getting close to discovering our kind.”

  “But … that makes no sense,” Em says. “Why would they think you would ever consider sirening for them? Or that you even could siren, if they couldn’t?”

  This is it. This is the part that scares me.

  My sisters can understand why I would want to help Clay get his memories back after he’d been robbed of them by our legal system, why I’d perform risky magic to undo a terrible wrong. Those things make me sound like some hero. Now I need to go back to the part of the story where I did something only villains do. Will they still be able to accept me afterwards?

  I bite my lip. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you.” My heart starts clanking against my ribs. “But like I said, I’ve had a really good reason for keeping it from you till now, and it wasn’t just to protect myself. It was to protect all of you. Because if anyone found out, it would destroy our entire family’s reputation. It would end Mom and Dad’s reign. There’s no way they’d be able to keep the crown, and we’d, um, I mean, Merkind would probably go to war again.”

  “Wow. Ego much?” Lapis says, but with a scared little laugh, like she doesn’t want to believe what I’m saying could be true.

  The gaze I level her with sobers her. “I’m serious. What I’m about to ask you, it’s not fair for me to do that unless I’ve told you everything.” I learned that the hard way when I asked for Caspian’s help figuring out what the Havelocks were up to without telling him about Melusine’s sireny or mine. I was trying to protect him, but I wound up almost destroying our friendship. I won’t do that again. I need to tell my sisters the complete truth and hope despite everything I’ve done, they still feel they can trust me enough to help me.

  I lock eyes with each of them in turn. “I kept this a secret from you for a reason. I didn’t want you to have knowledge of a crime.” Em gulps at the word, and the twins share a nervous glance. “A crime you have to hide from the authorities, and from Mom and Dad.”

  Amy’s eyes widen. Is she putting the pieces together?

  “If you guys don’t want to know, in case what I did ever comes out, I’ll totally understand. You can leave this room, and I’ll never mention it again.” I lean forward, into the small circle of our stools. “I need each of you to decide now.”

  The dry, static air between us stretches taut.

  The twins do that thing where they communicate with each other without speaking. “We’re in,” they say together.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Hey, after all that, now we have to know.” Lapis’s words are light but she and Lazuli both stare at me with blue eyes as serious as I’ve ever seen them.

  I nod. “Okay, then. Amy?”

  “I want you to tell me,” she says in a small but unwavering voice.

  “Then I will.” I turn to Emeraldine. She sits stiff as a coral rod, a long-practiced skill of keeping her body still while her emotions war within. For my plan to work, I need her to be on board—her role is central. But it’s not up to me. “Em, if you don’t want to know, that’s fine. You’re going to be queen one day, so we’ll all understand if you’d rather keep yourself clean of this secret.”

  Em’s lips thin as she thinks. I force my foot not to jiggle and my face to stay neutral. I don’t know how I’ll pull this off without Em. She’s the only one who can—

  “No,” Em says at last. What? Tides. “I don’t want to know.” Her words land in my stomach like stones. “I don’t want to know,” she repeats, “but because I’m going to be queen one day, I need to know. It’s my responsibility.”

  Wait, really? Oh please mean it. I lean forward on my stool, and so do Amy and the twins. Em continues. “As someone who wants to be a good leader, I need to be the type of person who not only seeks out the truth, but also tries to understand it from every angle.” Determination paints her elegant features. “Lia, if you committed a crime, I need to understand why.”

  Respect for my oldest sister washes over me, and I suddenly remember all the times I swam around the grotto in her too-big siluesses wanting to be exactly like her. That respect makes it even harder for me to say what I’m about to. But it’s time.

  “Last year, after I found out Melusine was sirening Clay, I knew I had to stop her. No matter how much research I did, I couldn’t figure out how. She was hurting him, and I couldn’t … so, I got him away from her by, by … sirening him. I sirened Clay.”

  I look up from my lap into four faces frozen in shock.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Melusine

  “Dear Clay,

  I want you to know I am truly sorry that you were hurt.”

  The dark green letters shout their inadequacy at me. I toss the algae leaf over my shoulder, where it joins the others. Red algae float around the locked room like confetti.

  I dip the gluss and bring it down on a new leaf.

  “Dear Clay,

  I want you to know I’m truly sorry I hurt you.”

  Why the frort should he care? I throw this leaf away, too, and let my head loll back. But the mosaic of frolicking, carefree mermaids playing with sea turtles and starfish across the ceiling mocks me.

  I don’t have to do this. No one is making me do this. I could stuff all of this in a drawer and go to sleep. My bed loom
s large and imposing on the other side of the room. I tighten my grip on the gluss.

  Is there anything I can even say to someone who I …

  My shoulders ache with tension, and shifting in my chair doesn’t help. A Mermese phrase my mother used to say drifts across my thoughts; it translates roughly to “Mind over matter.” I started this, and I am not swimming away from this desk until I get it done.

  If I could just get started, it wouldn’t be so damn difficult. What is it I keep hearing in therapy? Humans are no different from you. Every book and movie I finish aims at teaching me that same lesson. See, Melusine, they have the same wants, the same dreams, the same pain as you. It clashes with everything my father ever told me about them. But when I was trapped in that human high school for seven hours a day, their relationships and decisions didn’t seem that different. Kids were certainly nicer to me there than the lovely Mer classmates at the Foundation school were, the ones who pulled out strands of my hair one by one or urinated in my lunch and left it for me to find. Of course, that was because they knew what I’d done, but I can’t imagine my human classmates being worse. I saw some of them pick on other people in P.E. or at lunch, and it was the same.

  The look in their eyes was the same.

  Both schools had the ones who sucked up to teachers, the ones who snuck off to make out in hidden corners, who whispered secrets to friends, who flirted, who worried, who found somewhere private to cry like guppies after a bad day.

  So, if their thought processes and feelings really aren’t different, at least not that different, then … I prop my chin on my hand … if I were Clay, and I’d done to me what I’d done to him, what would I want to hear?

  I wouldn’t want to hear anything; I’d want to strangle me.

  But if all I got was a letter, what would I want it to say?

  Dear Clay,

  You don’t need to read this letter. It’s completely up to you.