The Mer king looked at us, his expression shifting from reluctance to something resembling resignation. He settled onto his throne of bones and corals, his tail curling beneath him, and began to speak.
"I cannot tell you how accurate my knowledge is," he started, his voice carrying the weight of incomplete histories. "Since there was not much recorded on the power itself. After what I told you... the fourth daughter did have offspring before her death, but from what is gathered, she did not have any female offspring. They were all male."
He paused, letting the implication settle between us like sediment in still water.
"So how potent her powers are, what form they will take, how they will manifest... this is what I would look out for." He leaned forward, his pale eyes serious. "Some emotion rides high and can make powers go berserk. I would say it would be best to keep her hidden as much as possible. And try to teach her self-restraint from an early age."
It was no help at all. I felt the disappointment sink into my chest, heavy and cold. If the fourth daughter only had male offspring, then of course they would not know what kind of power a female descendant would wield, or how far it would manifest. The histories were silent because the line had been broken, the daughters ended, until somehow, impossibly, the power had found its way to me, a traveler from another world.
I would have to try to reach out to that voice again, to the presence that had spoken to me in moments of crisis. I would have to find the source of the power itself and ask what could be done.
But first...
I turned to the Mer king again, gathering my courage. "I also have another question," I said. "This one is for me. I cannot heal myself. I cannot use my powers on myself, at least not the healing tide. Do you know why that is?"
The Mer king looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he sighed, a sound like water through reeds.
"You are the carrier," he said, "but you cannot use those blessings on yourself. That is the nature of the gift. Being the one who blesses must not use the powers on themselves." He tilted his head, considering. "Think about it. If the fourth daughter was able to heal herself, do you think she would have fallen victim to the poison her first sister inflicted on her?"
The truth of it struck me like a physical blow. That was true. If she could have healed herself, she would have. She would have lived.
"Blessing is not a way for anyone to cheat on life," Caelaris continued, his voice gentler now, almost kind. "It is a gift to give, not a shield to hoard. The power flows outward, always outward. To heal others, to bind others, to protect others. Never the self. That is the price of being the vessel. You carry the tide, but you cannot drink from it."
I stood there, processing, the words turning over in my mind like stones in a current. The price of being the vessel. The price of power.
I could save others, but never myself. I could bind my mates to me but never undo my own wounds. I was the source of the river, but I would always be thirsty.
"Then what is the point?" I whispered, not meaning to speak aloud.
Caelaris smiled, sad and knowing. "The point," he said, "is that you learn to be worthy of the gift by understanding its limits. The fourth daughter died because she could not save herself. But she saved hundreds before that end. She was mourned. She was remembered. She was loved." He looked at his son, at the family we had built, at the cubs floating in their bubbles. "That is the purpose, child. Not immortality. Legacy."
I looked at Levara, at her small face pressed against the membrane, her dark eyes watching me with trust and love.
Legacy. Yes. I could live with that. I would have to.
---
After the talk with the Mer king, we bid our goodbyes and headed toward the palace gates. Caelion swam beside me in silence, his tail cutting through the water with sharp, agitated flicks. He had nothing else he wanted to do here, no other words to exchange with the male who had given him life but never given him love. We readied ourselves to leave, the bubbles reforming around us, the cubs already beginning to doze in the gentle sway of the current.
Until a figure we did not expect to see showed herself in front of us.
She emerged from the shadows of the coral archway like a blade drawn from its sheath, all angles and edges and cold, calculating beauty. Her tail was scaled in iridescent black that shifted to violet in the dim light, her hair floating around her like blood coral, her eyes the color of emeralds, hard as ice. The Mer queen. Miranda.
The Mer king’s face lit up when he saw her, a pathetic hope blooming in his tired eyes. "Miranda," he said, his voice carrying a warmth I had not heard before. "What brings you here?"
The Mer queen looked at us as if we were debris blocking her path. She did not acknowledge her husband, did not even glance in his direction, but she answered, her eyes staying fixed on us with a disdain that made my skin prickle.
"I came to see the son who left nearly a year ago without a word," she said, her voice like silk wrapped around a knife. "You must not have trained him efficiently, Caelaris, since he lacks manners. His mother is in his face, and he is not acknowledging her."
"Caelion," the Mer king started, almost hesitantly, as if afraid to provoke her. "Son..."
Are they fucking serious? The thought burned through my mind, hot and furious. They treat him like waste of space, like a mistake to be forgotten, but they want him to acknowledge them? They want his respect when they have given him nothing but pain?
"Hello, Mother," Caelion said, his voice flat, controlled. "How are you?"
I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his spine had gone rigid, the careful blankness of his expression. He did not want to be subjected to this, especially not in front of us, his family, the people he had chosen to love him. He did not want them to see this humiliation.
To hell with it all.
I stepped forward, placing myself between Caelion and the queen who had birthed him but never mothered him.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice carrying clearly through the water. "Female to female. While you are considered my mother-in-law by our union, you have not earned that title in my eyes." I saw her eyes widen, saw the shock that someone would speak to her this way. "My mate tried to introduce us once, but you were too busy being smitten with your new mate to spare him a glance. That in itself was already disrespectful and demeaning."
I advanced a step, feeling bold in this situation, something I didn’t even know I had but I continued, "Quite frankly, to expect your son to give you acknowledgement while you see him as nothing more than a nuisance and a disappointment... I would rather you not come around him to give him grief." I turned slightly, offering a nod to the Mer king. "We were just leaving. Good day, Mer King. It is always a pleasure to see you." Then I looked back at the queen, her face already twisting with anger. "And Mer Queen, I wish I could say it was a pleasure."
I grabbed Caelion’s hand, felt his fingers tighten around mine, and smiled at him, a real smile, full of love and defiance. "Let’s go home."
We started walking, or swimming, or whatever it was we were doing, moving past her, dismissing her, denying her the power she thought she held over him. Her face was full of disbelief and anger, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air.
I stopped. I could not help myself. I looked back at her, at both of them, these two people who had failed so spectacularly at the one job that mattered.
"What you both have against each other, it is your story," I said, my voice softer now but no less firm. "Caelion is the innocent bystander in all of this. Can you call yourselves parents when you treat your son no better than trash around your home? Like he does not exist?" I shook my head, feeling the weight of my own motherhood, the fierce love I had for every one of my cubs. "As a mother, I try to understand you. But even then, as a mother, I cannot even imagine myself treating my son the way you treat him."
I held Caelion’s hand tighter, feeling him tremble beside me, feeling the years of hurt and neglect that lived in his skin.
"Goodbye," I said. And this time, we did not stop.
We left, and we readied ourselves to go back home, back to our Lion Tribe, back to the family that loved him, that chose him, that would never let him feel invisible again.
Suddenly a row of soldiers blocked our path, spears crossed in a wall of gleaming coral and bone. Caelion moved before I could react, his body shielding mine, his tail lashing behind him like a whip.
The queen’s voice slithered through the water behind us, cold and venomous. "So you think you can insult me and leave?"
The soldiers held their ground, spears gleaming in the bioluminescent light, but they did not advance. They were waiting, I realized, waiting for their queen’s command, caught between her wrath and their king’s authority.
I turned with Caelion, his hand still gripping mine, and we faced the royal pair together. The Mer king stood slightly apart from his wife, his posture straight, his tired eyes holding a resolve I had not seen before.
"Miranda," he said, his voice carrying the weight of command. "Let them go."
The queen whirled on him; her beautiful face contorted with rage and disbelief. "You allowed that female to talk to your mate that way, Caelaris? You must not respect me as you want me to believe."
The Mer king looked at her, and for the first time, I saw his hesitation the hurt and the pain.
"But what she said," he replied, his voice gentle but unyielding, "is it wrong? We really did treat the boy as nothing more than a nuisance. Can you say you ever treated him as a mother?"
The Mer queen’s face reddened, her emerald eyes flashing with fury. "I birthed him, did I not?" she countered, her voice rising. "With the pain you caused me, I could have ended his life. But I let him nourish from my body, and he was born."
"Giving birth to your offspring does not make you a mother," I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them. "It just makes you a vessel."
She looked at me, her expression twisting into something murderous, her hands clenching at her sides. "Who are you," she hissed, "to put yourself into my family affair, little girl?"
"I am your son’s mate," I said, stepping forward despite the soldiers’ spears, despite the danger, despite everything. "I am the one who knows what he goes through dealing with your so-called family affair." I took a breath, trying to moderate my tone, to find some bridge between truth and respect. "If I came off disrespectfully, I apologize. But do you think your beloved shark mate would be happy about how you treat his friend? His brother? The person he gave his life to protect?"
I knew it was a low blow. I knew I was wielding a love one’s memories like a weapon. But she needed to understand. She needed to see that her bitterness had poisoned not just her mates, not just her son, but the memory of the male she claimed to love.
"Don’t you dare bring Idris into this," she whispered, and her voice cracked, the fury draining away to reveal something raw and broken beneath. "You have no idea what you are talking about."
But I did. I had heard the stories. Idris, the shark shifter, Caelaris true friend, brother in spirit if not in blood. The male who had loved Caelaris like his own family, who had protected him, who had died saving him from death. The ghost that haunted this family more than any actual spirit.
For the first time, the hardened shell she presented cracked. The anger fled, leaving only a woman who looked worn out, old, and defeated. Her shoulders slumped. Her tail went limp. The soldiers lowered their spears, confused by their queen’s sudden collapse.
"Idris wanted only his happiness," she whispered, the confession torn from her throat. "He loved him and begged me to accept Caelaris as a mate. And I could not understand why. I could not forgive Caelaris for being the sole person Idris loved." She looked at us, the pain was visible but it doesn’t fix the fact that she had hurt an innocent soul in all this.
The silence that followed was heavy enough to drown in.
I looked at Caelion, at the pain in his pale eyes, at the hope that warred with years of hurt. And I knew that some wounds could not be healed with words, not even mine.
"Let’s go home," I said softly, squeezing his hand.
And this time, no one stopped us.