Forgive My Fins (11 page)

I’m not sure how I can tell, but I don’t think he was mocking my title. I watch until he makes it to and through the door, where Graysby and Grouper try to carry him again. The last thing I see before the door shuts is Quince shrugging them off, saying, “I got this.”

I don’t realize until I turn back to Daddy that I’m smiling. My face immediately goes blank.

“Daddy, you can’t really expect him to—”

“This isn’t about your young man,” he says, swimming out from behind his desk and pulling me into an embrace. “As soon as I perform the separation, you will go rushing back to the surface. I’d like us to spend some time together before you go.”

Leave it to Daddy to say the one mushy thing that makes me okay with his decision. His request reminds me just how long I’ve been gone, how much I’ve missed the sea. If only it had been Brody in the library, then we could stay permanently.

I wonder briefly what Daddy’s reaction will be when I finally bring Brody home. Will he be just as surprisingly enthusiastic as he has been about Quince?

“Tell me something.” I lean back, curiosity getting the better of me.

“Anything,” he says automatically.

“Why do you like him?” I have great faith in Daddy’s judgment, so it’s a total mystery why he’s treating Quince like his long-lost son-in-law. A tiny niggle of doubt at the back of my mind wonders if maybe Daddy sees something in him that I haven’t seen. “Why did you welcome him with open arms when you worked so hard to scare away every merboy in the sea?”

Daddy nudges aside a lock of blond hair that’s drifted into my eyes. “Because I thought you’d chosen him,” he says. “All those silly merboys pursued you, so I could never be certain of their intentions. But you brought this boy, a terraped who could have no real concept of your position in our society. He couldn’t be just another title chaser.”

“Oh,” I say quietly. I don’t know why a part of me is disappointed. It’s not like I wanted him to tell me Quince was some kind of magically perfect mermate or anything. Besides, this is good news, because the situation will be the same with Brody. I should feel relieved.

No, I
do
feel relieved. This is great. The blowfish and I will stay the night, I’ll get to hang out with Daddy for a while. Then I can go back to Seaview knowing that when I finally bring Brody home, he’ll get a celebratory welcoming.

As I snuggle back in against Daddy’s neck, I ask, “Will you take me to Bubbles and Baubles?”

He heaves a big sigh, but I know it’s just pretend irritation. Daddy loves spoiling me whenever I’m home.

“Only if you promise to leave
some
stock in the store this time,” he says. “You can’t possibly take that much back to your aunt’s.”

“That’s okay,” I tease. “I’ll just leave anything I can’t carry in my room here.”

Daddy clears his throat and pulls back. “Yes, we need to discuss your room.”

My room? What’s to discuss?

“With all the guests in town for Dosinia’s ball, we’ve had to”—he pauses, like he’s looking for the right words—“be creative in our accommodations.”

“How creative, exactly?” I ask, not liking the sound of this.

“After some necessary rearrangements and last-minute guests, all but one of our guest rooms are full. Quince will obviously have to stay in the available room. Unfortunately,” he says, “you will not have yours to yourself.”

11

“L
et me stay with you,” I beg Peri. “We can have a sleepover like when we were guppies.”

“Can’t,” she says. “The whole extended family is in town for the ball. I’m already sharing my room with three of my cousins.”

I roll over and bury my head in hot pink sea anemones—a special stingless variety cultivated by the royal seascape artist exclusively for the palace gardens. They don’t have a scent, but their velvety-soft petals feel like satin against my cheek. I’m in desperate need of some serious Zen. Just when I thought my weekend couldn’t get any worse.

“She’ll kill me in my sleep,” I complain.

“No, she won’t.”

“You don’t know that, Peri,” I insist. “She hates me. This is the opportunity she’s been waiting for all her life.”

“You’re royalty,” Peri says, as if that makes everything better. “Dosinia knows that killing you would be high treason. She might dye your hair purple, but she won’t kill you.”

Leave it to Peri to be all logical in a situation like this. Sharing my room—
my
room—with Dosinia is like moving in with a great white shark who has a taste for mermaid.

Dosinia and I should be close. Growing up, we should have teamed up against our boy cousins. Kitt and Nevis were (still are) total nightmares who put spider crabs in our beds and jellyfish in our sandwiches. Even though they were just as mean to Doe, she always liked them more than she liked me. Played with them instead of me. I’ve never understood why.

“Maybe I can just sleep out here in the gardens,” I suggest. “We’ve done it before.”

“Be serious, Lily.” Peri picks a caulerpa frond and slides it behind my ear. “With the spring current as strong as it is right now, you’d be in Bermuda by morning.”

“This is so unfair.” I know I’m whining, but I don’t care. “It’s
my
room.”

“Stop whining.” Peri pulls my head out of the anemones. “You still haven’t told me all the juicy details about your terraped cargo.” She glances at the palace gate, where Cid and Barney are showing Quince how to drive a wakemaker (like a golf cart but water powered). “He’s cute.”

I jolt up. “He is
not
cute.”

Peri gives me a look that says, You’ve got to be kidding me.

“All right.” I scowl. At her and partly at him. “He’s not hideous looking.”

She lifts one elegantly curved brown eyebrow.

“He’s…” I narrow my gaze in his direction just as the wakemaker takes off, leaving him flipping backward through the water. Rather than act upset or hurt, Quince spins out laughing. His big, bright smile gleams in the bioglow from across the gardens. When he catches me looking, he gives me two thumbs up, like that was the coolest thing ever. “He’s got assets,” I finally—and very, very reluctantly—concede. “He has a nice smile.”

Not as nice as Brody’s, of course, but no one’s is.

“The boy’s a certified hunk,” Peri says, sizing up Quince like a slice of kelpberry pie. Then she turns to me, pinning me down with her gray-green gaze. “But last I knew, you were full-on hooked by Brody the swim wonder. How’d you wind up bonded to the neighbor boy?”

I give her the brief play-by-play—without the part about my fins curling or how nice and warm his lips felt or how he made me kiss him again before going underwater or how he didn’t have to try that hard to
make
me. When I’m done, she doesn’t say a word. Just plucks another frond, rolls onto her back, and lets it flutter in the current.

“Well?” I prod.

“Well what?” she replies.

“Don’t you think that sucks rotten fish eggs?” Why isn’t my best friend commiserating with me about how awful this situation is? Shouldn’t she be outraged at his forward behavior and agreeing that we should have a pair of dolphins drop him in the Arctic? I kick up from the anemones and twist around so I’m floating in front of her. “I’ve told you the stories. Like about the time he spent a week following me to and from school on his motorcycle—never said a word, just rumbled along ten feet behind me the whole way. And that he slams my locker shut
every
time he walks by. And how he always manages to ruin every possible moment of progress I make with Brody. I mean, don’t you think he’s the worst slime to ever sink fin on the ocean floor? He’s just so mean and rude and—”

“Floating right behind you,” Peri says, not looking away from her anemone grooming.

I freeze. Maybe she is just messing with me. Or she’s mistaken. Or—

“Talking about me,
Princess
?”

Of course. I close my eyes and gulp in a deep breath before spinning around. “Quince, I—”

“No harm, no foul,” he says, waving off my apology. He’s playing like it’s no big, but I see something in his eyes—I sense something in him—that says it’s bigger than he’s admitting. I
feel
it. He doesn’t relent, though. “That wakemaker is some piece of power.” He gestures back toward the gate, where Cid and Barney are now trying to wrestle the wakemaker back into the tower garage.

“Yeah,” I agree, trying to make up for acting like a sea witch by being extra nice. “It takes a little getting used to. The trick is letting out the clutch real slow.”

He flashes me another brilliant smile. “I’ll remember that next time.”

Peri makes a really loud yawning noise behind me. “Time for me to head home,” she says. “Gotta get the little cousins tucked into bed.”

“Do you have to go now?” I spin around, pleading with my eyes for her to stay. To not leave me alone with Quince.

“Yes.” She gives me a meaningful look, one that says, I can’t save you all the time. “Besides, between Doe’s party and your”—she shrugs at Quince—“return, I’m wiped out. I’ll be asleep before I float through the door.”

Then, before I can argue or beg or threaten blackmail, she waves good night and swims away. I watch her disappear through the gates. It’s not like I’ve never been alone with Quince before, but now it feels different. Now he knows the truth about me—the whole
royal
truth—and I’m beyond nervous about facing him.

Finally I turn around.

“I—”

“I’m wiped, too,” he says before I have to make verbal sense of my thoughts, saving me from saying something stupid. “Your dad said you’d show me to the starfish room?”

“Sure,” I say, my stomach sinking a little. I’m not sure why I feel bad that he’s giving me an easy out for the night. I mean, I don’t want to hang out with him. Right? “It’s one floor down from my room in the southwest tower.”

We swim in silence to the palace main entrance. It’s slow going because he’s trying to swim on his own, but he’s getting better. He’s figured out how to combine the simple breaststroke pull with a dolphin kick. Still way slower than my normal speed, but pretty impressive for a human who couldn’t swim this morning.

I get the feeling he’s really trying to make the best of this. Which only makes me feel worse for ripping on him to Peri.

“You know, I didn’t mean what I said,” I explain, filling the silence as we move through the main hall and toward my tower. “I don’t really think you’re mean and rude. Well, not mean, anyway. You can be a little rude, but that’s no excuse for my—”

“Lily.”

I’m not sure what stops my babbling apology—it could be his commanding tone or the fact that he’s used my actual name for once. Either way, my mouth snaps shut.

“It’s okay.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, which makes me feel like even more of a sea slug. “Really. I know you didn’t ask for this situation any more than I did. I won’t hold your emotions against you.”

“I—” I can’t believe what he just said. It was just so…nice. “Thank you. I really am sorry, though. I just want to get through tomorrow, get the separation, and then get back to our regular lives.”

“Back to Brody.”

“Yes,” I say, ignoring the chill in his voice, the sudden tension in his body. “Back to Brody. Back to Seaview. Back to everything that was normal before last night’s dance. It’s not about you,” I explain. Not
entirely
about him, anyway. “It’s about me. That’s all.”

Quince stops swimming and looks directly into my eyes. “I get it, princess. Really I do.” One side of his mouth lifts in a mocking smile. “I want to get back to normal too.”

There are some serious undertones in his last statement; I’m just not sure what they are.

Several seconds tick by as we look at each other, like we’re both trying to figure out what’s really going on. For the first time, I actually try to tap into the bond, to reach out and read what he’s feeling. I focus in on Quince and open my mind to him.

I’m struck by a sudden sense of longing that is much stronger than anything I’m feeling. Is that how badly he wants to get home?

I feel even worse for being so angry at him. All he did was kiss the wrong girl, and in an instant his life on land was yanked away. The least I can do is help him have a good time while he’s here.

“So where’s this starfish room?” he asks, bursting our intensity bubble.

Without a word, I turn and swim for my tower, knowing Quince will follow.

“This is it,” I say. A quick twist of the handle, and I push inside what has always been one of my favorite rooms in the palace. I have kind of a thing for stars of any kind—probably because we can’t see the real stars from the ocean floor. You have to swim to the surface to see them twinkling above. Besides having the predictable starfish-shaped accessories, the starfish room has a bioluminescent-painted ceiling of stars. As I float into the room, I twist onto my back and gaze up at the starry surface. It makes me a little homesick for land.

But, now I know, not nearly as homesick as Quince.

“This is a bedroom?” Quince asks, floating in after me. “Where’s the bed?”

“There.” I point at the shell-shaped piece in the center of the room.

“O-kay….” He swims over and eyes the bed skeptically. Not your typical box-spring four-poster, sure, but if I could get used to sleeping on a flat mattress, he can spend one night in a curved shell. Then, as he awkwardly turns to inspect the room, his gaze lands on the sculpture in the corner. “Whoa.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask. We both swim over to the three-dimensional, twisting column made of every variety of blue shell found in the sea. My favorites are the sand dollars, dotting the deep blue swirl with spots of brighter, almost sky-colored blue.

Quince runs a hand hesitantly over the curves, as if he might accidentally send all the shells scattering into the current. Then I hold my breath as his fingertips linger over one of the sand dollars.

“Such a bright blue,” he says. “I’ve never seen them this color.”

I try to ignore the fact that he’s fixating on my favorite part of the sculpture. Instead, I focus on being educational. “Sand dollars are naturally very colorful,” I explain. “But when they die, they gradually pale to the white shade we see on land.”