Forgive My Fins (12 page)

“Then are these”—he touches one gently—“alive?”

“No.” The thought of a living sculpture makes me smile. It’s a pretty cool idea, but keeping the shelled creatures alive and in place would be a major effort. “The artist treated recently deceased sand dollars to maintain the color. It’s a flash-freeze technique that can preserve anything from sand dollars to starfish to yards of rainbow-colored seaweed.”

“That’s amazing,” he says, turning his awe-filled gaze on me. “
You
are amazing.”

No, I think, I’m just an average mermaid. But when he looks at me like that, I almost
feel
amazing.

“Sleep as late as you like,” I blurt, uncomfortable with the sudden comfortableness of the situation. The longer he sleeps, the less time I have to spend trying to figure out what to say to him. The less the chance I’ll say something mean or stupid. “I’ll find you before the ceremony tomorrow night. Until then, just lay low and—”

“Hold on,” he interrupts. “You think I’m just going to stay curled up in your guest room all day? No way. If I only get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore a mermaid kingdom, I’m not wasting the opportunity. I want to see…everything.”

“Be serious, Quince.” I try to reason with him. “You can’t just swim around Thalassinia, looking in houses and—”

“I know.” Quince swims close, so close that I can feel his body heat in the water. “You can show me around.”

“Uh-uh.” I shake my head. The last thing I want to do is spend more time in his company. Especially with the bond messing with our emotions—or at least mine. I’m already softening toward him, even though I
know
it’s just the bond.

“Come on, princess,” he murmurs, floating closer still. “I’ve been pretty good about this whole mermaid thing. I think I’ve earned a personal tour.”

My shoulders slump. He has me there. He
is
taking this really well. No tantrums or freak-outs or even disbelief. And if I were in his shoes—or rather, his biker boots—I’d want to take a look around, too.

“Fine.” I relent. “I’ll give you the royal tour.”

He grins, and I have to consciously stop myself from smiling back. No good can come from forming a stronger connection with Quince.

“I’ll meet you in the breakfast room,” I suggest. “We can leave from there.”

I turn away before his smile infects me. I’m almost through the door when he says, “Good night, Princess.”

Without turning around, I say, “Night, Quince.”

As I swim up to my room, I wonder how it happened that Quince and I are actually being civil to each other. Clearly, the bond can make miracles happen.

Dosinia is floating outside my room—
our
room, I remember with a groan—when I get upstairs. Like she’s been waiting for me.

“Getting a good-night kiss from your bond boy?” She crosses her arms over her chest and kicks one hip to the side. “He’s decent looking, I suppose. If you go for terrapeds.”

“Drop it, Doe,” I say, pushing past her and into the room. “I’m not up for this right now.”

“Oooh, trouble in paradise?” She hurries in after me, hovering as I swim to my dresser and pull open the bottom drawer, looking for a sleep shirt.

The drawer is full of sequin- and pearl-and glitter-covered tops. Definitely not my style.

“Where are my clothes?” I demand. Jerking open the other three drawers, I find them all equally full of Dosinia’s frilly and borderline-trampy wardrobe. The girl does not get the concept of understatement.

“Sorry,” she singsongs, swimming over to the bed and floating down onto the spongy mattress. “I had to put my clothes
somewhere
.”

Scowling, I repeat, “Where?”

She gestures at the big steamer trunk under my window. It was a present from Daddy for my twelfth birthday. He’d salvaged the trunk from an old shipwreck and had it restored and waterproofed so it wouldn’t fall apart. I flip open the shiny gold latches and pull up the lid, only to find the entire contents of my dresser tossed into the trunk in a giant messy pile. I don’t have the energy for a fight, so I just grab a top and head for the bathroom.

Doe follows me.

“He’s not your usual type,” she says from the open doorway. “You usually go for the mossy-mouthed, untouchably popular guys. This one seems like he knows where to find trouble without much looking.”

She sounds…intrigued. That’s the last thing I need.

“Let it go, Doe,” I beg. I duck behind the bathing curtain and change out of my tank top. “He’s only here for a day. Not worth setting your hooks into.”

“If you say so.”

When I emerge, she’s not in sight. A quick peek into the room, and I see her slam my trunk shut.

She acts like such a guppy.

“Why did you have to come back tonight?”

I can’t see her eyes because her back is to me, but I can tell from the tone of her voice that she’s on the verge of tears.

When a mermaid cries underwater, it’s not like on land. Her tears just dissolve into the water around her, mixing their salty drops into the salty sea. The only indication that she’s crying is her eyes. No matter what color her irises are usually, when she cries they turn into a sparkling shade that matches her scales. I know from experience that mine turn gold. And Dosinia’s turn bright pink. Like the anemone field in the garden below.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I explain, swimming around behind her. “I had to get him here as quickly as possible so I could get the separation and move on with my life. It’s just…bad luck that it happened to be tonight.” I place one hand on her shoulder, next to her fuchsia-colored mer mark. “I didn’t mean to ruin your party.”

She laughs and shrugs off my hand. “Ruin?” she asks like it’s a ridiculous notion. “Are you kidding? It was the social event of the year.”

She turns and looks me in the eye for a split second before jetting over to the bed and settling in on what has always been
my
side. But rather than argue—about the bed or the party—I just quietly take the other side and sink in. Besides, how do you argue with a girl whose eyes are sparkling brighter than the moon?

12

Q
uince eyes the breakfast buffet in the main dining hall as if it might get up and swim away. I don’t know what his problem is. The spread looks amazing. There are mounds of scrambled eel eggs, toasted sea fans, strips of pickled kelp, and a variety of local fruit mixed with some land fruit—the kingdom has a trading agreement with some human merchants who prize the giant conch and other shells we can provide. And, if you love sushi—I dare you to name a mermaid who doesn’t love sushi—we have just about every variety of nigiri, maki, and inari you could dream of.

Grabbing a plate, I start piling on Thalassinian delicacies.

“Care to introduce me to the menu, princess?”

I scowl at Quince, ready to deflect whatever insult he’s getting ready to hurl, but he looks genuinely concerned about the buffet.

“You don’t eat sushi, do you?” I guess.

“Not if I can avoid it.”

Rolling my eyes, I point out the eel eggs and sea-fan toast. “Take some of those.” I scoop up a spoonful of fruit and dump it on his plate. “This should get you through the day without having to resort to raw fish.”

He gives me a relieved look and then piles on a plateful of my recommendations. I don’t have the heart to tell him what they actually are. He’d probably put them back.

Once we’re at the table and he’s figured out how to use seasticks, the mer equivalent of chopsticks, he asks, “What’s on the schedule?”

I shrug, dipping my spicy tuna maki in thick ginger sauce before placing the delight in my mouth. My eyes close automatically, focusing on the sensation of spicy and tangy on my tongue. The mainland has its fair share of sushi restaurants, and some of them are pretty passable. But nothing compares to the royal sushi master’s concoctions. I feel my body hum with epicurean pleasure.

“That good, huh?”

My eyes flash open. In my bliss I’ve completely forgotten about Quince—about everything except pure sushi joy.

I chew and swallow quickly. Knowing my cheeks must be bright red, I keep my head down and catch another piece in my seasticks.

“Yes,” I say simply.

I sense Quince shift next to me. “Then I have to try one.”

Surprised, I look up at him. He looks serious.

“Hey, anything that gives a girl that kind of pleasure,” he says with a wink, “has to be worth a try.”

Now my cheeks are practically on fire. He watches me with a kind of unsettling intensity as I take the ginger-dipped piece I’d been about to eat and hold it out for him. For Quince.

Never taking his eyes off me, he leans forward and opens his mouth. The spicy tuna disappears between his full lips and white teeth. My eyes dart up, anxious to read his reaction. An array of emotion plays across his eyes. Uncertainty. Contemplation. Intrigue. Finally, in one fluid motion, he swallows, then gives me a slightly forced smile.

“Not the”—his smile wavers—“worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“Oh,” I say, not sure why I feel relieved. “Good.”

“But I think I’ll stick with the eggs and toast.”

We finish the meal in silence. I watch Quince nervously out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to realize that the “ketchup” he’s putting on his eggs is actually sea-cucumber jelly, but he eats up ocean fare like it’s his favorite burger and fries back home. Dosinia watches us carefully from across the table, trying to act completely uninterested, while everyone else in the royal household—from Daddy on down to Cid and Barry—watches me and Quince with undisguised fascination. I feel like a goldfish in a bowl, and I was fully prepared to face that reaction once I finally bonded. Only I’m stuck in my bowl with the wrong human.

Unable to force another bite of eel and salmon roe into my mouth when dozens of eyes in the room are watching my every move, I kick away from the table.

“Are you ready to go?” I demand, not waiting for Quince to respond before pulling him up and away from the last bites of sargassum grapes left on his plate. On land he may outmuscle me, like, three to one, but underwater I have the definite advantage of a massive strong tailfin and years of learning how to use it effectively.

I have him out of the dining hall before he protests. “In a hurry, princess?”

“Sorry.” I don’t mean it, but since I’m forcibly dragging him away from breakfast, I probably should. “I just couldn’t sit there while everyone watched every tiny thing we did. I don’t do well in the spotlight.”

“Aren’t you used to it?” he asks. “I mean, you’re their princess. Haven’t they always watched you like that?”

We pass into the front hall, and I finally release Quince to swim on his own. “Not like this,” I explain. “They’re all super eager because of the bonding.”

Unconsciously I run my fingers through my hair. And, since it’s not air frizzed, they actually rake through easily.

“Why does that make a difference?” he asks. “I mean, it’s not like it was your first kiss.”

My entire body from the waist up freezes. I’m still kicking, still moving toward the door, but I am otherwise motionless.

“Well, hell.”

That freezes me altogether. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if that will make this whole situation disappear. As if I can pretend for a minute that I just came home for a nice visit, without a bonded Quince in tow. As if I can shut out the feelings of shock and (annoying) pride that are pouring out of him.

“I had no idea, Lily. If I had known, I would have—”

“Forget it,” I snap, kicking back into motion. I can’t take much more of this nice Quince. Rude, obnoxious Quince I can handle, but this is beyond my experience. “It’s over. Done. We can’t change what happened.” Then, under my breath, I mutter, “No matter how much we want to.”

Quince is silent for a minute, hopefully shocked by my outburst, but with my luck he’s just building up steam. As we reach the front entrance, he wraps a warm hand around my arm and tugs me to a stop.

“Why did the bond make them watch you more intently?” he asks.

Maybe it’s because there’s no trace of mockery in his question, or because dealing with this kinder, gentler Quince is throwing me off my game, or because the bond is not only amplifying every emotion between us but also every physical sensation and the feeling of his hand on my arm is really, really nice—Wait, where was I? Oh right. His question. For whatever reason, I give him a fully honest answer.

“Because in this world, a bond is the equivalent of marriage.” I’m impressed that he doesn’t betray a single emotion—in either his face or through our magical connection. “And because I’m a princess and the heir to the throne. One day I will be queen. They think I’ve chosen you as our future king, and they’re trying to decide if I’m crazy or in love or just full-out stupid.”

A little muscle along his jawline twitches, and there’s a protective intensity in his eyes that pulls me in. I want to swim into those Caribbean-colored pools and never swim back out. That scares me.

Which is why I shrug out of his grip and turn away.

As I pull open the door, I hear him say, “And you wanted Brody to be the one at your side.”

Now why does my body shiver all over when I realize Quince sounds jealous? It could be fear…or thrill (which scares me even more).

Thankfully I’m saved from responding.

“Princess Waterlily!” Cid hurries through the hall toward us. “Wait! Your father asks that you join him in court today,” he gets out in gasping breaths.

Carpola, I forgot about Daddy wanting to hang out. “Oh, well, I was just going to show Quince around,” I say. “He wanted to—”

“Don’t sweat it,” Quince says. “I’ll amuse myself. Hang with your dad.”

Although that might have sounded like a laid-back, cool kind of response, there is nothing laid-back about the steady tension swirling around him. I think it has nothing to do with me staying with Daddy and everything to do with that last statement about Brody. His masked jealousy pulls an echoing sympathy from me.

“His highness arranged for an alternative, Master Quince,” Cid says. “The princess’s cousin has volunteered to give you a tour.”