The Sea Witch (The Era of Villains Book 1) (11 page)

Loud gasps and squeals
of excitement rippled through the young mermaids in the crowd.
Serena’s breath caught in her throat. Hazel whipped her head
around to catch Serena’s expression and smiled coyly. Serena
held Hazel’s hand. Hazel looked down at their interlocked
fingers in surprise and then squeezed Serena’s hand gently.

“
Over
the next month,” said Poseidon over the increasing murmurs, “a
grand dinner party will be thrown every week. Every eligible young
mermaid in the entire kingdom will receive an invitation telling her
which week’s dinner party she is to attend. By the end of the
month, Prince Triton will choose his bride.”

The sound that
followed was deafening. Squeals and shrieks and giggles pierced the
water. Tails flailed with abandon. Hands reached towards the balcony
as if they could pluck off their prize and have him right then and
there. The older merpeople murmured excitedly together and looked
around with annoyance when they were smacked in the face by a
flailing tail or arm. The loudest cries came from the poorest
mermaids. Finally, they were invited to a dinner party at the
palace. Finally, they had a glimmer of hope of getting close to the
Prince, even being his bride. Some of the wealthy mermaids’
elated faces fell when they looked around and realized that the
competition had just gotten a lot fiercer.

One of Serena’s
hands clutched Hazel’s and the other went up to touch the
locket. It was better than she ever could have hoped for. The love
potion ensured that Triton would fall in love with her, and
Amphitrite’s death had actually sped up the time table. Her
mother had been right once again. Not only was there no longer any
obstacle standing in her way of marrying Triton, she was actually
going to be whisked down the aisle in record time by a decree from
the king.

“
Hazel!
Can you believe it?” she said, turning to her sister with a
radiant smile on her face.

For a moment, Hazel’s
face lit up, infected by Serena’s joy, but then her mouth
pulled down in a sour frown, and she said, “Believe what? You
getting everything you want? Sure. You always do.”

Serena’s joy was
making her feel light enough to float up to the surface and into the
sky, and she hardly registered Hazel’s frown or her morose
comment. She grabbed Hazel around the waist, lifted her up so that
her head was centimeters from the stomach of a mermaid floating
above them, and spun her around, squeezing her tight and laughing in
her ear. Hazel’s eyes widened, and she said, “Serena!”
in a scolding tone, but a small laugh escaped her lips as she did.

“
Oh,
can you believe it, little sister! We’re going to live in the
palace!”

“
We?”
said Hazel, looking down at her beaming sister, her own smile
growing.

“
Of
course, ‘we,’” said Serena, her eyebrow cocked in
a playful look that suggested any other scenario was absolutely
absurd. “You, me, Mother, and Casius. I refuse to live there
without you.”

Serena spun Hazel
around again with a powerful twist of her tail, and this time Hazel
hugged her back and laughed along with her. Serena let go of Hazel
and threw her arms around Moira.

“
Mother,
you were right!” said Serena. “I should have listened to
you sooner.”

Moira was stiff in
Serena’s arms, but she put an arm around Serena’s
shoulders and patted her lightly.

“
I
hope you’ll remember that in the future, darling.”

Serena looked up at
Moira. Moira smiled, but her face remained hard. She looked angry
and disappointed, and Serena realized that Moira had been expecting
Poseidon to announce a reversal of Amphitrite’s decree banning
business with witches. Serena was slightly amused that her mother
could let her emotions get the best of her too. A reversal of the
decree would not have been announced like this, it would have just
been posted around the city. Moira should have known that, but
still, she had hoped. Serena’s amusement turned to pity. She
knew how her mother felt. She hugged her tighter.

“
I
will, Mother,” she said. “Trust me; I will.”

— — —

Serena grabbed Hazel’s
hand as they swam through the front doors of the palace into the
atrium that was already crowded with jittery young mermaids all
dressed in their best shell tops. The wealthy girls were easy to
spot. Their hair did not swirl around them in the water because it
was so weighed down with trinkets.

“
Stay
close to me, Hazel,” said Serena.

“
Serena,
I’m not a baby,” said Hazel, trying to pull her hand
away.

“
I
meant stay close because I need you. I’m so nervous,”
said Serena, squeezing Hazel’s hand tighter so that she
couldn’t pull away.

“
Oh,”
said Hazel, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth,
“so you’re the baby.” She giggled softly and
intertwined her fingers with Serena’s.

The hand that was not
in Hazel’s was shaking. Serena’s breath was shallow and
excited. Mermaids were bumping and shoving, some of them quite
viciously, all trying to get to the front of the queue. Serena felt
no urge to rush to the front. She didn’t need to be the first
one Triton saw. She just needed a few seconds near him to speak the
spell, and he would be hers.

She looked at Hazel
and smiled, biting her lip nervously. Out from under Moira’s
shadow, Hazel looked rather lovely all dressed up. She was wearing
her best, white shell top that tied halter-style around her neck.
Serena had braided her long, light-brown hair and placed a large
pink and white flower at the top of the braid. Her dark green tail
looked shiny and healthy with a fresh application of jellyfish
extract. Serena’s own royal blue tail was just as shiny. Her
dark brown hair was pulled back from her face by two braids that
connected in the back. She had woven small, orange seaside flowers
all throughout the two braids to match her favorite coral-colored
top.

“
Ladies,
can I have your attention, please?” said a male voice.

Serena and Hazel
craned their necks and pumped their tails to float above the crowd
and see the merman speaking from the entrance to the far corridor
that led to the grand dining hall. Instead of silence and attention,
the merman was met with screams of excitement. He cupped his hands
over his mouth, trying to be heard, but it was no use. He floated in
the corridor entrance with an annoyed look on his face until the
noise settled.

“
Ladies,
if you will follow me in an orderly fashion, the dining hall is now
open,” he said.

He didn’t seem
to be finished talking, but the mermaids surged forward with even
louder screams. The merman was shoved aside in a tidal wave of tails
and nails and hair. Serena and Hazel were roughly shoved forward by
the late-comer mermaids behind them. The corridor was tight, as
crowds five mermaids wide tried to shove through all at once. Serena
would have lost Hazel in the chaos if they had not been holding
hands. A blonde mermaid with a deranged look on her face tried to
crash her way through Serena and Hazel’s interlocked hands.
There was a crack, and the blonde mermaid was tossed back, flipping
tail over head in the water. Serena and Hazel looked down at their
hands with matching expressions of surprise and then looked up at
one another and started laughing. They laughed the whole way down
the corridor and into the dining hall.

The light from the
surface was fading, but the hall was lit with blue, underwater
flames, created by the Trident’s magic, in torches along the
walls. All around the room were stone pillars shaped like upright
dolphins and seals, their noses holding up the ceiling. In the
middle of the room was a dining table so long that the short, open,
stool-like chairs on the far ends were only a few feet from the
walls of the massive room. The centerpieces were arrangements of
hundreds of pearls and white shells fastened together and shaped to
look like fish at play, dashing around one another and leaping out
of the water. Instead of chairs, two large stone benches spanned the
length of the table. There was plenty of space to the sides of the
benches, and the mermaids spread out, some of them chatting, others
floating alone and looking nervous (Serena thought that if she
hadn’t had her sister and her locket with her, she would have
been one of that group), others glaring at their competition and
fussing with their hair and jewelry. The merman who was supposed to
lead them into the hall followed them in looking disgruntled.

“
Ladies,
ladies, please,” he said. “If you would all arrange
yourselves along the benches and wait at attention, King Poseidon
and Prince Triton will join us for the evening’s meal.”

There was a whirlpool
of tails and a symphony of squeals as the mermaids scrambled for the
best bench seats near the end chairs. They had a fifty-fifty chance
of picking the one Triton would sit in. Hazel moved forward to go
find a seat, but Serena put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back.
The two sisters watched with a mix of amusement and disdain as
several fights broke out. It was mostly a lot of hair tugging and
scratching, but Hazel and Serena both let out a soft, “Ouch,”
as one redheaded mermaid slapped a brunette across the face with her
tail. The middle-aged merman was starting to look slightly panicked,
swimming back and forth and attempting in vain to break up the
fights. Finally, he swam up above the dining table and shouted,
“Ladies! If this does not stop at once, the dinner will be
cancelled!”

Serena doubted he had
the authority to do such a thing, but the mermaids were not about to
take the risk. The fighting ceased at once. There was still some
shoving as they settled onto the benches, but certainly no more tail
slapping. Serena and Hazel squeezed their way into a space no one
wanted in the middle of the long table. Quiet settled over the room.
Serena actually heard the merman’s sigh of relief as he
floated above her head. He snapped his fingers and two adolescent
mermen appeared in the doorway with large conch shells. They blew a
single, short breath into them.

“
Presenting
their Royal Highnesses, King Poseidon and Prince Triton of Adamar.”

The table erupted with
a low roar of excited murmurs and soft giggles stifled behind hands.
Poseidon and Triton swam through the doors slowly—royals
always moved at a leisurely pace. Poseidon stopped and rested his
hand on the chair closest to the door. He held the golden Trident in
his other hand. When he held himself upright with his tail curled
behind him, the three tips were in line with the point of his crown
and the bottom extended past the curve of his tail. The mermaids
sitting next to Poseidon’s chair were not able to hide their
scowls of disappointment as they looked down the table at the
mermaids at the other end. As Triton approached, some of them were
lost in a fit of giggles, their eyes slightly deranged with a
feverish sparkle. Others went white as a beluga, their mouths
clamped shut and their eyes wide with panic at being so close to the
object of their fantasies.

“
She
looks like she’s about to have an accident,” said Hazel
with a snort about one such mermaid. Serena put a hand over her
mouth to stifle her laugh. It was true.

Others batted their
eyelashes, flipped their hair, and bit their lips seductively.

“
She
looks like a beached seal in heat,” said Serena, her brows
creased in anger.

The mermaid in the
seat to the right of Triton’s chair was leaning over the
table, using it to push up her considerable breasts, and beckoning
to Triton with a come-hither finger. She patted the seat of his
chair with her other hand. Hazel went into a fit of poorly
suppressed giggles, clutching her stomach. Serena glanced over at
her sister, and her angry expression softened into a smirk. When
Triton, looking bored and morose, reached his seat (Serena was happy
to note that he stood to the left of his chair, giving the beckoning
mermaid a wide berth), Poseidon spoke.

“
Welcome,
young mermaids to the first dinner party. Tonight, you will all be
given the chance to make an impression on my son. At the end of the
month, after all the dinners have been served and all the eligible
mermaids have been given their chance, if he still remembers your
name, you just might become princess of Adamar.”

There were no squeals
in the presence of the king, but many mermaids sucked in their
breath, and all sat in rapt attention.

“
Now,
let the feast begin!” said Poseidon.

He struck the bottom
of the Trident against the floor and sparks tumbled across the
stone. Heaping plates of food—mollusks and clams in sauces and
seasonings that Serena had never seen before, kelp and sea grass
prepared in every way she had ever heard of, and sweet algae
cakes—appeared from nowhere, summoned from the kitchens.
Serena smiled in surprised delight. Many mermaids clapped their
hands in excitement. One mermaid near Serena almost fell backwards
off the bench in shock.

Despite her nerves,
Serena began to salivate. She and Hazel looked at each other with
matching smiles. Poseidon and Triton took their seats, and after
they had been served their food by two bustling maids whom Serena
knew and the king took his first bite and gave an approving nod,
everyone else tucked in, serving themselves. Well…almost
everyone else. There were a handful of mermaids who kept picking up
the food and raising it to their mouths, but they never seemed to
actually swallow any of it.

It was all delicious,
the best Serena had ever tasted, but she ate slowly and only had
small, single helpings. Her skin was warm and flushed from the
accelerated speed of her heartbeat. Her dream was within her grasp.
It made her feel lightheaded, free, and happy to the point of
giddiness, but also slightly nauseous. Watching the mermaids at
Triton’s end of the table flirt and dither around him made her
even more nauseous, so she kept her eyes on her plate most of the
time, only casting demure looks at him every now and then, and she
thought perhaps he noticed at least once.