Page 7 of Seas and Scepters

But perhaps—just perhaps—before that door closed forever, I might find a few moments of genuine connection with someone who could look upon my face without flinching.

It was a slim hope, but in the gathering darkness of my fate, even the smallest light seemed worth pursuing.

Chapter Three

Selene

The surface broke around me, and I gasped my first breath of air as a human, the alien sensation burning my lungs like fire.Above me, the same moon that had witnessed my failure now looked down on my exile, its pale face offering no comfort, no guidance.

The storm that had been brewing during my trial now unleashed its fury.Lightning split the sky in jagged wounds while thunder shook the very foundations of the world.Rain lashed down like tears from the heavens, and the sea that had once welcomed me now tossed me about like debris.

My new legs were utterly useless.Where my powerful tail had once cut through water with elegant efficiency, these strange, separate limbs only flailed helplessly.Every movement sent fresh waves of agony through my transformed body, and I could feel my strength ebbing with each desperate attempt to stay afloat.

The rocky coastline seemed impossibly far away, a dark smudge against the storm-lashed horizon.The sea itself seemed to reject me now—waves that should have carried me gently to shore instead battered me mercilessly, driving me under again and again until my lungs burned with the alien need for air.Salt water filled my mouth and nose, and I realized with growing horror that I could drown—actually drown—in the waters that had once cradled me.

This is what it means to be human,I thought as another wave crashed over my head.Fragile.Vulnerable.Mortal.

I don't remember much of what happened next.There were only fragments—the scrape of barnacles against my skin as the waves drove me against the rocks, the terrible cold that seeped into my bones, the overwhelming exhaustion that made my eyelids heavy despite the danger.At some point, I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I knew, I was lying on wet sand with the taste of blood in my mouth.

Dawn was breaking over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of pearl and rose.The storm had passed, leaving behind a world that seemed washed clean and strangely quiet.I lay where the waves had deposited me, half-buried in seaweed and debris, my new body aching in ways I had never experienced.

Slowly, I tried to sit up.

The movement sent lightning bolts of pain through my spine, and I bit back a cry of anguish.Everything felt wrong—the way my weight was distributed, the strange sensation of having separate limbs instead of a unified tail, the constant pull of gravity that seemed determined to drag me down.My hair, once a cascade of silver-white silk, was now tangled with kelp and crusted with salt.Blood from a dozen small cuts painted my pale skin in abstract patterns of red and brown.

But I was alive.Somehow, impossibly, I was alive.

I looked down at my new legs with a mixture of fascination and revulsion.They were pale as pearl, long and shapely in the way that human males seemed to prefer, but they felt foreign and unresponsive.When I tried to stand, my knees buckled immediately, sending me sprawling back onto the sand.

"Easy there, love.You've had quite a night."

The voice made me freeze.I turned my head to see a woman approaching from the direction of the cliffs, her skirts lifted slightly to keep them out of the surf.She was perhaps forty years old, with graying auburn hair pinned back in an elaborate style and sharp dark eyes that seemed to take in everything at once.Her dress was well-made but functional, the sort of clothing worn by someone who had earned their station rather than being born to it.

"Please," I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming and seawater."Help me."

The woman stopped a few feet away, studying me with the calculating gaze of someone accustomed to appraising value.Her eyes traced the lines of my body—noting, I was sure, both my nudity and the ethereal beauty that marked my siren heritage.Even transformed, even broken and bloodied on this desolate shore, I was still a creature designed to ensnare mortal hearts.

"Well, well," she murmured, a slow smile spreading across her features."What have the tides brought me today?"

She moved closer, her experienced gaze cataloguing every detail of my appearance.I tried to cover myself with my hands, suddenly aware of my nakedness in a way I had never been beneath the waves.Among my people, such modesty was unknown—bodies were simply vessels for power and beauty, nothing more.But something in this woman's expression told me that humans viewed such things differently.

"Shipwreck?"she asked, though her tone suggested she didn't entirely believe the explanation.

I nodded weakly.It was close enough to the truth—I had been wrecked, though not by any human vessel.

"Thought so.Poor thing, you're half-frozen and bleeding from a dozen cuts."She unwrapped the heavy cloak from her own shoulders and draped it around me, enveloping me in warmth that made me gasp with relief."Can you tell me your name, dear?"

"Selene," I managed, grateful that at least I didn't have to lie about that much.

"Beautiful name for a beautiful girl," she said, and I heard the calculation in her voice."I'm Lydia.Lydia Rosecroft.And I think you and I are going to be great friends."

There was something in the way she said it that made my skin prickle with unease, but I was in no position to be selective about my rescuers.The cloak smelled of expensive perfume and something else—something musky and human that I couldn't quite identify.

"I...I have nowhere to go," I admitted, and the words tasted like ash in my mouth.A princess of the sea, reduced to begging charity from surface dwellers."My father...he cast me out.Disowned me for my disobedience."

It was the truth, as far as it went.I simply omitted the details about kingdoms beneath the waves and trials of blood and song.

Lydia's eyebrows rose slightly."Disowned you?What sort of father throws his own daughter to the wolves over a bit of rebellion?"She shook her head, making disapproving sounds."Well, that's his loss and my gain, I suppose.You have the look of good breeding about you, Selene.Quality bones, fine features, an air of...refinement."

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