Page 111 of Female Fantasy
“Everywhere. All over the continent, seeking mer dissenters and shifters living amongst the humans and maecenas. I found ways to get messages to my Upper Shoal, then established a method of communicating with many individuals at once, sending out rallying cries to the rebels. Most knew I had the conch in my possession, that it had been missing from the treasure trove for centuries. It became a symbol of the resistance. It gave my people courage. But even then I knew, somewhere deep in the crevices of my soul, that I would not be the one to make it sing.”
For it was my destiny to call the mer to war. Not just as a descendant of Amphitrite, but as the true loch of the crown prince of Atlantia.
“When I returned to the creek cottage decades later, after establishing pockets of a rebellion militia across several territories, I immediately felt that tug toward you again. Your light, which had once been a mere dancing flicker, a tendril, had grown. As had you. When I saw you for the first time, I felt as if I had been punched in the gut. You were the most beautiful creature I could imagine. And you were glowing, Merriah—glowing with the light of the North Star. I knew then and there that you were my loch, that the Fates had chosen you for me. The runes on my back are the proof. A male mating mark.”
A tear slides down his cheek, matching the ones that now streak down my own.
“But I was too late.”
Another tear.
“You were already betrothed. To him, a human man. He was years your senior, and yet you appeared besotted by him. Happy with him.”
We were happy together for years before his accident robbed him of his manhood. And then the foundation of our married life shattered like his leg.
“So I made a promise to myself to stay away from you and allow you a chance at a peaceful life, free of warfare and court scheming. I would not force you to be with me. I would accept your existence for what it was: a small gift that had restored my faith. I was able to convince myself that knowing you were alive, happy, and loved would be enough to sustain me.”
Even on our happiest days together, I never loved my husband. Not the way I love Ryke. What he saw that day was a mere illusion. We were content in each other’s company at first, but our joining had been a duty. There was no passion, no feeling that if we were parted, the world would cease to spin, that my lungs would fail to fill. For loving and interlocking are not one and the same.
There is a difference between living on the world and living in it.
“But then you came to me.”
Ryke’s voice cracks, his words as shaky as my hands.
“I could not believe it when you brought that conch to your lips that day in the creek cottage. Could not believe you could hear its call, master its song. At first, I thought maybe I was dreaming. Then I tricked myself into believing that you were a shifter and I had somehow never spotted the signs.Later, I laughed at the cruel twist of the Fates. Of course my loch would be the lost descendant of the sea goddess herself. Only destiny would have such a sense of humor. When I followed you that day, I was driven primarily by curiosity and a desire to retrieve the conch. But when I saw how your husband looked at you with such vitriol, when I understood the shambles your marriage was in, my restraint snapped. You were my loch, godsdamn it. I would not have you living in pain as this man dimmed the light given to you by the North Star itself. And when we were together, our blood sang. We shone with the blaze of a raging fire.”
How he had winced at the insinuation that he was my captor, my kidnapper.
“Taking you was the most selfish act of my life. By bringing you to my safe house, I immediately put you at risk. I loathed myself for it. And after I got to know you, my sweet, strong, sassy little minnow, I knew that if you found out we were interloched, you would hand yourself over to me. You have a strong sense of duty. But I did not want a subservient. I wished for a true partner. So I kept the truth from you, hoping that one day you would choose me as I had chosen you.”
Although I didn’t learn to swim until recently, I have always felt drawn to the water.
Perhaps it was not the water that called to me but the mer underneath it.
The one who dwelled there, shining with the light of a star.
My prince.
My loch.
My destiny.
My love.
Ryke’s next words are so soft, I can hardly hear them above the breaking waves.
“I love you, Merriah. With everything that I am, I love you. You do not need to say anything. I do not need to hear those words back. I just want you to know that before we were interloched, I was in love with you. In love with everything that you are.”
“Well, is that not the sweetest sentiment you have ever heard?”
The waters around us part. The sea starts to twist and bubble like a potion in a witch’s cauldron. Tidal wives crash against the surface. A whirlpool pushes me away from Ryke even as I call out for him. I reach for him, but to no avail. The dolphins scream and scatter, terrified by the water’s movement.
A mighty wave to end the world as we know it.
The false queen Talassa swims out of the watery vortex.
And smiles.
