Emerge (37 page)

I don’t want this to be true, but I don’t know what to say against it. So, I poke at the glaring hole in their logic. “
And what happens then? Clay’s an only child. If you kill him tonight, he won’t have any descendants in a hundred years. We’ll be right back where we are now.”

“
That’s the beauty of this ritual, Miss Nautilus.”
He strokes the silver box as he speaks.
“Once we kill Clay, any human life will do. We kill one human every hundred years in this same ritual and all Mer enjoy immortality.
”

“
That’s why you don’t want to mess with us,
” Melusine adds. “
As long as our family has the secret to the ritual, all Mer will recognize our power.
”

“
You mean they’ll have no alternative if they want to live. That’s tyranny,
” I say. The residue from whatever they used to drug me has left a sour taste in my mouth.

“
That’s how to ensure a dynasty.”
Mr. Havelock’s voice loses its objectivity. A mad spark lights his eyes.
“Our family will rule for all time. Stretching through the generations. That’s been the plan for nearly two hundred years. When the curse first took effect, no Mer were spared. Even the Sea Sorceress herself, who was quite old, began to wither. When she was on her deathbed, she told her nursemaid—my ancestor—all about the curse. And she told her where to find this.”

With careful fingers, he undoes the latch on the box and opens the lid. I have to pitch myself forward in my bonds to see inside, yanking painfully on both my arms and tail. There, resting on a cushion of the finest seasilk, lies a dagger with a black blade.

It can’t be.

“The very same obsidian dagger that cursed us all those years ago. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
He lifts it out of the box by its ruby-encrusted, iron hilt. The sharpened point of the long, spiny blade glints in the green light. Beautiful? I’d go with horrifying. Even from a foot away, I can feel its power. Dark and metallic, like spilled blood.

“
Just as our family has passed down the knowledge of the siren song for generations, we have also passed down this dagger in secret, as we bided our time. As we searched for the descendant we needed. Tonight, we will unify all Mer under our reign.
”

“And you’ll help us,”
Melusine says.

“Like hell I will.”

Mr. Havelock moves behind me. I try to crane my neck around to keep him in my sights, but it’s impossible. Then Melusine places her hands on my shoulders.
“Allow me.”

She spins my body around in its seaweed bindings. Mr. Havelock has seated himself on a gigantic chair fashioned from igneous rock. It’s imposing and studded with hundreds of aquamarine gemstones, the symbol of royalty. This once-stately hall with its archways and mosaic was the throne room.

And Mr. Havelock looks too comfortable on the throne.

When Melusine approaches him, he hands her the dagger, and she accepts it with a bow of her head.

“Reason with her
,” he tells his daughter.

She swims back to me, and I keep my eyes glued to the dagger’s obsidian blade the whole way.

Now she’s right in front of me. Will she cut me? Stab me?

Holding the hilt, she rests the blade innocently against the palm of her other hand.

“Lia, remember when I told you we didn’t have to be enemies? It’s still true. I’m not the bad guy here.”

“You sirened Clay,”
I spat.

“So did you. You had a good reason; you wanted to save him.”
She looks straight into my eyes with what looks like sincerity.
“I had a good reason; I wanted to save everyone.”

“You want to kill humans. And not just Clay. You want to kill a human—take an innocent life—every century. Forever.”
How could anyone do that? All those lives … all the people she plans to murder, each with a family …

“Grow up, Lia. There are always sacrifices.”
Then the tension in her expression smoothes out.
“You know, I think we’ve gone about this the wrong way.”

She turns me so I’m no longer facing her father, but I’m not facing Clay either. It’s just her and me.

“We can be on the same side.”
The palm of her hand presses against the bare skin of my upper arm. She still grips the dagger in the other.
“You’ve grown up in the human world, and it’s skewed your priorities. But this is your heritage.
You’re Mer, Lia. You have a responsibility to your own kind. Tonight, we can save our entire species from death. We can give them back the immortality they deserve for just one human life every hundred years. It’s a small price to pay. The humans are lower than us. They die anyway.”

I don’t want to hear this. I angle my torso back, away from her, but it pulls on my bonds and I writhe in pain. She leans even closer, her face inches from mine.
“Their lives flicker out like the fire they rely on for survival. But ours shouldn’t. Ours are meant to be so much more.

“Don’t you want that for yourself, Lia? For your family?”
she asks.
“They’ll die. If you don’t help me tonight, your whole family will die. Your sisters, your parents.”
Her cherry lips form vile words I don’t want to acknowledge. I shake my head.

“Yes, they will. Your parents have only forty or fifty years left—and that’s if they’re lucky. You care about protecting people. Don’t you want to protect them?”

Of course I do. How could I not? My parents have devoted their lives to protecting me.

“Even the little one—the one with that beautiful strawberry blond hair—Amy?”
She runs a lock of my own hair through her fingers. It’s one of the most intimate gestures among female Mer. I think of all the times I’ve done it to Amy.

“She’ll die, too. You can save her. You can save all of them. All of us.”
She’s still running her fingers through my hair. In this decaying, dangerous place, after such a terrifying day, the caress feels comforting. It shouldn’t. But having someone stroke my hair is so familiar, so soothing.

“Join us, Lia. I’ll make you a part of our dynasty. We can rule side by side. Everyone will know you saved them. They’ll see how special you are.”

I picture my family, the entire Community, and even all the Mer Below living forever because of me.

“Think how grateful they’ll be to you for giving them their eternal lives back, their safety back. The wars will be over and you and your family can come back home. Here—to the ocean. Imagine what you could do with an eternity to explore, to discover everything the ocean has to offer you.”

Immortal life in the ocean … it’s the stuff of dreams.

“I know how strong the call is. I know the unquenchable need you have inside you to be out here in the deep. Trapped on land with only a few miles of shallow ocean is no life for a Mermaid. I know you feel it.”

It’s like her eyes can see into me. Like she knows how out of place I feel.

“This is where you belong, Lia. All you have to do is choose it. Make the choice.”

I know what I have to do.

I lean into Melusine’s hand against my hair.

“I want that. All of it. I want my family to live. I want the ocean and the freedom. I want to stop hiding. I want eternity.”

A triumphant smile curls Melusine’s lips.
“I knew you were smart, Lia.”

She touches the tip of the dagger to my temple. I force myself not to shudder. To stay perfectly still with the sharpened blade pressed against the vulnerable veins there.

Our eyes meet, and Melusine must see the resolve she’s looking for.
“There’s no reason for you to be our prisoner, when you can be our guest.”
She drags the tip of the dagger down my cheek and neck with enough pressure that it must leave a line of raised, red skin in its wake. But she doesn’t break the skin, doesn’t cut me. This is a warning.

Obey.

As she circles behind me, bringing the tip to rest between my shoulder blades, I’m careful not to flinch. The cold, sharp point skims down my spine.

“Let’s do this together.”
With those words, she brings the blade down between my hands, slicing through the seaweed ropes that bind me.

I only have one chance.

The instant my tail is free, I stretch it to its full length and kick out as hard as I can, walloping Melusine in the side.

The powerful muscles of my tail smack against her ribs. She grunts in pain, but I don’t look back. I’m already swimming at full speed toward Clay. The seaweed bonds still hanging from my wrists and fins fly out behind me in the water like streamers.

If I’m anything, I’m a fast swimmer, and I reach him in seconds. Clay. His body bound, his skin blue, his face frozen. I have nothing that can cut through his bonds, so I duck below him, where the rope is tethered to a ring in the mosaicked floor.

My fingers are nimble, but the knot’s a complicated one. There’s movement behind me. I need to leave with Clay, and I need to do it now.

I work one strand of seaweed under another, then another. I almost have it.

Hang in there, Clay, I’m—

A large, cold hand closes around my neck from behind, yanking me away from Clay.

“You stupid girl,
” Mr. Havelock rasps in my ear. With his other hand, he grabs the top of my fin and folds my tail back up into that painful bent position. I lash out with my arms, twist my torso around so I can hit him with my fists, and try to free my tail, but he stands firm against my attack.

“Stop!”
Melusine shouts. She presses the dagger to Clay’s throat.

That stops me faster than ropes ever could.

“Don’t hurt him,”
I say, raising my hands in surrender.
“Just don’t hurt him.”

“I thought you wanted to fix the curse. To save your family.”
Did her voice break? A bruise is blooming across the pale flesh of her right side and abdomen.

“I do.”
I picture my family, picture the smiles that would light my parents’ faces if I told them they could have the immortality they’ve always dreamed of. But they’re not the only ones I picture. An image of Kelsey with her mischievous grin rises to my mind. How many times has she been there for me when I needed her? We have so many of the same interests, the same worries about school, about family … we’re the same age. How is Kelsey’s life worth less than mine? It isn’t. And neither is Kelsey’s friend Matt’s, or chatterbox Laurie Kennish’s, or eager, well-intentioned Mr. Reitzel’s. Their lives matter. I picture my parents again, who have spent years living alongside humans and trying to learn from them. They’ve always taught me to respect humankind, to be grateful to humans for creating a world that could provide Mer safe haven from the ocean in our time of need. My parents wouldn’t be proud of me if I agreed to the ritual slaughter of human beings, no matter what the benefits.
“I do want to save my family,”
I repeat.
“But causing more death isn’t the way to do it.”

“I thought you wanted eternity.”

“I do.”
I answer honestly. “
But I want Clay more. You told me to make a choice? I choose him.”

“You fool.”

“At least now we can get on with it,”
Mr. Havelock says, still clutching my neck in his cold fingers. “
I’ve waited long enough.”

“All right, Lia,”
Melusine says,
“it’s time to break your precious human’s heart so we can start the ritual.”

The ritual. They can’t kill him now, or it will ruin the ritual!
“I’m not helping you. I’m calling your bluff. You can do what you want to me, but you won’t kill Clay. Not now. You need him.”
Only the fact that the blade tip rests against the soft indent of Clay’s clavicle keeps me from fighting again.

“Oh, I won’t kill him. Not yet. His death is too important. But I have no problem hurting him.”
She uses the blade to trace random patterns against the skin of his throat.
“You know the dagger’s cursed. As soon as it breaks the skin, it burns like liquid fire. Even small cuts will cause poor Clay unbearable agony.”

The unsuppressed glee in her eyes is the only proof I need that she’s telling the truth.

“We’ve still got an hour before sunrise,”
she says.
“So you do exactly what I tell you, or I’ll spend all that time torturing him. Making him writhe and suffer before I slit his throat in the ritual.”

The fight goes out of me. I can’t let Clay’s last moments be filled with pain.
“Don’t. Please.”

“Do we have a deal? No more pointless escape attempts? Full cooperation?”
She’s still skating the blade against his exposed skin, tracing where the seaweed pulls taut against his chest.

“Deal,”
I whisper.

“Oh goody. This’ll be fun.”

Her father releases my neck and tail. There’s nothing holding me now, but the instant I try anything—try to wrestle the dagger from her grip, try to free Clay and get him out of here—Mr. Havelock will overpower me again, and Melusine will take my actions out on Clay. There may be nothing holding me, but I’m trapped just the same.

“Unbind the land-dweller
,” Mr. Havelock instructs his daughter.
“He must be free and willing for the spell to work
.” She nods, and the dagger glides across the thick seaweed ropes. They fall from Clay’s body, leaving him floating there unconscious in a pair of cotton boxers nearly the same blue as his icy skin.