Chapter 28

As Luna hugged her brother, it felt like all the moments since she was eight years old had been leading up to this one.

He smelled just as she remembered her family smelling, like sea foam, and rain, and the westerly wind. His arms around her felt like her mother and father’s embrace. His smile was like her dad and her mom put together… And above all else, he was a strapping lad. He was healthy and he was happy, and he was known here by the same name, almost, in a different world from the one she’d lived in since they parted.

All these years he’d been no more than twenty miles from the marshes. And she hadn’t known. She shook her head at all the sadness, the loneliness, all the wasted time.

But this was not the moment for regrets.

He stepped back now, and she looked him up and down, remembering to keep her lips tilted upward, to wipe the furrow from her brows. She was so used to guarding herself, but how could she with her own family?

She turned and glanced at Kai, standing big and blue and silently watching out of compassionate, loving eyes. Her heart flooded with gratitude, and something else—something so big she couldn’t let herself acknowledge it.

“This is Kai. He is responsible for me finding you.”

“You’re kraken.” Tom stepped forward and they shook hands. “Your folks saved my life. Brought me here.”

She sensed Kai pulling back a little, sensed his shame. Maybe Tomas did not know that kraken had also killed their parents. Then suddenly her brother said, “I do know the whole story; my Mer moms didn’t hide it from me.”

“Everything?” Luna asked.

“I know that the kraken thought we were an enemy boat, that it was a mistake.” He looked from Luna to Kai, his eyes bright. “That Mom and Dad drowned in the raid.”

“You must hate us,” Kai said gruffly.

“No. I don’t hate kraken. That isn’t the Mer way.” He smiled at Luna. “And now we’ve got each other, so Mom and Dad live on in us, right?”

Luna nodded, trying to swallow past the huge lump in her throat.

Kai said, “I’m going to leave you to spend some time together. I’ll be out at the cabana.”

Luna watched him wistfully as he strode away.

It was bittersweet, this reunion.

How ironic; she’d found Tomas but would soon lose Kai. Just as her heart was learning to love, she was going to say farewell to the guy she was falling for.

No. Luna. No.

She focused back on Tomas.

“Tell me all about you,” she said. “I want to know everything I’ve missed for the last fifteen years…”

Brooke swam up to Kai as he made his way along the shoreline toward the cabana. “Here, I’ll show you around the community,” she shouted cheerily from the water.

He waded in and swam leisurely alongside her.

“So you’re the kraken they played in the games this year.” Brooke turned onto her back, swishing her tail and eyeing him with curiosity. “And you lost to her.”

“I did.”

“And then she renounced the title.”

“She did.”

“I watched her interview with the wolf on TV last night. Those games of yours are daft anyway. All you monsters beating each other up every year, for what? Makes no sense to us.”

Kai huffed a laugh. “I’m not sure it makes sense to me anymore, either.” He decided to change the subject, he’d had enough of the games to last him a lifetime. “But tell me about this amazing place. How do you keep humans away?”

Brooke bared her pearly white teeth and made a chomping gesture. “Sharks, luv, sharks.”

“How does that work?”

“Let’s just say we have an understanding. And a huge net of the best tuna each year to sweeten them up.”

“Ah, right.”

“And in return, they keep humans well away from us. Beast Hunter Tours have tried to come here, but we made it clear, high-breed humans are not welcome. All they get to see of us is our monthly visits to the Faery Bazaar to sell our wares. Though our jewelry is getting into some trendy shops in The Hole in the Wall District these days.”

With that, she took him into a rocky, low-ceilinged cave and Kai gasped. “Oysters.”

“More importantly, pearls. Lots and lots of pearls.” Brooke grinned. “This is our main industry now. We ship them over the mountain range, they give us a good price. Gods, would valley humans love to get their greedy mitts on these.”

Kai was impressed. These Mer folk were canny and entrepreneurial.

They swam through the workshops, meeting the artisans, who willingly explained their work to Kai. And finally, Brooke took him back to the cabana, ordered them both a cocktail and eyed him out of luminous eyes, like sea glass.

“So, you and Luna. You’re lovers, right?”

“Nope.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Kai. You’re mad about the girl.”

Kai didn’t say a word. But when he glanced at her over his cocktail glass, he knew he was blushing as bright as the Blue Lagoon he was sipping.

Brooke gave him a playful thump on one tentacle.

“So how d’you plan to sort this out?”

Kai’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t. She doesn’t feel as strongly about me, and even if she did, I’ve agreed with the clan elders that it can’t go any further.”

Brooke frowned at him. “That’s not champion talk. What, you’d give up that easily?”

“Well, I didn’t win the games… so.” He laughed hollowly, sipping his drink. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh, sweetheart, interspecies love always is. Doesn’t make it impossible.” He glanced at her, a little seed of hope lodging in his heart at her confidence. “Maybe you need a consult with Waldo.”

He startled. “You know Waldo?”

“Yeah, sure I know him. I did his training in how to administer ocean herbs to treat my people.” She looked hard at his scarred tentacles. “Seems to me, you might have had need of his healing powers yourself once.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Them scars wouldn’t have healed without magic.”

Kai leaned into her. “No one knows that I got treatment from Waldo, Brooke, it’s secret.”

She chuckled. “I get it. You krakens have a reputation for being tough as barnacles, and you don’t want those bastard humans knowing you’ve been on land to garner help. Here in Merinda, we’re not too proud to seek help. We live more simply, making art and music, eating well, loving well. We don’t have some grand image to uphold, just a good lifestyle that we are wise enough to maintain.” She gave him a tap on the arm with one long pearlized fingernail. “Don’t let macho kraken pride spoil what you have with that human, is all I say.” She slurped at her cocktail, then, to Kai’s surprise, slammed it down, hooked her big tail over her arm and with a yip of joy somersaulted into the water. When she surfaced, she winked up at him. “Life’s short, kiddo. Go talk to Waldo.”

“C’mon,” Tom said, “I’ll show you my room.”

“Is it in the water?”

“No, it’s in a dry cave higher up the beach. One concession to me being human. Mer folks’ caves are partially under the water, but my skin goes all wrinkly if I sleep in sea water. When I’m crafting, my cave is the shallowest too, but it’s never completely dry.”

“Hence the boots?” she queried.

“Yeah. Cool, aren’t they? Brooke’s dad made them for me, he’s a cobbler. They also help me when I swim, it’s my equivalent of a tail. Hey, do you fancy a dip? I’ve been working all day finishing off that piece for you. I was so worried you wouldn’t like it. And phew, now I need to let off some steam.”

Before Luna could answer, he’d dived off a rock. She watched in amazement the way his boots behaved just like a tail. He was as lithe and speedy as Torqua, twisting and turning in the clear blue water and poking his head up to beckon to her. “Jump in,” he called. Needing no further encouragement, Luna stripped down to her underwear and dived in.

It was soon pretty evident she couldn’t keep up. Even though she was a great swimmer by human standards, she felt like an ungainly land animal flailing around as Tom zoomed between rocks and sea grass and kept returning to her and grinning.

In the end, she surfaced, gasping, and pulled herself onto a rock. In seconds Tom was bobbing his head up, a look of concern in his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“I just,” gasp, “can’t keep up with you.” Gasp. “How can you hold your breath for that long underwater?”

He looked perplexed. “I don’t. I breathe.”

Luna wrinkled her nose. “That’s not possible.”

“It is for me.”

“How?”

“By switching over to my gills.” He looked perplexed. “Don’t you have them?”

Luna’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Humans don’t have gills?”

Luna frowned, laughed. “Of course not.”

“I thought they did.”

“No way. Show me.”

Tom pulled himself up on the rock next to her and peeled back his ear. Luna’s jaw dropped as he exposed a small flap of skin.

“May I?” She reached out.

“Sure.”

Gently, she lifted the flap to see a slit set diagonally, just under his ear. “On both sides?”

“Yep.” Tom twisted his head so she could look.

Luna asked in an awed voice, “H—how did you get them?”

“I’ve always had them.”

“I remember you as a baby and I promise you did not have them then.”

He shrugged. “As long as I can recall, at least. I’ve always been able to swim where the Mer folks go and stay under as long as they can.”

“And you never thought to ask how you got them?” Luna was incredulous.

Tom laughed. “Until now, I honestly had no reason to question it. I really thought they were a human thing too.”

“Sadly, no.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You bet it’s a shame. I’d love a pair.”

“Well, maybe whoever fitted mine can operate on you.”

Her heart sped up. “Do you know who it was?”

“Nah, but I guess Brooke would know. Or Letitia.”

He dipped back into the sea. “I’ll swim on the surface now so you can keep up. Want to come back in and we’ll play?”

Luna slid off the rock to be with him, her mind buzzing, her pulse racing with a sudden realization.

Because if Tom had gills fitted, then maybe so could she.

She barely dared let her mind touch on what that might mean.