“Then it’s settled.” Merletta gave a decisive nod. “I’ll stay in the triple kingdoms tomorrow, be seen about the place on Sage and Andre’s rest day, and come back the day after. Hopefully with a passenger.”
August held himself tensely as he nodded an acknowledgment. “I’d ask you to send my greetings to young Andre, but you still haven’t told him I’m alive, have you?”
Merletta shook her head, guilt gnawing at her. She’d intended to tell her friends about the three guards’ survival immediately after her second year test, but the reality had been a little more complicated.
“I’m going to tell him tonight,” Merletta said firmly. “I’ll just have to find a way to make it work.”
“If you want to be back inside the triple kingdoms before sunset, you’d better get moving,” Paul prompted.
Merletta sighed, glancing at the sun. He was right. Sunset was still a few hours away, but the journey from Vazula to the triple kingdoms wasn’t as straightforward as it had once been.
“You’ll be going in via Skulssted again?” August asked.
Merletta nodded, slinging her kelp satchel over her back in preparation for departure.
“Be careful.”
Griffin’s voice alerted Merletta that he’d made it across the sand. She smiled at him, trying not to show how amusing she found his stern expression when combined with his unsteady stance. He acted sometimes like he was as old and commanding as August, rather than relatively near Merletta’s age. She didn’t mind, really. She was grateful that the guards she’d once believed murdered for her secrets didn’t appear to blame her for unintentionally ripping them away from everything they knew and loved. If anything, they’d become quite protective of her.
The thought once again drove her mind to Heath, and the sternness in his voice when he’d issued her a command of his own: don’t die.
Those words—spoken shortly before she undertook her perilous second year test—were the last they’d shared. She had hoped he might return sooner. Her break was almost over, after all, and it would soon become considerably more difficult to sneak away to Vazula. But then again, she hadn’t exactly been waiting alone for him on the island, as she usually was. She had no idea how August, Paul, and Griffin would respond to their inevitable meeting. She should probably explain to the guards the extent of her friendship with Heath. But not today.
“I’ll be fine,” she told Griffin cheerfully. “And I’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”
With the words, she waded into the shallows, relishing the cool of the water on her skin. She’d often found the depths of the ocean cold, but there was no denying that spending the entire day above the surface was hot. At least on Vazula. Heath claimed that his kingdom was cold sometimes. But it was hard to picture. Perhaps one day she’d find out for herself.
The water was up to her thighs now, and she shook off the thought as she dove forward. As she entered the water, she felt the change take place. An intense ripple passed down her scales all the way to her fins, the sensation making her realize that she once again had fins. The transition was so seamless now, she could barely track the moment her legs became tail once more.
Merletta swam quickly through the familiar waters between Vazula and the northern border of the triple kingdoms. But she didn’t go far enough to reach the uncultivated kelp forests through which she’d snuck into the triple kingdoms so many times. On August’s advice, she’d begun to vary her route into and out of the cities, in an effort to make her movements harder to track.
It took much longer to skirt around the outside of the triple kingdoms—well beyond the barrier—but it did ensure that no one watching her old waters in Tilssted would get any hint of her approach. Traveling through the area somewhere between the northwestern border and the maelstrom where she’d completed her test three weeks before, she approached Skulssted from the northwest. Since she was staying in the wealthiest of the triple kingdoms, it was at least a short swim once she entered.
She had to wait a fair while before the guard patrols left a long enough gap for her to pass through the barrier unseen, but she’d allowed enough time. The sun was only just setting in the world far above as she swam through the clean waters of Skulssted, making for Sage’s family home.
She deposited her satchel in the small, detached room which Sage’s parents had kindly offered her for the duration of her break between second and third years, but she kept her weapon with her. If Sage’s family considered it strange, they’d well and truly gotten used to it by now. Even Sage’s little sister, who could sometimes be uncomfortably blunt, didn’t comment on it anymore.
Merletta had been reluctant to accept the offer of hospitality, but when Sage explained that the room in question was designed for guests, and wasn’t attached to the dwelling, Merletta had relented. It was very generous of the family to offer her the convenience of being hosted while still allowing her the independence necessary for her to spend the majority of her days on the island.
Not that Sage’s parents dreamed that was where she disappeared to each day, of course.
“Merletta, there you are.” Sage’s mother smiled in a friendly way as Merletta swam into the room where the family ate their meals.
“Did I hold you up?” Merletta asked anxiously.
“Not at all,” the older mermaid assured her. “In fact, we’re still waiting for—ah, there he is.”
Her husband appeared in the dwelling’s doorway as she spoke, looking weary.
“Am I late for dinner?” he asked, after he’d greeted his wife and younger daughter. “We had an injury come in at the last minute, and I had to stay to oversee the report.”
“What injury?” Serena, Sage’s sister, piped up. “Was it a bad one?”
Her father shrugged as he lowered himself into a seat. “It’ll heal. Someone burned their arm in a thermal vent when cooking.”
Merletta listened in fascination as the family drifted into their seats. She’d already known that Sage’s mother was a record holder at the Center, but she’d known nothing about Sage’s father’s job until coming to stay with the family.
They were just serving up when another voice hailed them from the doorway.