Out of Water

Chapter Fourteen

Bile rose in Erica's throat as she beheld the tanks and the creatures within them. But it wasn't the same disgust that her uncle felt; there was no fury to kill these beings he was so certain had wronged them. It was the thought of what was to come - the violence being forced upon the suitors. As she watched the mermaids thrashing within their tanks, their wrists scrapped raw from the chains that bound them - blood as red as hers seeping from open wounds - she vowed to herself that she would never marry a man who could hurt something so defenceless.

While her uncle had called them 'mermaids', Erica could clearly see that the description only applied to two of the creatures, for one was clearly male. However, it was the maid in the centre tank who drew her eye. Her hair was a tangled mess of blue and purple; her tail a deep violet, its scales merging seamlessly into brown skin above. She wore a cropped top fashioned from sea weeds and rainbow coloured shells. When she'd first been uncovered, she had tilted her scarred face downwards, as if hoping to hide it beneath her waves of hair, but then her eyes had fixed on a point in the crowd and her self-consciousness had given way to shock and fear and anger.

Ares. She was looking at Ares, her gaze so piercing that Erica thought it might burn through the glass that trapped her, spilling salt water onto the suitors below.

Her uncle noticed the direction of the mermaid's gaze as well, a satisfied smile settling on his lips. Whatever was going on, he had expected it.

Ares himself looked as though he was trapped in a horrible nightmare. His mouth had dropped open in a silent scream, his fists were balled at his waist. He was looking at the central mermaid with something so much like recognition that Erica was taken aback. How could he know a girl who was made of scales as well as flesh? Something tugged at the back of Erica's mind, but she was too shocked to explore it.

Alidor and Leandre didn't look much better than Ares: she thought Alidor might be sick and Leandre was glaring at Lance with fury in his eyes. It was clear none of her suitors wanted to play her uncle's perverse games.

Erica knew she was going to have to re-evalue everything that had happened over the past few months: her uncle's distance, his desire to leave the throne. He wasn't retiring to the countryside or fleeing the kingdom's walls: he was going hunting for the creatures he believed responsible for his wife's death. But Erica had been caught in that storm herself. She looked at the thin arms of the captured merfolk; they couldn't have caused the destruction she and her aunt had found themselves caught in. But...

But there was some part the merfolk could have played in her ordeal... The beautiful male voice that had accompanied her rescue from the ship's wreckage... She could still taste the salt-wet feel of it on her lips, hear the wild, foreign words in her ears, feel the untameable melody thrumming through her veins. It had been unearthly - so perhaps it wasn't a song of earth, but of sea.

Had she been rescued by merfolk?

She got to her feet, the scene suddenly overwhelming and too much.

"I will have no part in this challenge," she told her uncle, saying the words she should have declared publicly from the start. "This is not the future I want for Merpolia."

"You would rather see your country suffer at the hand of these monsters?" Her uncle snarled in response.

"Monsters? You are the one who dragged them from their homes. Who bound them in iron. Who put them in tanks and sentenced to death. The only monster I see here, uncle, is you."

Erica stormed from the stage, the crowd parting for her like waves. As she retreated to the safety of the palace, she heard her uncle call out to the suitors. "The challenge will continue without my niece's presence. Clearly she is too delicate to witness what needs to be done; all the more reason she will need a strong man by her side if she is to be queen of this kingdom. I see that you are uneasy about the task ahead, so I will give you all time to think it over and consider your next move. We will all disperse from this place and will regather here at dawn tomorrow, to witness how you will end these monster's lives, should you have the courage to do so."

{Another short one, sorry, but chapter fifteen will be posted tomorrow. In the mean time, please vote if you enjoyed this chapter and let me know what you think Erica ought to do next. Is there some way she can stop her uncle and save Ares from the terrible choice he needs to make?}