We broke apart. I shook my head until all the pearls fell out. They floated around us, suspended in the water like stars. If I was going just to prove myself, then there was no need for me to dress up. The mage from the god’s court only cared about what was inside my womb, not what jewelry I wore. Mama snatched the pearls from the sea and stuffed them back inside the little clamshell pouch she wore at her hip.
“I’m not like that, Mama. None of them interest me.”
“Not even Havamal?” She winked at me, but her eyes were tired. “He’s gotten awfully good-looking.”
“No, especially not him. And don’t remind me. Everyone’s always fawning over him.” A lump rose in my throat. Havamal was mated to a world—a system—where I didn’t belong. He couldn’t have both that world and me.
“Someday, I hope you two work it out.” She pressed a kiss against my cheek. “Not that I want you rushing into a mating bond, but you used to be such close friends.”
I choked back a sob and closed my eyes to hide the tears brewing under my lids. “I’ll leave now. If I get there early, maybe I can speak to the mage alone.”
“Whatever she tells you, remember you make your own decisions. And your egg count is not what makes you.”
“Tell that to Vigdis,” I muttered. After giving her a final hug, I swam out of Mama’s crevice and into my own. My eyes swept the chamber, looking for something I could carry. I wanted something small to remind me of the things I valued, something I could hold on to if I were tempted to betray myself.
Pushing aside the kelp curtain, I fished around in my carved bin for Ragna’s necklace. She’d survived capture, imprisonment, and a shipwreck on her own. This ornament had dangled from her neck through all of it. I bit my lip, then fastened the chain around my neck. The delicate metal was numbingly cold against my scales, but the sheer defiance of wearing the necklace inside the glacier thrilled me. If he saw it, King Calder would be beyond furious, but I was already bending to pressure by attending the ceremony. My hair was long and thick. If I had to, I could hide the necklace with my hair.
With my chin held high, I swam to the great hall and passed through the arches. I was early, so the hall was nearly empty, but the king sat on his dais, flanked by a troop of guards. On his right, the sea god’s court mage sat on a low stool helping herself to cuts of fish from a tray in Havamal’s hands. The king whispered into her ear. He ignored Havamal’s presence completely. The mage cackled into her spindly hands. I wondered how Havamal felt, being treated like an invisible part of the landscape, a beautiful serving plate, when he had signed on as a warrior.
The mage had the legged body of a human. Most of her was doughy and pink, but her skin was pocked with barnacles that had attached directly to her flesh. Algae-covered gills gaped at her neck, and she wheezed when she tried to suck in water. I’d always considered myself lucky to have a mermaid’s gills: dozens of tiny flaps concealed under our scales. Looking at the woundlike structures on her neck made me more intensely grateful. Long, twisted strands of seaweed seemed to grow from her head where hair should have been; the locks sprouted in mismatched shades of green, deep coral, and topaz.
She was the strangest looking creature I’d ever seen.
Havamal rested the tray on the nearest table and backed up to the wall. His eyes widened when he saw me, but then narrowed when the glimmering necklace at my throat drew his attention. He missed nothing. I combed my long hair around my neck to cover it. Now that I was in the king’s presence, my nerve failed me.
“Ersel,” King Calder said in his hoarse cough of a voice. “I didn’t expect you to be the first. I was led to believe you weren’t excited about the ceremony.”
Had Havamal told him that? Or had some other insidious little fish, Vigdis perhaps, been whispering in his ear?
Hastily, I sank into a bow, dipping my chin lower than etiquette demanded to be sure the necklace was fully hidden. The intensity in the king’s eyes made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I felt subversive with his stare on me, as though I wore a dangerous secret instead of a simple chain.
“I’m ready for it to be finished,” I admitted, lightening my words with a falsely confident smile. I didn’t know where he got his information about me, but all of us knew about the king’s vicious changes in mood. He had never seemed to take any interest in me before, so now that he remembered anything about me, I was nervous. Although he seemed happy enough in this moment, I knew what happened to those who lied to him. Liars earned his most capricious responses—above the disobedient, the unruly, and the drunk.
When I was eleven, right after the king took power from his mother, his sister had lied to him about her whereabouts. After summoning the bailiff, the king ordered his guards to hold her fast while the enforcer removed one of her rear scales with a pair of tongs. I heard the girl’s screams in my nightmares for a week.
She had been the rightful heir to the throne; the king was only ruling as regent until she came of age. Girl children had the first right of inheritance. That had always been our law before King Calder seized power. The princess had been a frail child and constantly ill. Calder had bullied her into letting him reign as regent and controlled her with cruelty. When the princess died, some people had thought her lucky.
Aegir’s mage laid her gnarled hand on the king’s shoulder. “The first girl is here; you must take your leave.”
He stiffened at her touch. “I’m the king in this glacier. I should be privy to what goes on here. My mother always stayed.”
“Your mother did always oversee the proceedings. Yes, boy, I know.” The mage’s eyes crinkled, and she laughed. “But your mother was a woman. No merman has ever seen these rites, and you will not be the first. You may be a king in this ice mountain, but I am a member of the sea god’s court and I outrank you in every possible way. I remind you of this yearly. A girl is here, and we will begin.”
“My mother pushed me out of the proceedings too, and it was a mistake that cost us,” Calder growled. “She put too much faith in Inkeri.”
The mage’s lips parted, revealing rows of green-stained teeth. “Your mother wasn’t the one at fault concerning your sister.”
“It’s getting more important,” he hissed as his fingers tightened on the arms of this throne. “Our future—”
“I know what importance this has to you.” The old woman’s glare was hard as fresh ice. “But I serve Aegir, not you. And if anything happens to me, you will answer to him. The sea god does not forget, nor does he forgive. Begone.”
I held my breath as the king’s blue-scaled fingers balled into fists. Surely he wouldn’t hurt a messenger of the gods, even one who had threatened him? The captain of the King’s Guard cleared his throat and gestured toward the hall’s archway. “Your Majesty, I hear the gatherers have the feast prepared. It’s laid out in the small hall.” The merman chanced a wink at his king. “If we wait there, we can appraise each girl when she comes out. Perhaps help young Havamal choose a mate.”