walking around us and to the school behind me. “This is our home now. Accept it.”
“But you’re—”
“But nothing. I’m nobody.” I lower my voice, forcing a smile to my lips even though all I want to do is scream...scream all the pain and anger and loss seething through me at his naïveté. Speio’s expression is scared and confused. I gentle my voice. “Ask your parents. Get them to tell you the truth.” I pause and press my hand to his shoulder in a comforting gesture, an apology of sorts, but he shakes my arm off like it’s a snake. “Tell them that I commanded it.”
I walk across the parking lot without looking back, and jump into my car. My hands are trembling with emotion and my throat is dry like sandpaper. I gulp and lean my head against the cool window, heaving breaths into my lungs, hoping to staunch the tide of helpless anger that’s threatening to overwhelm me. But it’s too late. I need to get out of there before I do something ridiculous like throw up all over the floor of my Jeep. Flooring the gas pedal, my tires burn a black path across the asphalt as I peal out of the lot, gasping for air and heading blindly for the shoreline. I need to get to the ocean.
The drive seems endless even though it’s only a few minutes before I see blue on the horizon. Then I’m out of the car and running on the sand as fast as my legs can take me despite my exhaustion from the earlier hockey game. I don’t care. If I stop, I’ll break...I’ll collapse and never be able to get back up. My face is wet as the taste of salt dips into my mouth, making me ache even more. Driven by pain, my vision spirals into the raw memory.
Days after my father’s warning, Speio’s father, Echlios, came back from a brief trip to Waterfell to see me. He was different that day. I’d never seen a Handler express emotion, but he did. He repeated exactly what my father had told me, but I already knew. My father never would have risked contacting me otherwise.
“Your father is dead,” he said. “The High Court has been taken by Ehmora.”
“Ehmora?”
Echlios nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Queen of the lower Ruby Court, she belonged to one of the stronger families, always opposing my parents, always scheming to replace the Gold Court with the Ruby Court. She’d never been content to stay hidden. She wanted it all—the waters, the lands, every last bit of it. And now that she’d displaced my father, she’d do anything to take control of the High Court.
And once I came of age at seventeen, I’d be the rightful heir. No wonder my father had urged me never to return. Leaving Waterfell was a part of my grooming—a necessary part of my training to understand the world in which we lived, to share the lives of humans, before I assumed the position I was born into just like all the heirs before me. But my training turned into something more with the death of my father. Without a home to return to, I took refuge in the human world.
“How?” I asked.
“It looked like a hunting accident,” Echlios said, his face shadowed. But I knew better. My father was murdered.
“My father’s advisers? What of them?” I asked him.
“All missing, presumed dead. My lady, it’s not safe for you here. Ehmora’s spies will no doubt have told her where you are.”
I shook my head. If what Echlios said was true, this was the only safe haven I had left. Running meant I’d always be on the run, and I’d never give Ehmora that satisfaction. “No running. This is my home now. What does she want, Echlios?” I asked him, and then frowned. “What’s to stop her from just killing me, too?”
“She needs you.”
“Why?”
But I already knew why. Rule of the High Court in Waterfell was determined by succession of birth, unless there was no direct heir. Then each of the lower courts—Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Gold—could present a challenger. Whoever won would become the next king or queen, and their court the new High Court. Since I was the only living heir to my father’s throne, once I came of age, the High Court would rightfully be mine. But the truth was, I didn’t want it.
“Well, she can have the throne,” I said dully. “I don’t care.”
The thought of returning to Waterfell was a bitter one, with my father gone. All his people—my people—would be looking for someone to lead them, and I wasn’t that person. To them, I’d been a frivolous child who’d shirked every form of royal responsibility and been indulged by a doting father. They’d loved him but only tolerated me. They’d be better off with Ehmora as queen. I said as much to Echlios.
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
“I do. I belong here now. I’m never going back.”
As the memory fades, I’m hissing the word never through my teeth just as the smell of salt hits me like a rolling wave, and I pump my legs faster, stopping only to throw my backpack on the side of the pier and to kick off my shoes. Self-disgust pours through me in violent waves. I hate feeling so powerless. I hate the way that Speio looks at me as if I’m a loser...a coward who’s taking the easy way out. But it’s not like I have much of a choice, do I?
In seconds, I fling myself off the edge of the pier in a graceful swan dive, letting the icy water envelop every part of me, and suddenly I can breathe again. I ignore the startled glances of the surfers clad head-to-toe in wet suits and churn my arms in a strong front crawl that takes me effortlessly past the breakers. The water is cold for February, but it feels balmy against my bare skin as I duck underneath the last of the breaking waves to make my way underwater to where the ocean rocks with a gentle wide roll.
I’m careful to control my reaction to the water—it’s like life energy to me—and it takes work to stay focused and make sure I don’t transform when every part of me wants to give in to the magical pull of the sea. But I relax enough to let the cold salty water do what I came here for. I let it soothe me, fill me, pass over and through me until I am nearly faint with it.
Until I am calm once more.
It has been only moments but it feels like days. The arms of the water will always be my home, up near the surface or down in the deep.
Floating on my back watching the popcornlike clouds sail across the sky, I don’t immediately notice the surfer paddling toward me. Or maybe I do and hope that he will go away, but I can feel the changes in the water that tell me he’s coming closer.
“Hey, you okay?”
I turn around with a flippant remark on the tip of my tongue that gets stuck as I make contact with a pair of the oddest-colored eyes I’ve ever seen—a bottomless blue, as if he’d leached the color straight from the depths of the ocean. The eyes belong to a boy not much older than me. He paddles closer.
I must have imagined the strange, nearly navy color, or it must have been some trick of the sunlight, because on closer inspection, his eyes are more dark than light, almost blue-black. His teeth flash white at my look. Flushing, I realize that I’ve been ogling him for the better part of a minute.
“I’m fine,” I manage, tearing my gaze away from his odd eyes.
The boy shoots me another knowing glance before his gaze dips to my bare arms. “Um, you’re not wearing a wet suit. Aren’t you freezing?”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, a little irritated by his smile and the fact
