Page 42 of A Sea So Cruel
Asta asked her final questions in desperation, understanding that she may never know the answer. Something was not right with her father’s memories. “How is it that Maren is finfolk, father? How is it possible?”
There was a stagnant silence in the room. The thickening air caused Asta to breathe heavily. Her father began shaking uncontrollably in rhythm with the quivering flame of the lamp.
The king’s eyes snapped open and his gaze shifted around the room as though he were seeing it for the first time. He covered his mouth with an unsteady hand and began weeping softly.
Asta took a cautious step forward. “Father?”
His wide stare slowly turned to her, sorrow flooding them and overflowing down his wrinkled cheeks. “I remember… something. The finfolk… they are real?”
Asta waved a hand through the air. “Well I would say so since I just fought for my life against them! What do you remember? Tell me.Now.”
King Botmar inhaled deeply multiple times, though it did nothing to diminish his shaking. “I have these dreams. Well, nightmares.” He forced his eyes closed once more, exhaustion visibly taking over him. “The finfolk are real. They storm the castle and take Maren away from me over and over again. She gets swept into the sea as she reaches for me and I can do nothing about it.”
“And you just so happened to keep these nightmares to yourself all this time? You never wondered what they meant?” Asta’s face felt hot and she couldn’t help but pace. Her knuckles begged for relief and she cracked each one.
“I couldn’t remember them each time I woke up, until now. It’s as though they were wiped from my memory until you confirmed their existence. There’s so much missing. There are black holes in my mind.” He gasped, “Oh gods, the things I’ve done. The things people believe I’ve done.”
The king’s hands shook as he searched his pockets and pulled out a cloth to dab his eyes.
“What do you remember? Is it about Maren?” Asta reeled in her anger at the sight and tried to approach the situation more gently, not fully understanding what was happening.
“I’m so sorry, my sweet, for what lies you’ve been told. For the life you’ve had to live because of me.” The king spoke through rattled breaths, his whole body trembling.
Asta didn’t know why, but she trusted him. She trusted this reaction—that it was genuine. “Tell me everything.”
And so, King Botmar Enrathi told his tale.
Over twenty years ago, he had met a strange navy-haired woman during a royal ball and approached her to inquire about her bold style. They exchanged pleasant conversation throughout the ball, the king always checking in with his wife to make sure she was faring well on her own—which she always had. But then someone approached him and sang a strange song to him, and he felt an undeniable need to follow the blue-haired woman out of the ball and up to his suite. The more the stranger sang, the harder it became to resist the advances of the blue-haired woman. She seduced him fully, taking him to his own bedroom where they conceived Maren. When they emerged, she told him who she was, Queen Yrsa, ruler of the finfolk.
A strange song came over him again and he listened as Yrsa explained that she would leave during her pregnancy, but return to pass the child to him to raise when she was born. On Maren’s birthday, the finfolk queen returned, as she promised, and abandoned her child with King Botmar. Through song and a strange liquid the queen made him drink, the king’s memories were altered once more, so that he would think Maren was the child of a noble. A bastard child that he was claiming to his royal line. The scandalous rumors spread from there, and Botmar had spiraled with them. His entire memory became addled, not solely his ability to remember Maren’s conception. He hardly remembered making any decisions during the last twenty-two years. It was a miracle the kingdom wasn’t in complete ruin.
But hearing what Maren was from someone who knew with absolute certainty broke him free of his spell, allowing his thoughts to solidify and make sense once more.
Asta didn’t know how to react, aside from dropping into the nearest chair she could find. Her father wasn’t an unfaithful git. He wasn’t so dependent on alcohol that his brain was permanently damaged. His memories had been tainted. He had been spelled to believe those things of himself, and she had treated him terribly because of it.
Her conception was an act of putting on a united front, but it never should have happened. Her mother never should have died birthing a child that was only brought into the world because of the trickery of a ruthless sea creature.
“She is a sea witch, Asta,” King Botmar admitted, shaking his head. “She can do more than an average finfolk. She possesses magic of electric currents. Queen Yrsa is not only dangerous, but living death itself.”
The hair on Asta’s arms stood up and a tingle ran over her body. She took a step toward her father’s desk and spoke softly. “Maren has returned to sea and taken Lord Kaidian with her. What do we do, father?”
It was the first time Asta had ever asked advice from her father. He must have realized it, too, because despite the overbearing weight of truth that had just fallen over him, he smiled.
King Botmar’s voice was gentle, like a father reassuring a daughter’s should be. It was a tone she was entirely unfamiliar with. “I will send out rescue ships. I have rough knowledge of where the Ryktarvan kingdom hides. We’ll find them.”
Them.
Asta didn’t have the heart to tell her father that Maren was never coming home.
Chapter 22
Awake, but too comfortable to open his eyes yet, Kaid rolled over in the softest bed he had ever slept in. He felt weightless, drifting through the air like a crinkled leaf in the autumn breeze.
But there wasn’t a breeze. The air around Kaid felt thick and strange. His eyes flung open to reveal a dimly-lit suite of some sort, the dark green walls containing patches of swaying grass growing from them. The only other things in the room were a vanity and two closed doors.
Kaid sat up quickly, remembering what he had last seen before blacking out. He looked down at the bed underneath himand saw that it was some sort of sponge and the blanket crossing his legs was tethered to the posts.
No, not legs. He curled the blanket back and saw the blue fin. Kaid thought he had dreamed the whole thing, his imagination helping him escape from whatever had actually happened to him. He worked his muscles as he would to make his legs wiggle and the fin rolled in response.
