A well—placed accusation—even a small, insignificant one—has the power to change the tides and start a war.
This is something I've grown up learning.
My kind have always been careful with our words…we have to be. For the last one hundred years, we've had to fight against the actions of one mermaid. Well, to be fair, one mermaid, her mother, and a group of followers, but that's just semantics. For a hundred years before that, we had to be careful too—we had an agreement with the humans.
"Are you intentionally trying to look like that?" I ask, flicking my tail flirtatiously.
"Like what, Celena?" Merrick glances up from where he's working on the sea floor against a rock, his brow low.
"Brooding," I reply.
His face lights up, realizing that he has been caught.
"Sorry, Len," he uses his pet name for me—no one else is allowed to call me that—as he moves the knife in his hands, cutting the rope.
He brushes his blue hair back with a smoldering grin before lifting himself off the sand, swimming over to me.
"Need a hand with that?"
"We're fine, Merrick," Caspian says. "Go back to not paying attention to the rest of us."
"I didn't miss that much," he mutters.
"Sure," Caspian replies.
Merrick gives him a mock—annoyed look, rolling his eyes as he grabs the net, helping us to untangle the rock.
"How did we get stuck on clean up duty?" Merrick asks, using his most charming voice as he sidles up next to me.
"We volunteered," I remind him.
"Mmm," he murmurs. "You volunteered. I just followed."
"Nothing new there, brother," Caspian teases loudly. "Always following my twin around no matter where she goes."
Caspian has no idea why Merrick and I spend so much time together.
"Shut up, Casp," Merrick chides, winking at me.
What neither of the boys knows is that I didn't volunteer just to help out—I'm on a mission.
"It amazes me how the humans are still so intent on capturing us," Caspian murmurs. "It's been a hundred years since Persephone ruined the alliance for us."
"Be fair, Casp—it wasn't just Persephone. Chantay was instrumental in all of this—most say she was the mastermind and her daughter just followed along."
My fingers work to cut away the net waving gently in the current. The knife in my hand is far more effective than the broken shells I sometimes resort to using for cutting up the instruments of death that fishermen leave in the ocean when they snag on something like coral or rocks.
"It's a shame we can't just sing this work away," Coralie swims over, attempting to carry a large, round ball. She barely manages to roll it across the sea floor.
"That's not the way sireny works, starfish," I correct her. "And stop playing with that canon ball."
My little sister pouts, looking up.
"I'm not playing with it, I'm trying to help," she mutters.
"We don't need to collect human things, just remove the dangerous ones," I remind her. Coralie has only been out to help us a few times, but I'd rather she stay at home—she's too young for me to be able to sneak off and run missions while she's with us, and Caspian will start to catch on if I dump her in his care all the time.
"It would still be easier if we could sing it away," she grumbles, running hair hands through her blonde hair.
"We are not sirens, Cor, and don't even suggest that," I snap. Caspian and Merrick stop to look at me. I try not to blush as I lower my voice. "We are not like that, Coralie. Sireny has been outlawed since great—great—grandmother Aila caught Persephone sirening the prince."
"We're better off," Caspian mumbles. "We don't need the humans to survive. They haven't been able to find us in a hundred years anyway, so who cares what stupid stunt Persephone and her mother pulled?"
"You mean aside from hundreds of dead humans, the mer population splitting, our entire kingdom having to leave our home and move here, and—oh, yes—the entire human race hunting us for a century?" I chide him.
"Settle down, children," Merrick chimes in, playfully trying to quell an impending argument.
This is why Caspian has never been informed of my extracurricular activities over the last few years. This is also why Merrick has been on most of my missions with me.
"Well, maybe we could train the sharks to move this stuff for us," Coralie suggests.
I certainly have my hands full with this one.
"Coralie, it's all we could do to train them to act as a barrier for Scylla, for coral's sake. It's not like they're pets—they don't have the ability to open things like an octopus does. They're there to eat—that's all."
"Well maybe grandma Aila should have come up with a better plan," Coralie mumbles.
"Aila saved us all, Cor," I eye her. "Show a little respect. She prevented Persephone from destroying the entire mer population. She even managed to bring Persephone in from the open seas."