Chapter 21: : Chapter 20

THE REST of the day was a blur. Ariel didn’t return to speak with him after Vanessa scared her away, and Eric knew it should have bothered him. Ariel was his friend, and Vanessa had cast her aside like trash. It was upsetting.

Except no part of him felt upset.

He felt empty, hollowed out, and he couldn’t ever recall being full. He knew there were things he was forgetting—things he had meant to do, things he should be doing, things he shouldn’t be doing. It just all felt so inconsequential.

It was easier to smile and nod when Vanessa spoke. She told him to focus on getting ready for the wedding and little else while walking him to his quarters. After that, he was in Carlotta’s gentle care, and he bathed and got dressed slowly. Carlotta asked about Vanessa and the wedding, hemming and hawing with each of Eric’s answers, and he frowned. He didn’t have many answers, but that wasn’t odd. Vanessa was a private person.

Late afternoon, an hour before dusk, Grimsby pulled Carlotta aside and whispered to her as Eric smoothed the wrinkles from his coat. Gabriella and Vanni came to walk him to the wedding ship before he could ask Grimsby what was going on.

“Grimsby’s got a plan,” Vanni whispered to Eric as they left him at the back of the deck behind the guests. “Don’t worry.”

They were standing near the stern, where Vanessa would join Eric soon. One walk down the aisle—that was all that separated him from being married.

“I’m not worried,” Eric said. “Why would I be?”

Vanni only shot Gabriella a look before they moved to their seats.

Waiting for Vanessa to appear so the wedding ceremony could begin, Eric tugged at the uncomfortably tight collar of his state clothes. He took a breath and looked around the ship. Columns as white as whale bones rose up from the deck, green vines and pale pink flowers twining up them, and the evening’s ruddy light spilled out over the bay. At the prow, the Vellona crest rested beneath great curtains of ocean blue, gilding glittering in the sun. A crown sat above it all.

The sun touched the horizon. Music swelled. The wedding guests shifted in their seats, the familiar forms of Vanni and Gabriella twisting in their chairs to look at him. Gabriella’s expression was tense, the green scarf holding back her hair wrinkled from constant fiddling, and Vanni hadn’t even dressed up. That should’ve bothered Eric, and he knew it. He couldn’t bring himself to care, though. That couldn’t be good.

Soft footfalls neared, and the guests rose.

Finally, he was marrying his true love, but there was no lightning strike of excitement or flutter of love. Maybe he simply had to spark his own happiness.

Vanessa glided next to him, and her white-and-pink skirt rustled against his trousers. The peachy sky began to darken to a red-stained orange.

“Ready, sweetling?” Vanessa asked. She did not take his arm. “Walk.”

Eric couldn’t move his head from staring straight ahead, not even when he heard Max whimper.

The altar was no more than two dozen paces away or so, but each step was an eternity. The guests looked on with the same somber expressions. Sauer was the only one who didn’t look like they were at a funeral, and that was mostly the red coat’s fault.

Eric and Vanessa reached the small altar before the even smaller priest, and the crown of Vellona loomed over them. The blue curtains were dark against the backdrop of the setting sun, and Max tugged against his leash at Grimsby’s side. Eric wanted to pull away and comfort him, but Vanessa would hate that.

Eric hated that she would hate that. He hated that he didn’t even try to pull away and calm Max.

“Welcome!” said the priest, and his voice was barely loud enough for Eric to hear, much less everyone else. “Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to see these two lovebirds bound in matrimony.”

The priest droned on and the sun sunk lower.

“… you, Eric, take Lady Vanessa to be your lawfully wedded wife for as long as you both shall live?” the priest asked finally.

Eric paused. True love should not feel underwhelming or mediocre or whatever this empty emotion was. It was supposed to be all-encompassing and passionate. He should have been happy.

When was the last time he had been? Last night? Before he met Van—

Vanessa squeezed his arm, nails digging through his sleeve, and Eric spoke without thinking. “I do.”

A gull squawked. The priest paused, looking up. Eric longed to look and see what was happening, but kept repeating in his head. He didn’t move, and Vanessa turned away from him. A flock of birds tore across the bow, forcing Vanessa away from Eric. The priest ducked behind his podium.

Wings and webbed feet raked over Eric’s shoulders, but he still couldn’t move. The flock swooped again, dropping half-eaten fish and seaweed on the deck. Vanessa shrieked, and the guests scattered back toward the stern. Water splashed against the ship, rocking it. The ship listed severely.

“Eric!” Vanni called.

Eric couldn’t even answer him. His arms trembled as the world became a swirl of white feathers. He forced himself to move, letting the tilt of the ship drag him to the side and spin him around. The scene played out in a shuddering blur, birds sweeping guests from the deck and crabs scurrying with military precision. A pair of sea lions barreled through the crowd, sliding across the deck and into Vanessa. Vanni and Gabriella herded some of the guests into the captain’s quarters. Nora looked anxiously over the rail.

“Why didn’t we plan for this?” asked Grimsby.

“We prepared to fight a witch!” Sauer ripped a starfish off their shoulder and flung it at Grimsby. “Why would anyone ever plan for this?”

A sea lion slammed into Vanessa and threw her into the cake. She screamed, flinging buttercream and salt water from her face. Her legs tangled in her sodden dress.

“Eric!” Gabriella helped Vanni away from the other sea lion. “Come on!”

He wanted to. He needed to. His feet shuffled, each movement painful and slow. The wedding guests were scattered and panicking, overrun by the rampant sea creatures. Everyone was trying to find a place to hide or just trying to stay upright and on the deck instead of being knocked overboard. Vanessa’s eyes rolled to Eric and narrowed, and she used one of the frightened guests to help her stand. She tossed them aside once she was done.

“Don’t you dare lea—” A wave swept over the side of the ship and smacked into her back.

Hair red as the setting sun caught Eric’s gaze. And then there was Ariel, gasping for breath and soaked to the bone, crawling onto the deck through a scupper hole and stumbling to her feet.

Noticing the girl, Vanessa lurched toward Ariel, but a scraggly gull caught her necklace in his beak and pulled her back.

“Oh, you little…” Vanessa grabbed the gull by the throat and twisted. “You think a ball of feathers can stop me?”

Max growled at Grimsby’s side. The dog whined at Eric and then ripped his lead free of Grimsby, launching himself at Vanessa. His teeth locked down on the back of her leg. She screeched and dropped the gull. It ripped the necklace from her neck, and the golden shell fell to the ground. It shattered at Vanessa’s feet.

A golden mist rose from the pieces, bright against the dark scarlet of the sunken sun beyond the ship. The tendrils twined together, and the distant hum of a familiar tune rocked through Eric. He closed his eyes, the sound reaching deep into his soul as his savior’s song echoed over the deck. It was beautiful and otherworldly, and he couldn’t believe he had thought it Vanessa’s. The voice was kind and certain in a way Vanessa wasn’t. She hadn’t even bothered to learn Carlotta’s name, for Triton’s sake. Eric opened his eyes.

The golden glow of magic warmed the air and drifted to Ariel like dandelion fluff on a breeze, and her beaming smile matched the clear, bell-like tone of the voice. Ariel held up her hands, and the magic moved eagerly to her. She clutched it, pulling the voice to her throat. It settled into her skin.

One final note rang out, and Ariel’s skin, the air, the world, glimmered with magic.

The haze in Eric’s head cleared. Whatever hold Vanessa had over Eric broke, the tightly strung tension in his body fading. The near-constant headache vanished, and he tried to reach out for Ariel. His shaking hands moved easily through the air, and he could move again. He fell to his knees, unable to take his eyes from Ariel. She smiled and gestured at the sea lions. They lay down at once. Max danced around her in joy.

“Ariel?” he whispered, finally free to speak.

She smiled and said, “Eric!”

It was the first time her voice had been hers, and it was glorious. He was back on the beach, drowning and exhausted, and her voice was the air in his lungs. It wasn’t bells in winter ringing out over the icy waves. It wasn’t like anything he’d heard before. His name on her lips was everything.

Max leapt up on Ariel, licking her face. She laughed, not the silent one he was used to but beautiful all the same, and patted his head. Eric stumbled to her.

“Ariel,” he said again, and took her hands in his.

“Eric! No! Get away from her!” Vanessa yelled. Her voice, lower and rougher, raked at his ears.

Eric put her off for one more moment and pulled Ariel close. “It was you all this time.”

“Oh, Eric,” she said, and the words struck him like an arrow. “I wanted to tell you.”

It was if they were back on Sauer’s ship with the Blood Tide seeping across the sea before them, red and terrifying, and Ariel diving from the ship, except this time, he dove with her.

Eric bent to kiss her.

“Eric!” Vanessa howled. “No!”

But before his lips met Ariel’s, she flinched away from him. The bloody red light of the fully set sun washed over her, and she crumpled and clutched her legs. A gasp of pain and an unsettling crack silenced everyone. Her legs shimmered and fused together. Green scales burst from her skin.

A mermaid’s tail thrashed where her legs had once been.

Shock froze him in place. Ariel’s tail knocked against the deck, iridescent and glittering in the falling light. A stranger wrapped in nothing but sailcloth appearing on a beach with no knowledge of the kingdom or written language and an endless curiosity focused on things commonplace to most kingdoms—he should’ve known from the start. His savior had rescued him from the depths of the sea during a storm and swam him all the way to Vellona’s safe shores. Of course she was a mermaid.

He moved to tell her it was fine—she was right not to tell him, since she had no way to know how he would react—and reassure her, but a roiling cackle cut him off.

“You’re too late!” cried Vanessa.

Eric spun to face her and stumbled. Storm clouds gathered over the ship, lightning webbing the sky. All of it centered on Vanessa, the flashes shadowing her face. Her skin burst at the seams, color undulating across the once-pale flesh in hypnotic swirls until it turned a deep purple, darkening to black the lower it went. Her legs split up the sides. They thickened and twisted, six writhing tentacles spilling out from her flesh. She ran her hands through her dark hair, and it faded to white beneath her fingers.

The remaining wedding guests screamed and scrambled away from her. Eric stepped between her and Ariel.

“Oh, sweetling. No warm welcome?” She rose up on her tentacles and smirked down at him. “I thought you would be much more excited to see me after you spent so much time hunting me.”

Eric hadn’t had time to truly consider her last night. This was who had cursed him before he was even born, finally before him just as he had imagined so often these last few days. He had assumed he would be prepared, not reeling after being compelled into a marriage he had rejected. It was fitting; even the choice of how they met she had stolen from him. A flush of heat surged through him. He wanted to hurt her as much as she had hurt him. Offer her everything she wanted and rip it away. Make her feel worthless.

And he hated it, but he hated her more.

Ursula surged forward before Eric could move, snatching Ariel and pulling herself up onto the rail.

“You’re too late!” repeated Ursula. “So long, lover boy.”

Eric lunged, but Ursula dove over the side of the ship, slipping out of Eric’s grasp with Ariel in her arms.

“Get the guests away,” Eric shouted. “I have to go help Ariel.”

He turned and found Vanni and Gabriella at his side. Grimsby was herding the guests into the quarters and out of the way, and Sauer was at the helm. The ship began to turn slowly, its lack of sails working against them. The rowers were still recovering.

Vanni grabbed Eric’s hand. “You can’t deal with Ursula alone. Remember what Malek said.”

“I know, and I love you both,” said Eric, wrapping his arms around Vanni’s neck. He grabbed Gabriella by the shirt and pulled her close, too. “Help Sauer and Nora get the ship back to shore safely.”

“Eric,” Gabriella muttered into his shoulder, and pulled away to look at him.

Vanni shook his head, fingers still clenching Eric’s coat. “No, we can go with you. Grimsby and Sauer can get everyone to safety.”

“I trust you both with my life, but more importantly, I trust you with the bay. Grimsby’s going to need help evacuating Cloud Break,” Eric said. “And Ursula isn’t here to take Vellona. She will if she can, but she’s here, first and foremost, for Ariel and me. We need to be the ones to face her.”

“Fine.” Gabriella hugged him once more and pulled Vanni away. “But once people are out of danger, we’re coming right back out to help.”

If Eric couldn’t defeat Ursula, he would at least get people as far away from her as possible.

The wedding ship was better equipped for battle than Eric had thought it would be, but pistols and swords would be useless underwater. Eric’s friends had clearly been planning for a fight on the ship, whether or not they had realized Eric’s bride had been Ursula in disguise. Eric was thankful to find two harpoons in the hold, and he tossed them into the ship’s dinghy, darting between the panicking guests who were still overrun with upset birds and sea lions. Max found Eric on the quarterdeck and locked his teeth around his ankle, tugging him away from the ship’s edge. Eric patted Max’s head.

“I have to go, buddy,” Eric said, glancing over the sea every few seconds. There was a golden light beneath the water a little ways from the ship, and he was terrified of losing track of it. How could he help Ariel when he was only human? He knelt down and pried himself free of Max. “Come on. Let me go before Grim figures out I’m leaving.”

Max whined and licked his face but ran back over the deck.

Eric lowered the dinghy into the waves. He climbed down into it, the choppy sea throwing the little boat back and forth. He could still spy the glow of magic through the water, and he rowed toward it. Ursula would have the advantage, but there was no helping that. At least it had stopped moving away.

A strangled shout from the ship caught his attention. “Eric!”

He turned back and groaned. Grimsby stood at the rail, expression stricken.

“Eric!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

“Grim, I lost her once. I’m not going to lose her again!”

Eric pushed on toward the light. He would do all the paperwork in the world without complaint after this so long as Grimsby got back to shore safely.

With another dozen good strokes, Eric was atop the glow of magic. He stopped rowing and grabbed a harpoon. He dove into the sea, warbling sounds like whale calls shaking him all the way to his bones. Under the water he could make out Ursula, a golden crown atop her head and a large glowing trident in her hands. Two large eels Eric recognized from the Isle curled over her shoulders like a cape. She had pinned Ariel against a rock, jabbing the trident at Ariel’s neck.

Fury ripped through Eric, and he hauled his arm back before launching the harpoon. It sliced through Ursula’s arm, drawing a hazy cloud of blue blood. Ursula spun to face him, distracted, and Ariel eased away from her.

“Why, you little troll!” Ursula raised the trident toward him.

Eric spun and swam away.

“Eric!” Ariel’s voice rippled through the water, otherworldly and familiar all at once. “Look out!”

Ursula whipped around and hissed at the eels. “After him!”

The eels cut toward him. Their jaws worked as they swam, teeth gnashing at his feet. Eric’s chest ached, and he gasped for breath when he broke the surface. Air flooded his lungs, and his fingers scrambled for a hold on the boat. The eels wrapped around his legs and yanked. Ocean water filled his mouth.

One of the eels tightened around his chest and arms. The other twined between his legs. They pulled him deeper and deeper, and salt burned in Eric’s eyes. He struggled against their hold, but their teeth nipped at his hands every time he tried to break free. A blur of blue and yellow, the same bright fish that had followed them to the Isle of Serein, flew at the eels and rammed into one’s head. The eel about his legs shivered and let go. It tried to wiggle free of the crab clinging to its tail. The other released Eric to help it.

Eric drifted up, and he twisted, trying to spot Ariel. The witch raised the trident, magic sizzling at its tip, and Eric’s exhausted limbs moved too slow.

“Say goodbye to your sweetheart,” Ursula said.

Ariel lunged and yanked Ursula back by her hair. The magic meant for Eric struck the eels. They lit up like storm clouds, lightning coursing through their bodies. They exploded in a shower of magic and bone.

Ursula gasped and gathered up the pieces of them to her chest.

Ariel fled while Ursula was distracted. Eric raced back to the surface and gasped for air. Ariel broke the surface near him.

“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling her close.

Ariel wrapped her arms around his waist. “You have to get away from here.”

“No, I won’t leave you,” he said, and pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to go through with the wedding, but I couldn’t stop myself. Her voice, well, voice—it was some sort of compulsion, like the ghosts.”

“It’s all right.” Ariel gripped his collar. “Eric, I’m sorry I—”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said. Lying Eric could understand. It was necessary to survive, whether you were lying about your name or a curse or some other important piece of yourself. There was safety in lies. “We can talk later.

have to get away from here.”

“She has my father,” said Ariel. “He’s King Triton—”

“

King Triton?” Eric nearly choked.

She tapped his shoulder once. “I have to get back his crown and trident, or else she’ll be unstoppable.”

Had she not been unstoppable before?

The water around them glowed with bone-white light and bubbled. The waves grew and ripped Ariel from Eric’s arms. He struggled to reach her again, and a golden spear rose up from the water. Ursula, great and terrible, a leviathan of magic and fury, emerged from the sea. She was giant and growing larger still. Ariel and Eric clung to her crown, trapped atop her. Ariel shouted to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the rushing of the sea. She pantomimed diving.

Eric peeked over the edge of the crown to the sea far below and nodded.

“One,” he said.

Ariel swallowed and shouted, “Two.”

They dove together, crashing into the water, and Eric surged to the surface. He looked around for Ariel, salt burning his eyes. Ariel swam up a few feet away.

“You pitiful, insignificant fools,” Ursula said, cackling as the clouds swirled in a maelstrom at the tip of her trident. She was taller than Vellona’s highest cliffs, inescapable and pulsing with power. “You think you can win this fight?”

Eric shook the salt water from his face. “You took everything from people for decades!”

He peeked at Ariel once and tried to keep Ursula’s attention away from her.

“That’s what people do. We take,” she spat. “I started with nothing, and look at where I am now.”

“Was it worth it?” Eric shouted. “All that pain and suffering? What was it even for? More magic? More injustice?”

“This is justice!” She sneered down at him. “Restitution! Retribution! I am taking what I am owed. I am taking what your”—she rounded on Ariel—“family has taken from me. You think Triton wronged you? Do you know what he used to do to witches he feared might get more powerful than him? Banishment! Death! And for what? Because I used a few little souls! You have no idea what true desperation is, but I do.”

“Why?” shouted Eric. “What use do you have for every soul and crown and kingdom?”

“None except to rule!” She bounced a ball of sickly green lightning across her fingers and flicked it toward the bay with the trident. The water around it boiled and steamed. It slammed into the supports of a dock. “Don’t worry, sweetling. I want them to bow, not die.”

Ariel was only a few strokes away from him now.

“You want to reshape the world to serve you!”

“Of course I do, darling,” she said with a laugh. The trident glowed in her hands. “The world was shaped by people like you and Triton. It was shaped to serve you. Why shouldn’t I have a turn?”

Ariel was just about to reach Eric when a tentacle as large as a ship emerged and crashed into the water between them.

“Now I am the ruler of all the ocean!” Ursula spun her trident, magic crackling in the air, and plunged it into the water. The sea churned around Ariel, wreckage-choked eddies twisting around her. “The waves obey my every whim. The sea and all its spoils bow to my power.” Ursula loomed over Ariel. “And so will you, Princess.”

She said it with such venom, Eric recoiled.

His mother’s journals detailing the destruction left in Ursula’s wake were proof enough of Ursula’s deviousness. She had stolen Ariel’s voice and used it against her. She had bewitched Eric after he rejected her and stripped him of his ability to tell her no. Ursula manipulated and manipulated until people had no choice but to make impossible deals with her, and even then she removed their real choice with contracts and magic. She had rigged the game so that the only choices were hers.

But knowing she was monstrous and facing the monster were very different.

This was what she had wanted all along—dominion over sea and land and an army of ghosts to ensure her rule. Power derived from desperate souls with no one else to turn to. She must have been one of them once. She had to have been, to know exactly how to lure them.

She didn’t want to shape the world. She wanted to control it.

“Eric!” Ariel shrieked.

The whirlpool pulled Eric in, sucking him beneath the waves, and the holey hull of an old ship passed over him. Eric slammed into the wood and got dragged along it. His fingers scrambled for purchase. He caught the slimy remains of a rope.

It whipped about in the storm. Eric groaned, pulling himself up to the barnacle-washed deck. He collapsed on it, pain burning in his chest and arms, and Ariel screamed again. He slipped to the rail and looked for her. A flicker of red tumbled down the walls of water to the seafloor at the bottom of the whirlpool. Ariel crawled behind a large rock.

“It was so easy,” Ursula said. “What was that old man teaching you that you didn’t bother to read the contract you signed?”

The shattered bones of shipwrecks bobbed in the whirlpool and smashed into each other, raining salt and splinters onto Ariel. She threw up her arms to protect herself.

What could he do? Eric searched the ship for anything—cannon, harpoon, pistol—and found nothing. The rigging was tangled in the broken deck boards and eaten through by years in the sea. The masts were broken.

Up on the quarterdeck, the wheel still spun with the rocking of the ship. Eric lurched to the stairs and dragged himself toward the wheel with the rail. The tiller ropes were still attached, so he could steer the ship. At the very least, he could get between Ariel and Ursula.

“Is this all you’ve got, girl?” Ursula aimed her trident at Ariel, and magic burned through the air in jagged bolts. Ariel leapt out of the way, the stone where she had been smoldering. Ursula whipped another lash of magic at her. “Where’s your prince now?”

Eric spun the wheel and turned the ship to Ursula. A rage Eric had never known consumed him, and a flash of lightning struck the jagged spear of the bowsprit. Ursula had taken his life, his love, his choices, his mother, and his kingdom from him. He only had one shot.

He wouldn’t let her take anything else from him ever again.

“So much for true love.” Ursula laughed and narrowed her eyes. “Sweet dreams, Princess.”

She raised the trident, ready to strike. Eric screamed, muscles aching at the grip it took to keep the ship steady. Before Ursula could complete her blow, the bowsprit cut through her stomach, impaling her, and the pale waters ran sapphire blue with her blood. She choked and looked down, hand grasping at the ship. The trident slipped from her fingers, and lightning struck her crown. She fell onto the ship, flipping it forward. It launched Eric into the air.

He hit the water, one last glance of Ariel safe and sound calming his heart, and it all went black.