me to him in a rough hug. I smelled salt and cinnamon in his skin and tried to quash the memories of how good that skin tasted. I felt him pull himself back as he started to press into me. He drew a circle around my face with a calloused finger.
“I don’t know where you’re going, and I’m not gonna ask. But just stay safe, huh?”
I was sure as hell gonna try.
Chapter Five
Rick Astley and Other Old Friends
Gadulan Precinct, Aegira
I watched, kinda detached, as tiny bubbles popped like childhood dreams around me and Mom. All the pieces of me weren’t back together yet. My eyes, and the rest of me, were still adjusting after their heady, scattered flight through space and water. But I was getting there. We were suspended, floating, in The Eye of the Goddess, the site of tomorrow’s wedding, re-forming before what looked like a thousand eyes, antennas and various other ways of checking you out. I’d done this often enough to know that we were also glowing burnished gold, like idols.
Helluva way to make an entrance.
I knew I was a novelty for those watching. A dark, muscular Aegiran, only my breasts breaking the steel. Mermaids, honest-to-goodness ones, don’t look quite so badass. They manage to look like a Waterhouse painting even though they’re hard as nails.
Every time I came to this vast marine cathedral I imagined The Awakening. I knew from the legends that the piazza on the island of Hlsey had been the epicenter of Aegir’s storm. And now, in its place, a still, underwater lagoon, the eye of a magical tornado, framed by the rush and suck of mammoth protective walls. The Eye of the Goddess. This tornado, and the temple-like bubble it wrapped itself around, was all that was left of Aegir’s wrath. And it still swirled and broiled ten thousand years later at the centre of a bustling city-state refuge.
Aegira.
A place of peace and hope for all who breathed water.
I couldn’t see Aegira’s golden peaks here in The Eye of the Goddess, but I could picture them. After the sunken buildings of Hlsey had withered, a supple coral hybrid had been used to rebuild. Almost impenetrable, it allowed water through and burned with a fierce golden glow.
As my brain started to wake up properly, I wondered again if it was Aegira’s glow that had birthed the legend of Atlantis. I blinked a couple of times to release my little-used inner-eyelids and swept the scene before me. I don’t think I’d ever seen such an exotic menagerie of Aegirans and other sea creatures, promenading together in this giant bubble of warm water.
My eyes roved over the teeming life caught in the golden light of The Eye. Creatures of all the treaty nations of the deep, and refugees from other, more brutal states. Brilliantly colored fish, who made me feel insipid and small beside them. Massive rays, floating like ghostly liquid through the throng. Squid, eels, some of the more peace-loving sharks. Even a handful of junior dolphins (I guessed the leaders would be at the main event tomorrow).
Also the covert ones, known only to Aegira. Silent at the bottom of the sea, and grateful for Aegira’s veil of secrecy. Gynomarls, silver-blue snake creatures with women’s faces, midwives to generations of Aegiran women. The displaced Leigons, whom Aegira had adopted, carrying gifts of pearl on their broad, faithful shoulders. Like oxen with fins. Sand Seeders, shifting masses of pure energy that rose from the seabed and could form and scatter at will. Brilliant, but ephemeral. And then the Aegirans. Beautiful to a man, woman and child.
There were many children here tonight.
As the thought settled in my brain, I saw her. Swimming skittishly on the spot, looking like she was studiously avoiding gawping at us the way everyone else was as we came back together after the hydroport. The Princess Lecanora.
All silver blonde hair, floating around her like a halo, and serious grey eyes.
She was standing close to some children cavorting in the water with a group of young fish of the Resicalian Dynasty. Like peacocks of the sea, the blue-green fish flashed and shone as they played tag in the golden pool with the Aegiran children. I thought for a moment I caught a blast of bittersweet longing in the Princess’ eyes as she watched them.
It was not in Lecanora’s destiny to have a child. For that, you needed a man.
And Aegiran men did not choose with those without a line. Not even their