Part of Your World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,8

any sort of decent queen. Since she never should have been queen to begin with.

When she had returned to her sisters five years before, voiceless and deep in despair over what had happened to her, she'd fully expected banishment, punishment—at the very least, severe chastisement. Instead her family did something utterly unexpected: they made her ruler over all of Atlantica. There was no precedent for this; as the youngest child of the mer-king it would normally have taken the deaths of all six older sisters before the crown

came to her.

"You're responsible for the murder of our father," they had said. "It's only right that you take on his burdens."

Privately Ariel wondered if it was less punishment for her than a relief for them. None of her sisters wanted the job. As royal princesses they could sing and play all day, dress up m fancy shells, wear crowns, oversee dances and parades and balls... and never actually have to do any real work. These days she often watched her sisters laughing and singing and wondered at the gulf that had grown between them. Here she was, the youngest, some would say the prettiest—at one time perhaps most thoughtless of the lot—and now she sat on a throne, envying them.

The merfolk adored their queen despite her silence and melancholic air. Or perhaps because of it. Mer poets and musicians wrote odes and epics to the tragedy of her existence, the romance that had almost caused a kingdom's downfall.

She did not enjoy these.

She did not enjoy the attention of the mermen, either. Once upon a time, as a younger, more innocent thing, she had never even noticed boys. Mer boys, at least.

Now she was forced to notice them, to keep an eye on them, to be aware of what ulterior motives they had: to wed the queen, maybe to become king.

Ha, she thought bitterly. If only they knew what a pain it is to rule.

She hadn't been even a tide-cycle into her new office before she had begun to understand her father's temper and moods. He had been a firm leader who rarely smiled, presenting the perfect image of an old god: stony- faced, bearded, permanent. Prone to glowering and frowning. She and her sisters always teased him, trying to win smiles from him, trying to get him to steal an hour from his duties to play with them. Mostly they had to content themselves with his presence at official functions, banquets, and performances like the one Ariel had skipped—the one that had started the whole thmg.

She wished she could tell him she understood. Being a ruler was hard. It made one frown, turn pensive, grumpy.

It should have been an easy job; the merfolk and their allies were the happiest, most carefree peoples in the world.

Well, until a tribe of branzinos moved a little too close to the viewing garden of a royal cousin.

Or the shark-magister insisted on expanding his people's hunting rights all the way to Greydeep Canyon.

Or, far more importantly, a reef suddenly turned white and died for no apparent cause. Or the diamondback terrapins couldn't make it to their favorite nesting place because there were houses there now. Or the humans had managed to catch—and eat—an entire delegation from the northern seas. Or the number of fishing vessels was getting too large to ignore, to relegate to the unwritten and ancient Dry World-Sea World laws of yore.

Yet despite these much more pressing concerns, cousin Yerena still complained about the branzinos and her garden and "their ugly faces."

It made Ariel irritable just thinking about it.

Besides general grumpiness, there was another more serious similarity between the king and his daughter. Any joy Triton had taken in life, even with his daughters, was constantly shadowed by sorrow over his dead wife.

Any respite Ariel took in her new life was constantly shadowed by her sorrow and guilt over her dead father.

And so she ruled, firmly and well, but silently and with much melancholy.

She cleared her throat, one of the few noises she could still make, and was leaning forward to give the little crab a piece of her mmd when Flounder came swimming up.

Her old friend was larger and happily fatter than when they had first set out to the surface years ago. He had a medallion around his neck to show rank; the imprmt of the trident meant he was in the innermost ring of the royal circle. But unlike the adorable little helper fish and servant seahorses, he didn't turn his chest