I shrug. “I don’t know but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“They forget to live it. My sisters and I live in between the worlds. They with their laria and hordes of petulant pixies. Yet I, I must always be alone.”
“You weren’t alone.” Kurt reaches for her. “You had me.”
She takes his hand. “I waited a thousand years for you. And when I had you, it was too, too, too much. You’d lie in my arms and in sleep, your thoughts turned to chaos. Then I sent you away.”
“So you see the future?” I remember when I met the first oracle, Shelly, the youngest. She could only read corny shells. She said she was born with the smallest bit of magics. If Lucine is the strongest, that means she is the eldest.
“I see what the fates bid me to see. Sometimes it’s everything all at once. Tiny voices and faces hurting, loving, dying. Flocks of ravens tearing at each other’s wings. Worms digging deep into the dirt. They’re all in here.” She places one hand over her temple and one over her heart.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I say, “but there’s a really nasty mermaid who wants to take over the throne and I need that trident. She’s even left you guys unprotected by sending away your sea dragons.”
“The day Nieve, daughter of the sea, commands any of my dragons is the day I breathe my last breath, and that day is not yet upon us.”
“Your dragons?” If only I had my dagger. “You sent the dragon?”
“How else could Adaro, witless as he is, reach the staff? How could I get you to trust Comit to guide you here without them?”
I feel like I’ve been set on fire. “But you told Adaro he’d find what he was looking for on this shore.”
“And he will.” Her smile is cruel. “Don’t think for a moment that we don’t know what we’re doing. The king was the foolish one to go against our wishes. I told him what needed to be done and he defied us.” She swims to the center of her pool and pulls it out of the water. The trident. It’s brighter somehow. The gold etchings glisten. Sparks fly between the prongs. If she points that thing at me, I will fry.
“This,” she says, “is the true power.”
I step closer to her. Kurt and I are side by side. I can feel the scepter between my shoulder blades reacting to it, glowing with the same light.
“What is it you want?” I ask her finally.
“I want one thing.” She lowers the trident. “To give the power to the true heir of the king—”
I hold out my hands. But I can see it in her eyes. I want to run. I want to fight. I want to grab it from her and shove it into her heart. Anything to make this moment untrue.
“The last son of kings, Kurtomathetis.”
Yet echoes in my heart a voice,
As far, as near, as these—
The wind that weeps,
The solemn surge
Of strange and lonely seas.
—Walter de la Mare, from “Echoes”
Here in the Second Circle, beneath the saloon of belly-dancing girls and Madame Mercury’s collection of monstrous beauties, is Lucine, the oracle who can see the future. She holds the trident for Kurt to take.
Kurt, who appeared in the form of a fish in my bathtub the first time I shifted. Kurt, who led me to Toliss Island, who fought by my side, who taught me how to hold a sword properly. My friend Kurt. I work out the family tree in my head. If he’s the last son of kings, then Kurt is my uncle.
“Did you know?” There’s a twinge in my spine. And what if he did know? What if he spent all this time letting me feel special and chosen when he knew he was the true son of the king? Then I say it louder. “Did you know?”
Kurt shakes his head. He can’t look at me. He can’t look at her. He bows his head and looks at his hands, the deep grooves and callouses, the thin fissures of scars.
“When did you begin to suspect the truth, Kurtomathetis?” Lucine asks. She’s manic and giddy, and I want to skewer her with my scepter. My scepter.
“I was sharpening the weapons,” Kurt whispers. “On Arion’s ship. When we went down to the cove. I was sharpening our weapons and I realized what I was holding. Triton’s dagger. It—it didn’t burn me. After we saw