For the Taking

She lifted that strong, stubborn chin. “Is that what happened in Pacifica, all those years ago? Not as far as I’m concerned!”

“You were too young to understand. If you’d listen to me, I could tell you. My father had nothing to do with your mother’s death.”

“Oh, he didn’t?”

“No. He was horrified that one of his supporters had taken a speech of his and interpreted it in that way. The man was acting totally alone.”

He heard the smallest tremor of doubt in his own voice, and wondered if Lass had picked up on it. He still wasn’t sure of the whole truth himself. There was a tiny thread of evidence—the report of one witness—that suggested Joran, one of Okeana’s own supporters, had incited the fanatical assassin to murder Okeana’s wife in order to further the unrest that Joran sought.

For the moment, however, Loucan ignored the possibility. It was a detail that didn’t affect his own innocence. He had been three thousand miles from Pacifica when Wailele died.

He pressed on.

“Listen to me, Lass. Trust me at least long enough for us to talk about Phoebe and Kai and Saegar, and for me to tell you why I’m here. I’m not just looking for your belief in my version of the past. There’s more than that. I’ve spent years searching for you. Give me some time. Let me help you in the tearoom today, and we’ll—”

She laughed. “You? The self-styled rightful king of Pacifica, Loucan the Triumphant, or whatever you’ve decided to call yourself, cutting tomatoes and stacking the dishwasher? What could your royal majesty possibly know about my kitchen?”

He grinned, seeing the chance to soften her with humor, and grabbing it.

“I admit I’m more experienced at tending bar than pouring coffee,” he said, still smiling as he invited her to share his amusement. “But I’ve worked in the galley of a commercial fishing boat, cooking a hot breakfast for twelve hungry men after we’ve been up all night hauling nets. I know which side of a teapot to hold, and which to pour from.”

“Big deal!”

“I bussed tables once for a few months, a long time ago, when I was around seventeen. You should see how fast I can flick a wet cloth around, when it’s needed. You need help today, and I’m offering. For less than minimum wage. Couldn’t we start from there?”

His smile was as hot as summer sunlight and as powerful as the sea itself. It pulled at Lass’s emotions, the way the ocean did in all its moods.

Loucan knew all about that. He was a creature of the ocean himself. Even so, she would have forced herself to stay immune to his smile if he hadn’t pulled the packet of photos from the tight back pocket of his jeans, and added casually, “Tell me what to do to start setting up, and you can look at these while I work.”

“All right. Okay. Uh…I’m not— This isn’t a capitulation, Loucan,” she insisted. “All it is…it’s for Saegar and my sisters.”

“I know that,” he said quietly. “I understand. By the end of the day, I hope your reasons will change, but for now it’s good enough.”

“Okay,” she said again. The word hardly had meaning. “Good.”

Unlocking the door that opened directly into the gallery, she led the way past blue-green seascapes, glazed ceramics and trays of delicate jewelry, feeling as if she was walking with Loucan into a new future she hadn’t even imagined three days ago. She was terrified of everything about it.

Chapter Two

Cyria was the one who had taught her to be afraid, and to set herself apart.

Time and again, she had held Lass close to her and whispered, “No one should have to see what you’ve seen. We’ll never go back. Not unless your father himself comes to claim you and tells us that Pacifica is safe for us again. Promise me that.”

“I promise, Cyria. Only if it’s safe.”

As Lass grew older, she heard the same message from Cyria in more sophisticated language.

“We’ll stay hidden here,” Cyria said. “Forever, if we have to. King Okeana will come for us only if it’s safe. If we’re careful, no one will suspect that we are mer. These land-dwellers, they have no soul and no sense. It would never occur to them that all their silly legends about mer people could possibly contain an element of truth. Joran was right in what he told your father. We must use our kinship with the land-dwellers to take what we need from them, but we must never make the mistake of thinking they are our equals. You in particular, Thalassa. You are a mer princess, and you must never forget it.”

Of course, Lass hadn’t blindly accepted everything Cyria told her. Young girls didn’t, particularly once they reached the adolescent years of rebellion and quest for selfhood. But enough of it had stuck, enough had grafted itself to her nature and helped to form the woman she now was.

When she swam, she did so secretly, and almost always after dark, because she never knew exactly how long it would take for her tail membrane to form. She’d had no one to tutor her in the chemistry and physiology of the process, and had worked out a hazy understanding of it by herself, through trial and error.

It was quicker at the full moon. Slower when the water was cold. Something to do with the sea’s saltiness, too, because it always took longer to happen when she swam near the mouth of the tidal lake next to her favorite beach, where a freshwater stream emptied into the sea.

If Cyria knew the science of it, she hadn’t passed on the knowledge. She had forbidden Lass to swim in the ocean at all.

“You could be killed as if you were a fish, before you could even cry out, if anyone saw your tail. Or you could be captured and tortured in the name of science.”

Lass had tried to argue at first. It would be perfectly safe to take a short swim, even in broad daylight, as long as she left the water in time. Her tail membrane did not even begin to form for at least fifteen minutes.

But Cyria wouldn’t hear of it, so Lass swam guiltily as well as secretly. She’d been doing it since the age of fourteen, but there had been defiance rather than guilt in the act until she was twenty. The guilt came after Cyria’s death. The old woman had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for Lass’s safety. She’d sincerely believed that the ocean was too dangerous.

“But I can’t give it up. I can’t!” Lass had told herself, over and over, in the first acute days of mourning her guardian’s loss. “I’ll do everything else Cyria wanted. I’ll keep my hair. I’ll run a business that’s under my own control and where there’s never anyone I have to get too close to. She’s right. Friendships are dangerous. Ondina and my mother thought that their friendship was enough to keep peace in Pacifica, and they were wrong. And I’ll never fall in love with a land-dwelling man.”

She’d already had proof that Cyria was right in that area. She’d had a boyfriend at college who’d taken her out several times and then told her, just as she was beginning to let down her guard, “There’s something weird about you. I don’t think I want to go on with this. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t accepted any dates after that, and after a while, word got around and no one asked.

“I’ll never have a child, who could turn out to be mer. But I have to swim…sometimes. Not too often. Or I might as well just die….”

Even so, she kept trying to give it up. She learned to love horseback riding and hiking in the wild Australian bush country. She told herself that eventually she would wean herself away from the sea.

But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. And so Loucan, son of her father’s enemy, had found her….

Summer was the most dangerous time of year—the season when Lass tried hardest, and failed most often, to stay away. The water was at its warmest, so her tail formed faster. The beaches were more crowded, so she had to be watchful and seek the most isolated places.

Lass hadn’t been to the ocean for weeks—not since the start of school summer vacation in mid-December. And now Christmas and New Year had passed, and it was late January.

And she was ready to snap. She had snapped. Three times today, at Susie and Megan, over trivialities. That was out of character. Normally, she didn’t have a flashing temper, and in any case she’d found long ago that a cheerful attitude toward others invited less curiosity, and fewer questions.

Today, she knew that the pressure inside her would keep building until she flooded it away with the cold, salty, healing caress of the ocean.

It was a hot day, and even the big ceiling fans and the thick stone walls of the old dairy weren’t enough to keep away the heat. She closed as usual at five, quickly ate the left-over pasta special she’d served in the tearoom at lunch, rebraided her long hair, grabbed her swimsuit and her towel, and jumped into her car to speed down to the north end of the beach where she could hide among the rocks at the base of the cliff if anyone came.

It was perfect. The beach was deserted and the sky glowed with mauve and orange near the western horizon. There was no wind, but there’d been storms at sea for the past few days and the surf was high, rolling in long, even waves onto the sand. The foam was so white it was almost iridescent.

And the dolphins were there. She tried to surf with them, but they weren’t interested tonight. Maybe because her tail hadn’t formed yet and they didn’t recognize her as a kindred creature. Or maybe because the fishing was good, out where the sea floor shelved down, and eating was more important to them than having fun.

So she surfed alone, and didn’t regret the solitude. Didn’t use a board, just her body, timing the moment when she launched herself ahead of the breaking wave and let it carry her to the beach in a tumble of cold foam. Her whole body was tingling so much with the buffeting of the waves that it took her a while to recognize the special, deeper sensation that signaled her membrane was starting to form.

And then suddenly she saw him—a strong, athletic-looking man not twenty yards from where she swam. She hadn’t noticed his approach at all. He was walking in the shallows and peering out at her, and beyond her, as well, to where the dolphins cruised back and forth, feasting on fish.

Hastily, she waded to shore and ran up the beach to grab her towel, as water streamed from her heavy rope of braided hair and down her torso and legs. When the transformation was imminent, she would wriggle out of her swimsuit and swim naked, but somehow even in this conservatively cut suit, she felt more exposed and more vulnerable this evening than she’d ever felt in the nude.

Why was he watching her?

She was as strongly aware of the stranger’s body as she was of her own. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his thighs and the deep tan of his skin. Beyond these details, he had an aura, a presence that she couldn’t name. And he was looking at her as if he was seeking something.

She began to rub herself dry immediately. A couple of times in the past, when she hadn’t dried the seawater away, her membrane had begun to form as she lay on the sand. From a distance, it had only looked like a rather bizarre and serious case of peeling sunburn, but if anyone had peered too closely…