Aqua Coral's Arc

Chapter 5 of 16

Aqua woke to an empty hall. Seph was gone, his blanket folded on the floor. She held the iron key in her palm and felt how light the tower had become. She had won the argument. Now she had a stranger's house and a stranger's name, and no plan to make him more than that. A guest door and a locked window would not teach her who Alden was. She found him at a long table with the morning meal untouched. Alden looked up. "You slept," he said. He did not add more. "I did." Aqua sat. She watched him move a cup an inch to the left, then leave it. He rescued her once and never learned her name. He had counted three years of her. Yet across this table he was as far as the sea floor from the surface. "I want to know your day," she said. "All of it. Not the throne. The rest." Alden set down his fork. "My day is stone rooms and papers." "Then show me the stone rooms." He studied her a long moment. Then he stood. "Come." He walked her through the castle. Blue and white banners hung from every tower. Waves were carved into the great doors. Aqua pressed her palm to the cold wall and felt nothing familiar. "You built the sea into your house," she said. "I didn't build it." Alden touched a carved wave. "It was here before me. I never asked why it fit." He looked at her scales, then away. "Now I think I know." They climbed to a garden on the roof. A stone basin held rainwater. Aqua dipped her fingers in. Her cheek scales caught the small ripple, the way they read every shift in a current. "You come here," she said. It was not a question. The water was clean, tended. "Every morning." Alden stood at the wall's edge. "I look south. A man once told me he saw you near the coast. It came to nothing." He said it flat, no weight added. "I still look." Aqua's chest tightened. He had not asked her to stay because he was a king who kept things. He waited by water every day for a woman he could not name. She stepped beside him at the wall. "You don't have to look south anymore," she said. Alden turned to her. For once his face moved. "No," he agreed. "I don't." They stayed at the wall until the sun climbed high. He told her small things. The names of the towers. The morning he first drew a wave. Aqua stopped counting the space between them. By midday the guest door meant nothing. She knew his hours now, and he knew her voice. But she had traded one distance for a closer one. Standing that near, she felt the pull to stay for good, and no idea yet how a king would love a half-fish woman.