Prince Devan was humming. It was a light, foolish sound, the melody of a man who believed the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders and placed onto the shoulders of someone else. Specifically, mine.
It grated on my nerves like a sunburn. A tune of salvation that sounded suspiciously like a golden retriever yipping because he had finally found the leg he wanted to hump for the rest of his life. We walked down the long, vaulted corridor toward the Grand Banquet Hall. The heat of the day had settled into the stones of the castle, stifling and heavy, making the corridor feel less like a home and more like a kiln designed to bake the moisture out of anything living.
“You will like the Council,” Devan said, adjusting his cuff for the tenth time and smiling at the wall. “They can be a bit stiff. Old money, you know. They hold onto tradition because it is the only thing they have left that hasn’t rusted, but they will appreciate a man of your… stature.”
“I am sure,” I said, my voice flat.
I looked at him, walking with a bounce in his step that hadn’t been there yesterday. Yesterday, he was a moody, grieving boy crushed by the legacy of a dead father. Today, he had become light and buoyant. Entirely too happy because I had let him touch my hair in a garden and project his daddy issues onto my scar tissue.
I hated it, and gods help me, I loved it.
I looked ahead at Avis, who was walking ten paces in front of us. She wore a corset that was laced too tight, the yellow silk straining against the constant pressure of the flabs. She was lumpy, in all the worst ways. Although I’m not sure which way lumpy could be rewritten to be good. I only knew that she wasn’t that.
Bait, I thought. She is just bait.
She was the lure I was dragging through the water to catch the King, the shiny object and the means to an end. But looking at her trudging forward in shoes that pinched her toes, I felt something else. She was a child suffering in surface clothing, walking into a room full of sharks who would judge her inability to speak as a moral failing. A creature of the deep forced to perform a pantomime of humanity for people who would eat her if they knew what she really was.
The only difference between her and the poor unfortunate fish trapped in the aquarium was that they knew they were being observed for a sick form of entertainment. I felt a pang of pity. Carlotta would be heartbroken to see her like this. It was an annoying sensation in my gut that I crushed immediately. Pity is a luxury for people who are not on a deadline, and certainly not for people wearing a meat suit constructed of shark cartilage and lies.
“Do they know who she is?” I asked Devan, keeping my eyes on the back of Avis’s two-toned hair.
“We explained that both of you were shipwrecked,” Devan admitted, stopping his humming long enough to look worried. “I hope that’s okay. Martan told them she was… injured in the crash.”
“And the lack of table manners?”
“He told them she was reacclimating,” Devan whispered.
Reacclimating, I thought. That is a very expensive word for someone so cheap.
We reached the heavy oak doors of the Banquet Hall where two guards stood at attention. They looked at me, assessing the width of my shoulders and the scowl on my face, stepping out of the way without announcing us. We entered the hall, and I realized quickly that this luncheon was more of a siege than it was a social gathering.
The room was cavernous, with tapestries hanging from the ceiling depicting men spearing boars and men spearing stags and men spearing other men. It was a celebration of penetration that surrounded us.
Fifty people turned to look at us, a sea of velvet and powdered wigs representing the aristocracy of the coast. They smelt of judgment and unwashed bodies doused in rosewater, holding their wine glasses like weapons and whispering behind fans like conspirators. Their eyes were penetrating more sharply than the spears in the boars.
Martan stood at the head of the room, tapping his cane on the marble floor with a sound that echoed unnecessarily.
“His Royal Highness, Prince Devan,” Martan announced, his voice thin and reedy. “And his guests. The Lady Avis Waters, and Lord Milstead Waters.”
I hadn’t considered Avis having a surname, but she did now. The room murmured as a wave of whispers washed over us.
“Who is he?”
“Look at the size of him.”
“Is that the uncle?”
“He looks like he could snap the Prince in half.”
They looked at Avis with curiosity.
“What odd hair.”
“The shape.”
“Not even suitable to stand in silence.”
It was one thing for me to talk about her gross appearance and inability to grow hair of a consistent coloration. I was family. But these people doing it were just cruel.
They looked at me with fear. Good. I enjoyed the fear. It was a familiar flavor that tasted like power. I strode to the table, my boots striking the floor with authoritative rhythm. I pulled out Avis’s chair, not for chivalry, but to control where she sat. I needed her within leg’s reach so I could kick her if she started trying to point her breasts in the wrong direction.
“Sit,” I whispered, my voice a low growl only she could hear. “Do not inspect the silverware for your reflection. And for the love of the reef, do not try to eat the centerpiece.”
She glared at me, her brown eyes full of defiance, but she sat and smoothed her skirt with hands that were shaking. She was drying inside under the crushing weight of the surface world. I placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, letting a flowing presence wash over her, hoping it could help keep her mind fluid and her tail in motion. I took the seat next to her, and Devan sat on my other side, practically vibrating with happiness.
He was so close I could feel the heat radiating off his arm. He kicked my boot under the table, a playful gesture meant to establish a conspiracy between us. I moved my leg and did not engage, staring straight ahead as the servants descended and poured wine into our crystal goblets.
The heat in the room was stifling, and the chatter was a dull roar of sycophancy. The sound of fifty people trying to say nothing while using the most words possible.
“So, Lord Waters,” a woman with a mole on her chin asked from across the table, leaning forward so her powdered cleavage was prominent. “We hear you are from the Colonies. Do you find our court... lacking?”
The table went quiet. It was a trap. If I said yes, I was insulting them. If I said no, I was boring them. I picked up my wine glass and swirled the red liquid.
“Lacking?” I repeated, letting the word hang in the air. “No, Madam. I would not say lacking. I would say... quaint.”
The woman blinked. “Quaint?”
“In the Colonies,” I lied smoothly, “we do not have time for velvet. We do not have time for powder. The jungle does not care about your pedigree. The tigers do not check your family tree before they eat you. It is expansive and dangerous. It's a whole new world. So yes, revisiting the old world with its conveniences and pomp is truly quaint.”
I took a sip of wine. I didn’t understand the human capacity to drink. In the ocean, we drink to breathe. It tasted fresh and briny. Here, everything these people drank was putrid. The wine almost had a flavor of old fruit with a hint of that moment when I take my boots off at the end of the day. As if it had been filtered through people's toes and then allowed to sit until it turned. It treated it as if it was a fine experience, because it was anything but that.
“It must be terrifying,” the woman breathed, looking thrilled by the idea of danger.
“It is clarifying,” I corrected. “It strips a man down to his essentials. You find out very quickly who you are when you are waking up with a viper in your boot.”
Devan watched me, looking at me like I was reciting poetry. He loved the lie. He loved the rugged fiction of me. Avis clicked at my obvious theater. She was reduced to showing her true nature and self by not having a voice while I was using mine to construct exactly who they wanted me to be. Both who I really am and who they want me to be was infinitely an improvement upon who she shows up as, with or without the voice.
“We heard that you swam here after your shipwreck,” a staunch count stated. “That must have been quite an expenditure of energy… for a man of your girth.”
I choked on my wine slightly. I glanced at Devan.
“I didn’t expect that the Prince would have told you about the size of my cock,” I said firmly. “But yes, it does present certain challenges in daily life. As for swimming, however, it mainly keeps me afloat.”
I’d never been to a human luncheon, but I did not believe this was the proper topic of conversation for one to be having at a human luncheon. Avis dropped her jaw so quickly it nearly dislocated itself. The gasps from around the table, coupled with the look of absolute shock and entertainment on Devan’s face, told me that it wasn’t the proper topic of conversation that one should be having.
“Oh, you are referring to the size of my body,” I corrected. “Well, swimming for me is like first nature. Like walking is for you. I’m very fluid, really. So fluid, in fact, that the ocean is a hard surface. It’s hard as a rock.”
“It sure is,” Devan said with a hunger that spoke for more than whatever food was heading our way.
“And you, Lady Avis?” The staunch count asked, trying desperately to change the subject, as he cleaned his spectacles of the vision I had just planted in his head. “How do you find our court?”
Avis froze after having stuffed an entire bread roll into her mouth. She looked at him, then she looked at me. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t tell him that his court smelled like dead fish and hypocrisy.
“She finds it overwhelming,” I answered for her, not looking at Avis as I cut a piece of cheese from the board in front of me. “My niece is still in shock from the crash. She speaks often. But from the moment she was found, she hasn’t spoken a word. She can merely grunt and make that incessant click. But even when she can speak, she does so when she chooses, selectively. Unlike most people, she does not feel the need to fill the silence with noise just to prove she exists.”
I looked pointedly at the woman with the mole, who blushed and retreated behind her fan.
“She listens,” Devan added, looking at Avis with a manufactured warmth, trying to follow my lead. “She listens better than anyone I have ever met.”
Avis looked at Devan with a small smile. She did listen to him. She listened to every word he said.
The servants returned and placed large silver domes in front of us. Once lifted, they released a cloud of steam that rose up from the table.
The smell hit me first. It was a heavy punch of a scent. It was laced with garlic, butter, paprika, white wine. And something else. Something briny and substantial. Something that smelled like home, but wrong. It smelled like home on fire. I looked at the bowl that was strangely sitting on a plate. It was a stew where a red broth bubbled around chunks of white meat, and floating in the center, like question marks, were curled red strips.
I picked up my spoon, ignoring the warning bells ringing in the back of my brain, and took a bite. It was delicious. The meat was tender, melting on the tongue, and the sauce was perfectly spiced. A pungent and flavorful moment cut through the richness of the butter. I ate another spoonful, then another, shoveling it in like an engine taking on coal.
“Excellent,” I noted, wiping a drop of red sauce from my beard. “My compliments to the chef. The texture is extraordinary. What is this?”
Devan smiled, pleased that I was pleased, looking at the table as if he had caught the meal himself.
“It is a local delicacy,” Devan explained. “We caught a fresh batch this morning in the nets. The fishermen said the migration patterns brought them right into the bay. Braised swordfish and octopus.”
I couldn’t believe it. The spoon stopped halfway to my mouth. Octopus. The word echoed in my skull. My stomach rolled, my throat closed, and the delicious meat suddenly I tasted of the love that I have for my redpussies. It felt like betrayal. I looked at the bowl, really looked at it, and saw the curling tendrils, the suckers, and the texture of the skin. It was family, not food.
Well, not close family. I am a moctopus, a divine mixture, royalty. These... these were redpussies. They were no different than my babies. I looked at the suction cups floating in the garlic butter and remembered how those cups felt when they gripped a rock against the current, how they felt when they held a lover. I was eating a cousin of Speckle and Dot. Eating them felt akin to a human dining on a chimpanzee. Not necessarily cannibalism, but close enough to make the room spin.
Barbarians, I thought, the bile rising in my throat. They are absolute savages. They boil us until our husks turn red, drown us in wine, and treat us like garnishes.
I looked around the room and saw the courtiers eating with gusto. The woman with the mole was chewing on a tentacle. A man in a blue coat was sucking the sauce off a suction cup. They were monsters. They were the true monsters.
I swallowed the bile and forced my face to remain neutral. I was Milstead Waters. Milstead Waters was a colonizer. He ate what was put in front of him. He did not vomit at the dinner table.
“Fascinating,” I choked out, my voice tight. “A bold choice. Have you ever enjoyed a meal that didn’t at one point in time have a face or a family?”
Next to me, Avis gasped. She heard the word octopus. She looked down at her bowl and saw the familiar shape, the severed arm of a creature she probably knew. She panicked. She inhaled sharply, a gasp of pure horror, but she had already taken a bite. The girl had a chunk of the swordfish and a piece of the tentacle in her mouth. The gasp sucked the food backward, straight to the windpipe. The octopus meat lodged in her throat.
She made a strangled noise. Ghhkkkk.
She dropped her spoon, which clattered loudly against the china, instantly silencing the chatter. She grabbed her throat, her hands clawing at the pearl necklace she wore, her face was turning a violent shade of red while her eyes bulged.
The chewing and discussing slurping finally stopped. The woman with the mole froze.
“Avis?” Devan asked, half-rising from his chair, looking confused. “Avis, are you alright?”
Avis couldn’t answer. She couldn’t breathe. She stood up, knocking her chair to the floor with a crash, and stumbled away from the table. She was clawing at her neck now, scratching red lines into her skin. She looked at me.
Her eyes were wide, pleading. Help me.
I sat there, holding my wine glass, looking at the dying girl. Time seemed to slow down, the world narrowing to the sight of the little mermaid choking on a piece of the ocean.
Let her die, a voice whispered in my head. It would be poetic. The girl who rejected her fins, killed by a fish. The girl who use a dagger to manipulate what she wanted, brought down by the sword of the fish. The irony is delicious. It's almost worth the failure of the plan just to appreciate the narrative symmetry.
If she died, the contract was void. I would not be welcome back in the Kingdom. I wouldn’t get the treaty. But I wouldn’t have to keep wearing this itchy suit. I wouldn’t have to keep pretending to be a man who eats roof tiles and likes adoptive princes. I could slip out the window, dive into the sea, and be Octavia again by dinner.
Avis’s knees buckled. She was turning blue. The red in her face was draining away, replaced by the pallor of hypoxia.
No, I realized, the pragmatist in me taking over. If she dies with a tentacle in her throat, they won’t blame the chef. They would examine the body and see the suction cups. It would be called a curse. I could hear it now: the Sea Witch came to reclaim her. I would be to blame because who else would be?
And Devan... I looked at him. He was frozen, watching her die, not knowing what to do. He looked broken. If she died, he would be inconsolable. He wouldn’t be a King I could negotiate with. He would be a husk.
I sighed, a heavy, annoyed sound.
“For the love of Neptune,” I muttered.
I stood up. I didn’t rush. I moved with the heavy inevitability of a landslide. I walked over to Avis, who was on her knees now, inaudibly dying. I grabbed her by the jaw with one hand. My fingers were large, digging into the flab of her cheeks as I forced her head back and her mouth open.
Devan shouted, “What are you doing? Help her!”
I ignored him. I ignored the gasps of the courtiers. I didn’t hesitate. I balled up my fist and punched her directly in her tiny stomach. The pressure of the sudden assault jettisoned the tentacle right out of her throat. It shot across the room with the force of a school of clownfish outrunning a great white shark. It landed in the wine glass of that woman with the mole on her chin, a glistening lump of chewed calamari.
I saw the look in Avis's eyes. It was familiar. It was exactly like the moment I had taken her voice. The anatomy was the same, the fear was the same, the helplessness was the same.
Avis gasped. The air rushed back into her lungs with a ragged shriek that sounded like a sail tearing in a storm. She collapsed against the table leg, coughing and heaving, her whole body shaking with the violence of the recovery.
I stood there. The room was dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. You could hear Avis wheezing. Then someone started to clap. It was the woman with the mole. She clapped slowly at first, then faster. Then Martan joined in, tapping his cane on the floor. Then the whole room erupted.
“A hero!” someone shouted. “He saved her!”
“Did you see that?” a man whispered loudly. “He didn’t even hesitate. Pure instinct. A man of action!”
“Magnificent!”
I looked at Devan. He completely ignored the traumatized girl heaving for breath on the floor. Disregarding the vomit and the piece of octopus, all he could see was me. His eyes were shining, wet with tears of relief. The reverence that he held was terrifying. I was a monster who had just assaulted a trollop, but he didn’t recognize the brute who had considered letting her die. In his eyes I was a savior, a protector. He recognized someone who could take action and protect his family.
“Milstead,” Devan breathed. “You saved her.”
I looked down at Avis. She was looking up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and terrified. She remembered the feeling of my tentacle ramming her stomach. She remembered the loss of her voice. Her eyes were dark with fear and hatred.
“She forgot how to swallow,” I said to the room, my voice calm and bored. “It is not something I have ever done, but it happens. The girl is out of practice.”
I looked at the crowd with the disdain of a professor addressing a class of slow learners.
“It simply went down the wrong pipe,” I explained with absolute authority. “The Eustachian tube, I believe you call it.”
Martan nodded. “Yes,” he said, bowing his head. “The Eustachian. Tricky bit of plumbing, that. Very common in the... Colonies. Doesn’t happen much here, of course.”
I sat back down, picked up my wine glass, and took a long drink. The wine washed away the taste of the octopus, and it washed away the taste of the lie.
“Now,” I said, setting the glass down with a sharp clink. “What's for dessert?”
Devan sat back down. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. He looked like he wanted to climb into my lap. I had cemented the trust of the Prince by saving the girl and winning the crowd. Now I simply had to coax him into marriage with the nearly departed and all would be well.
But the octopus was still staring at me from my bowl, the red tentacle floating in the red sauce like an accusatory finger pointing straight at my hearts.