I decided that the best way to sell a product was to create a vacuum. If I wanted Devan to buy Avis, I needed him to feel the emptiness of his own life so acutely that he would purchase the first thing I put in front of him.
We spent the morning walking around the castle grounds. It was a tedious exercise. The sun was too bright. The birds were too loud. And Prince Devan was too melancholy.
He showed me the stables. He showed me the armory. He showed me a statue of his grandfather who looked like he had died of constipation.
“It is a lot to manage,” Devan said. He ran a hand along the stone railing of the balcony. “The Kingdom. The trade routes. The council. Sometimes, I feel like I am just playing dress-up in a costume that doesn’t fit.”
I looked at him. He was wearing a sash that was slightly too long. He looked like a boy who had raided his father’s closet.
“Heavy is the head,” I rumbled. I leaned against a pillar. I looked like a man who held up buildings for fun. “But a King needs a Queen. Someone to share the load. A partner to help carry the weight.”
I was trying to pivot to the sale. I was trying to plant the seed. Devan didn’t bite. He looked out at the ocean. The wind caught his hair. He looked tragic. He looked marketable. I was disappointed I wasn't selling him.
“I don’t think I’m ready for a wife,” he confessed. “I’m not even sure I’m ready to be King. Martan does the heavy stuff. I just... I exist. I smile. I wave.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You have the jawline for it. That is half the job right there.”
“I’m serious, Milstead.” He turned to me. His eyes were wide and wet. “My father... he was supposed to be here. He was supposed to guide me. I thought we had years left. I thought there was time.”
“We always think there is more time,” I explained. My voice dropped to that low. “But when the clock runs out, it’s over. The sun sets and it’s all barnacles.”
“Barnacles?” Devan asked.
“An expression,” I lied quickly. “From the... Colonies. It means dust. Ashes. Worm food.”
Devan nodded solemnly. “Right. Barnacles.”
He walked over to a stone bench and sat down heavily. He looked small. He looked defeated.
“My father,” I said. I don’t know why I started talking about him. Perhaps it was the testosterone. Perhaps it was the shared trauma of disappointing a patriarch. “He was a difficult man. He had a specific vision for his legacy.”
Devan nodded. “Mine too. He wanted a warrior.”
“Mine wanted a son,” I said. The words tasted like bile. “He wanted a copy of himself. A soldier. A brute. And for a long time... I tried. I wore the armor. I fought the wars. I broke the things he told me to break.”
I looked at my hands. They were Milstead’s hands. Large and calloused. But inside I remembered the slender, blue fingers of my true self. I remembered the way they moved through water.
“But I wasn’t who he wanted me to be,” I continued. “He was always so proud of my sister. Carlotta. Because she was the real daughter. She was everything he thought a woman should be. Beautiful. Musical. Obedient.”
It was a slip. A dangerous one. I was referring to myself. I was referring to the woman I knew I was. The daughter I should have been allowed to be. I put a hand to my forehead. The memory of Carlotta’s perfection and my father’s adoration of her burned. It was a living pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t mean that. It’s the heat.”
Devan looked at me. His eyes searched my face.
“Don’t apologize,” Devan said.
He reached out. He put his hands on my shoulders. His palms were warm. They burned through the linen of my shirt.
“I am exactly the same,” Devan said.
He leaned in. He touched his face to my shoulder. He rested his forehead against my deltoid muscle as if it were a pillow. He breathed in the scent of me. Lavender. Sea salt. Musk.
“We are both the same,” he whispered.
“I doubt it,” I said. My voice was tight.
Unless you are also a sea witch in a meat suit, I thought.
“No,” Devan insisted. He pulled back to look at me. “I mean... the feeling. The feeling of being an imposter in your own family.”
He took a breath. He looked around to make sure we were alone. The garden was empty save for a few bees and the heavy scent of roses.
“I’m adopted,” Devan said.
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The King and Queen,” Devan explained. “They couldn’t have children. They found me. They took me in. Raised me as their own. But I always knew. I always felt it. I wasn’t of him. I wasn’t his blood.”
He looked at me with such intensity. He believed he had solved the riddle of Milstead Waters. He thought my pain came from being an orphan. He heard my comment about the real daughter and thought that meant that I, too, was a foundling.
“You think that is why he didn’t see me as real?” I asked.
“Wasn’t it?” Devan asked.
I looked at this boy, at his desperate need to find a reflection of his own pain in someone else. I saw the way he projected his own narrative onto my silence.
“Well,” I said slowly. “Yes. I suppose... yes.”
I decided to tell him the truth. Or at least a version of it that he could understand.
“My father had his children,” I said. “He had his legacy. Then one day, years later, someone new joined his family. Someone different.”
I was talking about myself. About the day I shed the skin of Octavius and demanded to be Octavia. That new arrival was me. I was the stranger in the house.
“He was expected to love them the same,” I said. “But he never could. He looked at me and he saw a mistake. He saw a broken version of the son he lost.”
Devan squeezed my shoulders. His grip was surprisingly strong.
“Then... my sister died,” I said. My voice cracked. I didn’t have to fake that. Carlotta’s death was the end of everything. It was the anchor that dragged us all down. “She was the favorite. The perfect one. And he was never the same. I tried to tell him he still had me. I tried to show him that I was still his... that I was still there.”
“But he said no,” I whispered. “He said all of his children were gone. He looked right at me and said he had no one left.”
“And now I’m alone,” I finished. “There is another sister. Refelda. But she is so... green.”
“Oh, Milstead,” Devan said. “I am so very sorry that you survived that. I hope that your sister grows into the experience that she needs.”
I was referring to her hideous green skin and scales. But she is also very inexperienced in nearly everything.
“You’re not alone, Milstead,” Devan continued. “And you never have to be alone again.”
“That’s nice to say, Devan,” I replied. I felt seen in a way that was entirely accidental and entirely terrifying.
“Not just saying it,” Devan said. He looked at me with such earnest, puppy-dog eyes. “You can feel free. Just let go. Be yourself. I won’t judge you. You don’t have to be perfect.”
I laughed. It was a dark sound.
“My flaws are as big as the ocean,” I said. “I am a disaster, Devan. A big, eight-armed, scaled monstrosity.”
“You are big,” Devan laughed.
He stepped closer. Our chests brushed. I felt the heat of him.
“So very big,” he whispered. “But you are not a monstrosity. You can be flawed.”
He paused. He looked at the fabric of my shirt. He could see the ridges underneath. He could see the unnatural topography of my new form.
“You can be... scarred,” he whispered.
He placed his hand on my chest. He ran his fingers across the scars where my muscles were defined. He traced the line of the pectoral muscle.
Octavia knew what those ridges were. They were the seams where I had cut away the woman to build the man. They were the evidence of my butchery.
But Devan didn’t see butchery. His brow wrinkled. He looked as if he was angry at whatever hurt me. He thought they were war wounds. He thought they were badges of honor.
And his eyes cut up straight to mine.
They were swimming with a confusion that had him believing himself to be flying through clarity.
“There is just this gaping hole,” Devan said. He kept his hand on my heart. He could feel it beating. It was a slow, heavy rhythm. Thump. Thump. I looked at him. I looked at the pathetic slump of his shoulders.
He wants a daddy. A parent, not a partner.
I stood over him. I let my shadow eclipse him.
“It needs to be filled," he said. "The hole in me. It’s huge. My father’s love... it left awfully big shoes for me to try to fill.”
Devan laughed. It was a breathless, nervous sound.
“I say that,” Devan said as he looked me up and down. “But you seem to be able to step in and fill it out.”
I froze. The air in the garden went still.
Careful, boy, I thought. You are playing with fire. And I am made of grease.
But I didn’t step back. I enjoyed the adoration. I enjoyed being the biggest thing in his world.
Devan’s hands went from my chest to the back of my head. His fingers buried into my hair. He slightly gripped it. He held on as if he were drowning and I was the only driftwood in the sea.
I could taste his breath when he spoke. It tasted like bacon and longing. He was an extremely passionate man.
I think I remember thinking that I didn’t know humans could be so warm. I didn’t know they could feel so deeply. I thought they were shallow creatures. Puddles.
But Devan was a trench.
“When you allow yourself to be imperfect...” Devan said. I noticed as he spoke that his voice was trembling. “That’s when who you really are is shown.”
His eyes were like the sky and the ocean at the same time.
“And that’s the part of you that needs love the most,” he said breathlessly.
He pulled my head down slightly. Just an inch. Just enough to show me he wanted to.
“Scales and all,” he whispered.
I stared at him.
I was a fifty-year-old sea witch wearing a meat suit constructed of shark cartilage and testosterone. I was here to marry him off to a mute teenage psychopath to secure a political treaty.
And this boy was looking at me like I was the answer to every prayer he had ever whispered to the dark.
“Devan,” I rumbled.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he challenged. “Tell me you don’t feel it. The connection. The... similarity.”
He wasn’t talking about adoption anymore.
I looked at his lips. They were parted.
Neptune rising, I thought. He is going to kiss me. He is going to kiss the uncle and forget the girl.
It would be a disaster. Would ruin the entire plan and void the contract.
And, gods help me, for a second, I wanted to let him do it. Just to see if a monster could be loved. Even if it was the wrong monster.
“You really have daddy issues,” I said.
Devan blinked. The spell broke. He laughed. It was a startled, flushed sound. He pulled his hands back from my hair.
But he didn’t step away.
“Maybe.” He grinned. “But can you blame me? You’re a hard man to ignore, Milstead.”
“You seem to be a hard man as well,” I said as I looked down at the form of his royalty.
It was no sea cucumber, but it did have a stately presence befitting a future king. Devan looked down with no shame. He looked back up at me with a grin.
I turned away. I needed air and distance. I had to remember that I was a woman on a mission and not a man on a date.
“Come along, Your Highness,” I called out. I walked briskly toward the castle. “I believe the luncheon is in an hour. And I am starving.”
Devan followed. I could hear his footsteps. They were light. They were happy. I had filled the hole.
I just hoped I hadn’t filled it too well.