“Someone like me?”
“Ma’am, what I am about to tell you…it is of the utmost importance that you keep it to yourself. The entire kingdom could be in danger if you do not.”
How dramatic. I pushed away the eye roll that threatened to emerge and raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about, mister?”
He lowered his lashes, took a deep breath and then said slowly, cautiously. “I’ve travelled all across the realm of Thalassar and never before have I met a mer like you. Becauseyou, ma’am, are a perfect likeness to her Majesty, Princess Odele of Thalassar.”
CHAPTER THREE
Tiberius
SHE WAS THE PERFECT PICTURE OF INCREDULITY.Black eyes, like smooth marbles of obsidian, stared back at me. Eyes that were so familiar, they tugged at my heart, almost as if meaning to rip it straight from my chest with the intensity. And yet,shewas so different from the Princess I’d confused her with hours earlier.
The similarities were striking, but whoever truly knew the Princess would notice this mer’s posture, the subtle tilt of her chin, the set of her brow, the roughness of her palms. This mer, with her torn fins fanning at her sides was no royal.
But she was enough like Odele, that even I, with all the attention I placed in detail, had been taken aback.
She glared at me now. The Princess had never glared. “You’re insane!” Her hands were placed on her lean hips, her voice coming out in that twangy, Lagoona accent.
I couldn’t stop myself from comparing every miniscule detail and judge.
“I can assure you, I speak the truth,” I stated firmly. My hands were behind my back. At first it had been to avoid reaching out to her, to taking her in my arms with desperation. For a month I had searched for the Princess. A month of traveling from town to town in the hopes that I would find her. But wherever she was, she was well hidden. And this place had been my last hope of finding her, the last place we’d visit. I had hoped, with every raging fiber, that she would be here. Instead, I’d foundher. And thiswaitresslooked so much like Princess Odele, that my heart thundered in my chest and I had to remind myself she wasnotwho she looked like.
Her next words reminded me of this. “Right,” she let out the most unladylike snort. “So you grabbed me because I look like the Princess.” Her words dripped with an icy coating of disbelief. “You’re full of sand, mister. The Princess is at the palace with her betrothed. You’re wasting my time.” She started to swim away, back to the tavern. But I couldn’t let her leave, not with the future of the kingdom hanging on by a thread. And she may just be the answer we’d been searching for all this time. A temporary solution. If I could only convince her.
“Please listen,” I whispered. “Let me explain.”
Her obsidian eyes flicked over me and she sighed, placing her hands on her hips again in a gesture that obviously meant impatience. “Five minutes,” she said. “That’s all you get before I go back.”
I took in a slow breath. This, this would be the hard part. Swearing her to secrecy, convincing her of my maddening plan.
“Four minutes!” she snapped.
I pierced her with a hard look and dug deep inside to muster up the patience for this conversation. “You see what the King and Queen want you to see. Princess Odele and Prince Kai? Those images had been recorded months ago and are being projected to make the events seem recent. They do it all the time.”
She looked taken aback by that revelation but quickly remasked her features. She was much easier to read than the Princess, that I noticed.
“So?” She tilted her chin up in defiance. “So what if she’s missing? EvenifI look like her—which I don’t—what business is it of mine?”
“What I’m about to tell you is one of the biggest secrets in all of Thalassar. I need your word you will stay silent. You can tellno one.”
“I can make no promises.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and took a stroke forward, just as she took one back. Yes, that was fear in her stance. I stopped, jerking my hands behind my back once again. It would do no good to frighten her into submission, though I wasn’t opposed to the idea if necessary.
“Your word,” I threatened darkly. “No one can know.”
She sighed with obvious exasperation. “Fine. I give you my word.”
And I believed her. It was the expression on her face. Everything about her seemed so openly honest.
“The Princess has been missing for months.”
She didn’t even blink, as if the news hardly surprised her. “So what, she ran away?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. No one did. “It remains a mystery, how she was in the palace surrounded by guards one moment and gone the next. But sheisgone and we don’t know where.”
She bit at her bottom lip, pensive before looking at me with curiosity. “Do you think she’s gone from the palace because she does not wish to be there?”
