Prologue
King Tearloch, ruler of the Mer Folk
My thoughts about my queen were tangled in my mind like a jumble of broken jewelry in a box. My love for her remained, though, still bright, still beautiful. Only now it was totally worthless to us both.
I still saw her in my mind the way she was when I first met her when she was only sixteen, her seaweed-colored hair falling across her face and wrapped around her already voluptuous body. Her beautiful mermaid’s tail glistened in the water with iridescent, aquamarine scales.
Her long, emerald hair was now like an enemy flag, waving mockingly in the current, and if we met in battle, she would thrash that lovely mermaid’s tail in fury and never meet my gaze. I had begged her to stay with me, to leave the evil behind, but she had refused to even listen. She was now a Siren and lost to me—she had even managed to corrupt our beautiful daughter Maeve as well.
The ancient Greeks got it all wrong when it came to the legend of the Sirens. In their mythology, the sirens were humanlike beings with alluring, beautiful singing voices.Their song, though irresistibly sweet trapped a sailor’s body and soul in a fatal lethargy, a forerunner to death and corruption.The Siren’s song always took effect at midday, in a windless calm on a placid sea. Deceivingly so, because the end of that song was always death.
EvenHomer, the poet, mentioned sirens singing to Odysseus on his long journey home. Odysseus, who tied himself to a post to hear their sweet song, made his men stuff their ears with wax to save all their lives. Roman poets placed the Sirens on some small islands called Sirenum Scopulim. But, as I said, none of that was true.
Sirens were simply Mer Folk, no more and no less, and they were lured to join the ranks of the Sirens by the Sea Hags, who promised them great power. Sea Hags were witches, evil creatures who brought death and destruction to humans who dared venture into the sea on ships. It was the Hags who made the storms—the hurricanes that destroyed the ships and even the towns and villages that dared build too close to the oceans of the world.
To increase their numbers and their power, they recruited Mermaids, like my Beathag, with promises of power and magic. These mermaids, turned Siren, appeared to sailors as the beautiful women they once had been, enticing sailors to jump overboard and make love to them.If they succumbed to their charms and joined them in the ocean, they would wrap their arms around them and drag them to their watery graves, deep beneath the waves.They could also lure seafarers to crash their ships against the rocks. And it wasn’t only in the Greek isles, but anywhere at all in the seven seas.
This was our heartache and our curse, and there was no going back once our women chose to embrace the evil. When my sweet wife Beathag succumbed, I would have given my own life to save her, but it was no use. She soon infected our eldest, our daughter, Maeve, and then went after our sons. Not to recruit them, but to kill them.
All I had left to me were my young sons, Adan and his twin Kailar. Once in a fit of rage, not long before she left me, Beathag had gone for the boys, and I’d had to hold her off as she clutched and clawed at me to get to them. She had vowed to one day to capture and kill them. She told me then why she wanted them so badly.
“I’ll feast on their flesh and then grind their bones,” she raved. “After I eat then, I’ll absorb their essence into myself and gain their power. I won’t rest until I have them!”
I should have killed her then—wrapped my fingers around her lovely, cruel throat to crushherbones and put her out of her misery. It would have given us both some measure of peace, perhaps, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. God help me, I still loved her.
Over time, Beathag’s power had increased to the point that she was now a powerful Sea Hag, her mind completely taken over by wickedness.
I knew what I had to do.I took my sons to the Atlanteans in their magic-walled city and begged their king to give them sanctuary and keep them safe. King Cleotus was a kind man, and he had agreed to help us. I left the last of my family with him that day and went back home to my people.
I knew they’d be safe in the impregnable fortress of Atlantis, even though the separation broke my heart. Once human, the Atlanteans were an ancient race of people, who had used their considerable magical abilities to save themselves and their beautiful city when a huge tsunami swept their island into the sea.
They had mostly saved themselves, though with still a considerable loss of lives, and used magic to survive until they could build their invisible, but impregnable wall around the city. It kept out both the water and the sea creatures who might try to attack them in those first chaotic years. But as time went on, keeping the water out was too enormous an expenditure of even their considerable magic to sustain, so they set out to make sure their people could survive under water by giving them gills so they could breathe in the sea water, and by enhancing their strength so they could withstand the oceanic pressure. Atlantean bodies, like that of the Mer Folk’s, were capable of moving with ease even with half a ton of pressure on their bodies.
Ten years later, Kailar and Aden were swimming in the sea inside the Atlantean walls—and occasionally venturing outside those walls. They were adventurous boys, and they were Mer Folk, who never liked to be confined to any one space. We all loved the freedom of the open seas.
But they had been expressly forbidden to go out on their own, alone. It was far too dangerous for them, with my queen still stalking them and sending her creatures after them. Queen Beathag had bent the most deadly and vicious creatures of the ocean to her will and they served her now. Sharks, stingrays, sea urchins, barracudas, blue-ringed octopus, and sea snakes were all counted among her creatures. My sons were attacked by a group of sharks in the open sea and barely escaped with their lives.
Worst of all and most deadly of all Beathag’s creatures, however, was the Kracken. Living in a deep cavern in the darkest, deepest part of the ocean, the Kracken rarely made an appearance. When he did emerge, it was to do Beathag’s bidding. It hadn’t happened for seven years—most of the time the monster lay dormant and dreaming in his cave. But I knew Beathag wouldn’t hesitate to waken him again when she thought the time was right.
With the boys’ activities becoming too adventurous and too dangerous, King Cleotus sent for me, and we agreed they had to be watched more closely. He named two of his Lords as their guardians, Lord Alyxsander and Lord Keion. They were brothers—young men at the time, though high-ranking and from a powerful and wealthy family. Still, I wondered why Cleotus had chosen them. He explained to me that with his wizardry, he had discerned these two men would one day be mated to my sons. Who better to guard them now?
He knew that while they might look on the task as an irritation while they were still so young themselves, but one day, when the boys got a bit older, they would be all too happy to guard my sons with their lives. I was satisfied Cleotus was right, and so I agreed.
One of the men, however, Lord Alyxsander, or Lord Alyx as he liked to be called, found the task to be too onerous, giving him too much responsibility when he was busy living his rakish life and training for the Atlantean military. He was very young and rash, so he decided to find a caretaker for Kailar, his charge, and to further ensure Kailar’s safety, he sent both Kailar and the caretaker to the mortal world until the boy reached the age of twenty-one. Lord Alyx was from a family of powerful mages, and he altered Kailar to look and feel like a mortal. He also wiped his memory of any life he’d once had in the sea.
His brother, Lord Keion, allowed Adan to stay on in Atlantis, but assigned his care to bodyguards, who lived in a villa on the far side of the city. From that time on, he rarely saw the boy or paid him any attention.
I feared they’d both regret those decisions one day, but I had agreed to give the Atlantean Lords free rein over my children and trust that they knew what they were doing.
I only hoped they did.
Chapter One
Kailar, son of King Tearloch
Ten and a half years later in the water off Tybee Island
Leaning over the railing of the rented boat, I watched the dolphins performing for us. And I truly believed they were performing—even the two men running the boat and overseeing this tour had already commented on how mischievously the beautiful creatures were behaving, jumping in the air and splashing too close to us. The boat was small, more like a large fishing vessel, because that was all my stepmother and I could afford. But it was a beautiful day, and I was enjoying every second of it.