Of Neptune

  At least, not for him.

  5

  AHEAD OF us, the interstate looks like a river of cars running between the two mountains. My ears have been popping for at least an hour with the higher altitude. I keep glancing at Galen in the driver’s seat to see if he’s experiencing anything funky. Sometimes the water pressure affects my ears the deeper we go in the ocean. I wonder if Galen’s Syrena ears can adapt to any kind of pressure, or just the pressure caused by the deep blue sea.

  He hasn’t complained about it, but that doesn’t mean anything. Actually, he hasn’t said much at all, which might mean something. Either he doesn’t notice how often I look at him, or he’s pretending not to notice. I get what that means: He doesn’t want to talk.

  But letting him keep his thoughts to himself seems counterproductive, given the underlying reason for this trip. When my best friend Chloe died, I wanted to hole up and stop living. The possibility that Galen could be going through the same type of pain drives me crazy. Rachel was his best friend, maybe even more so than Toraf. And a mother figure, too. To lose both of those in one fell swoop is a devastating thing.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “Thinking of her again?”

  Galen gives me a wistful, forged smile that lasts only a second before his face falls again. Rachel’s death affected us all. We all could have done more. We all had a responsibility to look out for her. We all should have been more vigilant and kept track of her whereabouts the day we retrieved Jagen from the humans. Any of us could have prevented her drowning. But Galen is bent on stockpiling the blame on himself. And I’m bent on making him snap out of it.

  I just haven’t figured out how yet.

  “Actually,” he says, “I was thinking about what you and Antonis could have possibly talked about for so long yesterday.”

  Oh. That. I was wondering if/when he would ask. “Nothing much,” I say. Maybe I don’t want to talk after all. Not because I’m keeping a secret—I’m not. Not really. The truth is, I don’t know why Grandfather insists we travel to the belly button of Tennessee. But I do know that this weird scavenger hunt is important to him, and for some crazy reason, I’m willing to go along with it. And until now, I thought Galen was, too. He didn’t question it yesterday when I changed our course on the GPS from our original destination of the Cascade Mountains to the new target in the Smoky Mountains.

  He turns the radio down. “What are we going to find in these mountains, Emma? Why is Antonis sending us here?”

  My reflex is to be defensive, but I know Galen is on edge. Fighting with Galen is the last thing I want to do right now. I smile. “I’m just as curious as you are. Besides, he didn’t send us here, remember? We already said we were going to explore the mountains. He just made a suggestion of which ones to visit.” Meaning he pinpointed the entire middle of the state of Tennessee with his thumb on my cell phone. To scale, his thumb is about 150 miles on a map.

  Galen shifts in his seat, leaning his elbow on the armrest of the door. “What exactly did he say?”

  “He said to have a safe trip. And that he hopes I find what I’m looking for.” Which is true, and at the time, it didn’t sound nearly as questionable as it does now, even with the epic story he had to tell about searching for my mother. I’m not sure I’m adding anything new to what I’ve already told him about the conversation. It’s not like I’ve kept anything from him—I already explained why we changed course. And I thought he already accepted that. But Galen appears to be mentally dissecting every word my grandfather has spoken since birth.

  Which makes me just a little suspicious about Grandfather’s motives myself. Did he anticipate Galen asking questions—and did he intentionally omit any solid answers? If so, why?

  Galen glances at me sideways before looking back to the road. “He didn’t say anything else? Something that could have had a double meaning?”

  “Are these your questions? Or Grom’s?”

  Galen grimaces. “Grom did question me about it. But I have to admit, I’m curious. Maybe if you told me what he said, I could help figure out what he’s really up to.”

  I wonder if the hatchet will ever be buried between Grom and my grandfather. And I’m not ecstatic that Grom is clearly influencing Galen’s opinion. “He said, ‘Freshwater fish are bland.’” I gasp. Obnoxiously. Dramatically. Flared nostrils and all. “Do you think that’s code for ‘I saw a spaceship’? Or maybe, ‘I’m really a Soviet android’? We should totally turn around and go back. Beat the answers out of him.”

  At this, Galen flashes me the most heart-stopping grin. “Do you realize how gorgeous you are when you’re…”

  But his dimples have already reduced my vocabulary to “Um.” And I’m in severe danger of relapsing to my old blushing habits.

  He nods ahead of us. “I’m sorry to be grouchy. Let’s take this exit. I’m tired of driving. Let’s stretch our legs a bit.” By stretching his legs, Galen means unleashing his humongous fin. I have to admit, it would be fun to explore the springs here. According to Google, there are lots of them in this area.

  “My bathing suit is in my suitcase,” I tell him. “I’ll need to find somewhere to change. Maybe a rest area?”

  “You could always just wear nothing.”

  Yep, totally blushing. And my mouth is dry. And my insides are goo. And I accidentally imagine Galen wearing nothing. Ohmysweetgoodness.

  It seems Galen is a victim of his own teasing. His grin is long gone, replaced by what I would call hunger. He licks his lips then scowls, turning his attention back to the road. “Sorry. That slipped out.”

  Galen rarely lets these things slip. Sometimes I can see mischief in his eyes, and it’s playful and harmless and flirty. But Galen has boundaries. Boundaries like the law and his conscience. Boundaries that have always stopped him from saying anything like that before.

  “You’ve never apologized for teasing me before,” I muse.

  “Teasing you? Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t say things to make me blush.”

  A smirk raises the corner of his mouth. “Of course I do. But I apologized because I wasn’t teasing that time.”

  He’s having a hard time keeping his eyes off my mouth and on the road. I’m having a hard time keeping my seat belt on and a respectable—not to mention safe by DMV standards—distance between us.

  He swallows. “Emma. I’m driving.” But he’s not committed to his argument. Even now, he’s scanning the side of the road and slowing his speed, probably in case I pounce on him.

  “You could pull over,” I offer helpfully.

  To my complete surprise, he does. The cabin quiets as the sound of our hushed high speed turns to gravel crunching under the tires as he maneuvers the SUV onto the wide shoulder.

  He puts it in park. Unbuckles. Faces me. “You were saying?”

  I don’t know if he pulled me to him or I did it all on my own, but in fast-point-five seconds I’m out of my seat, into his lap, and tasting every part of his mouth. I’m surprised and pleased when his hands slide up the back of my sundress. He’s shy at first, just caressing my back lightly with his fingertips. But as I kiss him deeper, the lightness disappears, replaced by a want that matches my own.

  I silently thank whoever invented tinted windows. We are a whirlwind of hands and groans and impatience. I’m near drunk from the way he smells, tastes, feels beneath me.

  Galen is more ambitious than he’s ever been, and I decide to analyze that later. I don’t know why I think about it now; usually I take what I can get before he comes to his senses. And for now, I do take advantage of my good fortune. My thumbs slip under his T-shirt and glide up the rigid plane that is his stomach. He releases me for just long enough to hold his arms over his head, so I can relieve him of his shirt. Then I am back in his grasp, in his arms, against him, around him. Almost part of him.

  He entangles his hands in my hair, trailing kisses from my ear down my throat, leaving what feels
like a stream of lava in his wake.

  I finally get brave enough to reach for his jeans button. I wait for him to end it, to put a stop to this craziness. The miracle is, he lets me undo it. I feel reckless and unstable and empowered, but the last thing I want to do is stop and think about this. What we’re doing. Where we are. How far will he let this go? How far do I want him to let it go? And I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the answer. I pull away.

  His hands drop.

  I bite my lip. I’d gotten used to the idea of waiting for us to be mated. The idea of a mating ceremony and picking an island with him is crazy romantic to me. Sure, at first it felt like a burden, to wait until we were the Syrena version of married before I could fully enjoy Galen. And then I don’t know when, but I started to view things differently. He was giving me so much—living on land and adopting a human way of life for me. And all he asked in return was that I observe this one tradition. What kind of lowlife would I be if I refused him that one thing? Sure, I enjoy tempting him and teasing him. But I always know he’ll come around and do the noble thing—he always does. So why is he backpedaling now? Did I finally push him over the edge?

  Words of remorse form in my mouth, but he presses a finger against my lips.

  “I know,” he says. “Not like this.”

  I nod. “Sorry. It’s just that—”

  He laughs. “Funny that you feel you should be apologizing to me.”

  “I tempted you and I shouldn’t have. I’ll keep up my end of the deal from now on, I promise.”

  This seems to startle him. “Deal?”

  “That you’ll wait for me if I wait for you.”

  He’s quiet for a long time then nods. My legs are now falling asleep. This position wasn’t so awkward five minutes ago, but now it’s pretty close to torture. I brace myself on the driver’s side door, ready to move back to my own seat, when Galen pulls me in for one last kiss.

  And when he does, someone taps on the window. Fan-flipping-tastic.

  Galen stiffens underneath me. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he mutters into my neck.

  That’s when I have the good sense to be mortified. Not so much at how far we’d gone, how close we’d come. No, I’d already apologized for that, felt the appropriate shame. But this, this is a new kind of horror. Because it’s a public one. We are still in a less-than-ideal position. On the side of the flipping interstate.

  “Everything okay in there? Having car troubles?” a man says. Then that rotund stranger proceeds to make a mask of his hands and peer into the freaking window, pressing his porous nose onto the glass and blowing a circle of steam on it. Mother of pearl.

  “Oh,” he says. “Beg your pardon.” He eases away from the window just as I’m positioning myself back into the refuge of my own seat. Galen has already somehow put his shirt back on. Which is, of course, both a relief and devastating to me at the same time.

  He rolls the window down and somehow manages to sound polite when he says, “May I help you?” But his voice is thick, full of appetite. He’s as affected as I am, just from the beginnings of a kiss.

  The man’s face is as red as the rash of kisses Galen left on my neck. “Sorry about that,” the man says, tucking his thumbs into the straps of his overalls. “I was just making sure y’all were all right. I saw you had an out-of-state tag.”

  How he could have noticed that from the canal of speeding cars that is the interstate, I couldn’t say. Unless, of course, Tennessee is full of the type of do-gooders that would actually turn around and help someone. Any other day, any other second in the existence of the universe, I would appreciate that.

  But as it stands right now, I want to choke this man. And curse Tennessee for churning out such helpful citizens.

  Galen frowns at the man. “We aren’t in need of assistance, thank you.”

  The man glances past Galen, making an obvious show of scrutinizing the situation. He looks like his name could be Herschel. Or Grady. “Everything okay here, young lady?” he says to me.

  Galen must realize his purpose, because he leans back in the seat, allowing Herschel/Grady a good look at me. I’m going to kill Galen. And not just because a complete stranger is more worried about my virtue than he is at the moment.

  “It was,” I tell him pointedly.

  The man clears his throat. “Well, I apologize for the, uh … interruption. Have yourself a good day.” It looks as though he might grace us with his absence, but then he turns back to the window. He scratches the back of his neck in an almost superstitious way. “You know, a purdy rough storm is moving in. Might want to think about getting where you want to go.” With this, he departs. We wait until we hear his truck door slam shut before we breathe again.

  Or at least, I do.

  Galen grips the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “I think we should stop for the day.”

  I know he’s not great at driving in bad weather. But I don’t think he’s talking about driving. A tiny knot of rejection grows in my stomach. “Okay,” I tell him. But what did I expect? He’s just doing the right thing. Do I want him to, or not?

  He whips his gaze to me. “No, I mean, if it’s going to rain, then maybe we should … I mean…”

  I laugh. “Tongue-tied?”

  He catches my double meaning, too. “Emma.”

  It’s then that I turn away from him. Looking at him for one second longer would guarantee another visit to his lap, which is clearly not what he wants right now. I’m starting to think I don’t know what Galen wants. And I’m starting to doubt whether he knows what he wants, either.

  Maybe by the end of this trip, we’ll both have it figured out.

  I pull out my phone and peruse the screen for the link I’d found earlier. I feel the heat receding from my cheeks. My lips still feel like they’re on fire, though. “There are some touristy areas nearby. Springs. Caves. Sounds ideal for stretching.”

  Galen lets out a breath. “Sounds perfect, actually. The farther away from people, the better.”

  I can’t help but search for double meaning in that, too.

  6

  GALEN STEPS into the shallow water, startling some nearby frogs whose songlike croaks stop immediately. Even as the wind chops up the surface of the spring, a school of frenzied minnows whip up some ripples of their own. Galen marvels that no birds are taking this opportunity to feed. He supposes all the winged creatures here are fat and happy though, what with all the potential food above water—frogs and insects and other crawly things—why bother getting wet at all? Birds are meant for the air.

  Just as Syrena are meant for the water. He tries to stop it, but the thought pushes through anyway. If Syrena are meant for the water, what am I doing here on land?

  Then the reason he is here shuts the door to the SUV. Emma must be done changing into her swimsuit—and hopefully it’s a swimsuit that covers her well. After his slipup today, he can’t risk letting her stroll around in just any state of undress at the moment. Even the law didn’t hold him back this afternoon when he had her in his lap, intending on doing just exactly what he shouldn’t. But Emma views his self-control—what’s left of it, anyway—as a rejection. He’s explained to her about the importance of the law, even though he’s been questioning the importance of it himself.

  It seems to him that Triton and Poseidon wielded superstition rather than reason when they concocted the law all those centuries ago. That they scared their subjects into subjection instead of reasoning with them. Grom is different, Galen knows. He’s open-minded, taking what the humans call a progressive approach. And Galen has a suspicion that Antonis is, too, if the way the Poseidon king eagerly embraced the idea of a Half-Breed granddaughter is any indication.

  But the Royals have already pushed the old law to its limits by accepting Emma into their fold. Adhering to all the other aspects of the law now is more important than ever if the Royals are to regain full trust from the kingdoms again. From the Archives. From the Commons. From the ex-Loyals, Jagen’s brood
of followers.

  There is no room for distrust if they are to keep the kingdoms united.

  Galen knows there will come a time when humans will discover them. Grom knows it, too. And when that happens, the Syrena have a better chance of surviving if they work together. No more silent wars. No more rebellions by those who can tickle the ear and not follow through with their promises. If there was ever a time they could not afford dissension, it would be now.

  Galen is drawn from his thoughts by the sound of Emma’s bare feet pressing into the leaves. With each step she takes, his blood seems to heat up, to flow more freely. The tension melts away from him, and all those kingdom problems are absorbed into the air to rain on him another time. Because right now he has Emma.

  He thinks of what she said in the car. About their “deal.” She’ll wait for me if I wait for her. But is there a real reason to wait anymore? He shakes his head. Of course there is, idiot. If not for the law, then to keep the trust of the kingdoms.

  He smiles as the sound of her footsteps becomes the sound of her stumbling, then gasping. She’s not nearly as graceful on land as she is in the water. Maybe he could show her that, how much more she belongs in the water than on land. How much easier it is to live in the oceans than to come ashore and build relationships with humans who will eventually die and—

  “Wow, look at those clouds,” she says from behind him, sloshing the water as she wades in. Then slender fingers lace through his, and the rest of his anxiety hitches a ride on the strengthening wind. “Will we be safe in the water?”

  He presses a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, which is the only safe place for his lips to be at the moment. Before she can pout, he pulls her deeper into the water. To his relief—and his disappointment—she’s wearing a one-piece swimsuit and has also opted for a pair of matching shorts. “We’ll be fine.”