"Some stories don't begin with a meeting. They begin with the inability to forget."
Kael hadn't meant to stay out so long.
By the time he returned to the palace, dawn was smudging the horizon with gold. Dew clung to his cloak, and the hem of his shirt was soaked from the damp cliffs. He looked more like a stray sailor than a prince—mud-streaked boots, salt-ruffled hair, and that dreamy, disoriented expression he always wore when something unexplainable happened.
He was late for council.
Again.
But as he walked through the east gate, past the yawning guards and whispering shadows of morning, all he could hear was her voice.
Bored out of my scales.
Who says something like that?
Not a dream.
Not a hallucination.
She had been real. Solid. Sharp. Impossible to forget.
Kael ducked into the servant tunnels before anyone could catch him and climbed the spiral back staircase to his chambers. He'd snuck in this way so many times as a boy that the marble steps remembered the rhythm of his feet. By now, the guards had likely been sent to search for him. Again. Let them look. Let them worry.
For once, Kael wasn't hiding from his responsibilities.
He was chasing a reason to feel alive.
The council meeting was a blur.
Dukes discussed taxes. Generals plotted drills. His uncle, Lord Halvor, droned on about "the image of strength" and "the importance of heirs." Kael sat still, nodding when expected, blinking away the fatigue that clung to him like sea mist.
When asked for his thoughts on naval deployments to the Southern Isles, he stared down at the map and thought only of green eyes with gold slits and a tail that shimmered like stormlight.
He offered a vague comment about trade routes and excused himself soon after.
That night, he returned to the cliffs.
She wasn't there.
Not the next night either.
Or the one after that.
But Kael kept coming back. Waiting.
The world above was pressing in tighter by the day. Plans for the coronation had accelerated. His mother whispered of betrothals. His father was growing weaker, confined to the royal solar and speaking less with each dawn.
Kael's life was being carved into shape without his permission.
But beneath the cliffs, by the sea, there was still air to breathe.
He wasn't sure if she'd come again.
But he hoped.
Far below, in the heart of the tide caves...
Lyra floated upside down, her tail flicking lazily in the dark water as glowing jellyfish pulsed around her like drifting lanterns. Her arms were folded behind her head. Her expression was vacant.
"Bored out of my scales," she mumbled again, the words bubbling up like a curse.
She hadn't meant to say it that day.
It had just slipped out. Like so many things when that land-walker prince had been standing on the rocks, blinking at her like he'd never seen anything stranger or more wonderful.
She wasn't used to being looked at that way.
Not like a curiosity.
But like... a question.
And gods help her—she'd been thinking about him ever since.
The other merfolk didn't understand. They rarely came this close to shore. The elders warned of land-walker treachery, of harpoons and glass bottles, of the old war when queens bled out on beach sand for songs they refused to share.
But Lyra wasn't like the others.
She had always been restless. Too curious. Too blunt. Too drawn to things she wasn't supposed to want.
So maybe that's why, on the fifth night, when she saw him again—standing awkwardly on the same rocks, holding a basket of... was that cheese?—she didn't swim away.
She didn't speak either.
She just surfaced, cocked her head, and raised an eyebrow.
Kael nearly dropped the basket.
"I didn't think you'd actually show up again," he said breathlessly.
Lyra floated a little closer. "And yet here I am. Must be my poor judgment."
"Or mine." He smiled, nervous but genuine. "I brought cheese."
She blinked. "Why?"
"I panicked."
A silence stretched, then—
Lyra laughed. Actually laughed. A sharp, sudden sound that echoed off the waves like something accidentally joyful.
"Fine," she said. "Feed the sea witch. Let's see what happens."
They sat like that—him on the rocks, her in the water—for hours.
Kael told her about palace life, the suffocating expectations, the ceremonial sword that wasn't sharp enough to cut fruit, let alone enemies. Lyra scoffed at everything. She told him about tide politics, sea banshees with drama issues, and a crab named Leonard who thought he was cursed and made everyone suffer for it.
He asked why she was always alone.
She didn't answer.
She asked why he hadn't run away yet.
He didn't either.
But when the moon rose high, they both stayed a little longer than they meant to.
Over the next week, they met again.
And again.
Kael brought stories, stolen fruits, and once, a tiny harp. Lyra brought riddles, tales of drowned cities, and pearls that glowed in moonlight.
They laughed. They argued. They learned each other's silences.
They never touched.
They never dared.
But the space between them began to shrink.
Like the tide.
It wasn't love.
Not yet.
It was something wilder. Prettier. Less doomed.
A spark that didn't know what kind of fire it would become.
On the ninth night, as they lay in parallel again—him on the rocks, her half-submerged—Kael asked, "Do you think we could ever switch places?"
Lyra turned to him slowly. "You mean, could I grow legs and stumble around on dry land while being judged for not liking bread?"
He laughed. "Something like that."
"I don't know," she said. "Would you survive down here, Kael of Aldareth?"
He looked up at the stars. "No idea."
Another pause. Quieter this time.
"I'd try," he said.
But fate doesn't like perfect stillness.
And someone had been watching.
Far beyond the cliffs, in a chamber woven from driftwood and kelp, a figure stirred. Her eyes were glassy, her hair a tangle of seaweed and barnacles. She hummed low and deep, her voice vibrating the coral around her.
The sea remembers debts.
And someone had broken a rule.
The next morning, Kael awoke with salt still on his skin.
He couldn't stop smiling.
He didn't know it yet, but he'd left something behind on those rocks.
A sliver of himself.
And in exchange, something old had started to awaken in the water.
"You can't tame the ocean. But you can drown beautifully trying."