Chapter 3

Once, I woke to Ronan holding me. The bathwater had been changed. His shirt was soaked.

“I never meant to kill you. You know I can't bear to lose them.”

He took my hand and held it to his cheek. I eased it out of his grasp and pressed it over the wound in my chest.

When I next woke, he was gone. Sailors dragged me up to the quarterdeck, where the noon sun had baked the boards hot. My tideheart throbbed sluggishly. Every breath felt like swallowing a mouthful of salt.

Ronan sat beneath the awning with Vivian beside his knee, tying a new wristband around his arm. The old one I'd mended had been thrown down by the table leg.

“I saved you some lunch.” Vivian looked up with a welcoming smile. “You're so thin. It breaks my heart to see you like this.”

I couldn't answer quickly enough. Meg kicked me in the waist, sending me sprawling in front of them. Ronan caught her ankle and shoved it away. “Did I say you could touch her?”

The maid went white. Vivian immediately doubled over, clutching her stomach. “Don't get angry, Ronan. The doctor said I can't take a fright in my condition.”

He let Meg go. When he noticed fresh blood spreading through my skirt, he laid his coat over me, but his voice hardened again. “Get up. She's trying to be kind. You don't have to make this awkward for everyone.”

The moment he looked away, Vivian stepped on the coat's hem. I'd barely pushed myself upright when the cloth jerked tight and pulled me back to the deck. She widened her eyes as if surprised, then set a tin plate of meat and sea lettuce beside me. “Well, you can eat there. I don't suppose merfolk care much about table manners.”

Ronan looked at the plate on the floor. His fingers tightened on the arm of his chair, but he didn't ask anyone to give me a place at the table. I lowered my eyes to the food. I needed whatever strength I could get.

I reached for the food. Only then did Vivian lift her shoe from the coat and point to the pale meat. “Try that. It cost a fortune. Our little one will be eating it someday, too.”

I swallowed a small mouthful. My tongue was too numb to taste much. The meat caught in my dry throat. I tried to swallow again, but my stomach convulsed.

I doubled over and brought it all up. Vivian screamed and jumped back. Vomit had splashed her skirts and the pearl buckles on her shoes. She turned to Ronan, her eyes filling. “I was only trying to feed her! Why does she hate me so much?”

A sailor grabbed my hair. To keep me from hurting anyone with a mermaid's song, they forced a piece of cork packed with iron filings into my mouth and strapped it in place. Ronan lifted Vivian into a chair and knelt to clean her skirt himself.

He'd done that for me once. I'd been nineteen, attending my first winter ball in Grayhaven, when I spilled red wine down my dress. He'd dropped to his knees to wipe it away. Even his father had laughed and told him he was completely gone on me.

Now he knelt in front of another woman while I waited for his permission to spit the thing out of my mouth.

“Don't punish her,” Vivian pleaded, catching his hand between little sobs. “Let her keep me company while I paint my charts. That'll make us even, won't it?”

Ronan unbuckled the strap. The cork brought blood with it when he pulled it free. He asked someone to fetch clean water. “Why do you have to keep going after her?”

I pressed my lips together to stop the bleeding and waited for the water.

At the far end of the deck, the navigator rang the brass bell. The harbor officials had arrived and wanted Ronan to check the last passage permits before the Blue Tide. He stood, but Vivian caught his hand and drew him down to kiss her forehead. Then she placed his palm against her belly, watching me the whole time. “We'll be right here waiting for you.”

I turned my face away. Once, the thought of Ronan becoming a father had made me smile without even trying. I'd never imagined being chained at the feet of his child's mother.

As soon as he left, Vivian kicked over the plate. “You're blocking my light. Go sit by the rope basket.”

I moved slowly across the deck and rested my back against the sun-warmed rail. A torn red ribbon lay among the discarded ropes. I stared at it for a long time.

I left the ribbon among the ropes. Ronan still had the other tidehearts. I could never bring back the soul he'd crushed beneath his boot, but I had to find the others and get them home.

Two maids passed on the other side of the deck, praising Vivian's new chart and complaining about the trouble it took to make the colors.

“Three tidehearts for that little bit of blue. And we still haven't got enough white.”

I caught the rail and slowly pulled myself up. A faint sound reached me on the wind, the low keening White Reef merfolk made only when they were dying. I followed it. With every step, the shell fragments left in my feet from dancing sank deeper, but I couldn't stop for them now.

Behind the awning, several merfolk lay piled on a tarpaulin. Their tail fins were gone. Vivian was opening the last one's chest with a silver-handled filleting knife. She lifted out a pale gold tideheart, inspected it, and dropped it into a mortar.

The pestle came down. The keening stopped.

She looked up and smiled as though I'd come to save her the trouble of calling for help. “Lila, perfect timing. Royal tidehearts are silver-white, aren't they?” She came closer and laid her bloody hand on my shoulder. “Ronan would give his life for our baby. Of course he'd let your people make a few sacrifices. Why don't you pick one out for me? It'll be easier than trying them one by one.”