She thought of the day when, as a fourteen-year-old mergirl, she’d discovered a bullet among the pebbles of Urchin Grove. She had not known what it was, a fact that had told her it did not belong to the waters. Clutching it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, she’d shown it to her father. “I believe this is a bullet,” he’d said. “It ruptures through the flesh when shot out of a gun at high speed. You and I will never understand this, but humans have more ways of killing one another than an octopus has arms.” Coralline had placed the bullet on a corner of her bookshelf, to remind herself of the lesson she’d learned that day: When it came to humans, even things that looked innocuous were dangerous.
“The Ogre is right!” Nacre cried from within Coralline’s satchel. “We have to leave right away.”
“The ship might try to find us and kill us next,” Altair said tremulously.
A bullet whizzed over Izar’s head.
Coralline rotated the dagger in her hand.
“We’d planned to leave without Izar in the morning,” Pavonis rumbled, “but, somehow, he’s still with us. This ship attack is the perfect opportunity for us to get rid of him. Let’s leave him here to die, at the hands of his own bloodthirsty people. What could be better? What are you even thinking, Coralline?”
She was thinking that Izar had fought for her at Bristled Bed and Breakfast. She was thinking that if not for him, she would likely be dead—the two brothers had said they would kill her.
A bullet swept in front of Izar’s nose.
Soon, within minutes, the men on the ship would manage to kill him. Then it would be his blood she would be smelling in her nostrils, like she had smelled Tang’s yesterday.
Raising her arms over her head, Coralline started cutting a path straight up like a swordfish, until she reached Izar and the fishnet. A bullet flew past her chin, so close that she momentarily froze. Then, swinging her tail, using all the strength of her arm, she started gashing through the bottom of the net with her dagger. As Izar dodged to avoid bullets, the net lurched and shifted continuously between her fingers, but she kept slicing, snipping filaments with the same meticulousness with which her seamstress mother joined them.
Honeymooners Hotel swelled three stories above the seabed like the Elnath Mansion, and it had similar golden-rimmed windows, but its shale was not the stark, imposing black of Ecklon’s home—rather, it was a rare, pale pink, like a new blush.
The hotel was encompassed by a brightly colored garden of siphoned feather, red comb, and berry wart cress. It was just the sort of fairy-tale-like place Coralline had admired in mergirl story books like Haptera’s Happily Ever After and The Adventures of Agarose. The mergirl in her longed to swim through its doors, but the mermaid in her was stayed by the fact that she was not here on her honeymoon; she was here with Izar.
The town of Rainbow Wrack was a honeymoon destination, though. Almost all accommodations had sappy names, including the two, Romantic Retreat and Couples Corner, that flanked Honeymooners Hotel. Neither of them had availability. “It’s wedding season,” Coralline and Izar had been told in explanation.
Coralline followed Izar through the arched doors of Honeymooners Hotel. The lobby had a high, rounded ceiling with continuous arches that merged with twirling pillars like a broad set of shoulders. The architecture was strong and masculine, but frills scattered throughout the lobby—mirrors and heart-shaped tables—made the place also feminine. Even the concierge, whose breast pocket stated his name as Plaice, seemed suited to the hotel, for he had a large hulking form, but his scales were as lushly pink as a horse conch shell.
“We have a room available,” Plaice said in response to their unasked question.
“Separate rooms,” Coralline said, though she did not know how she would pay for her room without any carapace.
Plaice looked at her with surprise. Coralline supposed it didn’t happen often that a mermaid and merman requested separate rooms at Honeymooners Hotel, given that most people would be here on their honeymoon. “I’m afraid we have just one room available,” he said apologetically.
Coralline turned on her tail to leave, but Izar’s hand landed gently on her elbow. “Can we speak, please?” he said, gesturing to a little alcove off to the side. Coralline nodded and trailed him into the nook. “I can sleep on the sofa,” he said.
“The what?”
“The thing on which one sits in the living room, like in Tang Tarpon’s home.”
“Oh, the settee?”
“Yes, that. I’ll sleep on the settee.”
It was strange, the idea of sleeping on a settee, but if they shared a room, he might pay for it, and that would solve the problem of her carapace crunch. “Fine, thank you,” she said.
They returned to Plaice. Coralline inhaled sharply when he requested twenty-five carapace for the room. The sum was half as much as she’d earned for a full week of work at The Irregular Remedy. But Izar handed Plaice a cerith and slipper limpet shell rather casually, as though he’d never once experienced a shortage of currency.
She and Izar then trailed Plaice down a spacious corridor with limestone adornments along the walls. He opened the door to their room, bowed, and departed.
The room was divided into seating and sleeping areas. The seating area was furnished with a coral-pink settee, a large mauve rug embroidered with bright-pink halymenia algae, and a white-slate dresser with a framed oval mirror. The sleeping area, located deeper in the room, contained an immense bed covered with an orange-pink blanket. The room was luxurious by any standards, but especially after Bristled Bed and Breakfast, Coralline found it as opulent as a palace. She swam in enthusiastically.
She placed her satchel on the dresser. In the mirror, she saw Izar fling his satchel onto the settee, then plop down next to it; from his wince, he appeared to have expected the settee to be cushiony. Their eyes met in the mirror. Only then did it properly sink in to Coralline that she was sharing a room with him, when she’d never even shared a room with Ecklon before. When she’d agreed outside to sharing a room, she had been thinking practically—her lack of carapace—she had not been thinking of propriety. She looked away from Izar now.
Turning back to her satchel, Coralline extracted her jar of horned wrack salve and dabbed the balm onto the bruise next to her earlobe. She then unwrapped the braid she’d curled around her ear, loosened the strands with her fingers, and, jeweled comb in hand, fell gladly into her nightly routine: She ran the comb through her locks from one end to the other, pulling meticulously at her knots. For her, the nightly sweep of her hair was not just therapeutic but symbolic—if, with systematic effort, she could untangle all the knots in her hair, she could do the same with all the knots in her life. And this day, the knots had been many.
At last putting her comb away, she dug her ivory chemise out of her satchel. She’d never slept in a bodice before—they tended to be stiff and fitted—and she longed to change out of her bodice into her chemise—as smooth and soft as anything in the world—but it would be inappropriate for her to sleep in a chemise tonight, with Izar there. Sighing, she tossed the chemise back in her satchel.
In the mirror, she saw Izar rubbing his shoulder. She’d noticed him fiddling with it earlier as well, during their swim.
“Take off your waistcoat.”
“Excuse me?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
Assuming a commanding tone in an effort to hide her flush, she said, “I mean, something’s clearly the matter with your shoulder. Let me take a look.”