Kissed by the Sea- A MERMAID ROMANCE...

Part 5

Lindon's POV:

The world was drowning, and I with it. 

The ocean had blinded me, capturing my body in it's twisting, wet hands. I cried out, and nothing but silence left my mouth, the dark hands tightened around my throat until my life left me. 

I felt my legs breaking, being crushed by the weight of that mass of black water. They were hot and bloody. The red mist surrounding my corpse like a glistening ruby veil. 

For a time I floated, broken and drained, a lifeless, poor thing.

And then slowly, with the loaded, anticipation of a starved lover, my sight returned to me, blink by cautious blink. 

My body was on fire, and as the red fog lifted, I saw what form my sea-dwelling ghost had taken. 

The tail was copper-red, and glistening like a wound. The scales, that should be cool as the sea rock were hot to the touch. I stared, wishing it were merely a feverish nightmare.

The tail whipped back and forth with the dancing currents, keeping my torso upright,  a pale shadow of my former self. 

It took me a few moments to realise I was holding the ugly glass dagger in my fist. First I saw it, and then I registered the pain...the pain and the need.

It were as if someone had buried a hook in my chest, I was pulled forwards, towards oblivion, with no memory of why I was moving in the first place. 

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Arrabella POV:

I was with my father when they brought him in. 

I recognised those gold-speckled eyes, that dark hair and square jaw as if they had been carved on my heart. 

But...he was not him. His tail flicked in my direction as if to mock my pain. The copperish colour was like blood, and I pictured my human love broken and bloodless on the ocean floor for the eight time that hour. My sharp intake of breath made my father look quizzically at me from behind his thick grey eyebrows and I sat up straighter in the pearl and seashell throne.

"What is your purpose in our kingdom young man?"

The sea-king's voice rang strong and true through the long hall and I watched as the sea glass in the chandeliers twinkled and chimed at the vibration.

The strange merman quivered and clutched at his chest as if in pain.

"I do not know...your-your majesty."

My father shifted himself in his stone chair, grumbling incoherently, displeased with this nonsensical answer.

"You do not know? Or you will not tell me?"

The merman seemed to shrink at that, his shoulder crumpling and his black hair falling into his eyes. 

"I have no memory sir, I only know that I was meant to come here. I can't stay away. The pulling-"

He touched his chest again.

"-Its unbearable your majesty. I'm a foreigner in this kingdom, I believe I once knew who I was, and why I am here. But that's faded. I almost believed I was human."

His tail danced deftly in response. 

"I ask for sanctuary...until I know what happened to me...why I am like this." 

I heard myself say the words before I felt them leave my lips.

"I shall grant you it."

The King twisted in his chair to face me.

"Daughter on what authority do you grant this intruder  sanctuary."

I rose from my seat and met my father's gaze steadily. 

"I am the princess. I am the daughter of the King. I grant him sanctuary. We are not so villainous as to turn him out into the darkness."

My father looked at the merman, and my face. He lifted a hand warily and waved off the guards that stood by. 

"Come."

I said, and he swam sullenly behind.