The Mer Prince

Chapter 25

Charley Bab's POV

W-what? How could he guess something like that?! I looked at my dad with a shocked expression, horror and fear welling on my insides as I seemed to forget how to breathe again. I couldn't seem to breathe, my father's full attention on XY.

What was my father going to do to him if he learned he did? How did the king know? Was XY going to be punished? Would my father be alright if he did? What was going to happen? Would it be okay, just a kiss on the forehead that I returned with one on his cheek?

I felt more than a little overwhelmed as I glanced towards XY. Ever since I've been here, he'd been taking care of me. Would he take care of himself now and deny it? Would he put himself in possible trouble and not deny? He was standing there, physically phased because of the king's question, eyebrows raised as if someone had just tried to slap him.

"I did." XY said, more like stated.
It was just a little forehead kiss though, right?

The king waved his hand, guards flocking to XY as I yelped, feeling like the water was trying to suffocate me. "No! W-wait, what are you doing?!" I said, looking towards the guy who's supposed to be my father. "He did kiss me, just on the forehead! It was nothing!"

"Saline, take my son to his room. Guards, you know where to put this mutt." My father ordered monotonously, like he had done nothing of consequence and not heard me.

"What a-are you doing? Where are you taking him?" I cried as the red-tailed guy took my arm and started to pull me away, and I felt like it was getting harder to breathe as my chest shakily rose and fell, my mind racing as I pulled towards the guards that where now cuffing XY on the floor.

"XY!" I called to him, trying to get anything, something from him.

Yet the assassin didn't meet my gaze, his face bloody and busted now as he turned it away from me on the floor.

I started to sink like a stone as I started to cry at the cruelty of this, being dragged away from the only person I could say I knew in the ocean.... because of a kiss on the forehead that he did not deny. A kiss that I returned with one on his cheek.

It's an odd thing, crying in water. You don't exactly feel dehydrated as a mermaid, and tears aren't as cold as the water around them, so the warm water just floated up as fast as it could after escaping my eyes, looking like bubbles almost. If I wasn't being pulled away from XY right now I'd think they were pretty.

The tight hold on my arm lessened when we were so far away from XY that I couldn't try to do anything even if I wanted. Now it was just me and the red guy, who had been looking at XY like he had wanted this from the beginning.

"Are.... Are you happy now?" I asked the red tailed man quietly, his name Saline I think. "Are you happy now that he's being taken to the dungeons?" I didn't even use an accusing tone as I felt flattened inside, like something had just crushed me and was balling up my insides.

There was a pause in the man's swimming as he let go of my wrist and looked at me, though I wouldn't meet his gaze. I would not look at this man.

"No. No.... I am not." Saline says, his attitude now doing a whole flip as he has realized what he's done. Who XY was to me. "Let's get you to your bed, my prince."

"Don't call me that. I am no prince. I don't even want to be here." I told him, the man sighing and dragging me along. I yanked my arm away from his light hold, turning and swimming the direction he was going.

I felt... lost. Just when I had been found, and just when I held some hope and had someone beside me, it was taken away. That's how my life seemed to enjoy playing, and now I knew no one who could stand beside me here. No one that could swim beside me.

"Here you are...." The red tailed guy opened the door for me to a big, lavish red and gold room. I looked at the interior and frowned, the things inside familiar and not as interesting as the gorgeous hotel I had been in before. Nothing to interest me, nothing to cheer me.

I looked back towards the doors as the Saline guy started to close them.

"I have to lock these now...." He explained.

I nodded, looking away from him and at the giant metalwork that served as a window. The place only seemed like a prison though.

"I truly am sorry...." Saline says quietly, before the doors closed with a 'bomf' of metal hitting metal.

Once he was out, I started to cry again, and there was nothing to stop me now as I rose to the ceiling, clutching my chest. Nothing stopped me as I cried for being imprisoned, I cried for the loss of the only man I knew here, I cried because of the cruelty of the sea, and I cried, for the pain in my chest only told me what I already knew.

I had fallen in love with XY, an assassin who was now locked away for who knows how long, who knows where, and it's because of me.

He wouldn't even meet my gaze as they dragged him out.