The Mer Prince

Chapter 26

Here is some needed background information.

Charley's POV

Fish, covered in some sort of multicolored stuck-in seaweed that made it look as dressed up and fancy as I was, sat on a gold platter before me. It seemed like a metaphor, something dressed up and served before the king that was speared through and physically showing it through the colors forced upon it.

The king himself was across from me, talking to other mermen and maidens, the man I will never call my father. He still had his grey beard and seaweed eyes that I didn't share, nothing about him reflecting on me. If I followed my mother in appearance my whole life, I would be happy, because there is no way I would want to have connection with this king of cruelty.

I was being talked excitedly too by a teal tailed mermaid, who had murky brown hair like stirred pond water, which stayed up in the water and she was always brushing back from her round brownie face. I couldn't follow her in enthusiasm, but her happiness about being in the palace and at the table as a reporter helped me stay in one place.

"If you're a reporter, shouldn't you get the names of everyone in attendance?" I asked her, propping my head up on an arm and pushing away my plate. I was not going to be eating.

"Oh! You're right! What's your name?" She immediately asked.

"My name is Charles." I told her, and her face lit up.

"The Prince Charles?" The reporter practically squealed. Her green eyes sparkled as she scooted her seat closer to mine with a clever work of her tail. "Are the rumors true? Are you actually the prince? I mean, that would explain, well, you! You look so much like the queen!"

I nodded. "I am apparently the prince." I told her, not caring now if this was supposed to be a secret or anything. I held my tongue from adding something sarcastic about him, looking at the reporter lady. "What's your name by the way?" I asked.

"My name is Pemphero, Pemphero Molonie! Nice to meet you." The mermaid said, taking my free hand and shaking it like she was meeting a superstar. "Your disappearance was the kind of turn of the war content for this whole kingdom! It's amazing! There's even groups of soldiers with your name!"

"Oh, uh, there was a war?" I question. Yeah, I knew a bit from just what I could glean from everything happening, but I felt like asking this would at least fill me in.

"There is a war! Oh my, you probably don't know, do you?"

I shook my head. A war, the reason I was sent away, right? I would think that after eighteen or so years it would have ended, but apparently not.

"History books say that King Ramulosus, your great-great-grandfather, started the war by taking a whole prison full of assassins, fighters, and criminals, and kicking all of them out of the kingdom and into the great trench! Even if they were seemingly innocent, they were exiled to live in the trench by the king's order. This left our kingdom prosperous and peaceful, until about your granddad's birth. He ruled several years before the criminals and assassins all rose from the trench and tried to bring him down, but it didn't work! He even was given the name Scar Neck from all the scars he was given by assassins! Scar Neck and his men ran all of the intruders out into open water, where many sharks wondered and ate several of the enemy! They forced the fiends past the drop off and set up a border; no one was allowed back over. Now it's your dad's rule, and he has the worst assassins threatening to come back over, you returning to him, and apparently there is even a killer from the trench in the dungeons now! It's horrible, I heard he could have killed you!" Pemphero says, looking concerned for me.

How would she feel if she knew that the killer she's probably talking about is actually a big softie that my heart's become attached to?

Seeing her side of the conversation though, I understood why my father may have locked XY away. A assassin from the drop off finds the prince and brings him to the kingdom, apparently unaware of what he's found in the drop off, where it is apparently war zone waters when he's serving for the crown. Then the king, upset by finding his son has a really disliked tail, sent me off with this assassin, only to question what in the seven seas was XY doing out there in the first place? The king probably thinks XY needs to be treated like a traitor, though I know that man is my protector.

If XY was trying to kill me, he had several opportunities, didn't he?

I mean, he could have left me for the sharks. He could have let me hyperventilate away. XY had opportunities, yet never once did he take them.

"So, the king was born into a line of mer-kings against anything from the trench or open sea." I say, looking towards the bearded man.

"Yeah, it's tragic really. He and your mother thought sending you away would protect you until they had the castle ready for heavy attack, but then you never returned." Pemphero says, following my gaze towards the king.

"It is hard to be raised against something and not be wary about it." I say. "But.... sometimes a different perspective is needed. The criminals and assassins are probably all dead, it's been three generations, nothing but frightened and angry descendants are probably left. Hasn't anyone tried setting up some sort of.... legal let in system?" I say. "If they want to join the kingdom properly, they should be able to."

"But.... they're all murderers and criminals?" Pemphero apparently never heard this kind of conversation.

"How old do you think everyone lives to until they die here?" I question her.

"Umm, one hundred?" She answers.

"How long has it been since the first group was sent to the trench?"

"About four hundred years...?"

"Don't you think all the killers and criminals from the beginning would have died? Then it would just be their descendants that would have done nothing wrong." I explain.

"Yeah but they attacked us." Pemphero says.

"Did they all attack though? Don't you think some were just trying to get out of the trench?" I press. "Being stuck in a horrible place for long, because of nothing you've done but your parents did, that turns people mad and desperate."

"I.... I never thought of it that way." Pemphero says, looking down. "I have to tell this to the-"

"Attention, please!" Saline interrupted, by my father.

"Thank you all for coming. Today, I would like to confirm the reports of my son, Charley, being alive and well." The King says, gesturing to me with a calloused hand. "I would also like to announce the invitation for any noble to come and try to win his betrothal!"