Each baby born beneath the waves is killed--with one exception: the one hundred thousandth is spared. There's one rule shared between the island's tribes: don't touch the water. When Cressa-la breaks this law, her world, and body, changes. Sure, change is normal... but when has growing scales ever been normal? • • • Watty Award Winner 2015: Best Use of Visuals • • • Each baby born beneath the waves is killed--with one exception: the one hundred thousandth is spared. Among the spared, magic chooses a rare few, connecting them to the moon or sea. These are the One-Hundreds, mermaids and humans with the power to save the world-or corrupt it. When Cressa-la breaks the first rule of her tribe and touches the water surrounding her island, everything she knows turns on its head. Talking, sinister dolphins, mind control, and a whole world just under the waves await her on her eigteenth birthday... but she never asked for any of this. All she wanted was to become a Tribe Leader and take care of her village. It's amazing how one screw-up can change everything. A relentless darkness reaches for her, wanting her affections for his own twisted purposes. In opposition stands a fractured light, haunted by a painful past where corruption eroded friendship. Unless Cressa-la can bring the darkness to his knees and fight the war raging inside, the world is doomed. • • • Content warning: This story contains themes of depression and violence.

"Our next is a girl of eighteen summers. She has smooth, unblemished skin and has been schooled in the arts of love and seduction. But most of all, she is untouched." my auctioneer and captor said as he paraded me in front of the men. They eyed their fill of my body but they were forbidden to touch. "Bidding starts at two hundred pieces of silver." I was returned towards the stage as the men stated their prices. I was a rare commodity: a slave girl yet untouched, eighteen, fertile when the land has been struck with a plague that left women barren. The price for me reached eight hundred silver coins and many have already backed down. "Two hundred gold coins!" a man spoke up. It was he, the man who stared at me with passion and desire in his eyes moments ago. That was quite a sum for a slave! "Two hundred gold coins going once, twice... Sold to the King of Ivaris!" the auctioneer shouted. There it was. My fate was sealed. I am a love slave and it is just my luck that I am sold to the same cruel king that destroyed my kingdom. *A story of love, of gods and goddesses, of reincarnation and magic, intrigue and betrayal, of kings and war...*

"Take my hand Kieran... I swear... I promise... I won't let go."

There were not many things that I knew much about but pain... Pain I knew. I understood it and its various types. Emotional pain as time dragged by, physical pain I felt when my mate had sex with another woman, when different men had come, nightly beatings, mental pain when he played tricks, when I realized no one from my pack was looking for me. Worse pain... knowing that I was here paying for another person's actions and my children were paying too. Yeah... I knew pain.