“Okay,” he says, rising to a sitting position. He does seem to be taking this really well. “How do we get there?”

I twist around onto my stomach and motion to my lower back. “Grab on.”

“You’ve got to be—”

“I can travel over twenty nautical miles an hour.” Almost as fast as a dolphin at full speed. “How about you?”

He grumbles something about being in the driver’s seat but grabs me by either side of my waist.

“Hold on tight,” I instruct. “And try to stay as streamlined as possible.”

I’m not used to swimming with human-sized drag on my back. He will probably cut my speed in half. Which means we’re barely going to make it home before dark.

With a solid kick I set off to the east, heading toward the Bahamas. Now I have forty-five nautical miles of swimming time to worry about what Daddy’s going to say when he sees my passenger.

I’m pretty sure it won’t be “Welcome to the family.”

To the untrained (human) eye, Thalassinia looks like an expanse of coral reefs and volcanic formations. There are no straight lines or geometric shapes to give away the fact that the structures are actually mermade. (Get it? Mermade. Like mermaid, but…oh, never mind.) Thankfully, our kingdom is old enough for coral and algae and sea fans to have grown over all our buildings, camouflaging them even more from human eyes. Add on the strategically placed starfish, sea urchins, and anemones, and we’re practically invisible.

Unless you know what to look for.

There is a rhythmic pattern to the organic shapes. The bioluminescent glow that illuminates the kingdom at night can be seen from a thousand yards away. And if you focus your attention on the largest formation at the center of the valley, you can make out the pattern of the Thalassinian flag, formed by a field of blue sea whips and green sponge seaweed covering the royal palace. My home.

As much as I’m dreading the meeting with Daddy—I can already hear him roaring, “What were you thinking?”—I can’t help but be excited to be home. I haven’t visited since winter break. Almost three months. Too, too long for a daughter of the sea.

“There it is,” I say, pulling up as we crest the hill overlooking the valley. “That’s Thalassinia.”

Quince releases my waist and floats around to my side. I ignore the chill that shivers through me at the loss of his body heat: the depths are cool, that’s all. I swirl my hands, spreading energy into the water around us to raise the temperature.

Before today, in the three years since we became neighbors, I’ve never once seen anything resembling shock on Quince’s face. He’s more the shock-inducing type. But as he looks out on my kingdom for the first time, his jaw slacks and his eyes widen with a well-deserved sense of awe.

If this weren’t the crappiest situation in the history of merkind, I would take some kind of perverse joy in rendering him speechless.

“Let’s go,” I say, swimming in front of him so he can grab on. “The sooner we get down there, the sooner I can get rid of you.”

“Why, princess,” he says as he slips strong arms around my waist, “I’m starting to get the impression you don’t like me very much.”

“You’re only just figuring this out now?” I mutter as I kick us into motion.

I think he’s going to fall back into the silence I enjoyed on the way over, until he says, “It must have been nice.”

“What?”

“Growing up here,” he says. “It must have been nice.”

I never really thought about that. It wasn’t like I had a choice of where to grow up. Or, at least, I didn’t think I had a choice. But, yeah, I guess it was nice in a lot of ways. The sea is my home, and I’m always awed by her beauty. And I adore my dad more than anything, but my childhood wasn’t always ideal. My dad wasn’t just my dad; he was also the king. Growing up as the king’s only daughter—only child, only heir—meant being protected and sheltered and practically held prisoner…in my own best interest, of course. It meant being pressured from the time I could swim to act like a perfect princess, to find my mermate and bond before I turned eighteen or lose my place in the succession, while Daddy scared away every boy within ten kingdoms, insisting none were good enough for his baby girl. I love my dad and my kingdom and my royal future, but there were times when I just wanted to swim away and never look back.

Maybe that’s why I jumped at the chance to go live with Aunt Rachel for a while. That’s probably why Daddy suggested I go, giving me taste of freedom before I left to look for it on my own.

“You okay, princess?”

I almost forgot about the pain in the fins on my back.

“I’m fine,” I snap. “Just trying to remember the way.”

He doesn’t need to know that mermaids have an innate navigational sense, kind of like butterflies. I could find my way home blindfolded if you dropped me off a random boat in the middle of the open sea.

Entering from the top edge of the kingdom—the Gulf Stream pushed us a little farther north than I planned—I swim over the outer suburbs, the cookie-cutter neighborhoods of identical coral homes with perfectly manicured caulerpa lawns, ring sets in the backyard, and a family seahorse in the garage. After the suburbs we pass over the commercial and industrial areas. I resist the urge to look in on my favorite shop, Bubbles and Baubles—they sell the most adorable shell jewelry and yummy all-natural soaps. I can go there anytime. After the separation.