Water's Price by Mell Eight

Author:Mell Eight [Eight, Mell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Paranormal, magic, shifters, mermaids/mermen, witches
Publisher: NineStar Press
Published: 2023-06-19T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Four

CALDER’S ELBOW SLIPPED off the side of the pool, and he sank for a brief moment before he caught himself. Even humans had heard of the sea witches. The most well-known story was about one of the daughters of Triton—a spoiled, selfish girl—who wanted to make her journey up to the world of men before she was eligible. She ignored tradition, logic, and her family and—after a series of unfortunate events—fell in love with a human prince whom she rescued from a shipwreck. She had been too self-absorbed to realize or care that as part of their preparation for going to the world of air, mermaids were taught how to shift to a human form. She almost gave away the secret of the mermaid’s existence by saving that prince, and then, rather than going to school and learning the magic, she decided to cut corners and went to the local sea witch.

The sea witch was happy to make a bargain. She cut out the girl’s tongue, thereby stealing the girl’s ability to do magic, and in return performed the spell that all mermaids knew to give the girl human legs. Except, the sea witch purposefully cast an incomplete spell, so the girl felt pain whenever she walked.

In the end, the girl died a horrible death, alone and unloved, after giving the sea witches a glimpse into the magic the Tritons wielded. Luckily, the girl’s tongue didn’t generate enough power to truly boost the witches, but just the fact that they won such a decisive victory over the tritons gave them enough of an emotional boost. The story was a brutal lesson to all merfolk and many other sea creatures.

The oceans could be cold, ruthless places, particularly the northern sea, and that cold had sunk into the heart of every sea witch. Calder and his family carefully avoided the areas the witches claimed as their own so they didn’t accidentally antagonize them. Even the most imagined slight could lead to brutal revenge.

“Is this part of their continued belief that they, the descendants of Rhodos, should rule the seas rather than the descendants of Triton? Or did you do something to garner their ire?” Calder hoped it was the former as that meant the sea witches were simply attacking like that out of general spite. If it was the latter, and it was personal… Calder hoped Sevan never swam alone.

Sevan sighed. “A little bit of both. About five years ago, the sea witches hatched a plan to steal a trident. One of their more beautiful women engineered a fake injury along my patrol route, so I would have to rescue her—at which point she hit me with a love spell, a coercion spell, and a forgetting spell. She wanted me to believe we had grown up together and had been madly in love since we were kids, and therefore her asking me to hand her my trident so she could heal herself was natural. Luckily, love spells only work if the person they’re cast on can feel love for the caster.

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