I met Lena back at the house. She was mildly annoyed that I’d disappeared out on the beach, but she also wasn’t going to bring it up in front of Mom and Dad or anything. Mainly because she would’ve gotten busted too for not watching me. But it was a good reminder that I had to be a little more careful from now on. 

I didn’t go out that night—between meeting the Undersea Queen, boutiquing with Lena and Tess, and meeting Max at the aquarium I was exhausted. So instead I planned the ultimate night in. I put on Gilmore Girls, took a long bath, brewed up some tea Dad kept in the kitchen cabinet, and did some writing in my diary. 

Specifically, I found myself writing about Talu, the mysterious prince of the Undersea who’d saved my life as a princely type should. We’d had a connection on the beach, and again in the palace when I’d been introduced to his mother.

Was Talu the kind of boy I could fall in love with?
I could easily see it, and yet—

It was forbidden, wasn’t it? For a human to love a mermaid? 

Maybe I could be the exception—not quite human, not quite mermaid.

But he was also a prince.

The idea seemed preposterous. After all, I was the girl who had only just figured out how to be pretty. I was the girl that no boy had a crush on in my class, the girl who boys asked to the school dance as a joke to snigger over when I showed up disappointed and dolled up. How could someone like that suddenly expect to have a prince fall in love with them?
My eyes burned and something seized in my stomach—there it was. 

Lena had done so much to try to help me, but what if there was something wrong with me that couldn’t be changed? There was a reason I wasn’t exactly crush-worthy, and trying to pretend that someone like Max who knew me all my life suddenly might have any interest in me felt more like a patronizing attempt to boost my self-esteem, not rooted in any truth. Taking me to parties changed nothing because deep down I was never going to be the girl who went to parties and enjoyed them. 

I closed the diary and realized I was crying. Which felt pretty pathetic, given that it was all true, but that didn’t stop the feelings, I guess. 

Maybe I wasn’t ready for love like I kept dreaming of.

But I wasn’t going to stop trying.

The next morning, instead of using the pearl, I swam down to the usual place. Instead of Kei, Lumi, or Dominique, I was instead greeted by Jewel and a new girl I hadn’t met before. 

She was petite, with a round, cutesy face with wide brown eyes. Her shimmering tangerine tail was shorter than some of the others I saw, but had pale aquamarine fins that seemed to move of their own accord, almost flickering like fire. What was most distinctive about her though was her hair. The color of cherry blossoms, she wore it back in two elaborate braids, but strands escaped and moved like her fins, fire-like despite being underwater.

She held what looked like a harp made of gold with shells and dolphins carved into the gold along the top and the base. 

“Oh, hey, Mika!” Jewel waved. “Kei’s out running errands, and Dominique and Lumi are still busy. So it’s just us. Venus here wanted to practice before the symphony next week.”

“Hello.” Venus didn’t look at me directly, her full cheeks turning a deeper pink than her hair. She strummed on the iridescent strings of her harp, letting out a series of light, airy notes. “I’d heard rumors about the human with the heart of a mermaid.”

“Word travels fast,” I quipped. Still, hearing that exact turn-of-phrase made me uneasy. It was the same exact phrase that Talu had used when telling me about the Princess of the Twilight Tides.

Who I allegedly was.

I decided to navigate away from that topic. “So you’re a part of a symphony?”

Venus nodded.

“She’s being modest—not just any symphony, but she is the youngest member of the Royal Symphony!” Jewel gently prodded Venus in the back with her elbow.

Venus frowned as her notes jangled together from the disruption. “Jewel!”

“Sorry.” Jewel winced, but recovered quickly as she looked back to me. “And it’s not just any symphony—surely you know what’s next week?”
I tilted my head. “No, I don’t, sorry.”

“Aren’t you humans supposed to be closer to the moon?” Jewel laughed. “It’s a full moon next week, silly!”

“The Royal Symphony plays every full moon,” Venus said as she began to strum her harp again. “It’s to celebrate its coming again, and the renewal of magic—or something like that. It’s a very old custom from the sea-dragons.”

“The sea-dragons?” I recalled what Talu had mentioned off-handedly, when I’d seen him out on the surface. “The lost people who lived at the bottom of the sea?”

“You’ve been talking to Talu.” Jewel grinned mischievously. “He tends to be a little stilted. I think he reads too much poetry.”

“What do you know about Talu?” He’d told me that the others didn’t know of his true identity as Prince Tiberius. 

Jewel shrugged. “He comes and he goes, all with the tide I guess. He works with me as a Treasure-Diver from time to time. The way I remember it, he just showed up one day and never left.”

I nodded. 

“He’s never made eyes at any of us the way he does at you,” she added, the mischievous gleam returned. “Of course, you’re obvious too!”
I knew I was turning red. “Am not!”
“Even I can tell,” Venus added without looking away from her instrument. 

“So what happens at the symphony?” I decided to backpedal into safer waters. 

“Oh, lots of things!” Jewel’s eyes brightened. “Everyone is dressed in their finest, and we all gather in the amphitheater to sing along as the orchestra performs. It’s very magical—there’s nothing like a symphony under the light of the full moon!”

“I hope I get to see one then.” I tried to picture it.

“If Talu doesn’t invite you, then I will.” Jewel leaned in conspiratorially, her eyes gleaming. “Our Princess of the Twilight Tides should get a marvelous debut! I’ll even bring you some of my finest pieces.”

“You’ve already heard about that?” I blinked. 

“Word travels fast.” Jewel winked.

“How dare you use my words against me!” I cried in mock-outrage, a hand over my heart.

Venus had already started strumming again, this time vocalizing along to it. As her voice rose to harmonize with her harp, the iridescent strings glowed, sending out ripples into the water, until they echoed into nothing but stillness. Venus closed her eyes, her shoulders relaxed as her voice grew more confident, more sure. And as she grew more confident, the light grew brighter, and waves of pale ghostly moonlight began to dance around her in the height of the daytime. 

“Whoa!” 

As she continued, the moonlight took shape, into seahorses and dragonlings and seals. I reached out to touch them, only for my hand to pass through the illusion. 

Venus built to a crescendo, and every magical light shown bright—only to vanish entirely with the dying notes, the epilogue of the piece. 

When Venus opened her eyes, she smiled shyly, her face pinker than her hair again. 

“Was I any good?”
“You were incredible!” I physically couldn’t stop myself from rambling. “There were all these lights and these feelings and—“

“Ah, but you haven’t heard our kind sing before.” Venus ran her fingers along the strings, not quite strumming. “That’s pretty normal for us.”
She sat up straighter and met my eyes. “Our music is our magic—what makes us unique from the other people of the sea.”

She smiled down at her harp fondly. “That’s why it’s so important to get the symphony right. We believe that a full moon is a time of renewal, a time of blessings and divinity—just as the sea-dragons once did. We want to use our music to cement those good intentions. By joining our voices together, we amplify our spells.”

“It’s also why it’s a big deal that Venus is in the Royal Symphony,” Jewel added, arms folded over her chest. “It’s powerful magic, and if anything goes wrong. . .”

She didn’t elaborate further. 

I thought of what else she said. “What did you mean, by the way, about other sea-peoples?”

“Oh.” Jewel blinked. “That’s right, you wouldn’t have met any of them yet.”

“There are many creatures on the land and sea, and many types of people across all,” Venus said. “And there are many who are not mermaids, but still answer to the Undersea Queen, as per the treaty under Amphrite the Unifier—“

“Yes, yes, all that boring history stuff.” Jewel waved a dismissive pearl-clad hand. “Let me think—you’ve heard of the sea-dragons already, thanks to Talu. There’s the Selkies up north, the seal-shifters who live on rocks in the middle of the ocean. There’s the Oceanids who live more in the Pacific and the tropics, water nymphs who control lava—“

“My great-grandmother was an Oceanid,” Venus added brightly. “I have fins like hers, and some say my hair is like hers even if it isn’t the same color—“

“There’s some others out there, but those are the bigger groups,” Jewel finished. “I’ve traveled sometimes with my mother, scouting for wreckage sites. You meet a lot of people that way.”

I nodded, my head was whirling. Just a week ago I’d known nothing about mermaids, much less other groups of people that lived beneath the waves. To think that I’d lived by the ocean all my life and there was so much just beneath the surface!
“There you are, Mika!”

We turned to see none other than Talu swimming up. 

“I was looking for you.” He looked meaningfully to the pearl necklace. 

“Oh, sorry, I was just talking to Jewel and Venus about the symphony.” I suddenly felt more self-conscious. My hair was everywhere, never mind that we were underwater and everyone’s hair was everywhere. Insecurity triumphs over knowledge of water-physics eternally. 

“We were just talking about how the Princess of the Twilight Tides needs to make her debut into the symphony.” Jewel clasped her hands on my shoulders. “You should invite her, Talu!”

This was veering into dangerous territory. 

Luckily, as he did the night I first met him, Talu came to my rescue.

He shook his head. “I heard that the Crown Prince is supposed to be inviting her as his personal guest.”

Jewel let out a low whistle. “No one outside of the Marianas Palace has ever seen the Prince—you’re lucky to get an invite from him!”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” I said evenly. 

Talu’s bright aquamarine gaze was practically pointed. “You should go to the palace soon, I think one of the stewards or similar should have it.” 

“Okay, I get it.” I brushed my hand over the pearl when Jewel interrupted. 

“You should be the one to take her, Talu.” With that, Jewel gave a gentle push. 

Talu avoided looking at either of us. “I guess I can do that.”

“We should get going, I have to go check the songs.” Venus sprang up from the rock on which she sat, her harp tucked under her arm. She grabbed Jewel’s wrist. “Come on, let’s go before you get into any more trouble.”

“Come on!” Jewel whine as she was pulled away—leaving only me and Talu.

We floated in the silence of the Undersea for a long time. I finally decided to break the silence.

“So, should we go or—“

“It’s okay, I have it with me.” He withdrew from the bag around his waist an envelope that felt like a blend between paper and silk, pale blue with golden markings around the edges and writing that looked like it was actually gold.

I accepted it. “I’m sorry, I don’t—“

“Don’t worry about it,” he said too stiffly. He wouldn’t look at me.

“I’ll get going then,” I decided. “See you at the full moon, then.”

I caught him turning his head as I kicked off, but I wouldn’t give him a second glance. I knew better. After all, I wasn’t the kind of girl guys liked. Jewel had to have meant it all as a joke, for the mermaid boy to like the human girl. It did sound ridiculous. 

So why would I think that a prince of mermaids would be any different?

I managed to keep my tears back until I broke the surface and was alone on the beach in the lull between the late afternoon and sunset.