Once again, I was led down a labyrinth of corridors of pillars, high arches, mosaic floors and stained glass windows. More people filled the halls now, and more of them were looking at me. Had word already spread so quickly? Prince Tiberius said nothing, his gaze held straight in front of him and his expression now perfectly copying his mother's. 

Finally, my swim with Prince Tiberius came to an end when we entered a room with a proper door, not one of those golden gates. It was clearly some kind of living room or what a sitting room might be called in an old-fashioned period drama, the kind that Mom liked to watch with Lena. Except it obviously had an Undersea flare, with coral and shell shapes to the ivory furniture, the shaped glass windows, and the fluttering translucent gauze that caught the current. 

Once we were there, Prince Tiberius's features softened again, resembling the boy I'd met on the beach again, the friend I'd watched Pearly the dragonling fetch a conch shell with on the surf. 

He placed his hands on my arms. "Thank you for not revealing my identity. Either time, actually."

I shrugged. "It's your secret."

I glanced up at him. "What do I call you, by the way?"

"Oh." He blinked, as if my question had surprised him. "Talu will do. Even my mother calls me that, in the privacy of her own chambers."

"So Tiberius is like your prince name?"
He tilted his head, a smile playing at his lips. "More or less."

He let go of me. "That went well, all things considered."

"I had no idea what was even going on," I confessed. "I don't even know what a Princess of the Twilight Tides means."

He pressed his lips together for a moment. "I'm sorry—someone should have explained that to you. I think my mother just needed to make a display of it."

"What do you mean?"
He let out a long sigh. "Things have been tense for a long time. There have been a lot of cracks forming, and my mother doesn't have the time or the resources to mend them all properly."

"I don't understand." I was beginning to suspect I was stupid, with how often I felt left int he dark when the mermaids talked. 

"It's a long story." He smiled wryly. "Politics often are."

I tilted my head. "I could see that."

"But I'll tell you about the Princess of the Twilight Tides—and more eventually," he added quickly. "We should have plenty of time to discuss plenty of things, now that you're recognized by my mother and you aren't Lumi's little secret."

He glanced around him, and then drifted over to a little dresser-table kind of thing. From it he withdrew a necklace with a single pearl upon it. He cupped it in his hands and let out a low hum. The pearl glowed the same bright blue of his eyes, shining for one moment like an underwater star.

Then the light died, except for a small glimmer of blue that was within the pearl's glossy depths that I knew wasn't there before. Talu opened his eyes and looked to me, suddenly shy. 

"Do you keep pearl necklaces like that on hand all the time?" I asked, deciding to go for the least weird part. 

He shrugged. "I enchanted it to make a small portal to back here, whenever you'd like."

"Wait, you can do that?" 

He widened his eyes."Did you think that this place was just somewhere you could travel to, in the same physical space as the oceans that are graphed extensively by your scientists?" 

The familiar feeling of fire surging up my face as I turned away returned, along with the suspicion that I was just stupid. "Yeah, kind of."

"I didn't mean it like—" A blush crept up his sun-kissed cheeks as he glanced away. "The barrier you saw around where Lumi and Evie live? It's actually a portal."

"Really?" I couldn't believe it. "But it's there all the time!"
"It is, but only our kind can access that." He looked down at the pearl necklace in his hand. "This will only work for you, but you can use it any time."

"This is all so crazy," I muttered as I reached for it. I looked back to him, suddenly nervous for no good reason. "Are you sure?"

"Positively," he said, meeting my eyes.

I took it from him and managed to clasp it in one go, which I supposed was a nice small refutation of my lowering opinion of my own intelligence. 

"It suits you," he said, before turning away and floating over to a window, his arms behind his back. He looked rather princely in that stance. 

"So what's the story with the Twilight Tides?" I finally asked. "And me being the Princess of it?"

"It's an old story," he answered without turning around. "From before there was an Undersea, when there were many fragmented kingdoms of seafolk and more marvels and terrors ran amok."

I decided to seat myself in one of the shell-looking armchairs. The cushion inside was nice and soft. 

He looked back to me, as indecipherable as the Queen again. "One of these wonders and terrors was the Twilight Tides. An ancient, primal source, some thought of it as a representative of the souls of the merpeople, the heart of the magic in the ocean. More a myth than science, but remembered all the same."

He then drifted closer to me. "Do you remember what you saw the night you fell in?"
I nodded, the words heavy in my throat. "A Fathom, right?"

"Yes." He joined me at a seat opposite of me. "No one knows where they came from—we think the deep, maybe from the Twilight Tides themselves, or maybe some opposing force for it. Back in those days, it was said that the oceans were overrun with them."

"That sounds terrifying." I shuddered to remember what I'd seen.

"Then came a human girl, said to have the heart of a mermaid," Talu continued. "She commanded the Twilight Tides, used them to vanquish the Fathoms and seal them away."

"What happened to her?" I had a creeping dread in my stomach—those kinds of stories never ended well for their heroes.

"No one knows." He seemed to realize the same problem that I did as he spoke the words. He reached for my hand. "But don't worry—we'll make sure nothing happens to you."

I didn't pull away. "But you think that I'm this Princess of the Twilight Tides because I can randomly become a mermaid?" 

"And because of what I saw you do that night." His eyes were so intense, I had to look away. 

I sat up straighter. "You mean that I killed the monster?" 

He furrowed his eyebrows. "I hope that doesn't upset you?"

"It doesn't," I assured him. "I guess I just—I don't know. Never mind."

He decided not to push the subject further. "Madame Dominique also detected that power. And we have been seeing the Fathoms more lately."

My stomach churned at the thought. I was going to have to defeat more of those monsters?"
"Don't worry." He gently squeezed my hand and returned me to the present. "You'll have me and many others fighting by your side."