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The sun is rising and the water looks almost black.
Steven watches it splash over the tan skin of Anthony’s feet. Hidden in the surf they look almost normal, the distortion of the water masking their too-slender, almost skeletal proportions.
“Have you never wanted to walk?”
Brown eyes look at him, reflecting the lantern’s light, and Steven is almost sorry to have broken the silence.
“Of course. Many times. But the seawitch gave me a choice: To walk on land or to speak when surrounded by air. I wanted to learn about your world, Highness. And how would I learn if I couldn’t ask questions? Your archer might speak with his hands, but so few people bother to learn to understand him.”
Steven sits down in the sand, for once uncaring of his expensive clothes. He feels tired.
“Have you learned much, then?”
Anthony turns to look out at the water again. The lantern light makes his hair look almost like copper.
“No, Highness. It would, I think, take a lifetime to understand humans. But I have seen many things no one from my home has ever seen. I have experienced the wonders of a different world. That must, I think, count for something."
Anthony would never, Steven thinks, set out to hurt anyone with such words. But every one is a knife in his heart. It feels as if he, too, is cursed to feel terrible pain every time Anthony speaks.
“I wish you could stay.”
When Anthony turns to look at him again, Steven is surprised to see tears on his face.
He did not know mermen could cry.
“So do I, Highness. But I doubt that what you feel for me has changed since we last spoke. Why show me a whole room full of painted poppies, if I could live long enough to see the real thing bloom.”
Anthony tries to affect a smile, but it’s so brittle the effort is wasted entirely.
Steven just shakes his head, defeated.
“I’m sorry. You’re my best friend! My kindest and most brilliant companion. You’ve brought back so many of my dreams, made me look to the future again for the first time in years! You’ve bettered me to the benefit of my friends and kingdom! And I –“
He trails off and can't help fixing Anthony with a pleading look, as if Anthony is the one who holds the seawitch's magic. His heart is full of despair. But it's full of anger, as well.
“It’s true, I don’t love you. Not yet. But I could! I know it to be so. I could love you so easily. What’s in my heart could change, with a little more time! Surely it has to be enough! Why would you be punished for my – For my…”
“Grief? Do not apologise to me for your grief, Highness. Yours is a truly brave and loyal heart. What a disservice it would be to your lover if you forgot them so easily."
Steven blinks hard to clear his vision, but more tears make it swim again right away. Anthony’s face is a blur of bronze skin and copper hair in the dim light.
“But it’s been so many years. And how could they begrudge it, if my heart moved on to save another? How can the world be so cruel and punish you for my slow-changing heart!”
Anthony laughs, of all things, and it reminds Steven of a seagull, a bright and abrasive sound.
“Ah, humans. 'It's been years', he says. But you forget, Highness; that my kind can live for hundreds upon hundreds of your mortal years. And we love and grieve each other in proportion. Your slow heart is quite quick, to a merman."
Anthony sighs, deeply, like bellows in a forge.
“Just not, I think, quick enough for me.”
He picks up a rock and manages to pitch it so far out Steven doesn’t even hear a splash as it hits the water.
“No, Highness, I feel no anger towards you, and if I could take something with me when I go… I wish it could be your guilt. You ought to bear none for what has transpired. The seawitch has tricked me, and I have shortened my life and paid a high price for my foolishness. And yet, I don't know that I would choose differently if I had the chance. I may have had little time on land, in the grand scheme of things, but it was a full time. A rich time. That is more than I can say of many of my years underwater."
Steven realises he’s closed his eyes. When he opens them and finally manages to blink his vision clear, Anthony is facing him with a smile like none Steven has ever seen from him. A smile sadder than tears.
The sky has gone almost light by now, the stars starting to fade in the distance. It finally forces the damning truth out between Steven’s lips.
“I wish you hadn’t chosen me.”
Anthony laughs his seagull laugh again.
“Yes, it was quite the misfortune, wasn’t it. The seawitch told me I had to capture a human’s heart. But the heart I tried so hard to capture had already been caught by another, long before I ever went to land.”
Anthony's smile dims, but somehow he looks less heartbroken without it.
“Ah, but it is the way of all love, isn't it? Love is blind and it chooses foolishly. I will tell you a secret, Highness: Perhaps at first, if I had known, I might have chosen another. The Pirate Queen maybe, with her flame-red hair, or your paladin in the silver armour, with his beautiful dark skin. Perhaps even the sister of the seawitch, to escape the spell. But I could choose none of them after that third day I spent on land. You nearly died to save me, even though you did not know me. You, a king, chanced your life to save a man you barely knew, who had already lived for two days in the palace on nothing but your kindness. That alone would have endeared you to me endlessly. But then you agreed to teach me about your world, for nothing in return –"
“Not nothing!”
Anthony inclines his head, looking very much like a parent indulging a child that has interrupted their bedtime story.
“Well, not nothing, perhaps. But you must admit, Highness, I offered you very little but my pretty looks. And then I told you I was a merman! Surely most other kings would have had me condemned to a mad-house, or thrown me out of the palace at least, pretty or not. But instead, you gave me books and got me to ride a horse and painted flowers for me so I could see some even though it is winter. Tell me: How could I have chosen another? I was supposed to capture a human heart and instead a human captured mine. It could be amusing if this was a different kind of story."
Anger flares in Steven’s chest again, sharp and hot.
“A story? Is that all this is? All that will be left when you –“
He cannot manage to say the words.
Tony lays down on the sand. The surf is up to his navel now, making his shirt move with the waves.
“Today was a fairytale. Cake and cats and books and music and poppies. My kind only hears of such things in song. But I saw them and heard them and ate them and touched them with my hands. I think you underestimate how marvellous a story it is.”
Anthony reaches up a hand from where he lays and Steven can’t help but kneel next to him and put his face in it. Anthony smiles at him again, so it must be what he wanted.
Steven grasps at Anthony’s shoulder, at his neck. The skin he touches is damp from the surf’s spray and cold. It reminds him horribly of the last time he touched his mother.
Just as he did back then, Steven knows he’ll be left alone by daybreak no matter how hard he holds on.
He doesn’t dare look towards the horizon. But the rising sun has already eclipsed the lantern’s light. Steven looks down at Anthony’s face and curses the world’s injustices once again
How can this not be enough? If it hurts this much to lose him, how is it not enough?
Perhaps, he thinks darkly, he will become a hunter king, like his great-grandfather, who had ships built to hunt sea monsters. Perhaps he will hunt a seawitch and when he finds her, he will take her head to hang in the palace hall.
But even so, I will still have lost him.
The light has become bright enough to see the lighter streaks in Anthony’s hair. The water is up to his chest now, lapping at Steven’s wrist where he is holding onto him. Anthony’s own hand shakes where it is cradling Steven’s face.
“Don’t be afraid, Highness.”
“I'm not afraid."
That seagull laugh doesn't quite form, the sound dying as Anthony chokes on a sob.
“Well, that makes one of us, Highness. I'm terribly afraid."
The world blurs before Steven’s eyes again. He doesn’t bother fighting against the tears this time.
“Just say you’ll wait for me.”
“Wait, where, Highness?"
"In Heaven. Surely for someone like you, there is a place in Heaven, even if you come from the sea. Surely by God's grace."
Anthony brings his other hand up to Steven's face. It shakes even harder than the one already cradling his cheek.
“But you forget, Highness, that I possess no immortal soul. I will go nowhere. I will become seafoam on the waves and wash away."
It’s Steven’s turn to shake, with sobs, nearly falling into the surf next to Anthony. Only Anthony’s hands keep him upright.
“So many tears for me. I wish you wouldn’t grieve me so, Highness. Surely a heart as brave and true as yours will always find a companion. And I am but a pretty fish without a soul. Surely you can find more fitting company among your own kind.”
Steven wants to scream. But before he can so much as speak, Anthony moves his hand to cover his mouth.
“No, no. I know. You needn’t tell me.”
He moves his other hand to Steven’s chest.
“Such a strong heart. Do not hate it because it couldn't love me. How fickle a human heart would be, to feel true love in so little time. Do not let your heart turn to stone again. Promise me."
Steven shakes his head again, futilely.
“But you love me."
"Yes. But is it true love? The kind from fairytales? Unbreakable and ever-lasting? I do not know, Highness. And I thank all the stars that you are not enchanted, and therefore we must never find out one way or the other. And so my love is enough either way."
Steven’s vision is clear again. He’s simply run out of tears.
“But mine isn’t. My love isn’t enough.”
Anthony’s fingers dig into his face, grasping. Clutching at him like the lifeline he is failing to be.
“So you love me?”
“I must love you! How else can it feel like losing my own heart to see you die!”
Anthony looks somewhere over Steven’s shoulder. One of his hands falls away from Steven’s face.
“I do not know, Highness. But we are out of time.”
Something touches Steven’s knee and he can’t help but look down even though he doesn’t want to look away from those brown eyes.
What he sees is astounding. Where Anthony’s legs had been a scaled tail is laying in the water, glittering in shades of red and gold.
But Steven can't feel any wonder, only dread.
When he looks back at Anthony's face, the eyes looking back at him are blue and brighter than any gemstone known to man. Anthony gives him a smile, if it can be called that.
“I am as I was."
Steven clutches at Anthony's shoulder, at his hip, unheeding of the scales under his palm.
Anthony just shakes his head, stirring up the sand. The water is up to his neck now. The sky is bright above them. Soft sunlight reflects off red-gold scales.
“Too late, Highness. Please, Steven, close your eyes.”
Steven, because he is a coward, does.
It’s the first time he’s addressed me by name.
He’s so caught up in the thought that he doesn’t notice that his hands are suddenly clutching at sand.
Then a wave hits him in the face and he splutters his eyes open.
Anthony is gone. Steven is surrounded by seafoam. It glitters strangely in the early morning light. The waves are already carrying some of it out to sea.
He kneels in the icy water until the rising tide forces him to make his way ashore on numb limbs. Then he kneels there in the wet sand instead.
Something glimmers next to him, red and gold. But when he reaches out to touch the tiny scale that has clung to his clothes, it crumbles under his fingers and all that is left is a speck of foam.
Steven turns to face the sunset. He’s never hated the pretty sight more. The sky is red and gold and the water looks green and blue.
Steven lies down on his back in the sand and lets the cold leech the last ember of warmth out of his core.
Surely, later, someone will come. Someone will ferry him to the palace and warm him up until the frozen man becomes a king again. Someone will bathe him and dry him and put him in new pretty clothes. Later, he will put on his crown and do his duty.
But now, here on the beach, he is no king, and his crown is far away. Here, he is just a man who could not love enough to save another.
A sharp wind picks up, tearing at his wet clothes. For one fanciful moment, Steven thinks the wind is calling his name. But of course, it's just howling around the rocks along the beach, driving the water against them. There are no voices carrying on the wind, just seagull cries that sound too much like laughter.
Why wasn’t it enough?
He wants to scream it at the sea. He wants to plead with the water to give Anthony back to him. He wants to rage and to bargain and to beg.
He doesn’t have the strength.
Why wasn’t it enough?
The water laps at his feet. The sun has fully passed the horizon.
A new day dawns on Steven’s kingdom, as he lies frozen in the sand.