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There are lots of stories of humans stealing merfolk. They are practically a required part of every fairytale along the shore. They snatch the selkies’ coats and bind the sirens’ tongues and rip off the mermaids’ scales for magic and medicine. They take merfolk as spouses, as weapons, as art pieces, as slaves. Those sorts of things are rare in reality these days, of course, but the legends persist.
It’s far, far rarer to hear of merfolk stealing a human.
Theodore gets the message only a day ahead of his brother’s return home. The Lady Rishe moves gingerly when she arrives, still unaccustomed to navigating underwater. Arnold escorts her, his own deep onyx tail flicking slowly back and forth, occasionally supporting her pale pink one. Theodore stares at them with a heat he can barely articulate bubbling under his skin. How dare he look at her like that? This strange, weak creature, who only a week ago could breathe nothing but air? How had she bewitched him? His nails are digging into his palms, he realizes, when the faint scent of blood drifts up through the water.
He retreats a ways into the crowd as the couple draw closer, not wanting to be pulled into the spotlight. He can’t talk to Arnold, not here, not right now, not with her floating awkwardly but confidently on his arm. But he needn’t have bothered. Arnold only has eyes for Rishe. There’s something in his brother’s gaze that Theodore doesn’t recognize, a kind of soft intensity, as focused as his eyes get in combat but lacking the cold edge that he brings to everything he says and does.
Why has he never looked at me like that?
I want him to look at me like that.
Theodore slides further and further back through the crowd, until he falls out of it entirely, into a narrow gorge of an alley. He lets himself drift down into the unlit crevasse, ignoring the glowing eyes that appear to watch his descent. He’s made friends down here, in the dark and forgotten corners. He’s always been better at making friends with the outcasts than with the powerful. When he hits the bottom of the crevasse, he makes himself flip over and get his bearings, before taking off, deep purple tail propelling him down the maze of the undercity.
Theodore cannot make the Lady Rishe leave, not now. The enchantment to change her legs is a strong binding, one that cannot easily be undone without risk of killing her. He could kill her, he supposes, but he recoils from the notion. He isn’t a murderer. He doesn’t want to become one.
Maybe, though, maybe he could just threaten to kill her. He has friends down here in the dark and lonely places, who can ingratiate themselves as servants in her household and then steal her from her very bed. He can kidnap her and make it look like he means to attempt to unbind her. Arnold will be obliged to come speeding to her rescue.
And then, maybe, even just for a moment, even if it isn’t soft, even if it’s with the coldest eyes in the world—
Still maybe, just for a moment, just in the seconds before driving a spear through Theodore’s chest, just before he makes everything about this fucking awful existence finally, finally stop—
Maybe just for a single moment, Arnold will look at him.