Chapter 20: The King's Summons
The water in the grotto had just begun to feel like a second skin, the eerie quiet a blanket around them, when the disturbance came. It wasn’t a sound, exactly. More a change in pressure, a sudden cold current that snaked through the warm, spent space between their bodies.
Yamato felt Taichi go rigid beneath him. The merman’s hand, which had been tracing idle patterns on his back, stilled, claws pricking his skin.
A shadow fell across the bed of moss.
The herald from before—the one with the silver-scarred fins—hung in the entrance. His expression was unreadable, a mask of carved coral. He didn’t enter their sanctuary. He simply lifted one webbed hand and made a series of sharp, fluid gestures. His dark eyes fixed on Taichi.
Taichi’s answering sigh was a stream of furious bubbles that brushed hot against Yamato’s neck. He gently but firmly pushed Yamato off of him, his tail uncurling. The physical separation was instant, and the water felt suddenly frigid. Yamato drifted back, watching as Taichi positioned himself upright, his prince’s mask sliding back into place, though his amber eyes burned.
“Speak,” Taichi commanded, his voice back to its rough, royal timbre.
The herald’s hands moved again. This time, he produced a small, carved conch from a net at his hip and held it to his lips. A sound emerged, not a voice, but a vibration that traveled through the water and echoed directly in their minds. The Sun-King summons the Claimed and his Consort to the Hall of Tides. The bonding is witnessed, but not sealed. The Chalice awaits.
The words meant nothing to Yamato, but Taichi’s reaction was visceral. A low, dangerous growl rumbled in his chest. The vibrant orange of his scales seemed to dull.
The herald lowered the conch, gave a stiff nod, and disappeared back into the tunnel, leaving a trail of agitated silt.
For a long moment, Taichi just stared at the empty doorway. The pulsing light from the anemones painted the hard line of his jaw in shifting blues and purples.
“What does that mean?” Yamato finally asked, the words feeling clumsy in the silent water. “The Chalice?”
Taichi turned to him. The feral, desperate creature from minutes before was gone, replaced by someone older, wearier. He swam closer, his movements taut with suppressed energy. His claws came up, not to threaten, but to grasp Yamato’s forearm. The grip was urgent.
“My father,” Taichi said, the words gritted out. “He is… traditional. The court seeing you take me, that was one thing. A proof of capability. A political act. But to bind a human to the royal line? He requires a deeper magic. A permanent one.”
He glanced toward the entrance as if expecting more heralds. His voice dropped to a whisper, the sound of pebbles grinding in a retreating wave. “There is a ritual. In the oldest part of the palace. You would stand before the entire tribe again. And you would drink from the Chalice of Depths.”
“Drink what?”
“An elixir. Ancient. It’s meant to test the truth of your bond.” Taichi’s slit pupils were wide, black pools in the amber. “If your intentions are pure—if your desire to be bound to me is true—it will change you. It will weave the sea into your lungs forever. You will breathe water as easily as air. You will be able to live here, with me.”
Yamato’s heart, already laboring in this liquid world, gave a hard thump. Live here? Permanently? The thought was a vortex, pulling him in a dozen directions. His tiny village, his guitar, the sun on his face… it all seemed a lifetime away, a faint dream. This, the pressure, the glow, Taichi’s anxious face—this was terrifyingly real.
“And if my intentions aren’t pure?” Yamato heard himself ask.
Taichi’s fingers tightened. His claws bit in, not breaking skin but promising it. “Then the sea will reject you. The water you breathe will become poison. It will fill you from the inside. It will be… quick. They say.”
A cold that had nothing to do with the ocean seeped into Yamato’s marrow. “They say.”
“I have seen it done once,” Taichi admitted, his gaze shuttering. “To a mer from a rival tribe who sought to deceive his way into a alliance. He choked on glory. His gills bled out before he hit the chamber floor.”
The image was stark, violent. Yamato felt a wave of nausea. This wasn’t a gamble with coins or pride. This was his life, measured in a single swallow.
Taichi pulled him closer, their faces inches apart. The worry in his eyes was naked now, erasing the last of his princely aloofness. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered, the words fast, urgent. “This is my world’s madness, not yours. We can refuse. I can… I can say you’re weak. That we need more time. I can find another way. There are deeper caves, far from the court’s eyes. We could go there.”
The offer was a lifeline. An escape. Yamato could picture it—fleeing this glittering, oppressive court, hiding in some dark crack in the world. Just the two of them.
But then he looked past Taichi, at the grotto that was his prison and his sanctuary. He remembered the hundred alien eyes upon them, judging, waiting for him to fail. He felt the phantom ache of Taichi’s body around his, the terrifying possessiveness that had roared to life inside him. This wasn’t just about saving a creature anymore. It was about claiming one. And being claimed in return.
He thought of the fishermen on the shore, their nets, their casual cruelty. He was not like them. His intention, his desire for Taichi—it wasn’t a lie. It was messy, and frightening, and born of desperation, but it wasn’t a lie.
The weight of the court’s gaze felt present, even here. They were waiting. They would always be waiting, unless he proved himself.
Yamato placed his own hand over Taichi’s, where it gripped his arm. He felt the rough texture of the smaller scales on the merman’s wrist. He thought of his guitar calluses, the only roughness he’d ever owned. Different worlds, same language of survival.
“No,” Yamato said, and his voice didn’t sound like his own. It was steadier. It carried in the water. “There is no other way. Not if you want to be safe. Not if we want this to be real.”
Taichi searched his face, looking for doubt, for hesitation. Yamato let him look. He saw the moment Taichi found only a hard, resigned certainty. The merman prince’s proud shoulders slumped, not in defeat, but in a surge of emotion he couldn’t name. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Yamato’s again, a gesture that was quickly becoming theirs.
“Stubborn land-walker,” Taichi murmured, but it was thick with relief.
He pulled back, his business-like demeanor returning, though his eyes stayed bright. “Then we must prepare. The ceremony will be at the next tide pulse.” He gestured to Yamato’s back. “And you cannot go before my father bleeding my marks.”
Before Yamato could process it, Taichi moved behind him. He felt the slick, cool touch of Taichi’s tongue on the parallel claw marks he’d scored down his shoulders. A jolt, electric and warm, shot through him, followed by a soothing numbness as the sting dissipated. Then, a different heat began to pool low in his belly, a familiar, insistent stirring. The healing saliva, and its side effect.
Taichi finished, a low, knowing hum vibrating against Yamato’s skin. “A temporary remedy,” he said, his lips close to Yamato’s ear. “For now, come. We face the deep together.”
He took Yamato’s hand, his grip firm, and led him out of the grotto, away from the moss bed and the memory of sweat-slick skin, and into the cold, watching currents of the hall. The path sloped downward, into darker, older stone, where the light from the luminous corals grew sparse and the water grew heavy with the scent of depth and age.
Toward the Chalice.