The Sea King's Daughter Read Free

had dark moods, when her sadness seemed to overwhelm her, quenching the light in her eyes. Often even my father couldn't break through her gloom. I imagined I was like my mother in that way. She'd been unhappy, too.
    Sometimes I felt like the only spiny urchin in a garden of delicate white flowers. Thetis and my father pretended I belonged, but the rest treated me like a changeling. Mostly I didn't blame them. I did and said spiteful things without really knowing why. I sassed my tutors, lied to my grandmother, and ran away whenever I had the chance.
    Sometimes I stole combs and pretty trinkets from my sisters, not because I wanted their things but to make them hurt the way I did. I always imagined that these petty thefts would make me feel better, but nothing helped for long. Sooner or later I ended up in that dark, bottomless caldera where I hated myself, my life, and everyone around me. No sunlight could ever penetrate that deep.
    I reached out to trace the carvings on my prized possession, a silver mirror. It was the one thing of my mother's that now belonged to me. Perfect little golden seahorses danced around the outer edge. The handle was a miniature statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. My mother Doris had modeled for the statue. When I was a child I'd whispered my secrets into Aphrodite's tiny shell of an ear and imagined that my mother heard me.
    Everyone said that I, of all Nereus' daughters, looked the most like my mother. I certainly didn't look like Father or my sisters. But I didn't see my resemblance to Aphrodite's statue. She boasted high cheekbones and exotic, slanting eyes, while my own face was round and pale as the moon. As far as I could tell, the only thing I shared with my mother was the color of my scales. Coppery-green crescents covered my father, grandmother, and sisters' tails. But my tail was alight with silver scales, each like a sliver of the pale moon. When I was born, my father said, I reminded him of the night sky. He named me Nyx for the goddess of darkness.
    I longed to see the night sky for myself, to see the moon and the stars and the dark above the waves. I began to swim in restless circles, plotting my escape. Grandmother couldn't confine me to my chambers forever. The upper world was a siren song, beckoning me with an irresistible force.
    Sooner or later, whatever the consequences, I vowed to answer that call.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Thetis and I sat together in one of the tower rooms, a large round chamber with a marble frieze of Poseidon on the ceiling. Late afternoon light filtered in through amber windows and glowed against the floor's gold-inlaid tiles. My sisters and the other ladies of the court reclined on couches, gossiping and snacking on tiny pink damsel fish. Most days I avoided the tower room as if it swarmed with sharks and spiny sea urchins, but today I'd come looking for Thetis.
    "Please, Thetis. You've got to do it," I said.
    "Oh, Nyx. I don't know."  Thetis' pale lips puckered into a worried bow. As usual, she wore her hair pulled severely back, emphasizing her sharp face, thin nose, and huge black eyes. Her delicate, almost transparent skin lacked the high color that earned me such praise. Still, in spite of her outward plainness, Thetis possessed an otherworldly serenity. Her expression, her eyes, the way she held her body and folded her fingers together on the table -- everything about her reflected the quiet stillness of her inner self. My inner self, on the other hand, resembled a frenzied shark feeding.
    "I'm begging you," I whispered, reaching across the table to take Thetis' hand. "If you don't help me, I'll go mad."
    I'd spent the past four days confined to the palace grounds, where I moped about and avoided my grandmother. I wanted desperately to go up to the surface again. On this particular afternoon the water felt wonderfully charged with energy, and the fish darted by like arrows shot from a bow. Like me, they could feel the storm brewing