Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Founders' Night

Founders' Night is the one evening a year when all of Harrow Point eats at the same table.

They set it up on the slip, forty feet of planks on sawhorses, with paper lanterns strung from the bait shop to the harbor master's hut.

Gus had said I had to go.

"People saw you kiss him in front of the whole town," he said. "If you hide now, they'll talk."

"They're already talking."

"Then give them something to look at."

I carried a pot of chowder down the lane with the pickle jar in my canvas tote, wrapped in a dish towel.

I hadn't let it out of my sight since yesterday.

Soren was already there.

He stood at the far end of the table in one of Gus's good shirts, tall and silent in the lantern light, and every woman on the slip kept glancing at him and then glancing away.

He saw me.

He didn't smile, and neither did I.

I put the chowder down in the middle of the table and sat as far from him as I could.

Gus slid in next to me and passed me a roll.

"You two are being idiots," he said.

"Eat your roll, Gus."

The food went around.

Somebody played a fiddle badly, and a child chased a dog under the table, and for twenty minutes it was almost normal.

Then the fiddle stopped.

I looked up.

Neris stood at the head of the table in her white coat, and behind her stood the two men from the boat in dry suits, and the tall one who never blinked.

The whole slip had gone silent.

"Good evening," Neris said, in her clear, pleasant voice. "I hope I am not intruding."

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