Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Shell on the Dock

I woke up cold, with a stone under my hip and the smell of wet rock in my nose.

Soren wasn't beside me.

He was standing at the edge of the pool in the lantern light, and across the water from him stood a woman in a white coat.

I sat up so fast the flannel fell off my shoulders.

"You," I said.

"Me," Neris said.

"Get away from him."

"Minnie." Soren didn't turn around. "She came alone. She is standing in iron-free water, and she has no pearl, and she has not raised her voice."

"That's what she does right before she makes people kneel."

"Yes," Neris said. "That is fair."

I got to my feet.

I had Walt's bolt cutters in one hand, and I realized only then that I was holding them like a club.

"Say what you came to say," I said.

"Alone," Neris said. "Woman to woman."

Soren looked at me.

I jerked my chin toward the cave mouth, and he went, slowly, with a look back over his shoulder that I felt in my spine.

His footsteps faded.

Neris waded out of the pool and sat on the stone shelf with her wet coat spread around her, and the lantern between us.

She looked tired.

She looked more tired than I had ever seen anyone look.

"You let go of the pearl," I said. "On the slip."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I do not know." She turned her wrist over and looked at it. "I was holding it, and he was walking toward the water, and my hand opened. I did not tell it to."

"You were going to drown him."

"I was going to walk him to the edge and make Orlan believe I would." She gave a short breath that wasn't a laugh. "I would not have done it. I think I always knew that. I have just never been asked to prove it."

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