Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Fiancee

I went outside and pulled the boathouse door shut behind me.

The woman waited at the end of the porch with her hands folded.

Up close she was the kind of beautiful that makes you check your own shirt for stains.

Her hair was dry, though the wind off the harbor was soaking everyone else, and her white coat didn't have a single wrinkle.

"Minnie Marlow," she said. "Walt's daughter."

"Who's asking?"

"Neris Corrin." She said it the way you'd say the name of a bank. "My betrothed was lost in the storm. I am told you found him."

"I found nobody."

"You carried something heavy across the sand on a fish cart. The tracks are still there."

I kept my face still.

"I carried a lobster trap," I said.

"With a tail."

Her eyes were sea-green and very calm, and I realized she wasn't guessing.

"Say there was a man with a tail," I said slowly. "Say he told me to stay safe, and then warned me about a woman in a white coat. I'd want to know who you are to him."

That was a lie.

He hadn't said a word about her.

But I watched a muscle twitch in her cheek, so it landed somewhere.

"I will be plain," Neris said. "My betrothed is ill and he is not himself. His uncle, the regent, has asked me to bring him home before the spring tide. The court is very anxious."

"His uncle chained him to a log."

"Orlan would never."

"Then who did?"

She paused.

It was a half-second, no more.

"Whoever did it is unimportant. He needs care, and your cellar is a poor hospital." She opened her hand, and there was a thick envelope in it. "Fifty thousand dollars, in cash. For your trouble, and for your silence."

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