He Left My Daughter With His Ex, So I Left the Sea King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Net Loft

Stavros takes them in and Zoe gets her market morning at last. Melina sends Kyros's gifts back in public. A summons arrives for Zoe.

I had promised Zoe a market morning, and the sea lord's temper was not going to take it from her twice.

The storm had blown itself out overnight.

Port Karyos was washed clean and loud, with stalls open all along the quay and gulls fighting over a spilled crate of anchovies.

Zoe walked beside me in her blue dress.

The sea glass crown lay wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of the bag on my shoulder.

She had asked me to keep it hidden.

I had not asked why.

"Mama, look."

She stopped in front of a stall hung with copper kettles and stared at every one of them.

The seller put one in her hands, and she turned it over and over and read the little stamped fish on the base aloud.

She bought a blue ribbon for two coins and a paper kite for three.

She argued a honey-fig seller down by one coin, and I watched her do it with my chest tight and warm at the same time.

For one hour nobody mentioned the sea.

The fishwives from yesterday found us at the end of the quay.

One of them pressed a bag of warm bread into my arms and would not take my coin.

Another squeezed Zoe's cheeks and told her she had the nerve of a harbor cat, which Zoe took as a compliment.

"That nymph's not welcome on this quay," the bread woman told me quietly. "We saw what she did. Forty of us."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank us. Just stay."

I was about to answer when a handcart came rattling around the corner of the fish hall.

The hall's steward was pulling it, red in the face, with a lacquered chest strapped on top.

He stopped in front of me and bowed.

"Lady Melina. Lord Kyros sends these, and asks that you will accept them."

I did not open the chest.

"What is in it?"

"Pearls, my lady. The ones from the south shelf. And a letter."

"Take it back."

"My lady, he said you should at least read the letter."

"Then you can read it to him on the way down."

The stall women had stopped talking.

Three fishermen at the next table had turned in their seats.

I pushed the handcart a hand's width with my foot, so everyone could see I would not take it.

"Tell him I don't want pearls from the same hand that gave my daughter to Ligeia. Tell him Zoe's day at the market is going fine without him."

Someone in the crowd laughed, low and warm.

The steward went purple and bowed again, and he dragged the cart away over the stones with the pearls bouncing in their chest.

I watched him go with my heart pounding.

I had not known I was capable of that.

"Melina! Oh, there you are."

I knew the voice before I saw her.

Ligeia came up the quay with her pale hair in a loose plait and a basket on her arm, smiling at everyone she passed.

She wore a plain white dress, and no jewelry but the pearl at her throat.

The fishwives went quiet at her back.

"I've been looking for you since sunrise," she said. "I was sick over it all night, Melina. I truly thought she was ready."

I said nothing.

"I'm so sorry. Let me carry that for you."

She took Zoe's bag off my shoulder before I could stop her and settled it on her own arm.

It was such an ordinary, helpful thing to do that for a moment I did not know how to be angry.

Zoe stepped closer to me.

Ligeia smiled down at her.

"You were so brave yesterday, little one. I've never seen a child go under so calmly."

"I wasn't calm," said Zoe. "You let go."

"I held you as long as I could."

"You let go on purpose."

The smile did not move on Ligeia's face.

"Children remember things differently, don't they?" she said to me, with a little shake of her head. "It's the shock."

"Give me the bag," I said.

"Of course."

She handed it over at once and folded her hands in front of her.

For an instant I saw her eyes go to the bag in my hands, where the crown lay in its cloth, and then away.

I told myself I imagined it.

"Please," said Ligeia gently. "Let me make this up to you, both of you. Let me take you to supper. Kyros is in terrible pain."

"No."

"I only want to help."

"No."

"I understand."

She stepped back and bowed her head to me.

She walked off along the quay with her basket, and not one fishwife nodded to her as she passed.

I stood there breathing hard, and I did not know why I felt I had lost something.

"Mama," said Zoe in a small voice. "She asked me yesterday if the water ever talked to me."

"What did you say?"

"I said no. I lied."

Before I could answer, two men in the green coats of the harbor guild came shouldering through the crowd with a roll of paper between them.

One of them stopped in front of Zoe and looked at her, then at me.

"Melina Karras?"

"Yes."

"Summons from the Tide Court, in the matter of Zoe Karras, minor, raised under a lord's roof."

He held the paper out to me, and I saw the signature at the bottom of the page.

It was Kyros's hand, and the date beside it was three weeks old.

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