Proteus came out a moment later. “Field trip is over. Enjoy your weekend recruits.”
Shortly after they reached the outer wall of the prison, Jett gave Araxie a quick peck on the cheek. He and Calista swam away while discussing their plans for the club. The other recruits joined the conversation and Araxie sighed. Sometimes she wished she could be a normal recruit. Instead she nodded to Proteus and they swam back to the palace together.
There was no doubt in her mind that she’d have to talk with her father about the events at the prison. Mar would gloat and try to get Proteus fired again. The conniving advisor had hated Proteus ever since the Dark Tide uprising four years ago. But the octomerman had slipped his way out of any punishment and had continued his role as advisor.
Chapter 2
As soon as they’d arrived at the palace, a knight had delivered the summons for Proteus to go to the throne room immediately. Golden knights guarding the throne room and had blocked Araxie’s path when she’d attempted to follow Proteus inside.
So she stayed outside the throne room memorizing the stone carvings of her family on the large doors. Trite’s image had been removed years before, but the rough marks of the chisel still stood as fresh as the day they’d been made. The longing she felt for her banished sister hadn’t faded either.
By the time the shadows began growing in the fading daylight, she was swimming the width of the corridor to stay the effects of boredom. Five flicks of her tail moved her from the pillar on the right facing the outside of the palace to the one on the left closer to the ballroom that could open up to the throne room for formal occasions.
The door shifted and the sound of stone grinding on metal grated in her ears. Theia and Calder had crafted a gear system to assist the guards with opening the doors and securing them in times of danger. It used to take four knights to open a door, and now they only had to place a runed key into the control portion and twist it. There was a specific number of twists required, but Araxie hadn’t been privy to that either.
Proteus swam through the open door, his ruby red tail slicing through the water. He shot a look at her and swam passed without a word. In all the years she’d known him, she’d only seen him this frustrated when Mar had evaded consequences for his actions. She’d spent hours and days with Proteus and Calder marking the damages made by the Dark Tide movement.
She hurried to catch up to him. “Things didn’t go well?”
He glided to a stop at the end of the hall before it opened to other parts of the palace. “No.”
“Perhaps I could talk—”
“No.”
He’d never cut her off before. She stared at him, his jaw flexed as if he were biting back the words he wished to say. She wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him. He closed his eyes for a moment, before blowing out a stream of bubbles on a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, Araxie. Today’s been difficult in many ways.”
“You can talk to me Proteus, we may as well be family.”
She reached to place a hand on his arm, and he stiffened.
“Thank you for your consideration, Princess Araxie. Please excuse me.” He bowed smoothly and quickly before taking off towards a hall leading towards his room.
“Knights,” Araxie mumbled to herself and left for her own room. The daylight had faded and she needed to hurry if she wanted to be ready for dinner now since she’d wasted so much time waiting by the throne room.
Her sitting room that doubled as a study was just as she liked it, simple and cleaned to the point of squeaking. She could still smell a hint of the citrus polish the servants used on the black floor and white walls. Not a speck of dust to be seen on the furniture that matched. Amarine and Aquata had thought her mad for choosing white furniture. They constantly complained about how hard it was to keep their white scales clean. She missed her younger sisters, but she did not miss the chaos that followed them.
She moved quickly and methodically through the room, checking over the desk, chairs, and couch in case the servants messed up something. They did that on occasion and Araxie wished that she could take care of it herself. But the one time she’d asked about it, Mar had let the staff go because she was displeased with their efforts. Guilt still ate at her for their dismissal, and she thought about it every time a servant hurried away from her in fear.
They’d done better today, she only had to straighten one pillow and the black frame holding the photo of her mom she kept on the marble desk.
The only color she’d allowed in her room were the blue silk curtains separating the bedroom from the sitting room. Her hands glided across the cool silk as she confirmed that the creases in the curtains were evenly spaced and without creases or twists. Sometimes the servants twisted the curtains when putting them up. Araxie would then have to take them down to fix it.
The silky blue fabric caressed her shoulders as she glided into her bedroom and headed for her swim-in closet. The closet was as big as her sitting room, she’d measured it once just to confirm. Thanks to her father the right wall was filled with rows of sparkling jewelry for her days at court. Aquata on the other hand had taken care of the clothing and entire left wall. Araxie dropped her black recruit armor in a basket before moving to the other wall.
The left wall was divided into four sections of white shelves. The closest held all of the blue scale dust she’d ordered to match Jett’s fin. The next held all of the other color dusts she’d used. They were grouped by color and then arranged by the amount of sparkle. She picked up a bottle of blue dust and then moved to the third set of shelves.
Calista’s comments about her nail polish still rang in her head, the yellow had to go. She liked yellow, but perhaps she should go with something a bit bolder. Her hand hovered above a bottle of bright purple. It reminded her of the little fish at the reef she sometimes went to when she wanted to be alone.
The far wall of her closet had a door to her bathing chamber, and next to it a white marble vanity. Setting both the bottle of blue scale dust and the bottle of nail polish on her vanity Araxie sat down on the plush stool. The black anemone molded itself to every one of her scales so she could pamper herself in luxurious comfort. A quick check in the mirror above her white vanity confirmed that the sea snail gel had kept any hair from escaping the braids. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that. With two quick twists, she had the full bottle of scale dust and a bottle of rune ink opened and the lids set aside.
The top right drawer in the vanity held a row of uniform white sea urchin spines on black silk. She picked up the first one, dipped it in the white rune ink first followed by the flecks of blue inside the other bottle. Dust was such an inappropriate word for substance. But it was what humans understood when they wanted the stuff so they could make paints. Fish scales were sanitized then crushed, and then ground into bits of various sizes. The fishers wasted nothing.
Quick steady strokes of the urchin spine on one of her tail scales had the rune magic flaring to life. She pushed all the magic she possessed into that single rune. The white ink sparkled as it glowed and called to the blue dust in the jar. The dust rose fleck by fleck into the water before shooting down to her fin where it attached itself for the evening. She rose from her stool picking up the bottle of dust and the lid. By the time she reached the shelf with the other blue dust, her entire fin was covered. The lid snapped closed and she placed the half-full jar back in the proper spot.