She looked up just in time to see him bow. All around her, merkind gawked and bowed. She wanted to cringe, but she put on her most polite smile instead.
“Hi Bo, how is your family?”
Bo looked nervous as he looked to see who was with her. “Princess, I did see you, I would have let you in sooner. Your friends are inside, they didn’t tell me you were coming.”
Speaking softly, to try and put him at ease she said, “They don’t know I’m here. I wanted to surprise them.”
“Go on inside before my boss has my claws for keeping you waiting.”
“Thank you, Bo”
His orange claws turned pink from embarrassment as he waved her inside.
Ducking through the door, her eyes adjusted slowly to the purple lighting from the glowing crystals hanging above her from chandeliers. Each hit of the steel drums thrummed through the water as if it were the very pulse of the ocean. Steady and ever constant. Merkind packed the club tonight. Tentacles and scales glowing under the lights. Sleek silver booths were tucked into the shadows with the club patrons enjoying the privacy found within.
A woman with bright turquoise fins bumped into Araxie.
“Sorry,” Araxie mumbled automatically.
The mermaid looked at her, annoyance in her eyes, and that’s when Araxie recognized her as one of the recruits that had been at the prison with her class earlier.
“Is Jett here?” Araxie shouted over the music.
With a bright lavender nail, the woman pointed towards a booth in the corner. “He’s with Calista.”
“Thanks.” Araxie gave a little wave and continued through the crowd.
She smiled at the thought of telling her best friend the news as well. Calista was always looking to build relationships with important people. Being at the Palace would give her best friend a chance to meet more people.
She saw Calista’s red hair first, or rather the man’s hands in Calista’s hair as she leaned forward to kiss him in the shadows. At least Araxie guessed they were kissing based on the way Calista's scales lit up in the dim light a moment later. The kiss ended and Calista pulled away from the merman just as Araxie reached the booth.
Araxie’s heart squeezed hard enough to shatter stone.
Jett wiped at his mouth where Calista’s red lipstick was smeared on his skin. The same red lipstick Araxie had given Calista earlier that day.
He spotted Araxie first, and the bright glow of his blue scales paled.
“Araxie,” he said.
Calista smoothly turned, still sitting on his lap, and smiled up at Araxie.
That smile broke Araxie out of her shock.
Her fingers clenched into a fist so tight her nails cut into her palm. She hardly registered the pain as she pulled back her arm and threw it forward into Calista’s perfect nose. A satisfying crunch told Araxie she’d broken the nose.
Silence descended on the club, and for a pulse Araxie felt guilty. It had been drilled into her from childhood to never cause a scene in public.
“You Hag!” Calista cried from the ground as she lifted a hand to clutch her nose.
Jett slid Calista off his lap and reached for Araxie’s arm.
Araxie moved out of reach, her knuckles throbbing.
“Babe,” he began.
“Dry up on a beach Jett. We’re done.” Head high, Araxie turned her back to the pair of them.
The crowd parted before Araxie, pity in their eyes, as she swam towards the club exit. Araxie straightened her spine, a lifetime of being royal had trained her never to appear weak in public.
She barely nodded farewell to a startled Bo as she hurried away.
Her return path to the palace was a blur of swimming through shadows to avoid the eyes of merkind enjoying the moonlight. She didn’t let herself cry when she reached her suite of rooms and her head pounded from the effort. Nor did she let the tears fall during the hours where she painstakingly used a black sea urchin spine with red ink to etch a rune on each scale of her tale. The blue scale dust came off so much more slowly than when she’d applied it since she didn't have any more magic to put into the process.
Her magic was barely a drop compared to any of her sisters. Trite could rune anything and cast fortunes. Theia could heal with her runes. The triplets could sing an angry city into being peaceful, and Alea could talk anyone into anything with the power of her voice. Then there was Araxie, she had to carefully pick small tasks to put her magic into and wait weeks for it to regenerate in her blood.
With each rune, she replayed the scene from the club in her mind.
How long had he betrayed her? How many times had Calista kissed him?
When every spec of dust was gone from her scales, she looked up, her gaze landing on the shelves of blue dust. Quickly swimming out of her closet to summon the servants to remove the jars. But the blue curtains to her sitting room were in her way.
Those same curtains she’d had installed because Jett had mentioned that he hated double doors. Amarine had teased her for months over it since Jett had never seen her private quarters and wouldn’t unless they got married.
She twirled one of the lovely, silky, stupid blue curtains around her hand, gripped it hard, and pulled.
Fabric ripped, and the curtain rod snapped along with something inside Araxie. She tore the fabric into shreds, then did the same to the other curtain before returning to her closet. There she pulled a jar of blue dust from the shelf and threw it to the floor.
Dust and glass exploded across the white marble tiles.
It felt so good to release the anger, so she did it again, and again until every jar with dust reminding her of Jett was broken. Her closet floor was covered in sparkling bursts of blue.
Then the scrubbing began, she didn’t want a speck of dust on her body to remind her of him as she sat in her bathing pool. Warm water swirling around her in a small whirlpool as she took a brush to her scales. The water carrying the specs of blue away as they drifted down a drain.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning while Araxie stared out at the city from her bedroom balcony she decided the moonlight no longer sparkled, and she welcomed the shadows.
Her head throbbed from a lack of sleep the next morning, it also hurt too much to try and fall back to sleep. So bleary eyed, she got out of bed and spotted the shredded curtains on the floor. Her room had once been her sanctuary at the palace, but now there were too many things that reminded her of the night before.
She stared at the dust on the floor in the closet and decided she didn’t want to face the mess today. Instead she pulled the rope that rang a bell to summon a servant. While she waited she grabbed a new bottle of nail polish, a file and brush, and threw them into a light backpack.
A gasp alerted her to the arrival of a servant in her bedroom.
She smiled as sweetly as she could at the girl, “I made a bit of a mess when I decided to redo my room yesterday. Can you see that it’s cleaned up? No need to replace anything, I haven’t decided yet what I want instead.”
The servant nodded “I’ll have some of the others help me.”
Araxie picked up her bag and left her rooms in search of breakfast and something to ease the pain in her skull. Soft gentle murmurs came from inside the breakfast room. She heard a light laugh and then silence just as she reached the doorway to enter. Inside the room, Calder had his arms wrapped around Theia while they kissed.