Sweet Romance10 min read
Mermaid Tears and the Marriage Gamble
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"I can't do this any longer," I said, my voice breaking like a small shell under a boot.
"Just a little longer," Julio said from above. His breath hit my face like cool marble air.
"Oh." I focused on the wind that bit me, and I whispered, "Hurry."
There was no pity in his voice. "Sorry, slipped."
"My fault." I tried to laugh but it came out as a sob.
I dangled beneath the old execution platform they called the Azure Judging Stand. The ropes bit into the skin at my shoulders. The storm around the platform tasted like old anger. Tears fell from my cheeks and turned into pearls the moment I cried them. Julio held a satchel full of such pearls.
"This tainted wind," he said, not once looking at me, "will make your pearls dark if we stay."
"You can leave me." I tried to sound fierce, like a shell finding its own edge. "You can just go."
Julio only laughed softly, a sound that did not belong to the place. "I need them," he said plain. "You know what these are for."
I closed my eyes. He collected the pearl after it formed, smelled it like a trade good, and tucked it away. He did not meet my face. Julio always did things without many words. He did things in steady, dry ways.
"I want to marry a white-robed immortal," I told him once, out loud when the wind was kinder.
"That is an odd wish," he answered, and I had thought he was joking.
"I'm India Greco," I said now into the gusts. "I'm a mermaid. I have no great goal but to be loved."
"Then be loved wisely," Julio said. "Or gullibly, the world is full of both."
He pulled me up and released the cords. The satchel of pearls swung at his hip, heavy and bright against his white robe. He adjusted the straps and looked at me once, like tide water looking back at the moon.
"Enough. Go home," he said.
"Like you're not going to go to the wedding?" I snapped.
"Someone has to stay behind and mend the bench," he answered, and then, softer, "You can come if you behave."
We went to the Wind-Hidden Vale.
The Vale smelled of earth and flowers and secrets. I had been sleeping in Julio's shadow for a thousand years and wanted nothing more than to bolt into color. I sprinted like a child and found a field that seemed to have been painted just for me.
There he was. He lay like a drifting cloud in a bed of petals. When his eyes opened I felt the world tilt.
"You're a wandering blossom," he said with a smile that made me forget to breathe.
"I'm India," I said, breathless.
"Cassian," he answered like a music line. "I tend these flowers."
He lifted a single white bloom and handed it to me like a peace offering.
"You are beautiful," I blurted, and the petals shook.
"And you are blunter than most," he teased, and then his laughter was the kind that folded around me. He could do small miracles with a motion. Flowers rose to form a wreath; petals spun around our shoulders.
We laughed. We walked. He took me to the human world once, and I loved the view so much I thought I might break.
When he kissed me, I believed the sun would not mind. He kissed my forehead first, then once more like a promise. I gave him a hairpin that I had threaded with a pearl I had grown myself. He kept it.
He said, "Stay with me, India."
I told myself the whole sky had given permission. I told everyone we belonged together. I made that claim loud. Julio helped me, but once, he looked odd when he said, "Be prudent."
"Prudent?" I said. "Love is not learned from counsel."
"Love is a dangerous herb when uncut." Julio only smiled a little; his eyes were distant.
Months passed in bright hours. That brightness felt like a fortune.
Then I saw the hairpin in another woman's hand.
"May I see it?" I said.
"It's his," the woman answered softly. "He gave it to me."
"So he gives them to others?" My voice was small, but the thought exploded inside me.
Julio came up beside me in his quiet way. He looked at the woman and said, "She is pregnant."
I only saw the words like cold stones dropping. "Pregnant?" I echoed.
"He stayed with her all night," the woman answered, shy, and slid a pearl back into my hands like a gift returned.
"No," I told Julio. "You told me to keep him. You told me to behave."
"Did I?" Julio frowned. He sounded removed, as if asking a scholar a question. "You asked for an edge, and I sharpened it. The rest is on you."
That night the wind tasted like betrayal. I did things I would not have believed I would do.
I made the claim obvious. I held his hand in public. I pressed my face to his sleeve like a fool. I said, "Marry me," half in jest and half in demand, and when he stirred and walked away, I clung on.
Julio did not intervene. He left me to be the bait.
The bride's day came. The Vale boiled with faces. Estrella Sims glowed like a moon in pale robes. Leonardo Campbell watched her with hands that protected and worshiped. It hurt to watch another woman be cherished when I had been promised only petal kisses.
Julio and I were in the crowd. He gave a look and then a nod. I caught Cassian by the sleeve in the hall and said, "We must talk."
"I have duties," he said, unruffled.
"Your hairpin ruined my sleep," I told him. "You gave it to someone else."
"She dropped it," he said coolly. "I returned it."
"Then why is she carrying it?" I demanded.
"She kept it." he shrugged. "Do not make trouble."
My cheeks flamed. "Do you love her?" I asked.
"I love my flowers," he said. "I love people who are like flowers."
My world narrowed to that one sentence.
After the rites, the great Evren Barber—the Vale Keeper—cleared his throat like thunder in a thin room.
"Gather," he boomed. "All who stand here, listen."
A hush fell. I could hear my own pulse.
Evren lifted his hand and produced a small, polished globe. It shivered with light.
"This is a mirror of truth," he said. "It will show what a man keeps in shadow."
Front and center, like an insult, Cassian knelt. He looked calm at first. He smiled as if nothing were unusual.
Evren placed the globe on a stone. "Watch."
The globe spun, and the air turned hard and bright. The image inside was crude and clear. Cassian, the handsome gardener, lay on a rug, half-dressed—humiliated—surrounded by women with faces I had seen before: soft, angry, betrayed. They were not mocking. They were fierce. They slapped. They tore trims of robes. They called names I had not heard before.
I felt nothing but a cold that unrolled inside me. I heard a woman shout from the globe: "You promised me a life!"
Another woman hissed, "All you promised was a brazen mouth and empty hands!"
"How many hairpins do you collect?" a third demanded.
Cassian blinked. The smile slid off. His composure trembled.
"This is justice," Evren said. "This is a man's account when all his courtesies are given away."
Cassian's face altered from prideful ease to confusion. He stood too quickly. He said, "This is a trick."
"It is a mirror," Evren said. "It is not a trick."
"No," Cassian repeated, louder. "It is false. I never promised—"
"You promised comfort," one of the women in the globe said, leaning down to cup his face. "You promised warmth. You promised that your word was a roof."
"That was not—" he began.
The globe's images multiplied. I saw journals from hidden women, I heard Cassian's own faint voice in recordings the way light holds sound: "Wait for me," he said to one. "I'll return," he said to another. The globe sang his own lies back at him.
"Look at him," Evren said to the crowd. "This is what the selfish breed. He wears beauty like armor and uses hearts like gifts to give away."
A ripple of sound moved through the hall.
"Shame!" someone cried.
"They've been taking turns," another whispered.
"Is this true?" a child asked.
"It is true." Julio's voice cut. He stepped forward like a tide that arrives without noise and then is everywhere. "He sowed care like coins, expecting no harvest but favor. Those who lend their warmth to fickle winds will burn."
Cassian's reaction: at first stunned silence, then denial, then anger. "You—this is a lie!" he shouted. "You set me up!"
"Set you up?" Evren asked softly. "Did you set them up? Or did you set yourself up?"
The hall leaned in. The bridesmaids I had seen earlier—women I had thought of as rivals—stood, faces flat with the truth. "He came to me one night," one said. "He said, 'Stay with me, quietly.'"
A robed scribe read names and dates. "He promised a festival. He promised to build her a greenhouse. He promised a child a name."
"Prove it!" Cassian demanded. He lunged toward the mirror and the women pushed forward, angry grief in their faces.
"There are witnesses," Evren said, and the witnesses stepped up. Women I had never known spoke with small, fierce voices. A voice counted the hairpins. Another showed a tiny child that held a ribbon with Cassian's seal.
I watched his face change like cracked porcelain. He went from arrogant to pale, to attempts at charm, to a louder anger that he tried to disguise as indignation. He sputtered, "I didn't—this is slander!"
"Do you deny these children?" Evren asked sharply.
There were several soft coughs. A woman with a child said, "He holds their names." She lifted the child's hand and the child showed a small carved petal with Cassian's mark.
Cassian staggered. He backed away and tried to joke. "You're bingoing me with a ghost story." His voice cracked. He looked at me, then at Julio, then at Evren. He begged, quiet at first: "Please, I can explain."
The public reaction turned. Where there had been murmurs, shame, and curiosity, there was now a rising anger that smelled of justice. People spat on the ground near him. Someone threw a ribbon at his feet. A scribe took the petal. A young woman started to stomp. The younger men in the crowd hissed.
"Explain!" a voice demanded.
"Stop," Cassian begged. "I never thought this—"
"You never thought," Evren cut, "and that's the heart of the crime."
He had a short, cruel smile like a blade. "You will answer," Evren said, and the assembly pronounced sentences with their eyes. It wasn't law; it was the cleansing that a small valley could give.
They took Cassian's gardener crest from him and crushed it between two stones. "No more tending outside," Evren said. "You will be keeper of your shame."
Cassian's face crumpled into real panic now. He said, "This humiliation—"
"Aha," a woman spat. "You loved to keep many hands, keeping them warm enough but never home."
"Look at him," someone laughed. "He can no longer stand straight. He looks like a bent reed."
Cassian fell to his knees.
"Beg," Evren said.
Cassian gasped. He went from rigid defiance to clumsy pleas. "Please, I will do anything. Forgive me! I will marry—"
"Who?" Evren asked. "Which one? Which promise would you keep now that you are exposed?"
"No—no names," he babbled. He looked like a man who had been on stage and found the curtains slit.
It got worse. People stepped forward with little bundles: letters, tokens, lockets. Each token had a story and a wound. Each was placed on the stone by Evren like proof.
"Look at your debts," Julio said quietly nearby. "The ledger is not made of gold, Cassian. It is made from people."
Cassian's face went through more phases. Pride, shock, denial, fear, plead, collapse.
"Stop!" Cassian cried, grabbing at Evren's robe. "Stop this! I will fix it. I will—"
"No," Evren said, cold as the mountain. "You cannot fix the slow erosion of trust. You can only show that you will not repeat the same rot."
The crowd's voices folded into a song of shame. They did not lay hands on him—this was not a mob—but the weight of their gaze was worse than a fist. His knees buckled. He begged, "Please, anyone, tell me what to do."
"Answer the ones you hurt," Evren said. "Confess publicly. Give back what you owe. Make reparation."
Cassian turned, as if fishing for a lifeline. He fell at the feet of one woman and cried, "Forgive me."
She spat. "Forgive? You were never there to be forgiven when we cried."
Another woman slapped him. The noise snapped across my chest like a cane.
"Your reaction is done," Julio said to me softly. "Watch. Learn."
Cassian's face lost color. He vomited words and then near-sobbed. Bones of his arrogance broke in public. He looked at me—horrified, pleading—and I felt a strange coldness and a sudden anger.
"India," Julio said, hand on my shoulder. "You don't owe him your heart."
"I—" I could not speak. I watched him crumble, the fall short and ugly. He had been my flower and a dozen others' winter.
After it ended, he was led away to sit in a small room under the Vale to receive visitors who wanted to speak. The crowd dispersed with whispers like a breeze knowing secrets. Some wept. Some laughed. Some took note with pens.
I saw the child clasp a petal and then look at Cassian with eyes that had known only hurt and a little awe. The child said nothing.
I met Julio's eyes. He was calm. "You learned something, India."
"I learned that hearts are not trinkets," I said, very small.
He nodded. "And I learned to hold the satchel of pearls myself."
Days later, after the uproar dimmed, life returned in small ways. Flowers still bloomed. I still swam in moonlit lists of thought. Julio told me, "We leave for the Trial below soon."
"What trial?" I asked.
"Life," he said simply. "We will go down to the mortal world for a time."
"I thought you would never leave." I touched his sleeve.
"I thought so too," he said. "But some things are meant."
I had learned the truth. The fog in my memory unraveled at odd moments. One night, in Julio's care, I dreamed of a white-clothed boy who had saved me once, who had called, "India, hide!" I woke in a panic and ran to the celestial archives—the book Cedric Burnett kept—in the Great Hall.
"Cedric!" I cried. "Search for any record of an immortal who saved a mermaid!"
He handed me a scroll and frowned. "This is a long path. Be careful." He read and then his face changed. "Your rescuer... was Julio."
"My Julio?" I gaped.
Cedric nodded. "A thousand years past. He rose from a sacrifice and brought a child of the sea to safety."
I felt my feet leave the ground. All the pieces fit like fish bones now. I had loved a white-robed immortal for a thousand years and not seen the man close enough to the chest that held him.
I ran to the place where Julio sat in the quiet hour. "You saved me?" I demanded.
He looked up like a mirror to my rush. "Long ago. I promised a life. I thought it was enough to stand in the long night."
"Then," I said, breathless, "and you promised to marry me."
He smiled slow and sad. "I said things in the heat of a storm. I asked you once to choose me. I withdraw that asking like a tide. I am yours if you want only a safe shore."
I laughed, and then I cried. "Are you serious?"
"Yes," he said simply. "If you will come below with me. If you will be my partner through the trials."
"I thought I loved the idea of white robes," I whispered. "But I think I loved the hands that saved me."
He bent and kissed my forehead with a gentleness that was a prayer.
"Are you asking me?" I said, startled.
"Will you go?" he asked.
I looked out at the moon over the Vale, at the place where petals still clung to the ground from the wedding day, and at Julio's steady face. "Yes," I said. "I will go. If we must wear mortal grief, we will also wear mortal bread together."
He laughed, and the laugh was a harbor. "Then be my wife someday."
So we left the Vale and descended. The Trial below was loud and full of hard lessons. I learned fear of people and the small kindnesses of strangers. I held Julio's hand when days were bitter. He taught me to move among mortals like a fish learns new water.
When we returned, I had pockets of stories. I had a laugh that could come back quickly. Cassian had been punished by truth, and that punishment stayed like a scar visible to all. It taught me that public things could be cleansed.
Months later, Julio knelt in a narrow garden and took my hand.
"India," he said with a seriousness that cut through every laughing hour, "would you be my wife in the name that means home?"
I looked at him, at the man who had kept the pearls and my life, and said, "Yes."
He smiled, and his eyes shone like the first pearl I ever made. "Then come. Let us write the rest."
The wheel of fate turned, and this time I did not cry pearls of sorrow. I cried pearls of laughter and joy. I kept one and tied it into my hairpin.
When people asked, "Where is the white-robed lover who made your heart ache?" I would say, "He was always here."
I would point to Julio and feel his warm hand squeeze mine. That press would be my proof.
The End
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