And I shared with him even the minutest morsel.

But as each day passed into the next, and I withheld that from him, it felt just like that.

As if I was withholding something, something important, from my husband.

Keeping it a secret.

Not trusting it to him.

For he gave me his laughter freely. His attention admiringly. Time with his men. Tales of his father. His mother. His grandparents. His exploits on the sea. He did it openly, weaving rich stories that would have me enthralled.

But I was keeping the most important part of me from him.

I needed to share all of me with him.

I had decided the best way to share was to show. To find a boat, row out, tell him and dive into the sea, surfacing as mermaid.

But we were leaving tomorrow. If I did it, it would have to be tonight. And I had other activities planned for that night.

Could I do both?

Should I do both?

Would he allow me to do both (precisely, the second part) once he found out who I truly was? Would he wish his wife, his lover, his queen, the mother of his children to be a mermaid?

Or would he find me fantastical and abhorrent in some way because of it?

He’d mention mermaids before and told me, if I was one of them, he would protect that knowledge and me. Like he said he would do with my magic.

But speaking of it when he did not think that it was the case, and it being the case, were two different things.

My mother and father and auntie and grandmother and all of our people held this truth about ourselves as the utmost of secrets. No one around us knew who we were, what we were.

We’d learned.

But now, could I trust my husband?

A husband who was also king of the seas?

I started when I heard a thump in the sand beside me.

I looked that way to see Aramus’s boots there. His socks landed on them before I tipped my head back and then twisted my neck, for he was moving behind me.

He settled in there, his long, muscled legs on either side of me bent, his heels in the sand in front of the toweling, his arms snaking about me to pull me back against his body.

Thus, I settled into him, turning to face the sea and resting my head on his shoulder.

“You’ll miss it,” he said in my ear.

He was speaking of the sea.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Notting Thicket is far inland. But Sky Bay isn’t. We will make our way there immediately, once True and Farah are wed,” he promised.

I smiled a small smile at the waves before I changed our subject.

“You’re being too hard on your men.”