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Ruby opened her eyes.
That was in itself surprising. When the ship had broken up underneath her, plunging her into the waves, she’d felt a sort of euphoric calm. She didn’t want to die, but at the moment of its inevitability, she had accepted it—accepted she’d fought as hard as she could, accepted that she’d been caught in the web of something older and crueler and far more dangerous than her, accepted following Jet down into the suffocating milky waves. But now she was awake, and much too sore to be dead. Her head throbbed where she’d struck against the bowsprit on the way down and her throat felt raw when she swallowed. She was perversely irked to have wasted all that emotional maturity if she was just going to survive anyway.
The other surprising thing was that she appeared to be neither in a boat nor washed up on shore, but rather in some sort of cave. The ceiling above her was jagged with multicolored crystals, pulsing gently with arcane light. Ruby coughed. Her mouth was sour with the taste of old milk.
“Oh thank goodness, you’re awake!”
The high, musical voice made Ruby jerk upward, too startled to know if she ought to be afraid. She sat up all at once. The motion made her head swim, and she had to stop and press a hand to her temple, groaning, before her vision stopped wavering. Only then could she look at the creature watching her.
From the waist up, the creature looked mostly like a person. It had a face with the normal distribution of eyes and mouth and nose and ears. White, pink, and brown hair cut in a mohawk hung wet against the top of its head. Its skin was bright mint-green, and it wore a silver-white breastplate engraved with strange fractal patterns. The breastplate buckled at the shoulders and left its arms exposed. It had wide, thin fins draping off the length of its forearms, curving up in a frill just around the curve of its elbows.
From the waist down, instead of legs, the creature had some sort of massive fish tail.
The tail was the same colors as its hair: brown where it joined the creature’s torso, shimmering pink where more of those long draping fins spread along its length, and the bottom a white so pure it hurt Ruby’s eyes.
“Who—what—?” Ruby’s voice came out in a croak. The creature made to heave itself closer to her, and she shoved backwards on instinct. The creature stopped, holding up both hands.
“I won’t hurt you,” the creature said earnestly. “I saved you.” Its face dropped with something that looked like sadness. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save the others. I wasn’t fast enough. You were the only one who wasn’t already gone by the time I got there.”
Ruby was silent, eyes darting to take in her surroundings. She was in some sort of cave or grotto, on a stretch of relatively dry rock. The walls and ceilings were studded with those glowing crystals—candy? It reminded her of the stalagmites of rock candy she’d seen on a weekend trip to the mountains as a child—that were the only source of light. The Dairy Sea, pearlescent in the strange, rainbow light, lapped gently at the edge of the rock where the creature sat. Ruby could not see a way out except through the milk.
She licked her lips. Her gaze returned to the creature. It was watching her with curiosity but no obvious malevolence.
“Who are you?” Ruby asked, trying to channel, if not quite Jet’s confidence, then at least her bravery.
The creature smiled wide, and its teeth looked like chips of ice.
“Queen Saccharina of House Frostwhip, First Daughter of the Oceans. I’m your sister.”
Ruby blinked, and blinked again. “What?” she asked. Her head still hurt and she felt slow and stupid. She must have heard wrong.
“Well, half-sister,” Saccharina amended. “You heard about it in Comida, didn’t you? Amethar was already married before he met your mother. I’m his child by his first wife.”
“I— But— You—” Ruby couldn’t help but stare down at Saccharina’s tail. While Saccharina’s torso was proportional to Ruby’s own, perhaps a little taller, the tail was as long as Ruby’s entire body, a massive, curling thing that undulated across the rock like it had a mind of its own. “I’m confused,” she said. “Not to be rude, but what… are you?”
“Ah, this?” Saccharina lifted her tail and dropped it again with a smack that reverberated through the rock and made Ruby’s teeth chatter. “My mother left me at an orphanage,” she said. What was that tone? Ruby couldn’t parse it. Her head still hurt. “They were… not kind to me. But the sea is older than their gods, and when I called, she answered.” Saccharina reached out, and the milk of the Dairy Sea reached back to her, liquid rising from the pool to spiral through her fingers. “The sea is my mother now, and I am her eldest daughter.”
She dropped her hand, and the milk splashed down, splattering across the rocks. Ruby flinched. Saccharina looked back at her, expression earnest and open, as if nothing about this was at all strange or frightening. Ruby could do nothing but stare.
“The land above is cruel,” Saccharina continued, “but the oceans love me. I’m building a new kingdom beneath the waves.” She seized Ruby’s hand between her own before Ruby could avoid the grip. Ruby went stiff. Saccharina’s hand was cold and slippery, though its grip was vice-like. “And I’ll finally have a sister by my side,” she said. Her voice was rich with joy, while the words sent Ruby’s stomach plummeting out of her feet.
“No I—I need to go home,” Ruby protested. She tried to tug her hand away, but Saccharina held fast.
“To do what?” Saccharina asked her. Her eyes glowed with the same arcane light as the rock candy crystals, as pearly white as the sea. “I have eyes and ears on land. The armies of Comida are already marching on Candia. If you return to the surface, you go to your death.”
“Where’s Jet?” Ruby asked, voice trembling. “Where’s my real sister?”
Something ugly crossed Saccharina’s face then, there for a flash and gone. She released Ruby’s hand and sat back on the rock.
“I told you,” she said. “I didn’t make it there in time to save anyone else.”
The weight of those words seemed to trickle in slowly, dripping into Ruby’s spine one by one with icy horror. Her mouth was dry. Her throat closed up and tears threatened her eyes, but she couldn’t cry, not here. Bastard or no, she was the daughter of King Amethar of House Rocks, and she did not have time to cry.
“My mother,” she said in a cracked whisper. “I have to warn my mother.”
“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Saccharina said, and she really did sound it. “I can’t lose you too.”
The tail whipped forward with shocking speed. Ruby rolled, dodging it, acrobatic reflexes letting her spring to her feet. She reached for a weapon, but her bow was lost somewhere in the debris of the sunken ship. She was caught on the ledge of the rock, the sea lapping at her feet, and Saccharina moving towards her.
“Where are you going to run?” Saccharina asked. “You can’t escape this cave on your own.”
Ruby hissed at her, the sound drawn out in inarticulate fury. The tail whipped forward again. Ruby went to spring out of the way, but mistimed it. The tail caught her ankle and sent her sprawling. The motion jarred her still aching head. Her limbs felt slow and uncoordinated as she struggled to gather them back underneath her. She couldn’t move fast enough. Saccharina’s tail wrapped around her, pinning her legs together and her arms to her side. She cried out. Saccharina’s tail was freezing, cold as ice against her skin.
Saccharina turned her onto her back and leaned up over her. “You have no home and no family to return to.” Her voice was soft, soothing as the quiet rush of low tide against the shore. Ruby shook her head and thrashed, but the tail squeezed tighter and tighter until her ribs creaked, and she was forced to stop and gasp for air. “But we have each other now, and we will build a new home together beneath the waves.” She cradled Ruby’s face between her hands. “And one day the seas will rise, and the land will drown, and we shall take the other kingdoms for our own, one by one. And when we are finally the dangerous ones, we can take our revenge as many times over as we please.”
“Let me go!”
“If I do, you’ll do something stupid.” Saccharina pressed a kiss to Ruby’s forehead. “I can’t let you out yet. Not until you’re ready.”
“Ready? Ready how?”
“I’m sorry I can’t do it faster,” Saccharina said, stroking a hand down Ruby’s jaw. Ruby jerked her face away, but Saccharina only followed it. The tail rippled, pulsing around Ruby, drawing her closer, holding her tighter. It tugged painfully, the frozen scales caught against her skin. Ruby gritted her teeth against a sound of pain, exhaling harshly through her nose instead. “I’m not powerful enough yet,” Saccharina was saying. “So it will take a while before you’re able to join me properly. But don’t worry! I’ll take good care of you in the meantime, I promise.”
“What are you—?”
Ruby’s words were cut off by a rushing, liquid noise. Out of her periphery, she saw it: the Dairy Sea was rising.
It took only moments for the milk to reach them, to start lapping at her back and legs. It kept rising, seeking the invisible crevices between her and Saccharina’s tail, still holding her immobile, pouring over her arms, rising to spill across her chest. It was cold, shockingly cold as it found her bare skin, as it soaked instantly through her battle-shredded clothes. Ruby craned her neck upward in panic, renewing her thrashing, but the tail held her fast.
“Sh,” Saccharina soothed. “It won’t hurt.”
“Stop,” Ruby gasped. The sea rose, wetting her hair, filling her ears, blocking out any further reply Saccharina might have made. She tilted her chin up on instinct, struggling to keep her mouth above the surface even as the sea flowed over her forehead and into her eyes, but it was a futile effort. The sea rose. She took one last gasping inhale and sank into the milk.
She fought, twisting and writhing against the tail, but Saccharina held her fast. Ruby could see nothing even when she briefly flicked her eyes open, the sea white and opaque. She could feel Saccharina, though. Feel her hands grasp either side of her face. Feel the light brush of her lips as she pressed kisses to Ruby’s forehead, to her temples, to each cheek. Feel the frozen grasp of her tail, squeezing her unrelentingly. Feel it as Saccharina lowered her mouth to Ruby’s.
Ruby tried to thrash away, but she was running out of air, disoriented and sluggish with cold and growing weaker by the moment. It took no great strength for Saccharina to pry Ruby’s mouth open with her own. The taste of sugar and cream flooded Ruby’s tongue.
Then, all at once, the sea was receding, draining off of them, splashing harmlessly back down on the rocks. Saccharina’s mouth was gone, and Ruby gasped and coughed, inhaling frantic gulps of air. Milky tears ran out of her eyes. Dairy was not so dangerously fatal to candy as the pure water daggers, but still, her skin smarted and burned with the dunking, even as she shivered uncontrollably. The tail unwound from her body, but she could do little more than lay still anyway, struggling to get her breath back. Saccharina caressed her, rubbing her hands up the sides of her legs, across her stomach and ribcage, over her breasts. A tiny whimper escaped Ruby’s throat.
Saccharina’s hands massaged their way down Ruby’s arms until they reached her hands. For a moment, Saccharina just held her, palm to palm, until Ruby summoned the strength to try to pull away. With a sudden snap of magic, icy manacles encircled her wrists.
“Hey—!”
With monumental effort, Ruby pulled herself up to sitting. It took a moment as she swayed and struggled for balance—she had to pry her legs apart where they had become sticky and frozen to each other, the skin tugging and stretching before eventually, reluctantly releasing. She shivered, disgusted, and stared down at her arms. Saccharina had shackled her to the wall of the cave with glittering white chains. Ruby opened her mouth, furious, but Saccharina pressed a finger against it, shushing her.
“You aren’t ready to go beneath the waves yet,” Saccharina said. “Like I said, it will take some time before the transformation completes. But I don’t trust you not to try something stupid in the meanwhile. I’m sorry it has to be like this.”
Ruby jerked her head to the side. “Fuck you,” she said furiously. “You fucking monster.”
Saccharina withdrew, looking hurt. She smoothed over the expression after a moment and gave Ruby a small, sad smile.
“It will be better soon,” she said. “You’ll see.” She reached up, for another caress or what, Ruby didn’t want to find out. She yanked her wrists up, using Saccharina’s own accursed chains to block her. Saccharina sighed, and pushed herself back towards the edge of the rock.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “Don’t fret, sister. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
Ruby didn’t dignify that with a reply. Saccharina lingered a moment longer, and then sank into the sea.
The lights from the crystals went with her.