The Sea King's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Father seemed more scared than angry. I almost wished he would bellow at me so I would feel less guilty.
    Now he let me go and gave me a searching, sorrowful look. "Your grandmother said this is not the first time you've run off. Where do you go, Nyx? What do you do?"
    I poured out the whole story. When I told of surfacing for the first time, my father looked grim. By the time I explained about the storm and the ship and the beautiful young man, he'd pulled his bushy brows together so tightly that they ran across his forehead in one unbroken line.
    "I'm sorry, Father," I finished. "I'd like to say I'll be good from now on, that I'll never go back, but it would be a lie. Up there -- with the sun, the birds, the human world -- somehow I'm not so miserable as I usually am. It's hard to explain." I kept my eyes on the floor, unable to look him in the face. "Please, Father, don't forbid it. It's the only little pleasure I have."
    My father frowned. "Are you so unhappy, then, my daughter?"
    Truly, I didn't have enough words to describe my misery. I felt wrapped in layers and layers of sadness that sealed me off from the rest of the world. I feared peeling away the layers because -- underneath all the despair and wickedness -- I might find nothing at all. What if there was no sweet and lovable Nyx? What if there was nothing but darkness all the way down to my very core?
    I wanted to tell Father how trapped I felt even in my own body, how all the time I felt a sort of restless hunger that no amount of food could satisfy. I suspected it was not really hunger at all, but something darker. I felt a sudden urge to confess all my sins, if only it meant I could start all over again as someone clean and new. But I couldn't let Father find out what a cruel and petty daughter he'd spawned. I feared seeing the disappointment in his face. I simply nodded.
    "Tell me how I can help you," Father said.
    My lips quivered. "I don't know. No one likes me. I don't belong anywhere. I can't find a place for myself, a place where I fit in, and I truly don't understand why that should be so."
    My father's face seemed to crumble. The creases deepened at the edges of his mouth. His pale blue eyes brimmed with sadness, as if he remembered some long-forgotten grief. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself. He blinked and passed his hand over his eyes.
    "You're so young, my dear," he said at last. "You'll soon outgrow these dark moods. You'll find your place, with time. Perhaps you'll fall in love." His face brightened at the thought. "Perhaps there's a young merman you favor already. Of course, you're too young to think of marriage just yet, with your eldest sister only now engaged --" He broke off and snapped his jaw shut.
    I stared at him. "Thetis? Engaged?"
    Father nodded. "No one was to know of it yet. That was the purpose of my journey, to make the arrangements."
    "But you went all the way to the Ionian Sea."
    "Thetis will wed the eldest son of King Meros. Now, dearest, don't tell me this comes as a complete surprise. Thetis is almost twenty, after all."
    My eyes widened in horror. "Thetis will go away from here, far away. That's what she tried to tell me yesterday. I'll never see her again!"
    "Come, come," Father said. "It's hardly that bad. You may still visit each other, on occasion."
    He laid his hand on my shoulder to comfort me, but I shook it away. "Without Thetis, I'm all alone," I said. Sobs rose in my throat. I whirled and swam blindly away from my father. He shouted after me, but I didn't turn back.
    Outside the throne room, in the hallway, Thetis waited for me. She caught my wrist. I tried to pull away, but she held me tight. "Nyx, are you all right?" she asked.
    "Leave me alone," I said. My face twist into an ugly shape. "Get your hands off me. You're going away -- you didn't tell me -- and you're pleased about it, aren't you? You're happy to get rid of me."
    Thetis shook her head, bewilderment plain on her usually tranquil face.