Pretty in Pearls Read online

  To them she is the future queen.

  To me she will always be Lily.

  But today, the market is the last place I want to be. I only agreed to come so I wouldn’t have to explain why.

  “Oh my gosh, Peri, look at this,” Lily says, swimming into a stall of silks imported from the Indian Ocean. I give it a less than a minute before the owner realizes the princess is in his stall.

  She pulls a silk off the rack. A ribbon of soft orange ripples in the current, the gold trim and beaded embroidery glittering as it catches the sunlight filtering down from the surface.

  “It’s beautiful.” I catch the cloth between my fingers. “High-quality, too.”

  “You should buy it,” she says, holding it up next to my face.

  I make a face and shake my head.

  “It’s perfect for your coloring.” She gives me that sunny grin that no one can deny. “You have to.”

  Maybe she’s right, but it’s not my favorite color. I’m shaking my head when the owner appears from behind another rack.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he says. “What brings you to—oh!”

  Thirty whole seconds. I bite back a smile. Here we go.

  He bows deeply, displaying his balding head. “Princess,” he says, his voice full of reverence, “it is an honor.”

  “Thank you,” Lily replies. “Your silks are beautiful.”

  He whips upright. “These are nothing. Let me show you my special collection.”

  In a flash, he’s gone, diving behind the counter to find the best silks to show the princess. Lily gives me an apologetic look. She gets embarrassed by the attention, but after a lifetime of being her friend, I’m used to it. Mom and I have been buying silks for her dressmaking business from Mr. Egregia forever. He hasn’t even noticed I’m in the stall.

  Such is the life of a princess’s best friend.

  “Ah, yes,” he exclaims, popping up from behind the counter with an armful of fabric. “Here we go.”

  Lily and I swim over to the counter as he lays them out. They are truly breathtaking. There is a shiny one—cross woven with lime green and gold—that would match Lily’s tail fin perfectly. Mom would love the lavender one embroidered with white and purple flowers. But me? I reach for the ivory silk. It looks ordinary at first glance, just a stretch of off-white cloth. But as the current catches it, the fabric ripples and the glittery finish catches the light. A sparkling dream.

  “Wow, that’s amazing,” Lily says, swimming over to take a closer look.

  “The lady has excellent taste,” Mr. Egregia says, finally looking at me. “Ah, Miss Wentletrap. I should have known.”

  His smile is broad and genuine.

  “Hello, Mr. Egregia.” I lift the glittery silk. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Silica-infused dupioni,” he says, confirming my hunch.

  “The process to make this is so involved,” I explain to Lily, “they only make twenty yards a year.”

  “And I have secured ten of them,” he boasts.

  “You’re holding out on my mom,” I tease. “You know she loves this fabric.”

  “It arrived but yesterday.” He looks flustered, like he thinks I’m actually mad. “I would sell to none other.”

  Sometimes it backfires when I try for sarcasm. I should probably stop trying. I give him a reassuring smile. “She will be so happy.”

  He looks relieved.

  “I think I have to buy this one,” Lily says, pointing at the green-and-gold I knew she would love. “Can you have it sent to the palace?”

  Mr. Egregia bows again. “It would be an honor.”

  Moments later the arrangements are made and Lily and I are swimming off in search of another treasure.

  “Where do you want to go next?” she asks.

  “This is your shopping expedition,” I reply, linking my arm through hers. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Hmmmm, let me see . . . ”

  Her voice has that high, singsongy quality that indicates trouble brewing. I brace myself.

  “How about Paru’s Pearls?” she suggests. “I’m sure we could find something to look at there.”

  I knew this was coming. When Lily asked me to go shopping—not normally on her top thousand things to do—I had a feeling she was up to something. Now I know.

  “That’s all the way on the other side of the market,” I argue. “We should just work our way over there.”

  Lily huffs. “But what if they sell out?”

  “They won’t,” I insist.

  She gives me a pleading look. “They might.”

  “They literally have barrels of pearls.” I stare straight ahead, determined not to let her puppy-dog face sway me. “They won’t sell out.”

  She unlinks our arms and turns to face me, arms crossed over her chest. The determined look in her eyes worries me. A determined Lily is not easily discouraged. Just ask Brody—the boy she crushed on for three long years before realizing that Quince was her true love.

  “What’s going on?” she demands.

  I feign ignorance. “What do you mean?’

  “I mean,” she says, lowering her voice as she swims closer, “that two weeks ago you were all swoony over . . . Paru’s Pearls, and now you’re acting like you don’t even want to . . . check out their stock.”

  “Their stock?” I echo with a half laugh.

  She scowls. “You know what I mean.”

  I do—and we both know we’re not talking about pearls—but that doesn’t mean I want to talk about it. She’s my best friend and I talk to her about everything. Almost everything. Not this.

  A lot can happen in two weeks. A lot can change.

  “Really, Lily,” I say, swimming back a few inches, acting like I simply want to keep shopping, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve been spending too much time on land. It’s like you’re speaking a foreign language.”

  I swim off before she can respond, heading for the nearest stall as cover. Because the truth is, I know exactly what—exactly who—she’s talking about. And the last thing I want to talk about is him.

  Three hours, eighteen stalls, matching beaded braids, and a very full lunch later, my time runs out. I knew I could only delay for so long, that eventually we would make our way to this back corner of the market.

  If nothing else, I knew Lily would make sure we did.

  As we kick into Paru’s Pearls, a stall overflowing with iridescent orbs, my stomach does a triple flip. One flip of excitement to see what new pearls will be on display. One flip of excitement to see him. A final flip of dread that he will act just as casually uninterested as he has the last five times I visited the stall.

  You’d think I would stop coming.

  But no, I’m a glutton for punishment, it seems. Especially if that punishment involves getting to look at him for even a few seconds.

  “You want to tell me what happened?” Lily asks as we float over to the nearest display.

  I trace my fingers over the field of pale blue pearls. “Not really.”

  “Come on,” Lily urges, swimming close enough to whisper. “I can’t help if I don’t know what happened. And because right now, to be honest, you’re acting a little crazy.”

  I am acting crazy. What is wrong with me? I’m usually a very together sort of mergirl. That’s why I’m Lily’s emissary—basically her personal assistant—because I can keep my head on straight and make sure she knows everything she needs to know before state events.

  This? Freaking out over a boy and feeling completely adrift? This is not normal Peri behavior.

  Neither is thinking about myself in the third person. I need serious intervention. No, I need to tell my best friend what’s happened.

  I draw in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. She’s going to find out eventually. I might as well get it over with.

  In a tight whisper, I begin, “Well, you know I’ve had a crush on Riatus for, like, ever.”

  Lily nods en
thusiastically.

  “Two weeks ago,” I continue, “when he was first back from his swim around the world, it seemed like he was finally going to see me as something other than the little mergirl who shopped in his stall. It seemed like he might actually be interested in me, like he might actually ask me to the Sea Harvest Dance. My dreams were finally coming true.”

  “I know,” Lily says too loudly. I glare at her and she continues at a lower volume, “You seemed so happy. So excited. I knew it was something good.”

  “Right,” I say, my shoulders slumping. “Then the next time I went back, it was like an iceberg crashed into his heart. He wasn’t rude or anything; he was just . . . polite. Distant. Like we’d never met.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like . . . he smiled politely, chatted politely, helped me—”

  “Politely?” she suggests.

  “Yes,” I say. “He’s been exactly the same ever since.”

  “That’s so weird,” she says.

  Don’t I know it?

  No bubble message. No date to the dance. No acknowledgment that maybe, for a moment, he kind of thought he might be interested in me as more than a mergirl who shops in his stall. Nothing.

  “Well, forget him. He doesn’t deserve you,” Lily says, cheering me like only a best friend can. “You’re so much better than him.”

  “I know,” I say in a small voice.

  But that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to know why, doesn’t mean I don’t still want him. I sigh again.

  “Don’t let him ruin our expedition,” she says, swimming into the stall. “You love pearl shopping.”

  She’s right. But for today, I can abstain. I keep to the edge, hoping that maybe I’ll be able to see him without him noticing me.

  “Peri?” a male voice says from right behind me.

  Great. Clearly that hope was futile.

  I wish my skin didn’t tingle at the sound of him saying my name. I wish I could remember how he’s all but ignored me since that first meeting that had seemed so . . . promising. I wish I could think about anything other than the fact that I can feel his warmth, even through the chilly water.

  Time to be a big girl. I paste a friendly smile on my face and turn to face him. “Hi, Riatus.”

  Those pale silver eyes seem to glow as they watch me. But his mouth is pursed slightly, like he’s irritated that I’m here.

  Well, I’m irritated that he’s irritated.

  I don’t know what I did or what made him change his mind about me, but it’s pretty hard to ditch feelings for someone just because they lose interest.

  Which is why my heart is beating faster than normal.

  For an instant, I see something in his pale eyes that is far from disinterest. Then it’s gone and he’s back to the vaguely charming boy who treats me like nothing more than just another customer.

  “What can I help you with today?” he asks.

  I force my fake smile to get even bigger. “Just browsing. Thanks.”

  “Come look at these, Peri,” Lily calls out from across the stall.

  I brush past him. “Excuse me.”

  Joining Lily at a tray full of the whitest pearls I have ever seen, I feign interest in the display, doing my best to ignore Riatus.

  “Aren’t they gorgeous?” Lily asks, waving her fingers over the pearls.

  “They’re called Arctic Ice.” I pick one up for a closer look. “They’re harvested in Glacialis.”

  Lily and I visited the northernmost kingdom in the Western Atlantic once on an official mission, and I did all of the background research. I’d been fascinated to learn about the pearls, known to be the purest white in all the seven seas.

  They are so bright they are rumored to glow like a beacon in the dark.

  “They are harvested once a year,” Riatus explains, either not interested in letting me pretend to be indifferent to him or more interested in showing off his stock. “In the heart of winter, when the Arctic seas are at their coldest.”

  “Fascinating,” Lily says.

  I glare at Riatus across the display, but he isn’t looking at Lily or the pearls or even my face. His gaze—fierce and intense, icy gray—is focused on the base of my throat.

  “What?” I whisper as my hand goes to my neck, certain to find the remains of lunch—sea-cucumber jelly or lobsterman’s pie—stuck to my skin.

  Instead, I feel the necklace dangling there. Wearing it became such a habit in the past year, I totally forgot it was even there.

  “I just . . . ” I want to give him some explanation, some reason other than the truth—that the pearl means more to me than I want him to know. But nothing comes out. It’s hard to come up with a convincing lie when the truth is so blatantly on display.

  Then, before the moment can get any more awkward than it already is, he turns to Lily.

  “Here, Princess,” he says, “let me show you the golden collection. I’m sure we have a selection to complement your scales.”

  I let out a rough breath. What was I thinking? That he recognized the pearl? That he remembered giving it to me? No way. He made that clear when we first saw each other again two weeks ago. Why did I think he would have suddenly remembered?

  Still, the water between him and me? More than a little tense.

  When Lily and I swim out of the stall twenty minutes later, she has a shopping bag full of pearls—beautiful gold ones I know Mom will want to use on the princess’s dress for the Sea Harvest Dance—and I have progressed from utterly confused to downright flicked off.

  “I’m not crazy,” I say.

  Lily looks up from her bag of pearls. “Did I say you were?”

  “I mean, if a boy flirts with you, if he tells you he’s going to bubble message you”—I absently rub the pearl at my throat—“that should mean he’s interested. Right?”

  Lily nod. “Totally!”

  “That was weird. Wasn’t that weird?” I spin around to face her. “You felt it, too. Right?”

  Lily studies me, an angelfish on her face. She’s probably amused to see me so worked up over a boy, but right now I can’t even manage to be indignant about that. I just want advice.

  “What do I do?” I demand.

  “What do you do?” She smiles. “I think . . . ” she says, drawing it out until I’m practically leaning forward in anticipation.

  Lily may not have the most exhaustive experience with boys. There’s the boy she crushed on for three years—who barely knew she existed and is now bonded with her cousin Dosinia—and then there’s Quince. Who is, to be fair, pretty much every mergirl’s dream wrapped up in one tidy, biker-boy package.

  But still, her advice is better than no advice, and she knows me better than anyone.

  “ . . . you need . . . ”

  I hold my breath.

  “ . . . to talk to him.”

  I’m not sure what I imagined her advice was going to be, but that was not it.

  “Talk to him?” I echo.

  She nods. “Ask him what’s going on.”

  “Ask him?” I shake my head. “I can’t just ask him.”

  “Of course you can.” She smiles. “You have a right to know. I mean, he all but asked you to the dance, right?”

  “Right, but—”

  “Then ask him why he didn’t.” She places her hands on my shoulders. “You still like him, obviously. What do you have to lose? Ask him.”

  She makes it sound so simple. Just swim up to him and say, Hey, you said you were going to bubble message me and I thought you might ask me to the dance and then you started treating me like a total stranger. What’s up with that? Have a personality change or something?

  Oh yeah, sure, I’ll just ask him.

  “Even better,” Lily says excitedly, “why don’t you ask him to the dance?”

  “What?” I cough.

  She swings her arms wide, a huge smile on her face. “Absolutely. Ask Riatus to the dance. I bet you’ll be surprised by the answer.”

/>   I frown at her.

  Bet I won’t.

  3

  After much thought and consideration—and prodding from Lily—I relent and decide to try talking to Riatus. But not until after the market closes for the day. I can’t imagine anything more awkward than asking a guy whether he likes you or not in front of a crowd of shoppers.

  After the sun sets, replaced by the bioluminescent glow that keeps Thalassinia from ever being completely dark, I sneak back through the aisles of the market.

  Most of the stall keepers are packing up their goods for the night—covering the food and flower displays, packing the organic sea life into storage bins, placing valuable trinkets into locked chests.

  I’ve never seen this side of the market. It’s like staying in the ballroom after the royal party, when the palace staff starts taking down the displays to return everything to normal. An insider’s peek into a secret world.

  As I approach the back corner of the market, my heart starts racing, fast. Like, I have to stop and catch my breath and make sure I’m not having a panic attack.

  But no, after a minute of slow breathing, my heart gets back under control. I give myself a couple extra minutes, just to make sure, before pushing out from behind a rack of seaflower fascinators and continuing on my way.

  I round the last corner and freeze.

  Coral is still in the stall too. I hadn’t counted on that. All my imaginings had me swimming up on Riatus alone. I need a minute to regroup.

  As I watch, Riatus is moving the barrels of pearls to the back of the stall, probably so he can lock down all the lids and secure the whole collection to the seahorse hitching post in the back corner.

  I notice Coral reach for something behind the counter and pull out a folded sheet of kelpaper. She opens it, scans the contents, and laughs out loud.

  Riatus turns, probably to ask her what’s so funny, and she quickly hides the note behind her back. She says something that leaves him shaking his head. A moment later, she darts forward, places a kiss on his cheek, and then swims away, out of the stall—out of the market. The kelpaper drifts away behind her and lands on one of the barrels.