Vexed: A Tidal Kiss Novella (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 5)

  First published by Kristy Nicolle, United Kingdom, December 2017

  QUEENS OF FANTASY EDITION (1st EDITION)

  Published December 2017 by Kristy Nicolle

  Copyright © 2016 Kristy Nicolle

  Edited By- Jaimie Cordall

  Adult Paranormal/Fantasy Romance

  The right of Kristy Nicolle to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Disclaimer:

  This ebook is written in U.K English by personal preference of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-911395-10-2

  www.kristynicolle.com

  For those of you who loved Vex from the very beginning.

  Hold on to your sodding knickers,

  It’s time to get Vexy.

  HAVEN’T READ THE TIDAL KISS TRILOGY?

  START YOUR JOURNEY INTO THE OCCULTA MIRUM WITH…

  THE KISS THAT KILLED ME

  THE KISS THAT SAVED ME

  THE KISS THAT CHANGED ME

  TIDAL KISS SHORTS

  WAITING FOR GIDEON (FREE)

  BEYOND THE SHALLOWS

  CONTENTS

  Prologue-Time for Tea

  Chapter One-A Dangerous Game

  Chapter Two- The Dirty Tourguide

  Chapter Three Eye Spy

  Chapter Four-Mummy’s Boy

  Chapter Five-A Grave Business

  Chapter six-A Rose By Any Other Name

  Chapter Seven-Wrecked

  Chapter Eight-Supermassive Black Hole

  Chapter Nine-A Bloody Boring Affair

  Chapter Ten-Creep

  Epilogue-A Christmas Tail

  POD SUMMARY:

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Prologue

  Time for Tea

  Something causes me to stir from sleep; unusual for me seeing as I hardly ever allow myself to descend into my mind’s deepest recesses anymore. I find the recall of days gone past partly unsavoury, not that I can plead regret. The things I did, the blood I spilt, the skin I painted many dark colours, have long since faded and turned to dust. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, especially now, when I’m beginning to question if what I am can ever truly be contained, those dark days lurk, lying in wait…tempting, to say the least.

  I sit up on the couch, the television still blaring out, some too-happy kid’s movie about sisterly bonds and ice magic playing for the eighth time tonight.

  I realise immediately what it is that has woken me as I focus in on her chocolate coloured eyes, shaped like almonds and rimmed in too thick and blotchy mascara. I blink slowly, staring at her, taking in her painted and sticky face for a moment before I frown.

  I stretch up to the ceiling as I let out a yawn, muscles unfurling, desperate for a throat to rip out or a skull to crush. I’ve become far too bored of sitting around being democratic lately. I think on the violence, a meek and barely forgivable distaste for it tearing me in two, making me hesitant to act at all.

  “Hey, where did you get makeup from?” I demand, brushing aside the desperate oxymoron that my soul has become. She cocks her head, grinning as a dimple presents itself on the left side of her face beneath thick, badly applied blusher.

  “I found it,” she replies, acting dumb with a cute grin. I scrutinize her as she rearranges one of her three favourite stuffed animals atop tiny chairs, suitable for no average sized person. I think they’re called Geoffrey, Stan, and Theodore, though I can never remember which is which.

  “Kayla… where did you find it exactly?” I lean forward on the couch, sitting up from my slumped position amongst the cushions and resting my elbows on the sharp protrusions of my knees. As Kayla moves toward the olive-green wall in front of the television, leaning against it and ignoring me, I roll my eyes.

  This child. I cuss.

  Running my fingers back through my hair, the black locks feeling silky and dense against my fingers, I sigh out, knowing I’m exhausted but also knowing that falling asleep on the job probably makes me the crappiest babysitter of all time.

  The thought pains me, the idea that I can’t even look after myself becoming painfully evident as I drop to the floor, taking a seat with crossed legs in the free space around the tiny white wooden table. The places are set for high tea, something fancy I’m sure, and I wonder why Kayla is so obsessed with tea parties. When I was a child, I was happy to sit and draw with a stick in the sand.

  “Zure…” Kayla looks at me, her too large head and scrawny child’s body seemingly too fragile for the cruelty of this world.

  “Yes, Kayla?” I enquire as she looks between me and the television, where a blonde woman is singing about letting it go.

  I suppose it’s super easy to let it go when you can just freeze the ass of anyone who annoys the crap out of you. That’s probably why Gideon is so chilled.

  Kayla looks nervous, taking one or two steps towards me and then plopping down on the carpet in an uncoordinated mess. Her pyjamas have mermaids on them. It’s her latest craze, surprising everyone…though for no good reason I can discern. Of course, she’s obsessed; her entire family is bloody chosen.

  Careful. I warn myself, recognising the vernacular from my least favourite person seeping into my own. The individual I quite often fantasise about beating senseless. Though, at least he’s good for something these days.

  “Is there really an ice city? Like, really, really?” she demands, her voice dreamy as she cocks her head. A twinkle flickers into life behind the glassy surfaces of her eyes, making bile rise in my throat.

  Her blue fuzzy pyjamas hug her as she pulls her knees up to her chest and rocks back and forth on her tailbone, looking nervous, afraid even, as I fail to reply immediately. The instantaneous change in her expression pains me, and so does the question.

  Things would be so much easier if she’d just play tea party and watch the crappy movie.

  “Kayla… you know I’m not allowed to talk to you about those things. Come on, let’s have tea,” I dismiss her. Her eyes become wider, rounder, more puppy-like as silence falls, and the wind stirs outside. The flimsy gossamer drapes flap slightly in the breeze, letting full moonlight fall uninterrupted through the pane as she sighs, tugging at the glimmer of decency left inside.

  “Aww…” She’s giving me that face, those innocent eyes pulling on my heartstrings, the ones I had long since discarded as flat and out of tune. I sigh, knowing it is moments like this that I cannot forget what I am, not only what makes me strong but also what makes me weak. The fact that I was once a mother, but had lost the right to use such a word at my lack of presence.

  “There is a city of ice. It’s called the Gelida Silentium. But you know I can’t tell you any more than that. And don’t try those eyes on me again, or I shall cut them from your skull.” The words slip from my mouth, and her eyes widen further, mouth falling slack.

  I don’t know where the rage has come from. I thought it had disappeared along with the old order in which the Mer and Psirens had existed for so many years. I have become tired, feeling old and worn
out. Ready for it all to end.

  It’s not her fault, but I’m not a good, or kind, or sweet enough person to care anymore.

  Perhaps I want her to hate me. Maybe, if she did, it would mean I was right all along. I am unlovable, irredeemable, and too far gone that even one so pure of heart cannot quell my lust for bloodshed.

  “Kayla, I…” I begin to apologise, my heart pounding against my ribs in protest as I fear she may cry. If she does, I might never forgive myself.

  “What’s wrong, Zure?” She appears unsure but gets to her feet anyway, tottering around the table on short legs and falling into my lap before glancing up at me with her clown makeup. “You seem sad,” she assesses me, bringing a hand up to the locks of my hair that have fallen forward and brushing her fingers through them absentmindedly. I hold her in my arms, trying to take back what I said, trying to make her feel safe.

  “I… I am sad.” I admit, sighing, and she looks only now like she might cry.

  What did I do to deserve this little girl’s trust? I wonder, feeling myself fall deeper into melancholy at the thought of her growing up, growing wiser, and more beautiful, growing to know that I cannot be the hero nor even the person she hopes of me.

  “Is it because you’re Queen? Callie isn’t sad and she’s Queen too,” she asks me, and I feel my despair deepen.

  Of course, in her eyes the wonderful Callie Fischer should be my benchmark for lifetime achievement.

  “I’m not Callie,” I respond, simply grabbing her under the arms and standing her on her two feet, putting distance between us.

  “No. You’re better. You’re stronger.” Kayla assesses me yet again, and I wonder what else she thinks of me. She’s astute; that’s for sure. “Are you sad because you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  I almost laugh, finding a small smile tugging at the corners of my lips, which are so often twisted into a firm hard line these days.

  “Why would you ask that?” I demand, gazing up at her and pushing my dark hair behind one ear.

  “Callie has Orion… he’s dreamy, and she’s happy. Maybe you need someone dreamy too…” Her eyes sparkle, wistful, as she does a tiny twizzle on one foot and almost loses balance. I catch her, my long dark fingernails evidently sharp against the soft milky pallor of her skin.

  “I don’t need a boyfriend. And if I did want one, I wouldn’t want him to be dreamy,” I reply, feeling myself exhausted by her endless questions. I love this child, more than I had thought possible for the short amount of time I’ve been trusted to look after her alone. And yet, she has an insatiable curiosity unlike anything I’ve ever known.

  “Why not?” she demands, folding her arms across the mermaid embroidered on her shirt.

  I want to tell her the truth. That my dreams are all long since dead. That they had died the day Poseidon and Atargatis had stood before me and revealed not only my fate, but the fate of my Arabella as well.

  Instead, I simply state, “Because, Kayla, not every Queen needs a King to rule.”

  As the words leave my lips, she smiles, placing her arms around my neck and pulling me close to her still beating, innocent heart.

  It’s late, too late, proving yet again that I am the world’s worst babysitter, when I finally get Kayla into bed. Her face has been scrubbed raw, much to her protest, but I think I finally got the majority of the world’s most permanent make-up off her tiny face.

  She peers up into my eyes, surrounded by Geoffrey, Stan, and Theodore, making me want to recoil, to pull away, and yet I fight that urge. Her bedroom makes my stomach hurt, the pink of the walls, the gossamer of the canopy above her single bed. The way her books and toys are lovingly ragged and stacked haphazardly. It’s exactly what I would have wanted for my little girl, even though back then, I never could have given her such luxuries.

  “Are you good? You need a glass of water?” I ask her as I pat down the duvet around her body, not wanting to sit downstairs alone. Too much time with my own thoughts is never good.

  “No. I don’t wanna have to potty,” she informs me, yawning before rolling over under her soft pink blanket and curling up like a kitten. I stroke her hair as she closes her eyes, letting the soft silkiness of the individual strands take me away to a time that never was but could have been. To the bed of my little girl, the silken locks of Arabella, my Arabella.

  As she drifts away to someplace far calmer than anywhere I’m able to reach, I get to my feet. Moving from the room as a shadow, I turn off the light and blend into the dark, into the place where Kayla’s nightmares reside. Where I belong.

  I descend the staircase slowly, taking each step in metronomic time, examining the family pictures that hang parallel to the wooden banister, which I brush lightly with my restless fingertips.

  Smiling faces, moments captured, depictions of what I had been taken from me by a thief in the night as I had bled to death. I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel anything. My capacity for despair and rage is diminishing with each passing day, and I can’t help but wonder if this is what dying feels like.

  As I’m pondering what the end will be like, I hear the front door open, and voices erupt across the threshold as Orion, Callie, Patience and Gideon fall into the hall, chatting with an irritating and non-infectious joviality.

  “Shhh.” I place my fingers to my lips and Callie immediately silences as her eyes rise to meet mine.

  “Is she asleep?” she queries, hopeful, and I nod, watching as her aquamarine eyes crease at the sides with her gradual smile.

  “Just about. I had a little trouble getting her to go to bed. She wouldn’t stop asking me questions about certain forbidden topics.” As my words ring out, cold and unfeeling, as though this issue barely affects me at all, Patience’s eyes diminish. Her smile lines turn to those of worry as her eyes crease and lips purse, her gaze shifting unwillingly to the landing, where they settle on Kayla’s closed bedroom door.

  I reach the bottom of the staircase finally, moving into the light of the hall and out of the shadow. Orion slaps his hand across his mouth, eyes bulging as he tries to stifle something that sounds like a snort. Gideon’s aquamarine eyes glisten, amused, as he runs thick fingers through his braided white hair and Callie cocks her head, mystified.

  What the hell is so damn funny?

  “What?” I interrogate them, a severe frown marring my otherwise flawless features. Have they suddenly realised I’m flailing, falling, barely holding on? Have they finally seen my anguish? Realised I’m a joke of a ruler?

  “Uh… Azure, you didn’t happen to fall asleep, did you?” Patience asks, and I scowl. Her tone isn’t accusatory, but rather amused as she unties her beige overcoat and slips it off.

  “No. Why?”

  “Why don’t you hang this up for me over there.” She passes me her coat, and I feel like sighing, and yet something about Callie’s mother makes me feel inferior. Though, whether it’s because she’s done what I could not or because she reminds me of my own mother and her inescapable maternal warmth, I don’t know.

  I step off the bottom stair, twisting on the ball of my foot and striding toward a standing coat rack in front of a large wide mirror, which is hung on the wall opposite the staircase.

  As I place the overcoat on the hook and turn back in haste, something about my appearance catches my eye.

  I stall, pivoting back in slow motion to examine myself in the puddle of reflective glass, a sigh escaping my lips.

  Crap.

  Kayla has plastered thick jammy make-up all over my pale complexion, slathering me in pink glittery eyeshadow and bright red lips which twist into a sick half-smile, half-grimace. My cheeks look like those of a circus clown, rosy and thick with blusher.

  This Child. I cuss again internally, watching as the foursome begins to burst into full-blown laughter at my expense. I know I should laugh too, should live in the moment, but for some reason, this all seems way beyond what I deserve. A happy family, a laughing family, a blessed family.

  This is so n
ot my freaking look.

  Chapter One

  A Dangerous Game

  The shadows of the eight separate Alcazars fall upon the stark monochrome of the courtyard that lies central to Occulta Mirum. I feel my tailfin slicing through the water with slow ease despite the fact I know I’m running late.

  I know only too well by now that I have absolutely no desire to give in to the spectacle I’m about to witness. Yet, for some reason, I’m still swimming forward, like a clockwork toy with no choice but to obey the unstoppable turning of the key so cruelly embedded in its spine.

  “Azure.” Orion acknowledges my arrival, looking increasingly nervous as I propel toward the centre of the courtyard. The symbol of the circle of eight, four overlapping crescent moons surrounding the number itself, lies embedded into the ground, a permanent and unending reminder of what has passed. Not that I need it.

  Eight golden statues, depicting Poseidon, Atargatis, Ava, Neptune, Kanaloa, Mizuchi, Sedna, and Lir, also surround my brother on all sides as he stares wearily at my sullen face. I exhale, a flurry of bubbles rising in front of my face to tickle my forehead, putting me more on edge.

  “Best get this over with then. I want it noted that I told you this was an extremely bad idea,” I complain, folding my arms over the untarnished black of my breast scales as I right myself in the water.

  I feel the slits of my gills open and close, heartbeat heavy and torturous as dread floods my stomach.

  This is so beyond a bad idea. I cuss to myself, unable to muster any hatred at the hopeful glint behind Orion’s irises.

  “Noted,” he sighs, mouth falling into a firm unamused line.

  “Where’s Blondie?” I ask him, utilising Vex’s nickname for Callie without second thought. He shifts in the water, visibly relaxed now I’ve changed the subject. His royal blue tailfin undulates beneath the disgustingly muscular lines that track down his torso, falling into scale as he inhales, smiling.