The coral palace wasn't terribly far from the main one. The closest was the pearl palace, which belonged to the current merqueen. There were other palaces that were currently unoccupied because they were only awarded to concubines who had children currently living with them. The rest of the concubines had smaller quarters within the main palace.
Merrick lived with his mother in the pearl palace. Though Talori and Zale's mother was dead, they were allowed to maintain their own residence because they were children of the merking.
Brennan had told her that fae children were rare and precious on the surface too. Fae couples could be together for centuries without having one.
That seemed to be a universal fae trait. No wonder there were more humans than there were fae. They weren't capable of reproducing as quickly. It was similar to the problem he had told her about with the lionfish. Part of why they invaded to the extent they did was that they reproduced very quickly in addition to having no natural predators.
Talori shook those thoughts free. She needed to focus on enjoying being outside during daylight hours for once. The ocean looked very different before and after dark and she needed to take advantage of the light while she could.
The ocean was a beautiful place. She wished she was able to see more of it on a regular basis.
She soaked up as much of the scenery as she could before they arrived in the banquet hall. Merfolk she recognized were swimming around everywhere. All of the nobles in the kingdom seemed to be here tonight.
That wasn't unusual for parties like this. The merking and merqueen liked to go all out and show off for those they deemed worth of spending time with them.
Talori personally thought it was stupid. She had never gotten along with any of the nobles very well because they thought she was crazy. As a child, they teased her to her face but that transitioned to gossiping behind her back when they thought she couldn't hear them as they got older.
She couldn't care less about any of them. The only merfolk whose opinion mattered to her was Zale's.
She couldn't deny she was beginning to care about Brennan's opinion as well. She liked talking to him so of course she would want him to think well of her.
As Talori was announced by the herald, she frowned when she realized there were also merfolk here she had never seen before lurking in the shadows of the banquet hall. Creepy-looking ones.
They looked very little like those who lived in her home. Many of them had tentacles like an octopus, which was rare around here. She had only seen a couple of those at a distance.
Unlike the warmer water octopus merfolk, these ones were rather foreboding in appearance. They were red with orange skin and milky blue eyes that seemed to stare straight through you. Most of these strange merfolk had such eyes. Either that or ones that were pitch black from pupil to sclerae.
Some had incredibly sharp, thin teeth and something she didn't know how to describe sticking out of the top of their heads with a small light at the tip. There were also sharklike merfolk in their group but like none she had ever seen before. Their movements were more similar to eel-like merfolk than anything and they had those eerie milky eyes.
These merfolk were generally less colorful than the ones Talori knew and didn't seem to like the light since they were hiding in the shadows and squinting around. Don't tell her these were visitors from the deep!
It wasn't often that their kingdom had visitors from different merfolk settlements to begin with. Their race normally did their own thing…unless marriage treaties were involved for resources.
Fear squirmed in her stomach. They couldn't be here for her, could they?
No. She was being irrational. They couldn't be here for her because she had already been of age for decades and the merking hadn't tried marrying her off. The other princesses had been gone as soon as they turned 150.
If the merking was going to do that to her, he would have already. She needed to calm down. There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for strange merfolk being here today.
Talori forced herself to remain calm. She had to play her part tonight properly and she wouldn't be able to be overly enthusiastic and talk too much like usual if she was freaking out.
She calmed slightly when she spotted Zale and Beck across the room. Her brother wouldn't let anything happen to her no matter what the merking may or may not be planning. He would keep her safe.
If she couldn't trust Zale, she couldn't trust anything. Even if he didn't look the most trustworthy right now because he was spouting ridiculous poetry to a circle of onlookers laughing at his expense. She couldn't help but wonder how long it took him to come up with things like that for his act.
Everyone thought he was as frivolous as they come when nothing could be further from the truth. Frivolous and not talented at anything.
When Zale was a child, he pretended to get every answer wrong when the royal tutors taught him but took in everything he was learning and studied on his own as well in secret. He had been a strategist since he was less than eighty years old.
That was too young to be thinking of survival. Far too young.
Talori wished things were different for him. For both of them. That they could have been raised in peace instead of fearing for their lives.
He was fighting for a better future for both of them and for all of the common merfolk who were suffering because of the merking's ignorance to the problems the ocean was facing. They had to deal with it more than the nobles did.