Free Tales of Arilland by Alethea Kontis Page A

stared at me like you wanted to say something, and then you ran. You looked so…sad.”
    He turned me around to face him. “The day you saved me was the happiest day of my life. And this day should be the happiest day of yours. Don’t be sad.”
    I smiled and shook my head.
    “Good.” He kissed me then, long and slow and deep. He hugged me tightly before pulling away. “Come back to bed?”
    “Yeth,” I whispered, the words still foreign to my tongue. He kissed me once more and left me. I looked out over the moonlit water once more and said my goodbyes before following him, my prince, my soulmate, my love.
    Love.
    It was the reason I lived.

Well-Behaved Mermaids Rarely Make Fairy Tales
    E very mermaid’s mother warned against the dangers of rescuing humans. Obviously had Nerissa’s mother ever attempted such a thing, she would have mentioned the smell. Men stank of sun, fire, earth and something that made Nerissa’s scales crawl. They were heavy, too, not made for swimming, for all that they splashed around madly in the surf like they were. And all that strange raspy breathing!
    Thankfully, seawater seemed to stop their bleeding quickly.
    Nerissa stared at the fiery wreckage of his ship still aflame on the horizon. The man in her arms was the spitting image of the one from her dreams…minus the webbing between his fingers and the fins…and the inner eyelid. Waking, he stared up at her with eyes as blue as the sky.
    “I love you,” he said with foul breath. He clutched at her black tresses, limp now in the dry air.
    Nerissa could not return to the waves fast enough. From now on, she would listen to her mother. She would never speak of this event. And should she ever again be tempted back to these jagged rocks….well…there were always more humans on the sea.

Blood From Stone
    H e had no idea that I loved him. He barely acknowledged that I existed, a maid twice over, little more than a shadow in empty hallways. Trapped in unhappy marriage and prisoner in his own castle, he did not conceive that anyone loving him was even possible. The baron was a man of war, not of love.
    He was also an ass, but like Maman said, so many men are.
    He’d borne arms with Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans, had witnessed firsthand the divine power she had wielded. Sorceress , they’d called her. Maman had shared a similar fate, for far less a magical offense.
    The baron was so much more deserving of that power. If there existed a man with more confidence, more passion about things beyond the realms of heaven and earth, I never knew of him. Prelati was a pompous, hand waving fool in comparison.
    After testing the limits of his seemingly boundless wealth and ultimately finding it, the baron surrounded himself with books and candles and crucifixes in his barren estate, refusing to believe that divine voices could only be heard by the ears of unspoiled females. Yes, it was Prelati who suggested that he was imploring the wrong deity, but it was I who sent him the first child.
    “Perhaps those among the fallen might better relate to the sons of Adam.”
    Prelati’s silver-tongued accent echoed through the chimney from which I swept the ashes. The charlatan must have been standing directly in front of the fireplace in the baron’s study for his words to have landed so crisply in my unspoiled ears.
    I heard the baron’s response, rumbled deep from his strong chest, but I did not catch the words. His tone asked a question.
    “I will consult my books,” replied Prelati, just as he always did. Hidden as I was, I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. Prelati made a far better librarian than an alchemist, or a sorcerer, or a demon-speaker, or whatever color the robes he was wearing today suggested.
    Too curious to be privy to half the conversation, I tripped over the ash pail and tore through the cloud of dust out the door and down the hall, hoping to better eavesdrop at the seam between the sitting room doors.
    The doors were open.
    “I don’t