Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
He learns that Adan is in terrible danger, being held captive by their malicious mother and Kailar just may be the only one who can save him. But first, Kailar must learn the full potential of his true destiny and somehow find his way back to his family and his one true love in order to save his life and the future of the Mer people.
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Prologue
King Tearloch, ruler of the Mer Folk
My thoughts about my queen were tangled in my mind like a jumble of broken jewelry in a box. My love for her remained, though, still bright, still beautiful. Only now it was totally worthless to us both.
I still saw her in my mind the way she was when I first met her when she was only sixteen, her seaweed-colored hair falling across her face and wrapped around her already voluptuous body. Her beautiful mermaid’s tail glistened in the water with iridescent, aquamarine scales.
Her long, emerald hair was now like an enemy flag, waving mockingly in the current, and if we met in battle, she would thrash that lovely mermaid’s tail in fury and never meet my gaze. I had begged her to stay with me, to leave the evil behind, but she had refused to even listen. She was now a Siren and lost to me—she had even managed to corrupt our beautiful daughter Maeve as well.
The ancient Greeks got it all wrong when it came to the legend of the Sirens. In their mythology, the sirens were humanlike beings with alluring, beautiful singing voices. Their song, though irresistibly sweet trapped a sailor’s body and soul in a fatal lethargy, a forerunner to death and corruption. The Siren’s song always took effect at midday, in a windless calm on a placid sea. Deceivingly so, because the end of that song was always death.
Even Homer, the poet, mentioned sirens singing to Odysseus on his long journey home. Odysseus, who tied himself to a post to hear their sweet song, made his men stuff their ears with wax to save all their lives. Roman poets placed the Sirens on some small islands called Sirenum Scopulim. But, as I said, none of that was true.
Sirens were simply Mer Folk, no more and no less, and they were lured to join the ranks of the Sirens by the Sea Hags, who promised them great power. Sea Hags were witches, evil creatures who brought death and destruction to humans who dared venture into the sea on ships. It was the Hags who made the storms—the hurricanes that destroyed the ships and even the towns and villages that dared build too close to the oceans of the world.
To increase their numbers and their power, they recruited Mermaids, like my Beathag, with promises of power and magic. These mermaids, turned Siren, appeared to sailors as the beautiful women they once had been, enticing sailors to jump overboard and make love to them. If they succumbed to their charms and joined them in the ocean, they would wrap their arms around them and drag them to their watery graves, deep beneath the waves. They could also lure seafarers to crash their ships against the rocks. And it wasn’t only in the Greek isles, but anywhere at all in the seven seas.
This was our heartache and our curse, and there was no going back once our women chose to embrace the evil. When my sweet wife Beathag succumbed, I would have given my own life to save her, but it was no use. She soon infected our eldest, our daughter, Maeve, and then went after our sons. Not to recruit them, but to kill them.
All I had left to me were my young sons, Adan and his twin Kailar. Once in a fit of rage, not long before she left me, Beathag had gone for the boys, and I’d had to hold her off as she clutched and clawed at me to get to them. She had vowed to one day to capture and kill them. She told me then why she wanted them so badly.
“I’ll feast on their flesh and then grind their bones,” she raved. “After I eat then, I’ll absorb their essence into myself and gain their power. I won’t rest until I have them!”
I should have killed her then—wrapped my fingers around her lovely, cruel throat to crush her bones and put her out of her misery. It would have given us both some measure of peace, perhaps, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. God help me, I still loved her.
Over time, Beathag’s power had increased to the point that she was now a powerful Sea Hag, her mind completely taken over by wickedness.
I knew what I had to do. I took my sons to the Atlanteans in their magic-walled city and begged their king to give them sanctuary and keep them safe. King Cleotus was a kind man, and he had agreed to help us. I left the last of my family with him that day and went back home to my people.
I knew they’d be safe in the impregnable fortress of Atlantis, even though the separation broke my heart. Once human, the Atlanteans were an ancient race of people, who had used their considerable magical abilities to save themselves and their beautiful city when a huge tsunami swept their island into the sea.