The Mermaid They Never Knew

Chapter 14: Secret Visits

News that Liren had made a life for herself in the human palace — alive, though mute, her presence confirmed by merchants who traded between both kingdoms — reached the underwater court several weeks after her disappearance.

The news brought little comfort. Keilor found himself torn between emotions he could no longer untangle: relief that his daughter still lived, horror at the price she had paid, and anger that seemed to have no clear object. Was he angry with Liren for her recklessness, or with himself for failing to save her from such desperation?

“She abandoned everything she was born to be,” the king said one day after another report arrived from the surface. His daughters had gathered in his chambers, waiting anxiously for whatever news the traders had carried home.

“Her tail.”

“Her voice.”

“Her family.”

“Everything… for a man who does not even know who she truly is.”

“Liren did not betray us, Father,” the eldest princess answered quietly.

“She chose.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

Keilor found no reply. He simply turned toward the window overlooking the familiar coral gardens, which seemed impossibly distant from the dangerous world his youngest daughter had entered of her own free will.

Each sister bore the news differently. The eldest, who had always understood Liren better than the others, withdrew into troubled silence, often standing for long stretches beside the windows, staring toward a horizon she could never reach. The middle sisters whispered together at night, wondering what it must be like to live among humans without a voice, surrounded by unfamiliar customs and strangers who could never understand where she had come from. The fifth sister, always the most timid, grew newly afraid of darkness, as though Liren’s fate had awakened the childhood fears that every young merfolk carried somewhere deep inside.

But no one in the kingdom suffered more for Liren than the woman f*******n even to call herself her mother. The thought of her daughter living alone among humans — mute, defenseless, surrounded by strangers — gave Velara no peace, and at last she began doing what she had denied herself throughout years of exile: she started making secret journeys toward the human coast.

She discovered a narrow sea channel that reached almost to the palace gardens where Liren now lived. It was deep enough to conceal her beneath the water, yet close enough that, on clear nights, she could see the glow of palace windows, and sometimes even hear distant music drifting across the sea from evening celebrations on the terraces.

Night after night, once the palace above had grown quiet and only the watch lamps still burned, Velara swam through the channel as far as she dared. Every visit carried the risk of discovery, since human guards regularly patrolled the shoreline, yet she returned again and again, just to know. Was her daughter alive? Was she healthy? Was she happy?

One night fortune favored her. Lingering longer than she should have at the mouth of the channel, Velara noticed movement upon one of the brightly lit terraces. A slender young woman in a flowing gown was dancing before an audience of applauding nobles. Velara recognized her instantly, even from that distance — no mother could mistake her own child. She knew the lightness of those movements, and the desperate eagerness to be admired that now lived within every graceful turn.

Velara watched without breathing. Relief flooded her heart at the sight of Liren accepted among humans, yet that relief was pierced by something far sharper. A mother’s eyes noticed what no one else saw: the slight stiffness in her shoulders, the nearly invisible hesitation between steps, the tiny pauses hidden beneath perfect elegance. No audience noticed. But Velara did.

She is suffering.

The certainty struck with all the force of instinct.

She is smiling through pain… only so he will keep looking at her.

A guard making his rounds along the cliffs noticed an unusual ripple at the entrance to the channel. Suspicious, he raised his torch and swept its light across the water. Velara vanished before the flame reached her, slipping silently back into the depths. By the time dawn broke she had returned to her lonely grotto, exhausted far more in spirit than in body.

And the following night — despite the danger, despite the growing risk of discovery — she returned once more to the same hidden channel, because there was only one thing stronger than fear: a mother’s need to remain as close as possible to her child, even if that child would never know she was being watched over.