Chapter 291: Episode 289: Caspian’s Decision

Deep in the sea, one person was restless.

Caspian hovered in the center of the vast, bioluminescent chamber. He did not sit on his throne. He couldn’t stomach the thought of ruling right now. His massive, magnificent silver tail, swept back and forth in a slow, agitated rhythm, catching the soft blue light of the glowing anemones.

His white, silvery hair drifted around his broad shoulders like a ghost’s shroud in the current, and his striking silver-blue eyes were completely hollowed out by a devastating, all-consuming grief.

At the far end of the throne room, the atmosphere was a jarring contrast to the King’s misery.

Nerissa, floated near Nimue and the little child. Her dark, imposing presence was softened entirely as she reached out a slender, webbed finger to play with the tiny, chubby hands of the infant floating before her.

Zale let out a bright, bubbling cascade of giggles that echoed sweetly through the water. The little boy was currently being held securely in the arms of Nimue, Caspian’s younger sister.

Nimue’s tail kept her steadily anchored in the water as she bounced her nephew. But when she looked past the giggling infant to where her brother was hovering in his miserable, brooding silence, her delicate features hardened into a mask of bitter resentment.

“I cannot stay here in the dark anymore,” Caspian stated, his voice cutting through the quiet of the throne room. It wasn’t a request; it was a fractured, desperate declaration. “I am going to the surface. I have to find a way to make it up to her.”

Nimue stopped bouncing Zale. She whipped her head around, her eyes flashing with indignant fury.

“Are you completely out of your mind?” Nimue demanded, her telepathic voice sharp and biting. “She is gone, Caspian! The Surface-dweller made her choice. She chose the sun, and she chose those… those feral land beasts over you. She left you here, and she left Zale here. Why are you acting like she did nothing wrong? Why are you still groveling for a female who abandoned her own child?”

The water pressure in the throne room violently spiked.

Caspian didn’t just speak; he roared. The sheer, terrifying force of his Alpha command sent a shockwave through the water, rattling the pearl fixtures on the walls and making the glowing anemones violently retract into their coral shells.

“Because she did nothing wrong!” Caspian bellowed, the raw, bleeding agony in his voice silencing his sister instantly.

He surged forward, closing the distance between them in a flash of silver scales, stopping just short of Nimue and his son. His broad chest heaved, his silver-blue eyes blazing with a self-loathing so profound it was almost palpable.

“Do not ever speak of her as if she is the villain of this story, Nimue,” Caspian snarled, though the anger was directed entirely inward. “She didn’t abandon us. She fled from a monster. And I was that monster.”

Nimue flinched, her grip tightening protectively around Zale, who had gone perfectly still, his wide eyes looking up at his father’s distressed face.

Caspian’s voice broke, the furious roar dropping into a ragged, desperate confession. The weight of his sins was crushing him from the inside out.

“I was the one who kept her locked in that cave,” Caspian choked out, his hands curling into trembling fists at his sides. “She was drowning, I would have saved her and brought her back to the surface instead. I took her and locked her in the cave, terrified and alone, I didn’t tell her the truth. I kept her in the dark. And when her Surface mates risked their lives, driving a metal sphere into the crushing depths to save the woman they loved… I commanded a Stingray to drag them into the boiling thermal vents. I tried to boil them alive. I almost killed the fathers of her other children.”

Nimue stared at him, her lips parting in sheer shock. She had known her brother was possessive, but she hadn’t known the terrifying, murderous lengths his abyssal instincts had driven him to.

“I did it because I wanted to have her all to myself,” Caspian confessed, his silver hair falling forward to hide the agonizing shame burning his face. “I thought if I destroyed her past, I could be her entire future. I was completely consumed by my own selfish desires.”

He reached out, his large, webbed hand gently, reverently brushing the soft, chubby cheek of his son. Zale let out a soft coo, leaning into his father’s touch.

“But I have been mistaken,” Caspian whispered, a single, hot tear escaping his silver-blue eyes to mix instantly with the freezing ocean. “I thought she couldn’t possibly love me if she remembered them. But even when she had gone to them… no matter how many mates she had on the Surface, she still loved me. Even when she looked at me with pure, unfiltered hatred and disgust for what I had done… I could still feel the love she had for me pulsing in my chest. It was bruised, and it was angry, but it was there.”

Caspian looked up, meeting his sister’s stunned gaze with absolute, heartbreaking clarity.

“And that is enough for me,” Caspian vowed, his voice steadying with an unbreakable resolve. “That is enough for me to know that my love is being reciprocated. I don’t need to hoard her to be loved by her. But we are two entirely different species, Nimue. While I was made for the crushing dark of the sea, she was made for the light of the land. I cannot force her to live in my world.”

“If you have accepted that you are of two different worlds,” Nerissa’s smooth, ancient voice finally interrupted. “Then there is nothing more to be done. I cannot change the biology of the Beastworld, Caspian. So why are you here in my throne room, demanding the impossible?”

Caspian turned his silver-blue eyes to his mother. He straightened his spine, the sheer, imposing majesty of the Merman King returning to his posture.

“Because I am not asking you to change her biology, Mother,” Caspian stated with absolute, unyielding authority. “I am going to the Surface to be with her. And I am going to take Zale with me.”

“Brother!” Nimue gasped, her eyes widening in absolute, horrified disbelief.

“To the Surface?” Nerissa repeated, her voice dropping to a dangerous, calculating whisper. The ancient matriarch’s eyes narrowed, analyzing the absolute determination radiating from her son. “The Surface air burns your lungs. The sun blinds your eyes. You are a creature of the abyss, Caspian. To walk on the land, to survive in their world and bring an abyssal infant into the dry air… the magic required for such a permanent transmutation is ancient and terrible.”

Nerissa tilted her head, her gaze piercing right through him. “Are you truly prepared to do this? No matter how much it would cost you?”

“I don’t care what it costs,” Caspian replied instantly, without a single microsecond of hesitation. “Take whatever you need. I will pay any price to stand by her side and give our son his mother back.”

Nimue couldn’t take it anymore. She practically shoved Zale into Nerissa’s waiting arms. The matriarch caught the infant smoothly, immediately cooing at the little boy to distract him from the rising tension.

Nimue swam frantically up to Caspian, grabbing his broad, muscular shoulders and shaking him slightly.

“You cannot do this, Caspian!” Nimue pleaded, her voice cracking with desperation and fear. “It is a spectacularly bad idea! You belong to the sea! The Spires answer to your call. You are the King of the Spires! The one true King! You cannot just abandon your throne for a woman!”

Caspian looked down at his sister. He reached up, gently covering her frantic hands with his own, peeling them off his shoulders. He didn’t look conflicted. He didn’t look torn between duty and love. He had already made his choice the second Roxy had turned her back on him on that jagged black rock.

The Spires were nothing to him if she wasn’t sitting on the throne beside him.

A slow, profoundly serious expression settled over Caspian’s striking features. He looked at his sister, then past her to his mother, completely prepared to shatter the entire political hierarchy of the ocean.

“What if,” Caspian dropped the words into the freezing water like heavy rock, “we make Keenan the king?”

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