“Hi, Quince,” Shannen says, as if there’s no deadly tension in the air.

“Shannen.” Quince nods in her direction but doesn’t take his eyes off Brody.

Brody, clearly not as oblivious as Shannen, says, “I better get to class. Winslow will dock my grade if I’m late again, and Coach will kill me if I lose my eligibility.”

Then—I think he might secretly have a death wish—he winks at me before disappearing down the hall.

“Lil—”

I don’t let Quince finish before I launch at him. Throwing my full body weight into it, I slam him up against the lockers. He blinks super-fast, like he’s not sure what just happened.

“What is wrong with you?” I demand. “Couldn’t you see I was finally making headway with—”

“Lily!” Shannen gasps.

“What?” I snap, twisting my head to face her.

She raises her eyebrows and kind of twitches her head down the hall. I see Assistant Principal Lopez talking with Shannen’s physics teacher two doors away.

Holy mackerel, what am I doing? The kind of violence I’m displaying is not only totally out of character, but also grounds for immediate suspension, for sure. I’m still holding Quince against the lockers with my forearms braced on his chest (yes, I know I’m only holding him there because he’s letting me). This roller coaster of emotions or hormones or bond-magic-induced moods is wearing me out. Suddenly overwhelmed by the situation and the secrecy and the emotion flooding through me, I let my head drop forward to rest on Quince’s chest. For some reason—the bond—I feel better just touching him. Like all my anger seeps out of me.

Quince leans his head down next to mine and whispers, “Relax, princess. It’s all part of the game, remember?”

I shake my head.

Is it a game? It’s getting harder to remember the rules.

“You should tell Shannen.”

I jerk back. “Tell Shannen what?”

“Tell me what?” Shannen asks at the same time.

He looks me straight in the eyes as he says, “The truth.”

“I can’t.” Panic sets in. He can’t really mean the truth. The only truth I’ve ever kept hidden from my best human friend. I try to convey with my eyes—and through the bond—how much it hurts me to keep this secret from Shannen—especially when Quince, of all people, knows the truth. I shake my head vehemently. Doesn’t he realize how important the secret is? Of course not. It’s not his secret.

“Then I’ll tell her,” he says.

“No!”

“Tell me what?”

“Lily is—”

“Don’t!”

“—only pretending to go out with me.” He gives me a wry grin. “But I’m not. I’m trying to convince her to choose me over that idiot.”

I sag against him in relief. For a second I had been so sure he was going to blurt out my entire secret in the middle of the hall, where the whole school could hear. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. Not even the time a rogue shark slipped through the Thalassinian border defense.

Now, with my fears calmed, I get a feeling of longing. His words sink in. Was that part of the game too?

“Oh, that?” Shannen waves him off. “I knew that.”

She knew that?

The bell rings, sending Shannen hurrying off to her physics class, leaving me totally stunned in place.

“You know I would never reveal your secret,” he says softly, more like the gentler Quince I saw in Thalassinia. “Never.”

He’s sincere. I can feel it. And he’s a little hurt that I doubted him. Maybe he’s right. I should know better. He might be rude and obnoxious and a major pain in my tail fin, but he’s also honorable. He would never betray my kingdom.

I should feel major relief about that—and I do, really I do. But…there is a teeny tiny (guilt-ridden) part of me that secretly wishes he had done it, told Shannen the truth about me. Because then there wouldn’t be this invisible wall between me and my best human friend, and I could blame someone else if it went bad.

I can’t bring myself to thank him for something I almost wish he hadn’t done. Instead, I focus on what led to this moment—Brody—and fall back on something far more comfortable with Quince: anger.

“Why do you have to ruin every good moment I have with him?” I push away from Quince, putting a few feet between us.

“I don’t like seeing you with him,” he says, sounding irritated that the conversation has returned to Brody. “It makes my blood boil just thinking about—”

“It’s the bond,” I insist.

Maybe Quince was still in shock when I first told him what the magic was all about. I still remember the first time Daddy gave me “the talk” about the bond. He was all awkward and uncomfortable, going on about hormones and commitment and not letting any unscrupulous merboy talk me into kissing him before I was ready. After a while, my eyes crossed, and I’m pretty sure I tuned out the last half of the conversation. So it’s not a major leap to think the details could be a little murky for Quince, considering everything that got heaped onto him at once.

“That’s what’s making you feel jealous about Brody,” I explain. “The bond connects us and amplifies our emotional reactions. It’s designed to make mermates more in love.”

I can’t help laughing at the thought of me and Quince in love. It’s such a ridiculous notion that I can’t even imagine a world in which that would happen.