The Mermaid My Husband Brought Home Became My Blade

My husband brought home a mermaid. Said I could keep her as a pet.

Her tail shimmered with every color, but the way she looked at me was the way you'd look at a lump of dead meat.

I smiled. She's beautiful. What's your name?

She tilted her chin up. Maura Winfield.

Her voice was thick and sticky, a knife dipped in honey.

After that she was always draped over my husband, flicking that tail, sending droplets across my face.

"Stop making a fuss," he'd say. "She's just a fish."

But his eyes went soft enough to melt.

Until the night I came home early to a living room glimmering with water.

Half of her lay across his lap, silver hair wound around his wrist, and where they tangled her tail tapped gently against his shins.

His eyes were shut, his fingers stroking her hair, rapt as a man at prayer.

I gripped the strap of my bag, and suddenly I laughed.

"You like her?"

His eyes flew open and he shoved her away in a panic.

The water snaked all the way to my feet. I crouched, pinched a scale at her cheek, and gave it a light tug.

"Then let's keep her together."

He froze, and something wild and joyful flickered in his eyes.

...

Burton Delgado's expression locked in place, shock and confusion churning across it, until it settled into the ecstasy of a man who'd gotten back something he thought he'd lost.

"Chris, you"

My tug had hurt her. Maura let out a sharp gasp and shrank her wet body back behind Burton, her eyes gouging into me, full of venom.

I let go and rubbed the cold scale between my fingertips.

Thin, brittle, like a cheap chip of plastic.

"What? You don't want to?"

I stood and looked down at the two of them.

Water dripped from Maura's tail and pooled on the floor, reflecting my blank face.

Burton scooped her up, quick and clumsy, as if shielding some priceless treasure.

"No, of course not. Chris, I'm justI'm just so happy."

The words came out tangled as he tried to explain.

"I was afraid you'd be angry, I"

"Why would I be angry?"

I cut him off and walked to the bar to pour myself a glass of water.

"She's special, isn't she?"

I turned, leaned against the bar, and drank the whole glass down in one go.

The cold slid down my throat and did nothing to put out the burning in my chest.

Burton held Maura, at a loss for where to set her down.

This three-bedroom apartment had nowhere to hold a living, breathing mermaid.

She squirmed uneasily in his arms, tail slapping against him, leaving wet marks.

"Chris, she needs water."

There was a faint plea buried in his voice.

I nodded and took out my phone.

"Hello, is this Seaborne Design?"

"I want a custom tank. It's going in the living room of a villa."

The person on the other end hesitated, clearly not expecting business at this hour.

Burton went still too.

We lived in a penthouse downtown. There was no villa.

I ignored his surprise and kept talking into the phone.

"I need it large. Big enough for a grown adult to move around freely."

"Best water circulation system you have. It has to simulate a deep-sea environment."

"I want the proposal before tomorrow morning."

I hung up and looked at Burton.

"That villa of yours out in Shallow Cove, hasn't it been sitting empty all this time?"

"Perfect. She can live there."

That villa was something Burton had bought before we married. For our future children, he'd said.

He'd said it had the best international school, the most beautiful ocean views.

Now it was going to be a palace for a fish.

His throat worked, and his eyes turned complicated.

"Chris, there's no need to go to all this trouble"

"It's no trouble."

I answered lightly.

"If you're keeping a pet, you have to give it the best, don't you?"

My gaze dropped to Maura.

She seemed to understand too. The venom in her eyes now carried a touch of smugness, of challenge.

She lifted her chin at me, tail hooking around Burton's waist, the pose intimate and shameless.

His body stiffened, but he didn't push her away.

Whatever ridiculous little sting I still felt was covered over in an instant by a hard, cold layer of ice.

Five years of marriage, and I'd honestly believed our marriage was unbreakable.

Burton was a well-known architect, handsome and refined, gentle and attentive with me.

I was a jewelry designer with a bit of a name, from a comfortable family, and I'd thought myself his match.

To everyone else, we were a golden couple.

Until three months ago, when he went on a business trip to a coastal city, and everything changed after he came back.

He started staring at his phone in a daze, always carrying that faint trace of a salty, briny smell.

I thought it was just work stress.

Now I could see how naive I'd been.

"Where does she sleep tonight?"

I asked, breaking the strange quiet.

Burton's face flushed red.

"The bathtub... would the bathtub be okay?"

I nodded.

"That's fine."

Then I looked at him, one word at a time.

"You go scrub the tub clean."

"Use disinfectant. Three times."

"I don't want anything unclean left in my tub."

His face went white, then green, and his arms tightened around Maura.

She let out an aggrieved whimper against him.

"Burt, I feel awful..."

Burton looked at her, aching for her, then looked at me, torn.

I met his gaze without any expression at all.

In the end, he carried Maura toward the bathroom.

I heard the rush of water inside, and his voice, lowered, soothing her.

"Maura, hold on a little longer. We'll have a big house tomorrow."

I stood where I was, feeling like a joke.

The next day, I didn't go to the office. I supervised the work myself.

Seaborne Design moved fast. Before dawn they had the design plans and the construction crew out at the Shallow Cove villa.

The giant tank went into the dead center of the living room, taking up nearly a third of the space.

The glass was custom-made. Supposedly it could withstand a shark's impact.

The scenery inside was an exact replica of some famous stretch of coral sea, stunning to look at.

By the time Burton got there, the tank was already filling with water.

He stood staring at all of it, unable to hide the shock in his eyes, and something like delight.

"Chris, this"

"Do you like it?"

I asked.

He nodded hard and came toward me to pull me into a hug.

"Thank you, Chris. You're so good to me."

I turned aside and slipped away.

"I did it for your pet."

His outstretched hand froze awkwardly in midair, and the smile on his face froze with it.

I didn't look at him again. I turned to the construction foreman.

"Set the water temperature to eighteen degrees."

"Keep the salinity strictly to the numbers I gave you."

"And the filtration system runs twenty-four hours a day. I don't want a single impurity in that water."

The foreman nodded again and again.

Burton trailed behind me, starting to speak and stopping.

"Chris, isn't eighteen degrees too low? Maura, she"

"Is she a tropical fish?"

I asked back.

"No."

"Then there's no problem."

I dropped that and went straight up to the second floor.

This had once been the nursery I'd planned. I'd even chosen the wallpaper, a soft cream color.

Now, through the huge floor-to-ceiling window, you could see the giant blue cage downstairs, clear as anything.

Soon Burton came up carrying Maura.

He lowered her into the water with great care, like completing some sacred rite.

The moment Maura hit the water, her tail unfurled and cut a brilliant arc through it.

She swam freely in the enormous tank, her long silver hair drifting loose, too beautiful to seem real.

Burton stood in front of the tank, lost in her.

I stood on the second floor and watched too, quietly.

I watched the obsession in his eyes, watched Maura swim up to him now and then, nuzzling close against him through the glass.

She was like a victor, patrolling her own territory.

And I was the loser who'd been driven out.

My phone buzzed. A message from my best friend, Lola Fox.

"Chris, have you lost your mind? Keeping the other woman at home as a pet?"

"What kind of spell has Burton put on you!"

I sent back one line.

"Don't worry. The game's only just started."

I put the phone down and went downstairs.

"Burton."

He turned as if waking from a dream.

"Chris?"

"Starting today, we're moving in here."

I announced.

He froze.

"Moving in?"

"Yes."

I walked up to the tank and met Maura's eyes through the water.

"A pet this expensive, of course I have to watch it every minute to feel at ease."

Maura's eyes went wary in an instant.

Burton's expression was complicated too. There was delight in it, and unease.

"But this place is so far from both our offices."

"Then change jobs."

I said it lightly.

"Or you can spend four hours a day on the road."

I turned to look at him.

"Your choice."

Burton went silent.

He knew I wasn't joking.

My studio could move, but his architecture firm was rooted in the heart of the city.

Four hours of commuting a day would drain every bit of his energy.

This was the first choice I was giving him.

Either give up a convenient life.

Or give up seeing his darling every day.

In the end, he caved.

"Fine. We'll move in."

He looked at Maura in the tank, his eyes full of longing and reluctance to leave.

"Maura, I'll come home early every day."

Maura watched him through the glass, wounded and resentful.

I smiled.

Burton, this is only the beginning.

What you give up for her is only going to grow.

The first week in the villa was calm.

Burton left early and came home late, worn to the bone.

The moment he walked in, the first thing he did was rush to the tank and talk to Maura for the rest of the day.

And I played the part of a dutiful lady of the house.

Every day I prepared Maura's food myself.

The finest ingredients, the most careful cooking.

Steamed, poached, no seasoning at all.

At first Maura enjoyed it. Then she started to complain.

"I'm not eating this, it's too bland!"

She flung a plate of steamed shrimp up out of the water, and it landed by Burton's feet.

Burton hurried to pick it up, coaxing her gently.

"Maura, be good, Chris made this just for you. It's very nutritious."

"I don't want nutritious, I want barbecue, I want a big hot dinner!"

She threw a fit in the water, slapping the surface with her tail, water flying everywhere.

Burton looked at me, at a loss.

"Chris, maybe we could"

"She's a fish."

I cut him off coldly.

"If she eats that, she'll die."

The color drained from Burton's face.

Maura went quiet too, as if the word "die" had frightened her.

I looked at her and added, unhurried,

"Of course, if you really want to try, I won't stop you."

"After all, she's only a pet. If she dies, we just get another one."

Maura's eyes went red in an instant, tears spilling down like a snapped string of pearls.

"Burt, she's bullying me! She's cursing me to die!"

Burton immediately pulled me aside and dropped his voice.

"Chris, how could you say that? Maura is very sensitive."

"Sensitive?"

I felt like I'd heard the biggest joke in the world.

"Burton, get this straight. Right now I'm the one putting up with the two of you."

"You bring home some unidentified creature, move it into my house, spend my money, and now you turn around and blame me?"

My voice wasn't loud, but every word was an ice pick driven into Burton's heart.

He opened his mouth and couldn't get out a single word.

That was right. When we bought this villa, I paid half of it too.

The tank and every piece of equipment in it came out of my savings.

What Maura ate, where she lived, everything she used every day, which of it wasn't handled by me?

And Burton, what had he contributed besides a cheating heart?

"I'm tired."

I left the words there and turned to go upstairs.

Behind me came Burton's clumsy apologies and Maura crying harder than ever.

I didn't look back.

This war needed an ally.

The next day, I arranged to meet someone.

Christopher Vance, the nation's top marine biologist, and a friend of a college senior of mine.

I sent him Maura's photos and some basic data.

He called back quickly, excitement and confusion he couldn't hide in his voice.

"Miss Pruitt, where did you get this species?"

"A friend gave it to me."

I answered lightly.

"Dr. Vance, I'd like you to come by and give my 'pet' a full physical."

Christopher agreed at once.

"No problem, I'll set it up right away."

I hung up and looked at Maura, sulking in the tank because she hadn't gotten what she wanted last night, and a cold smile curved at the corner of my mouth.

Maura, your good days are over.

Christopher arrived fast, with his professional team and a mountain of equipment I couldn't begin to name.

He wore a white coat and gold-rimmed glasses, refined and handsome, with a steady, composed air.

When he saw the enormous tank in the living room, something dazzled behind his eyes for an instant, then gave way to professional caution.

"Mrs. Delgado."

He held out his hand.

I took it, and felt the dry warmth of his palm.

"Dr. Vance, thank you for coming."

Burton had deliberately taken the day off, hovering at the side with a tense face.

"Doctor, my... my pet, she's had no appetite lately, and she seems low. Please, take a look at her."

His urgency was that of a father worried about his child.

Christopher's gaze moved once between him and me, weighted with meaning.

"Don't worry, Mr. Delgado. First we need to take some water samples and a sample of her... secretions."

Maura was plainly repelled by strangers coming near.

When Christopher's assistant approached with the sampling tools, she thrashed violently in the water, her tail throwing up a huge spray.

"Don't touch me! Get away from me!"

She shrieked, her voice piercing.

Burton rushed over at once to soothe her.

"Maura, don't be afraid. They're doctors. They're here to help you."

Through the glass, he kissed the wall of the tank again and again, trying to calm her.

That lovesick display made even the junior assistant on Christopher's team curl a lip in disgust.

I stood to one side, watching, cold-eyed.

"Burton, move."

My voice wasn't loud, but it carried an authority that left no room to argue.

He turned to look at me, pleading in his eyes.

"Chris, she's scared."

"Then let her stay sick."

My face didn't move.

"Or would you rather draw her blood yourself?"

Burton had no answer for that.

Maura watched us from the water, fear and hatred tangled in her eyes.

In the end, under Burton's "loving" persuasion, she reluctantly submitted to the examination.

Christopher's team was professional. Sampling, testing, analyzing the data, all of it methodical.

An hour later, the preliminary results came back.

Christopher held the report, his brow drawn tight.

He drew me aside on my own.

"Mrs. Delgado, it doesn't look good."

"All her physiological indicators are declining. Especially the skin beneath the scales. There are faint signs of ulceration."

Something stirred in me.

"The cause?"

Christopher pushed his glasses up and lowered his voice.

"My preliminary judgment is a water quality problem."

"Water quality?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"I use the highest-grade equipment and materials there are."

"The equipment isn't the issue."

Christopher said.

"The problem is a trace element in the water."

He looked at me, his gaze sharp.

"This element is harmless to ordinary marine life, but to a... special species like her, it's a slow poison."

"It gradually erodes her immune system. It makes her rot from the inside out."

I listened quietly and said nothing.

"Mrs. Delgado."

Christopher's voice dropped lower still.

"A trace element like this doesn't occur naturally in seawater."

"It has to be added by hand."

The air went still in an instant.

I could feel his probing gaze land on my face.

I lifted my head, met his eyes, and pulled my mouth into a sorrowful curve.

"Is that so?"

"Then that's... truly unfortunate."

My eyes slowly reddened, and a tremor crept into my voice.

"Dr. Vance, I'm begging you, you have to save her."

"She's the most precious thing to my husband."

This near-tears display clearly caught Christopher off guard.

He froze for a moment, and the sharpness in his eyes softened.

"Mrs. Delgado, don't worry. We'll do everything we can."

He paused, then added.

"We'll adjust the balance of elements in the water and stabilize her condition first."

"But as for a true cure, I'm afraid..."

He didn't finish, but I understood him.

A true cure meant finding the person who'd done the "poisoning."

And he'd clearly already made me his first suspect.

Good.

That was exactly what I wanted him to think.

A pitiful woman betrayed by her husband, whose love had turned to hate, striking a deadly blow at the other woman.

This script was riveting enough.

I turned my back and wiped at tears that weren't there with the back of my hand.

"Dr. Vance, I'm counting on you."

"Whatever it costs, cure her."

Behind me, Christopher was silent for a moment, and in the end said only one thing.

"We'll do everything we can."

I turned around, gave him a grateful smile, and walked over to Burton.

He was waiting anxiously right where I'd left him.

"Well? What did the doctor say?"

I repeated Christopher's words back to him, embellishing as I went.

Leaving out, of course, the part about it being "added by hand."

I told him only that Maura was gravely ill, that because she couldn't adapt to the environment here, she could die at any moment.

The color drained from Burton's face in an instant.

He rushed at Christopher and grabbed his arm.

"Doctor! You must have a way, don't you? I'm begging you, save her!"

He was out of control, like a cornered beast.

Christopher pulled his arm back without a flicker of reaction, his tone distant.

"We'll do our best. But you need to understand, Mr. Delgado, any creature removed from its native environment suffers irreversible damage."

"The best thing to do is send her back."

Send her back.

Those three words struck Burton like a thunderclap over his head.

He staggered back a step, muttering to himself.

"No... she can't go back..."

"I only just managed to... I can't send her away..."

I watched him coldly.

Burton, your selfish love is pushing her toward the abyss with your own hands.

And I'm only standing beside you, feeding the fire, gently.