.

king?”

      Candida polished her already polished fingernails.

      “I don’t know him, so I can’t guarantee it,” Desdemona cut her off.”

      “You’re so boring.”

      “And you, having a stepdaughter of the same age, wanted to get a girlfriend?”

      “Well, at least an interesting companion. You’re a mess. You’re good enough to sacrifice to the sea god.”

      “Are you sure they sacrifice priestesses?”

      “Only a few, I think.”

      Desdemona’s heart sank.

      “Have they done something wrong?”

      “Probably,” Candida shrugged her lily-like shoulders. “I do not know exactly, I am not particularly religious.”

      Surprising! Only an immoral person could cling to a wealthy old man. Faith and dignity aren’t always the same thing. Isn’t it immoral to sacrifice human beings to the sea? That’s what believers do, isn’t it?

      There was a knock at the door. The brass ring was jingling.

      “Come down and see who’s there,” the stepmother commanded her, as if she were a servant. “But first look out of the window, and don’t unlock the door at once, or you’ll let in a gang of robbers.”

      “Robbers don’t usually knock on doors. We don’t have anything to steal, except outfits.”

      Candida just hummed something. The sight of sea creatures crawling through windows and doors didn’t bother her. Desdemona, on the other hand, dreaded the reappearance of the divas.

      But this time it was someone in menial livery. He stood at the door. A triangle with armorial patches made him look like a royal ambassador. Well, well! He had come from the palace, and his fist had dented the door as if a sea monster had knocked on it.

      As it turned out, the messenger brought news from the king’s castle. His hand was indeed ugly and overpowered. Blunt black claws pierced the glove. Desdemona took the letter with distaste. There was a dirty mark on the parchment. But the seal at the bottom was definitely royal. It was an invitation to an event that looked suspiciously like a viewing! She was taken aback.

      “Put on your evening dress!” commanded the messenger in an unpleasant, husky voice.

      “Is it right now?” Candida, who had come downstairs, yawned with the urge to sleep.

      The creature grinned at the sight of her. The stepmother herself also had a frightened look. She wasn’t used to lackeys that looked more like the underwater race.

      “Such ambassadors would be delivering letters now? It’s immoral. I will complain.”

      “To whom do you complain? They say the King is like them.”

      “It is slander!”

      “It is as you wish!” Desdemona shrugged her shoulders.

      She herself had always felt like a servant. They told her to pack, so she had to choose the best dress and hurry to the palace.

      The royal council

      The king’s tentacles braided the table. They were his tentacles, not the monster that had supposedly been there when the young king had crushed the foreign armada. Theon looked at the new king with distaste. The handsome face resembled a mask that had been placed over the slimy body of a morgen. Moran could tame with a single glance, not to mention long, strong tentacles that had knocked the weapons from all the conspirators who were unhappy that the king had crawled in from the sea. All those who had something against him instantly shut up and pretended not to be familiar with their own bodyguards, who were just preparing to use swords and sabers. The corpses of several assassins sent to kill the king were found disheveled under a balcony on the coast.

      Theon was merely the keeper of the royal seal, not a minister. He had no claim to coup or power, but a ruler with an angel’s head, a monster’s body, and superhuman cruelty immediately became deeply distasteful to him.

      It was as if the sea itself had been let into the council chamber. The round table, covered with the arms of Aquilania, was entangled in a net of tentacles that crawled out from beneath the floor of the royal robe. Moran’s face would have resembled a frescoed angel, were it not for the penetrating gaze of blue eyes beneath heavy eyelids. It looked as if the head of a living statue had been sewn onto the body of a monster, hastily covered with a purple silk robe.

      Theon didn’t want to give him the royal seal, but the king’s hand was incredibly strong, even stronger than all his tentacles.

      “This is now mine!” He unceremoniously took the seal away.

      It was just a toy to him, like a rod and scepter. They must have different symbols of power in the sea.

      Theon wouldn’t be surprised if his honorable position as seal keeper was abolished right now, but Moran was in no hurry to introduce the brutal mores of the Undersea Kingdom to the court.

      Strangely, he breathed air just like everyone else and was in no hurry to take a dip in the water. There were no water tanks in the council chamber, by the way. So water creatures are capable of living on land like humans. Curious, how long could they go without water? Theon glanced at the clock above the entrance to the hall. It had stopped, and the hands were covered in tarnish. The same thing had happened to the chimes on the castle’s main tower. Had time stopped? Or did creatures crawl inside the clock, braiding the gears with algae? Moran brought with him an unholy entourage. Creatures had appeared in the palace, weaving webs of algae, turning dry halls into pools of slime, dousing passersby with a torrent of water just by opening their mouths. Theon himself had stumbled upon one such creature, its needle-like back slithered back like a hedgehog, right in his bedroom. How many of those things had crawled out of the sea after Moran? So far, it was impossible to count.

      The new ruler was viewed with fear and suspicion. On the one hand he could single-handedly sink a whole armada of enemies. On the other hand he brought fear. Many mutilated corpses began to be found in the palace.

      Lancier, the fiancé of the maid of honor, who had recently been found dead in the throne room, looked at the king with hatred. He could not accept the rumors of Elisandre’s murder by a man from the sea. The corpse had rotted away with tarnish, and something like coral had sprouted in it. In fact, the corpse itself disappeared very quickly.

      Nevertheless, Lancier raised a scandal with the king himself and found himself pinned to the floor by a tangle of black tentacles, which drew wet from pus wounds on his face and chest. The defeated and disfigured young man had to shut up, but he held a grudge.

      On the solemn occasion of the first gathering of counselors, Moran was supposed to make a speech, but given the situation, he refrained. Those who were just about to overthrow him would hardly be interested in his speeches. They were much more impressed by his strength.

      “Words are for the weak, I prefer action,” his cold gaze communicated as his omnipresent octopus tentacles strangled the conspirators. He did not, however, choke them to the end. The terrified advisors surrendered and recognized him as ruler before they died of suffocation. Politics is the main thing. Sometimes you have to be humble, even if you’re unhappy about something. Everyone was dissatisfied with the monster king, except a few unpromising lazy people from noble families, who saw their positions at court as a burden, so they were happy with any ruler who would not bother them much. If the king alone can sink the enemy fleet, then he is a hero to them, because they themselves will not have to call the defense. And it did not matter that the enemy would not have attacked at all, if they had not learned that the king of Aquilania was a native of the abyss.

      The people under the windows shouted with joy, because they were allowed to collect the expensive things left from the broken armada, which the waves had miraculously