Part of Your World (Twisted Tales, #5)

by Liz Braswell

The humans had so many jars. And amphorae. And vases. And vessels. And kegs. And tankards. So many…things…to put other…things in.

Eric and Ariel. Whether apart or together, they were determined to screw up her life.

“So I was looking for the beautiful mermaid who sang me awake,” Eric mused, thinking back on the time. “And all the while she was right there before me.” “YES.” Ariel said it a little louder, a little more fiercely than she had meant. Her eyes blazed. Eric looked at her, surprised. “You had legs,” he pointed out.

“I had the same face and hair, Eric,” she said, using his name for the first time. “But you couldn’t sing. You couldn’t even talk. I remembered that better than how you looked. It stayed with me. I was coming out of unconsciousness, Ariel. Please have a little pity. I had swallowed copious amounts of seawater—I was coughing it up for the rest of the day, and lay in bed with a fever for three nights. I narrowly avoided pneumonia and there’s still a little bit of a twinge in my lungs on certain days if I cough too hard.” “Oh,” Ariel said, taken aback. She hadn’t thought it was like that at all. From her perspective she had saved him, fought with her dad, and returned triumphantly as a human to woo him. She hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what had happened to him in the meantime.