Waterfell

THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE QUEEN

Nerissa Marin hides among teens in her human form, waiting for the day she can claim her birthright—the undersea kingdom stolen from her the day her father was murdered. Blending in is her best weapon—until her father’s betrayer confronts Nerissa and challenges her to a battle to the death on Nerissa’s upcoming birthday—the day she comes of age.

Amid danger and the heartbreak of her missing mother, falling for a human boy is the last thing Nerissa should do. But Lo Seavon breaches her defenses and somehow becomes the only person she can count on to help her desperate search for her mother, a prisoner of Nerissa’s mortal enemy. Is Lo the linchpin that might win Nerissa back her crown? Or will this mortal boy become the weakness that destroys her?

The laws of human attraction are new to me.

I’m breathless.

Just before I walk into the classroom, I glance over my shoulder. Lo’s eyes are deep and piercing. I feel the weight of them hovering, watching. Holding me motionless as time, too, stands still. I force myself to peel my gaze away from his compelling stare, making my feet obey weak commands to enter the classroom…one in front of the other, like a drone. Something hot pulses across the back of my neck, racing across my body, and I can’t even think.

It’s not Ehmora who will be the death of me.

It’s this boy.

Waterfell

Amalie Howard

For Cam, who never stops believing.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Acknowledgments

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Shivers race through my veins like gilded fireworks. The covers are twisted, matted like the hair on my head, and the room is filled with an eerie green glow. For a split second, it feels like I’m still asleep, half out of a leftover nightmare but not quite awake. My fingers are bent and curled like gnarled branches, and the sweat feels clammy against my skin.

The green light flickers, and I blink.

Get up.

Complying with the fierce voice in my head, I shrug off the blankets with a rough kick, and for a minute everything glows in a haze of gold, green and pink, as if the northern lights have just taken up residence in my room. I am no longer sleeping but wide-awake—I can feel myself breathing, hear the night’s sounds outside my window. But the lights are still there, beaming off the walls and every piece of furniture, as if I’m captured in some kind of glittery prism.

Panicked, I throw an arm toward my bedside lamp and freeze.

My hand is glowing.

I look down. My entire body is glowing, like the iridescent scales of some fantastic creature shimmering down my limbs in bands of colored light. All my cells tingle, hearing the call, responding to it just as my people had known I would. Too soon, I think. Too soon. I’d been promised four years. It had been only two.

My confusion spirals as the electricity builds and the room is nearly blindingly gold. Tiny pricks pepper along my spine and the sides of my neck, and I’m thrashing around in bed like a fish out of water. A huge rush of energy slams into me and the light turns into a white-hot dazzling force. Struggling to breathe, I hear the voice. My father’s voice.

Run, Nerissa, run. All is lost. Never return.

1

UNMASKED

“Run!” the voices scream. “RUN, RISSA!”

I can barely hear them over the pounding of blood in my ears as my feet skim over the grass. I’m winded but can sense the others on my left flank, already closing in. I push my feet faster—I must get there before they do or we are lost. In the past few seconds, white netting looms in front of me like a spidery haze, just as a heavy shoulder jolts like a ton of bricks into my side. The breath is knocked out of me as over a hundred pounds of muscle collides into my side with the force of a speeding train. Adrenaline jerks along my limbs and I kick out, blindly swinging the wooden pole in my hand with all the force I can muster. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to go.

It’s now or never. I have to strike first or the moment’s gone.

The silence stretches into eternity as the momentum of the assault makes me keel backward, my shoulder dangling limply, and then there is nothing but the feeling of falling until the ground rushes up to meet me with an unforgiving crunch. The only sound around me is the rasp of my own labored groans combining with the wheeze of my opponent’s. Her eyes are as fierce as mine.

Either way, it’s over.

“GOAL!” the crowd cheers wildly just as the buzzer goes off, signaling that it’s halftime. It’s been one of the most intense games we’ve played all season. Bishop’s is the top-seeded field hockey team in Southern California and if they beat us, we’re out. Going into the second half of the game one goal up on them means everything. I roll to my knees, gasping as my cocaptain, center midfielder and best friend, Jenna Pearce, throws herself on top of me, screaming in unbridled delight.