Neria saw as soon as she entered the Throne Room that her father was there - but alone; Declan and Leonora were no longer with him. Her father was watching her contemplatively, and although he frowned, she felt he was not really angry.
He spoke to her almost as if they were in the middle of a conversation, instead of not having seen each other for many years."You were always the only one to defy me. You and that dolphin friend of yours. No, don't start, of course I shan't harm him for helping you - he still comes here every year, and brings his mate and his young with him nowadays, and I've never laid a finger on any of them, nor ever would!"
"Where are my children, Father?"
"Safe. Is that all the greeting I get?"
"You tried to drive me away! You attacked us!"
"You tried to bring a Mortal here!" There was a real anger with that. "You know it is forbidden! And I forbade you to come back, too!"
"You knew I would come. And that Mortal is the father of your grandchildren! How could you be so harsh as to try and drown him, when he loves his children, and they him?"
"If it is harsh, it is the Sea Law." The King looked indifferent to the accusation in her voice. "Your little ones are children of the Sea, as you are. You are here without harm, once you parted from him. As for your children - I warned you, Neria! They are my heirs, and they belong here now. They will grow up in the Palace, as you did; loved, as you were - " his voice in her head was heavy with an accusation of his own - "and I do not think they will find anything to make them unhappy! See for yourself..." and he struck the shell beside him to make it ring.
The weed curtain across the inner entrance - the one which led to the King's private rooms - parted. Neria's eyes widened at the figure which came in. 
Why, it was her mother! She was the Sea Queen again, with pearls in her hair, and a long fluttering robe of seaweed-purple which moved in the water as she came to stand beside her husband's chair, laying a small package wrapped in sailcloth on the arm of his throne. Her face looked gentler and softer than Neria had ever seen it, though her eyes met her daughter's in wry acknowledgement, as if she might have said, "Well, yes, I came back after all..." But that was only for a moment, because out from behind her skirts bobbed the twins 
to take all Neria's attention as they came tumbling through the water towards her, laughing and chattering as they came, talking both at once as always.
"Mama, mama, we have a gran'father - "
"And a gran'mother too - "
"And this is a lovely place, and the fishes sing, and there's crabs and seahorses who talk - "
Neria's arms reached for them, catching them to hug them tightly. "Yes, darlings, I know. It is a beautiful place, isn't it? Oh, I have missed you so! Daddy would love the singing fishes, wouldn't he, Declan?"
Two small blank faces turned towards hers; it was as if the children had no idea who she was talking about.
"You've put a spell on them!" Her voice was outraged as she swung round on her father. "You've used a spell to make them forget him!"
The Sea King stretched out a hand. And Declan and Leonora turned away from her, and went to him, to climb up on his knees. Neria's heart burned cold at this demonstration of his power - and she gazed at her father bitterly.
"Yes, I see: you can do what you will and call it the King's justice! If I talk to them about the home they have always known, and the father they love and who loves them, they'll look at me just as blankly, won't they?"
"Wouldn't you call it best?" her father rumbled mildly.
"For you - but it's always about you, isn't it? Will you use another spell to make them forget me, too?"
"There will be no need for that. Your place is here, now, as theirs is."
"Oh no, Father! You can do everything else, but not that! Michael is my husband, and he has lost too much already to lose me, too. I shall go back to him, and you know it. No matter what - " She broke off, swallowing hard, though her mother-of-pearl tears had begun to fall and shimmered in the water around her. "If you will do this thing, you will have to teach the children to forget their mother too, so that they won't cry for me and distress you - "
"You have no choice," 
he said, with a sudden triumph in his voice. "Look! This time, to reach your children, you gave up everything!"
One mighty web-fingered hand flipped open the package which lay on the arm of his throne. Neria's earrings were there - and her locket - and her wedding ring. And the silver-buckled belt, which she had given to the Crab Chamberlain last of all.
"You have no choice!" the Sea King said again. "You brought nothing else, or you would have used it to bribe the guards - oh yes, they had their orders! So now you will stay - you, as well as the children!"
Neria stared into his face. His eyes met hers implacably but with all the satisfaction of victory. She said, huskily,
"You will keep me here - even against my will? Is that your final word?"
"It is!"
"Oh look, Gran'papa," Declan's voice piped up suddenly. He had been leaning forward to study the little collection of things. "Someone's lost half the buckle off Mama's belt! It usually has two sides and there's only one. You'd better send to look for it, because she'll be upset if it's missing!"
A tremor ran all round the Throne Room,shaking everything just a little, as the Sea King looked, then raised his head to stare at his daughter. The twins, frightened by the unfamiliar feel in the water, squeaked and hid their faces against their grandfather. His arms quieted them, even as his gaze met Neria's with a sudden doubt in it.
Only then did she open her right hand, held tightly closed all the time she had been in the Throne Room. In her palm lay the half-buckle, which she had slipped off its clip at the last moment. She held it up for her father to see.
"It was a clever trick, Father," she said - stonily. "One that almost worked, for I did not guess it until the very end. Even then I hoped...but I was right, wasn't I?"
Every drapery in the room was set into movement as the water quivered and swirled. The Sea King's voice came echoing through it. "You cannot choose to go back to the Land again! Not with your children here! Neria, forget this Mortal, husband or no - "
"I don't think your spells will work on me. I am not your daughter for nothing." She faced him with eyes as sea-green as his own. "You cannot stop me. I remember. Whatever else you may hold of mine, I am free to go."
"I will not set your children free. I WILL NOT!"
"And I will not abandon Michael, and make him lose everything. Do you think I would leave him all alone - to be as lonely as you were, all through my childhood?" She did not spare a glance for her mother, standing silently by; her eyes were all for her father. And for the children who sat quietly in his lap, looking half-asleep under his spell. She scarcely dared to look at them, with the pain of losing them so great that it might break her in half. But Michael would be on the Shore somewhere by now, desolate and alone, and however much she might love the familiar Sea-World and her children who would grow up in it, she must go back to him. "I will not stay, Father," she said steadily, holding his gaze with her own.
"Neria! If you go back to the Land again, there will be nothing even I can do to let you return. You will have chosen the Land for the third time! It means you will become Mortal yourself - and there is nothing I can do to change it!"
She had not known that, nor that the anguish in her father's face would be so great. As if he could see her hesitation he said warningly, "I will not release your children!" She drew a sharp breath, and the silver buckle cut into her palm as her hand closed on it.
"Bring them up kindly, then. I know you will. I ask you to wipe me from their minds completely, so that they won't grieve. For even though it breaks my heart, Michael is my choice!"
She began to back away from the throne. The twins did not move, their eyelids drooping in sleep, as she gazed at them in a last silent farewell. They would not remember any of this, she knew, for her father would not be cruel enough to let them remember; his cruelty was only for those who did not, or would not, belong to his Kingdom and obey his laws.
The Sea Queen moved suddenly, laying her hand on her husband's arm.
"Set the children free, Talessos," she said softly. It was the first time Neria had ever heard anyone use her father's name, for he was always 'The King' to his subjects. "Neria is our daughter, and I have tried to hurt her in my time, and to hurt you through her. But it is time to change things, is it not? Why repeat our mistakes, and do things just because we can? So I beg you: let her have her man, and her children, and be happy!"
There was a long silence. Then the Sea King sighed a heavy sigh. 
One great web-fingered hand moved slowly to cover his wife's slender one. And all at once the twins woke up, and scrambled down off his knees, and came bobbing through the water to their mother, Leonora first, Declan following.
"Is it time to go home now?"
"Can I show Daddy the big shell Gran'papa gave me?"
"And tell him about the songs the fishes sing?"
"Neria..." The Sea King's voice was no more than a low rumble inside her head. "I cannot change everything. Not even I, the King, the last true Atlantean, have that power. I cannot change the doom of Mortality on you; nor can I alter the Sea's claims. But I can...bend the Law a little. For two months out of every year you must send your children to me, until they are old enough to choose for themselves. The Sea is still their heritage, and they must learn it. But I promise there will be no tricks, and I will always send them back to you again. Will you accept that?"
"Oh yes, Father!" Neria smiled at him, with all her heart. "I promise they shall come, and will never try to stop them. I don't want them to forget the Sea, now that they have found it! Michael and I will take a house by the shore, and send them to you. And - and perhaps they can bring me news of you..."
The Sea King looked at his daughter, standing there with love in her face, and her children beside her. And although his eyes were sad with the knowledge of a thousand years, he smiled.
* * * * *
Michael sat on the shore, filled with grief. He had tried again and again to go back into the sea, as soon as he had reached consciousness to find himself lying high and dry on the beach, all alone. 
Each time he was half into the water a dolphin came to block his path, nudging him back to land, or slapping him there with its powerful tail. In the end he had had to give up, for the great sea-creature lay there patiently, making it plain it would not leave him.
He knew he had lost both Neria and the children now; they would never come back from that strange undersea kingdom which had already begun to seem like a dream born of his exhaustion. He was too distraught to do anything but sit there with his head bent and his shoulders bowed.
So he did not see his wife when she came stepping up out of the sea with a child on either hand. He did not know they were there until the twins ran to him, patting his shoulders with their small hands and chattering at him lovingly in their high voices, about magic places, and grandfathers, and palaces...He looked up then, and saw Neria standing in front of him. She was smiling down at him - though there were suddenly wet tears on her cheeks, such as he had never seen there, mingling with the sea-water on her skin.
Just off the shore, the dolphin reared up to dance backwards on his tail, watching them, asking for their applause. Neria turned to wave to him. He chittered a farewell, drops of water flashing around him. Then he turned in a high leaping dive, and sped away out to sea.
THE END