Camille's eyes had frozen over like the surface of a winter puddle, robbing them of their usual warmth. She was in there somewhere, but it was like Mera's words had slapped her out of reality; making her take a huge step back from life. Mera wanted to reach in and rekindle her light but Camille was too shocked to register anything but the growing terror ripping at her gut. The world around her was moving too fast. It made her dizzy, nauseous even. It was impossible. She couldn't be pregnant...she wasn't ready. Camille had only barely accepted the idea of being married.

"I should...inform the king." Mera's voice was soft and careful, but inflicted a response so intense in the queen that her entire body jolted forward.

Camille grabbed onto her arm, head shaking vigorously. Her eyes were in an overwhelming state of panic, still attempting to process her current situation. "N-No, you can't!"

The redhead relaxed into the water, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her index finger against her scaly, green armour. "Why not? He needs to know."

"This isn't a request, Mera." Camille's expression hardened. For the first time since the Xebelian had met her, Camille looked as demanding as any other queen she'd met. That alone showed how desperate she was. "This is an order. You're not to tell Arthur anything about this."

Mera's shoulders slumped forward, an inner debate glaring inside of her skull. Arthur was her friend, and he deserved to know, but the queen had given a command. To go against that would be considered dishonorable in Atlantis. "As you wish...the news should come from you anyway."

Camille felt her stomach churn at the thought. She needed to decide what exactly she wanted to do before telling him. In all honesty, she didn't want a baby. She never did. Her own mother had left much to be admired when it came to parenting, and she had the worst feeling that she'd end up exactly like her.

Suddenly, Camille felt like she might faint. Her head was pounding, and twisting, and aching. Life was running away from her and she couldn't even begin catching up. Getting married for the sake of peace was one thing, but being pregnant after only a single week of marital life was quite another.

Camille mustered all of her strength to calm her jittering nerves. Vulko was still waiting for her, and Camille didn't want to give him any reason to be suspicious.

The older Atlantean was waiting for her in a room large enough to fit two cruise ships. Each wall was painted such a deep shade of blue that it almost disappeared entirely in the water; the only evidence that it remained around her being a gigantic engraving of a Megalodon. Vulko senses the ocean shift around him and turned with a bow. "You're late, my queen."

"Sorry..." Camille replied, voice trembling under such immense stress.

"Consider this your first lesson. Royalty is never late. Even when they are, they're not. Understood?"

Camille moved further into the room with a nod. She might have found Vulko's words amusing if she wasn't so overwhelmed. "And what's my second lesson?"

"Learning to swim without looking down." Vulko reached into a satchel that he had strapped to his hip. From there he pulled out a necklace...or a choker. It was made of solid stone and spanned the full length of a woman's neck. He swiftly snapped it onto Camille, and she found that moving her head in any direction at all was suddenly impossible. "A queen must keep her back straight, and learn to swim with an effortless grace."

"And not look down..." Camille muttered. "But what if there's a shark under me or something?"

"It is your guard's duty to check for danger, not yours." Vulko stated, though his expression seemed to falter.

"That...sounds a little stupid."

"Yeah, it does." He admitted with a shrug, directing for Camille to follow him further into the room. "But this was what I was told to teach you, so we have to go through it. Feel free to discard this information after today though. I'm sure King Orin will have no problem with you being cautious."

Camille found it surprisingly difficult to swim without any control over her head. It made her shoulders tense, which in turn, made it nearly impossible to move her arms properly. The only leverage she had left was her legs, and that only succeeded in throwing her off balance.

"While you figure that out we'll go over some Atlantean law." Vulko glided through the water with ease, but Camille was starting to look like a drowning spider; all flailing limbs and stiff joints. "What is the punishment for adultery?"

Camille chewed on her bottom lip, severely struggling not to sink. She could barely concentrate on anything else. "I don't know. A divorce and loss of custody?"

Vulko shook his head and corrected her. "Genital mutilation."

Camille almost choked at his bluntness. She'd read about this, of course, but she'd also tried desperately to forget it. Cheating was horrid, but so was chopping off someone's...anything. Any form of limb chopping was fairly unnecessary. "Oh yeah. That's right."

"Let's try again. What is the punishment for treason?" Vulko's eyes followed the queen, watching her thrash through the water with a complete lack of talent or poise.

Camille didn't need to strain any particular section of her memory to recall this part. It was the weirdest law she had come across thus far. "You tie them up in a desert overlooking the ocean...or something."

"And do you know why we do this?"

Camille's neck was starting to ache from the restraint. She groaned. It felt like having dozens of tight bangles clutching against her throat. She was suddenly thankful that she didn't breathe through her lungs underwater, or she was positive she would have been suffocating. "No, not really. Sounds a bit stupid to me."

"There are very few Atlantean that can survive away from water for extended periods of time." He started explaining. He could only hope that the queen could hear him over her own loud grunts of effort. Vulko had never seen anyone fail so consistently at something as simple as swimming with their head up. "You and Arthur are both partly human, and so being on land is no problem. Most other citizens of Atlantis though are limited in the amount of time they can spend away from the ocean; they'll often need to, at the very least, drink a litre water every five hours. To restrain an Atlantean in the desert, close enough to see the ocean but not touch it, is the slowest and most torturous death that we could ever devise."

Camille wasn't even surprised. These barbaric rules were swiftly losing their initial punch, and were simply becoming annoying. And boring. Very, very boring. She was starting to think that the people of Atlantis had nothing better to do than kill each other. "Yes. Of course. More death. Should have figured."

Vulko's lips twitched upward. He fought the urge to smile and encourage her irritation. He was also painfully aware that the laws of the city needed to be altered, but it wasn't a problem that could be resolved over night. Until then, they were stuck with their ancient rules and regulations, which meant that Camille had to at least understand them.

Camille had barely managed to swim halfway through the room when a few of the new council members appeared at the entrance. Vulko eyed them disapprovingly. "I hope you have a good reason for interrupting the queens lessons."

One of the Atlanteans, a young man with starfish clutching his hair, pushed someone forward. They wavered in the water, and if they were on land they would have face-planted entirely. "We caught him stealing fish from the market. King Orin is otherwise occupied, so the responsibility of judging the thief falls to Queen Camille."

The woman reached to take the stone object from around her neck, only to find that Vulko had already unlatched it for her. The restrainer immediately sunk, digging into the ground and letting rise to an impressive plume of sand. That was another small detail about the buildings in Atlantis...most of them didn't have floors; it was just tangles of coral and seaweed. There was no dire need for them, but it made every place look only half-finished to Camille.

The queen rolled her head to either side, trying to stretch her sore neck muscles. "Why steal fish? Aren't there plenty in the ocean?"

"Only trained hunters are permitted to catch fish, my queen." Vulko said with a sympathetic expression towards the thief. "And even then, the nearby areas have been running dry of food. We think the sea life are becoming cautious of us."

Camille stared at the 'criminal'. He looked harmless enough. He couldn't have been any older than thirty. He would have been pale if not for the spots that dotted his skin. His face was brown with small creamy spaces here and there, like the tips of grass struggling to show through a pile of golden-brown leaves. His hair was a perfect mop of red, it would have been lion-like had he not been so skinny. He wore netting for a shirt, and an old pair of cracked armour for pants, both were small but on him it was massive; clinging and hanging loose where it shouldn't.

"If I may, your majesty, the current punishment for theft is severing a hand. Either one or both, depending on the items that had been stolen." The young council member advised, not ever bothering to glance at the crook.

"I know what the law says I should do." Camille snapped, and the room seemed to grow oddly quiet. She was sick to death of their treatment towards one another, and in no mood to deal with it yet again. Her gaze flickered to the thief, softening as she asked "Why did you do it?"

His head tilted to the side in slight confusion. Then Vulko said something. A translation of her words in Atlantean.

The man's sunken eyes widened. He appeared genuinely surprised that someone had asked him this. Typically, people were punished without much chance to explain themselves. Especially when Orm was ruling. King Orin often showed mercy, but he was rarely actually present to sentence anybody. The thief shifted, the strangely ethereal handcuffs jolting and squeezing against his skin. The man said something in the common tongue of Atlantis.

Feeling a little foolish for assuming that he'd speak English, the queen reached up to her ear (where the translator that Lex made was still secured) and switched it on. "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

Vulko expressed your words to the man once more. "Queen Camille sarn'eck, fahy'or yortim iporlin treq?"

"I...was hungry. My wife is starving. We've traded everything we own, we don't have anything else." His voice was almost inaudible. As if he hadn't used it in a long time. Camille had read somewhere that the people not derived from noble families were lucky if they were taught how to speak, but she hadn't believed it until now.

"Do you not have a job?" Camille questioned, but instead of interpreting her strange language to the criminal, Vulko simply turned to the queen.

"Jobs are only given to Atlanteans that have been specially trained. Many families that live in old Atlantis aren't given that opportunity."

Old Atlantis. Camille could recall the ruins of the ancient city right at the edge of their border. It was all crumbling stone and marble, ready to collapse at the slightest shift of water pressure; definitely not a place that anyone should actually live in. Camille's expression visibly turned to one of immense vexation. Sometimes it felt like this place was simply too far gone.

The queen turned to the council members and straightened her posture. "Then I have made my decision."

"Excellent." The youngest one exclaimed, adjusting the starfish as it wiggled in his indigo locks. "I'll fetch the Jornur."

Camille scowled. She could easily remember Vulko's explanation of the Jornur; his job was to disembody criminals. "There's no need. This man's punishment will be to contribute to our society. He will be given the proper training to join the ranks of our hunters, and a spot will be reserved for him when he's finished."

Silence filled the room like poison. Everyone was frozen, their reactions temporarily halted by shock. It was like a game. Camille had to analyse each of their faces and guess who was going to crack first. The council member that hadn't uttered a single word, very unexpectedly, gave a sigh of relief; bubbles rising from his lips and disappearing near the ceiling. The younger man, however, looked appalled by this decision. "But that's ridiculous-"

The atmosphere changed instantly. Camille was tired, and sore, and incredibly stressed out. She was in no mood to be spoken to like some ignorant idiot. Her jaw clenched and she snapped "Are you defying the wishes of your queen?"

The man gulped and averted his eyes, mumbling "N-No... Of course not, your majesty."

"Good." Camille turned to Vulko, unwilling to trust the council to fulfill her orders without resistance. "Make sure it's done, and give him some food to take home from the kitchens. We've got more than we need anyway."

Vulko could no longer hide the smile that had wriggled onto his face. He had been a little unsure about her ability to rule, but in one minute she had completely changed his mind. He could se what Arthur liked about her. "As you wish. We'll continue this lesson at a later date."

Vulko took the cuffs off the thief, and they disintegrated into the ocean around them. The criminal seemed confused, but didn't delay long enough for anyone to change their minds. He followed Vulko to the end of the room when Camille called our once more "Actually, take all the food you and the guards can carry, and take it to Old Atlantis."

Vulko's smile only widened at this. He nodded, directing for the two other men to follow, and they did so with passing glances in Camille's direction. The moment they had left, Camille's shoulders fell. She didn't notice how tense she had become. There was so much happening all at once, and slowly, she felt like she was being crashed beneath the weight of it all. She needed to get out...at least for a little while.

The first thing that came to mind was an email from her grandmother that she had blatantly refused to open. The reason being that the 'subject' of the email had just been filled with a full stop. That was all she needed to be certain of her grandma's appending lecture. She deserved it too. Camille hadn't had any chance to contact her in months, and in that span of time, the world had been flooded with news of the land-dweller queen of Atlantis... Camille could only imagine her grandmother's surprise upon seeing her pictures in the paper.

That fact brought an aching headache to the front of Camille's skull. It was yet another thing to deal with...but this time she actually wanted to do it. This entire situation needed to be explained. That would take her mind off everything else for at least a few hours.

Without anyone to stop her, Camille sped out of the castle. She had only barely made it passed the gates when she crashed into someone. Strong arms prevented her from being flung in any random direction from the impact, and without even glancing up, she knew who they belonged to.

"What's the rush?" Arthur's voice was tinged with concern as he held her steadily.

Camille's eyes fluttered upward. He was returning from a meeting, or so she had been told. It was just her bad luck that she'd run into him right now; on the brink of a mental breakdown. "N-Nothing...I was just...gonna go see my grandma. I'm allowed to go on land right?"

Arthur raised a dark eyebrow at her. "Why wouldn't you be? It's your home." The right side of his mouth pulled upward, creating that smirk that Camille so adored. "But even if I said no, would that stop you?"

Camille felt her own smile begin to show. He always knew how to make her feel at ease...but that only made her feel worse about concealing her recent predicament from him. She couldn't tell him that she was pregnant. Not yet. Not before she figured out what she was going to do. "Probably not."

Though the dark-eyed woman tried to hide it, Arthur could clearly tell that she was worried about something. He'd never seen such a look of worry on her face. Not even when they were going to war. "Then I'll come with you. I should meet your grandmother now that we're...you know."

Camille's heart almost collapsed in her chest. What did he mean by 'you know'? Oh god. Did Mera tell him about... It was illogical to think that he knew. He hadn't been in the city all day, but that didn't stop paranoia from setting in. She temporarily forgot that she didn't breathe with her lungs anymore, and took two large gulps of seawater...then choked when her lungs attempted to filter it out. Arthur was instantly at her side, rubbing her back and waiting for the panic to pass though he had no idea why you were acting to anxiously.

"I actually don't know." Camille croaked out. "What do you mean?"

Arthur's expression was unreadable, primarily because he was so bewildered by the nervous aura that engulfed her. "Now that we're married, Camille..."

"Oh, yes, right. Married." Camille said, avoiding all possible eye contact with Arthur. She was relieved, but that only left more room for her embarrassment. "I-I... must have forgotten."

"That we were married?" Now Arthur knew something was amiss. Still, he suspected that it must have been fairly serious if she was hiding it from even him.

"Y-Yeah. That. Sorry." Camille inwardly cursed herself for how obvious she was being. In the history of the universe, there could never have been a person worse at keeping secrets than she was. "Don't you have, like, a ton of things to do though? You really don't have to come."

"I'm sure I can spare a few hours." Arthur insisted, letting his hand finally move from her back to her hand. He entwined his fingers with hers, and that forced her gaze back into his. "I want to meet the woman that raised my queen."

This time Camille was sure her heart had burst. Any will she had was withering. How in God's name was she supposed to refuse him after that? In fact, how was she suppose to survive the trip without telling him that she bared his child, and that she didn't want it. Still, by some divine power, she managed to keep her lips sealed. For how long though...that was the question that plagued her as they stepped onto land.