My name is Mera.
I am the queen of Atlantis.
My husband is Arthur.
He is the king of Atlantis.
In fact, when I first met him, he was not even considered an Atlantean.
He was merely a young man who lived by the sea with his father and possessed an exceptional talent for swimming.
No, it was more than exceptional.
He was born to live in the ocean.
That was because half the blood flowing through his veins was Atlantean.
It was even royal blood, because his mother had once been Atlanna, the queen of Atlantis.
Of course, for certain reasons, Atlanna was no longer queen. Her other pure-blooded child, Orm, was about to become Atlantis's new king.
And I had been born to marry the next king.
But I did not like Orm.
That was because Orm had publicly declared more than once that, once he became king, he would launch a war against the land without hesitation.
"Thousands of years ago, the land belonged to us Atlanteans in the first place."
Undisguised ambition burned in Orm's eyes.
"But now the land belongs to humans. We can simply continue living in the sea and leave humanity in peace."
"No. They are gradually encroaching on our territory."
I knew he was referring to the nations on land. Their technology was terribly underdeveloped, and they had produced vast amounts of industrial waste they could not process.
For the sake of saving money in a certain sense, some people had chosen to dump that waste into the ocean.
Whenever Orm spoke of this, undisguised disgust filled his face.
"Thousands of years ago, we developed clean-energy technology and incredibly powerful magic. We should reclaim our land, then lead those backward humans into the next future."
I knew I could not persuade Orm, but fortunately, I still possessed enough freedom before the wedding.
So I could only avoid him as much as possible—avoid Atlantis, and even avoid the ocean.
That was when I met Arthur.
A "land-dweller" who perfectly met Atlantis's laws and could compete with Orm for the throne.
His eyes always held a lazy calm, utterly different from Orm's ambition and anger.
He might not have been very likely to become a qualified king, but he could certainly bring peace.
I began approaching Arthur and told him that, theoretically, if he wanted to, he could shed his identity on land at any time.
He could go from the son of a lighthouse keeper to a candidate for Atlantis's royal family.
But Arthur laughed.
He rejected me without hesitation.
"I won't become the king of Atlantis. I only want to live out my life on land."
Many things happened after that.
Many, many things that made the once sunny and cheerful Arthur grow increasingly silent and increasingly unable to control his own fate.
Arthur's superpowers grew stronger and stronger. He joined the Justice League, and with my help and that of his reliable comrades, defeated Orm and took the throne of Atlantis.
I knew Arthur still did not want to become the king of Atlantis.
During most of the Justice League's free time, when they were not contacting him for missions, he would stare upward from the seafloor, as though his gaze could pierce the pitch-black seawater and see something on the surface.
But certain things had already bound Arthur, pinning him firmly to the seafloor and to that golden throne—the one that made him stop smiling the moment he sat upon it.
"Peace between the ocean and the land."
"The people of Atlantis need his leadership."
"A king must shoulder a king's responsibilities."
I had said these things to him. His comrades in the Justice League had said them to him. Even Orm had said them to him.
So when Arthur and I looked at the things excavated and dismantled from Atlantis's treasury, his brows remained tightly furrowed for a long time.
He was extremely unhappy, but he still spent more than ten minutes suppressing his emotions.
He turned around and told me that no second Atlantean could be allowed to know about this.
"It's perfectly normal for Batman to do something like this."
Arthur said this as if he feared that I, as the queen of Atlantis—and he, as the king—would go and demand an explanation from certain people.
"Last time, Wonder Woman found a pile of bugs in her apartment and even went to have a huge fight with Batman. The two of them nearly fell out."
Arthur tried very hard to make that past incident sound funnier than it was.
He was worried, yet also looking forward to my reaction.
I held down his arm and rested my head against his shoulder, using my actions to show that I would always support his decisions.
"Don't forget, you're not the only member of the Justice League. I'm listed as a member too."
Arthur forced out a smile, then turned to look at the listening devices. I could still hear the suppressed anger in his voice.
But I also understood my husband. He was a man who could see the bigger picture.
"Put these things away. The next time we go to the Watchtower, I'll pretend to be furious and smash them in front of Batman. I can use the opportunity to curse him out a little, too."
Then an emergency messenger burst into the main hall of the palace.
The guard said they had discovered something terrifying beneath one of Atlantis's cities.
When Arthur and I arrived at the scene, the place was packed so tightly with Atlanteans that not even water could pass through.
There were ordinary residents, guards, and ministers.
There were also several scientists with extremely high authority.
Everything had been such a coincidence.
During the several hours when the boy named Shane had been "playing" with Arthur, the continuous seismic waves had caused structural damage to the seafloor above a hollow space.
Those few hours of this willful king's fooling around had also kept everyone in Atlantis from resting. So when the buildings above the hollow collapsed, nearly half the city's population came to watch the spectacle.
When the people saw the king and queen arrive, they voluntarily made way.
Arthur walked solemnly into the enormous fissure.
Several Atlantean scientists who had already gone down to investigate accompanied him.
I suddenly fell into a tremendous panic.
Ignoring the ceremonial minister's attempts to stop me, I rushed into the seafloor fissure as well.
The earlier structural collapse had allowed some seawater to bypass the magical bubble and seep into this natural cavern through tiny cracks in the seafloor.
It was pitch-black. All I could hear were the voices of my husband and several authoritative old scholars.
"How powerful is it?"
"At the very least, it is powerful enough to affect all of Atlantis."
I could feel the surrounding seawater gradually solidifying. The trident in Arthur's hand suddenly radiated waves of golden light.
"Anything else?"
"Your Majesty, the technology used here is very familiar. It should be Black Manta's work."
I hurried forward and loudly covered the whispers behind me.
"Black Manta has always held a grudge against Atlantis. Hurry up and decipher and dismantle it. Tomorrow, Aquaman and I will go to the Justice League..."
The old scholar frowned.
"It has already been deciphered once, and something else was added to it. But I have never seen the technology inside."
I was about to speak when Arthur suddenly raised the trident in his hand.
The authority of the Seven Seas gathered within his grasp. Although this place was not completely filled with seawater, the surrounding stone walls of the underground cavern were damp.
Amid the pattering sounds, every water molecule was Arthur's eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Every tiny microorganism was an extension of his hands and feet.
As long as he was on the seafloor, everything was under his absolute control.
Even tiny clusters could unleash tremendous power.
A piece of rubble was pried open by the united efforts of countless tiny creatures, and a small device fell into Arthur's palm.
It was far too familiar. Only minutes ago, Arthur and I had still been discussing what to do with these things.
In the darkness, Arthur's figure swayed. He slammed the trident down heavily to support his body.
I did not know how I left that cavern.
I suspected Arthur did not know either.
The king's subjects surged forward. They all knew how dangerous the thing inside was, and terror spread constantly from person to person.
Several voices began to merge.
"Your Majesty!"
"Your Majesty!"
A little girl was pushed to the very front.
"You'll protect us, won't you?"
I watched my husband crouch down and ruffle the child's hair.
"Mhm. I will."
Before you continue