Vanished.
By Medusa.
My husband had fallen in love with me.
“My king,” I whispered.
“Do you have any sirens-damned clue what ran through my head?” he asked.
I had a feeling I did.
It was exceptionally horrible.
And I was sorry for it.
“Please, allow me—”
“And you were fucking swimming,” he clipped.
I pressed my lips together, hard.
Yes, one thing I knew about my husband, when he was angry, he needed to let it out.
“Did it once occur to you to wake your fucking husband and share you’d like a moonlit dip?” he demanded.
When he paused long enough I thought he might actually wish my answer, I opened my mouth, but he spoke yet again.
“No!” he barked. “It didn’t. But weeks ago, Cat had a sword run from his gut to his gullet. Sofia was magically overcome by sirens-damned snakes. Now you take off on your own with not one single guard in a foreign land and go swimming.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“You’re sorry?” he asked sarcastically.
“I was in no danger,” I told him.
“You were in no danger,” he repeated after me, again, sarcastically.
“Aramus—”
“You are beautiful.”
I shut my mouth again.
“The most beautiful female of any realm. Do you know what a man would do to possess that beauty?”
I stared up at him.
He thought I was the most beautiful female of any realm?
Before his words could sink in completely, Aramus kept ranting.
“Do you know what an enemy would do to that beauty to bring the man who possesses it to his knees?”
“I—”
“And you are queen. The queen of the mightiest realm in Triton. If someone abducted you, I would give our entire fleet to have you back unscathed.”
At this assertion, I fell back a step in shock.
“Yes, Ha-Lah,” he spat. “And not because you are my queen but because you are Ha-Lah. My Ha-Lah. Mine.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “Mine to hold. Mine to protect. Mind to keep whole.”
“I didn’t think—”
“No, you fucking did not.”
“You’d wake,” I finished.
At that, he shut his mouth and his powerful torso swung back.
He was not surprised.
No, he was angrier.
“Please listen to me, Aramus,” I said urgently.
He leaned toward me. “There is not one fucking thing you can say, woman, that will make me any less furious at you for being so bloody, fucking stupid.”
I forced myself to breathe deep and steady, stood still and held his gaze.
He breathed visibly shallow and erratic and glowered at me.
I gave it time. Time to watch his breath even. Time to watch the fury in his expression reduce to simply very damned mad. Time to remind myself that his words came because he was afraid for me, not because he actually meant them.
Time to let it settle he thought I was the most beautiful woman in any realm.
And he was in love with me.
Then, I spoke.
Quietly.
Not soothingly.
But calmly.
“You have an exceptionally foul temper, husband.”
“You terrified me, wife,” he returned.
“And I am very sorry for that, Aramus.”
That came quiet, and soothing.
He rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms on his chest.
I studied him.
And at what I saw, what had just transpired, and what I now understood to the depths of my soul about this man who was mine, it did not take long for me to make my decision.
“Will you come with me?” I asked.
“Come with you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” he bit off.
“Please, Aramus,” I whispered, reaching a hand to him. “Just come with me.”
He stared into my eyes.
He did this a long time.
I kept my arm extended toward him that entire time.
He finally dropped his gaze to my hand.
After several more moments, he reached out and took it.
As he would.
For my husband was in love with me.
Thank Medusa.
Awkwardly, with my free hand, I wrapped the toweling around me as best I could so it would stay in place and led him to the flaps of the tent and out.
“You can tell them to go back to their pallets,” I said under my breath, referring to the milling soldiers.
“I will not—”
I squeezed his hand. “Trust me.”
He scowled down at me before he turned to one of his lieutenants, a man named Bondi, but called simply Bond.
“You can settle. All is well. We’ll return. But keep an ear out.”
Bond nodded, sent a ferociously unhappy frown my way, then turned to the others.
I led my husband down the beach to where my clothes had been left.
I only let his hand go when we arrived at them.
Quickly, juggling the sheet I had around me, I pulled on my nightgown then my panties.
I wound the toweling around my arm, took my husband’s hand again and led him farther down the beach.
As the distance from camp grew greater, Aramus’s fingers tightened around mine and he growled a warning, “Ha-Lah.”
I stopped, looked back at camp, which was not close, but it wasn’t far enough away.
But my king was not comfortable with the distance.
So it would have to do.
Still holding my husband’s hand, I dropped the toweling to the sand, moved so close to his front, our bodies were nearly brushing, and I tipped my head back.
“You once accused me of making you earn everything you received from me,” I reminded him.
In the moonlight, I saw his expression flicker from anger, to regret, back to anger.
He opened his mouth.
But it was me who said, “This, my husband, my king, I give you for free.”
And then I turned, still holding his hand, but lifting my free arm up in a wide arc.
The tingle surged from my womb to my heart to my fingertips, and a great break of water some fifty meters out and some twenty meters across rose toward the heavens on the trail of my arm, then dropped to the sea.
My arm now lowered, I lifted it up, and a gust of surf blew straight up into the air only to shower down as I again lowered my arm.
“By Triton,” Aramus whispered, his gaze locked to the water.
On a tug of his hand, I moved us to the edge of the surf.
And when the waves lapped my bare toes and the leather of his boots, I tugged his hand again and made him crouch beside me.
I closed my eyes, felt the warmth overtake my insides, opened my eyes, submerged my free hand in the water and sent my request.
It did not take long for me to receive a reply.
I turned my head to my husband.
“Watch the sea, my king,” I urged.
His eyes, no longer filled with fury, now filled with wonder, something that warmed me far more greatly than what I was getting from the sea, went from me to the horizon.
I turned that way too.
I heard his sharp intake of breath when four dolphins, two on each side, leapt from the waves toward each other.
“And now for a show,” I said.
And they were back. This time flipping nose over fin in the air or riding above the surf on the ends of their flippers or leaping all together in formation.
They ended with just their heads above water, whistling and trilling our way.
As they sunk beneath the sea, I waved my hand still in the water, and said, “And the finale.”
Aramus had not turned his eyes from the deep.
A
nd thus he saw the great gust of water spout high before the gleaming beauty of a whale burst in a proud eruption of foam. It twisted in the air to its back, before splashing home.
Thank you, I sent through my hand.
The vibrations of the response tickled my fingers.
“Ha-Lah,” my husband called beside me.
I turned my head his way.
“I was in no danger,” I whispered.
“You don’t talk to them, you command them,” he whispered back.
I shook my head. “No. They’re my friends. I don’t command them. I sent a request. And they granted it.”
“The waters?” he asked.
It took me a moment.
And then I shared.
“That I command.” I inched closer to him on my toes, lifted my wet hand to wrap it around his neck, and finished, “If we are near to the sea, Aramus, nothing can harm me.”
“And this is why you’re a very strong swimmer,” he remarked.
Well.
Not exactly.
When I didn’t answer, he noted, “When first spotted, you were out very far.”
“I am indeed an accomplished swimmer, husband.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I was angry at you for hurting me.”
He held my gaze.
Then he straightened, pulling me up with him.
Right into his arms, held tight to his body.
He held me at night, when we slept, never letting go.
He’d done this since he’d said the things he’d said to me in Fire City.
He’d also done this against my wishes, but in an effort, I knew, to silently ask forgiveness for the harm he’d done to me.
But when we were not abed, he rarely touched me, even before he said the things he’d said to me in Fire City.
Now I was in his arms.
And I was not certain it was conducive to my emotional health to know how good they felt around me while standing in the sand with the sea caressing my feet.
He took one from about me so he could run his finger along my hairline and detach the wet ringlets that clung there.
He watched his finger do this as if fascinated.
I watched his fascination and I did it fascinated.
“This is extraordinary,” he murmured, his finger running along my jaw for no purpose as there was no hair stuck there.
I did not know if he was referring to what I had shown him, my ringlets or my jaw.
His eyes came to mine and his hand curled around my head, fingers in my hair, palm at my neck, his thumb resting along my cheek at my hairline.
An area it stroked.
“You are extraordinary,” he said.
I felt myself melting into him with no power to stop it.
“But I do not care.”
At these last words, I found the power to stop melting.
“I…pardon?” I asked.
His neck bent so his face was in mine.
“You left me.”
Oh dear.
I was melting again.
“Aramus.”
“You cannot even begin to imagine the terror that struck my heart when Nis found your clothes, but not you in them.”
I shoved my hands between us so I could press them tight to his chest.
“My king.”
“There was no sign of you. Nothing. This meant the best scenario, Ha-Lah, was you being swept out to sea. That was the best scenario, my wife. But even in that scenario, you were lost to me.”
“But now you see I was safe and never in any danger.”
“A husband could fall asleep beside a wife who commands the sea and the skies, the earth and all fire, and if he woke to find her missing, he would not roll over and fall back to sleep if she has a place in his heart.”
A place in his heart.
Dear Medusa.
He was going to make me weep.
“Is this understood, my Ha-Lah?” he asked.
Oh yes.
It was very understood.
I nodded.
“Please say the words, my queen,” he prompted.
“It is understood, Aramus.”
His fingers in my hair depressed in an affectionate squeeze as his arm about me tightened in the same manner.
“You do not wish my men to know you have this power,” he deduced.
“I…it is…”
“You did not wish me to know.”
I decided not to answer.
“It was wise of you, Ha-Lah. I sense I’ve only witnessed a hint of it and I still know your power is awesome. A thing of beauty. I do not know of another who wields it. And if it was known, it would be coveted. Coveted by those who would stop at nothing to possess the one who commands it. We will need to keep it, and you, safe.”
And again I felt like weeping.
For he understood.
“My closest men should know,” he decreed. “But we will talk, decide how to share, and when. Not now. We have other things to sort through, you and me.”
I nodded again.
When I finished, his thumb swept my cheek as his hand drew forward and he cupped my jaw.
All of this as his face got even closer.
“Do you forgive me?”
“Your temper is damaging,” I whispered.
This time, he nodded, and he did it solemnly.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “I have thought on this long and often during our travels here. It will be something I’ll endeavor greatly to work on, though I fear I must ask your patience with this as it is a part of me and thus might prove difficult to overcome.”
“You called me stupid in the tent,” I reminded him and watched his full lips twitch.
“My wife, my queen, my Ha-Lah, I woke, and you were gone.” He hesitated for emphasis and finished, “Swimming.”
I pulled my lips in and bit them.
Perhaps leaving him during that particular climate of our marriage, in this particular time on Triton, not long after a massive assault on the palace where we were staying, an attack where he lost a man he cared greatly for, was stupid.
“Mm,” he hummed, his eyes on my mouth, and I had a feeling he knew my thoughts.
I decided to change the subject.
“I need to be close to the sea, Aramus, for a few days.”
His eyebrows drew together as his gaze lifted to mine. “Of course. This is why we’re here.”
“What I mean is, I wish to stay. For a few days.”
“Of course, Ha-Lah, this is why we’re here.”
“I know that we shouldn’t linger,” I continued. “We should make moves to again join the others. I just need a few days.”
His hand at my jaw and his arm at my waist dragged me up his big body and he rumbled, “Ha-Lah, you listen close to words I wish you would not hear, and not to words I want you to hear. We will stay as long as you like. If you desired to be here a year, I’d allow it.”
I felt my eyes widen. “A year?”
“Well, perhaps not a year,” he muttered. “I have a kingdom to run.”
I smiled at him.
He grew still against me when I did.
Then I heard (and it must be said…felt) a sound that seemed to originate in his chest before it rolled out from between his lips.
And where I felt it was also at my chest.
As well as between my legs.
Which meant said legs trembled.
Kiss me, I begged with my eyes.
My husband was not looking in my eyes.
He was staring fixedly at my mouth.
Kiss me!
“We should get back,” he murmured, his body moving as if he’d let me go.
“Oh, for the sirens’ sakes,” I snapped, took my hands from his chest, latched on to his cheeks, yanked him down to me…
And I kissed him.
I barely had my lips to his before I had my back to the sand with the great, warm weight of my husband on top of me.
His tongue was plundering my mouth.
His big hands were shoved up my nightgown at my back.
And by all the bounty of the seas, he felt good.
He tasted good.
And he kissed magnificently.
I clutched his bald head in both hands, holding him to me, pressing up into his body.
He tore his mouth from mine, growling, “Sirens-bloody-dammit.”
Wait.
What?
Why had he stopped?
“Aramus?” I breathed.
“I’m not making love to my wife the first bloody time in the fucking sand,” he groused.
I shifted my hands to either side of his head and said urgently, “We’ll go back to the tent and we’ll go quickly.”
“I’m also not making love to my wife the first bloody time on a pallet in a tent with five hundred fucking soldiers camped close by.”
I clenched my teeth in frustration.
“It’s going to be you and me,” he declared.
“But—”
“Just you and me.”
That was very endearing.
However.
“It’s just you and me right now,” I pointed out.
“It’s going to be special.”
My frame froze solid.
Special?
“We will live our lives. We will have children. We will have grandchildren,” he declared. “And through it all, you will always remember the first time we joined. The first time your husband entered your body and made us one. The time I became truly your husband, and you my wife. You will remember it as a time of splendor. Of passion. Of joy. Not with half your mind consumed with how irritating the sand feels in places it will undoubtedly get that it should not be or who might hear and what they might say.”
One could definitely say, in that moment, I did not care what others might say.
Though he had a point about the sand.
“And when will this time of splendor happen, husband?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out,” he muttered irritably.
“We’ve been married for over—”
“I know, Ha-Lah, bloody trust me, I know,” he rumbled, far more irritably.
Which made me, for some reason, giggle.
“This is not funny,” he grumbled.
“It’s sort of funny,” I teased.
“It is not funny at all,” he returned.
I subdued my giggles but could not stop myself from smiling up at him.
I had a place in his heart.
He knew of my powers.
He might not have moved heaven and earth, but he did move five hundred soldiers, and he did this on a direct path to the sea.
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