Fire and Fantasy: A Limited Edition Collection of Urban and Epic Fantasy

by CK Dawn

  He finally tore his gaze from the ground and looked at me in question. “What do you mean?”

  “When all this is over? Hypothetically, where would you like to end up if you could? Would you want to leave Sea Haven with your magic, or would you want to stay here?”

  “If I had my way, I’d stay here. I kind of wish I never left. If only none of this ever happened.”

  I swallowed hard. It’s not like I wouldn’t have found Tristan washed ashore if Noah had never left. And if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had anyone to help me get back. Maybe it was a blessing that he’d left.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Me? I guess I wish the same thing, that things never got screwed up. But I mean, at the same time, I’m glad I found Tristan and that he told us the stuff he did. It’s nice to know.”

  Noah kicked at the dirt in front of him. “Yeah, I guess. But maybe these things are secret for a reason.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t be,” I stated flatly.

  “But people seem so much happier not knowing. Isn’t it better to let them live in peace?”

  I didn’t have an answer, so instead, I opened my mouth to change the subject. Only, nothing came out. I turned my eyes back to the ground with a frown. Noah surprised me by taking my hand in his and squeezing it.

  “Hey,” he said, tugging on my hand to get me to look at him.

  When I did, his blue eyes turned so serious that I had no choice but to look into them. They were filled with a sense of caring that I’d never read in anyone but my parents. But it wasn’t that kind of caring, either. It was something different, almost like it mattered more. I nearly forgot to breathe, I was so overwhelmed by his stare.

  “It’s all going to be all right. You know that, don’t you?” His expression became more serious as he spoke.

  When I didn’t respond, Noah released my hand but placed his arm around my body, pulling me to his shoulder. I gave into the gesture and rested my head there. I listened to his breathing, felt the rise and fall of his chest. I could sense his heartbeat, and it made me want to cry. I didn’t understand why, and it made me curse myself internally for not even understanding my own emotions. I didn’t have enough energy left to wonder what this was, if it was an act of one friend comforting another or if it was an attempt at romance. It felt like the first, but I couldn’t be sure with Noah. Where I was an open book, I wasn’t sure I had a full read on Noah yet to understand what his actions meant.

  Eventually, Noah released me, and I straightened back up to support myself. The air felt cool on my skin where it’d been resting against Noah.

  “I think we should maybe go back now,” he said.

  I nodded in agreement even though I didn’t want to.

  When we reached the shack, we found Liana and Tristan seated across the table from each other. Liana was attempting to tell him what she could about Harry Potter, and he was asking about the concept of their magic.

  “It’s different than ours,” Liana assured him before noticing our arrival. She glanced up at us in the doorway. “Oh, good. You’re back. I was thinking about taking off. I don’t want anyone to get suspicious of me being away all day, especially if someone’s watching out for me. I think I should at least make an appearance with Christina down at the beach, pretend everything is fine.”

  I nodded in understanding the same time a pang of jealousy hit me. It wasn’t fair that she and Christina got to go swimming all day without me. But I understood.

  Liana stood and crossed the room, scooping up our bag of cleaning supplies and the broom. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning to check on you guys, okay? By then, I expect you to have some sort of plan finalized.”

  The thought filled me with dread. Even in the midst of a crisis, I was still bad at making plans. By now, I’d learned enough about Noah to realize he wasn’t the greatest at making plans, either. Could Tristan maybe have some ideas up his sleeve?

  Thirty-Two

  We talked for a while but continued to get so off topic that eventually we opted for a break. I pulled out some of the carrots Liana had packed while Noah decided to go for a short walk. I wasn’t sure if he intended for me to follow him or not when he shot me a glance before shutting the door behind him, but it also didn’t seem right to leave Tristan here on his own.

  “You want some?” I asked, holding the bag of baby carrots out to Tristan. I stood and walked over to the chair beside him.

  He twisted his face before softening his expression. “I guess I could try one.” He reached into the bag, grabbing the smallest carrot inside, and took a bite. I could tell he wasn’t fond of it, but he grabbed another anyway, probably because he was that hungry.

  “Tristan, can I ask you something?” I asked when I sat.

  He looked my way with soft eyes. Looking into his eyes was dangerous. Their blue-green color took me away to another planet, leaving me at a loss for words. I still wasn’t sure if the swirling colors in them were some sort of trait all his people had or if I was just imagining it. Something about them left me feeling comforted. They were so much like the ocean that I thought I might be able to dive into them.

  “You can ask me anything,” he said in a soft, melodic voice. That, too, swept me away as if I could hear the sounds of the ocean behind his words.

  I didn’t even know where to start with the questions. I wanted to know more about the secrets Sea Haven kept, but I also was curious about his people and his way of life. Heck, I was curious about him.

  “Why would your people help us?” I asked curiously, settling on a question I’d been wondering for a while.

  “I told you,” he said, straightening up in his chair and popping another carrot in his mouth. “Insurance.”

  “I know, but you wouldn’t be helping us if you didn’t think we could do anything for you, now or in the future. What do we possibly have to offer to your people?”

  He shrugged. “Knowledge. Protection.”

  I tilted my head and rested my elbows on the table. It wasn’t as stable as I expected, and it wobbled from one leg to the other. “Protection? I thought you were the ones offering that to us by keeping the world from discovering us and using us for lab rats.”

  Tristan swallowed his carrot and leaned his elbows on the table, too. He was so close now that I could feel his breath cross my arm. “Yes. By protecting you, we protect ourselves.”

  My face must have read confusion.

  “Imagine what would happen if people found out you were a sub-species of our kind. Your DNA is undeniable proof that we exist—or have existed. They’d come looking for us. There aren’t many of us left as it is. We don’t need humans hunting us down. We don’t want to be lab rats, either.”

  I raised a teasing brow. “So you don’t know what carrots are, but you know what a lab rat is?”

  His lips twisted into a sly smile. “That’s another thing about protecting you and staying in contact. You teach us things about your world, the human world. And I knew what a carrot was. I’ve just never tried one before.”

  “Who are you in contact with, though? If the people of Sea Haven don’t know about you, who are you learning from?”

  He shrugged. I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t think it was a big deal or if he didn’t entirely know the answer. “Our leaders talk with your leaders from time to time.”

  “Why keep it from everyone else, though?”

  “We like our privacy. When our societies connected after years apart, it was first kept a secret because your people were still connected with the outside world, and we didn’t want the secret getting out. When we cast the spell over your town—under the agreement with your council—the secrets stayed secret because no one wanted your people trying to leave in search of us. It was better to convince people to stay because it’s a nice place, not because they had to.”

  “That’s not fair, though!” I practically shouted. I lowered my voice. I knew it wasn’t Tristan’s fault. He wasn’t even
around when all this happened. Or was he…? I was about to chew him out for how unfair his people were being to us to make us think we were staying due to our own free will, but suddenly, another question surfaced. I asked it slowly. “How old are you?”

  That sly smile returned, and he leaned in even closer, speaking quietly. “You think that because I have magic that I could be hundreds of years old and you wouldn’t even know it?”

  Okay. There was no denying it now. I was an open book. With Noah, it was frustrating that he could read me so well. With a stranger like Tristan, it was almost a turn-on, like he’d always be able to read me and give me exactly what I needed when I needed it.

  “Yes,” I managed to squeak out.

  Tristan gave a laugh, killing the electricity I thought I sensed growing between us. “No, Bree.”

  There he went saying my name again. It sounded like music.

  “We age the same way your people do, the same way humans do, for the most part. We reach maturity a little later in life and live to be about 100 on average.”

  I nodded slowly. “So that would make you…”

  “Twenty-four,” he finished for me.

  “Twenty-four,” I repeated, mulling the number over in my head. That made him six years older than me, but if he didn’t mature as soon…

  The door to the shack cracked open, and Noah walked back in. He glanced between the two of us. We weren’t as close as we were before, but I could still feel Tristan’s breath cross my skin.

  “Carrots?” I asked, holding them out to Noah.

  He gave in and accepted.

  Thirty-Three

  It felt like there was no getting answers out of Tristan when Noah was nearby. Neither of them wanted to talk much. Maybe it was because they were still strangers. Noah seemed like he didn’t exactly trust Tristan yet, and I personally thought he was acting irrationally by being silent around him. One of them intimidated the other. I just wasn’t sure which way it went. Logic told me Tristan should be the intimidating one, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

  By the end of the day, it seemed like we’d already spent days in that cabin, but at the same time, nightfall came too soon.

  Noah left the shelter again, presumably to go on another walk. I didn’t think he liked the small, dark space. It probably reminded him too much of his tiny apartment in the city. That was the best guess I had for why he escaped again.

  Once he left, I decided it was time to get some things together for bed. I unrolled the sleeping bag Liana had leant me, and Tristan crossed the room to grab his blanket.

  “Another night of sleeping on the floor,” I complained. I wasn’t sure how much longer my back could take this. At least Liana’s room had carpeting—a little padding. Here, it was all flat, hard boards.

  “At least we have somewhere to stay,” Tristan said.

  Of course he’d look at the bright side. I really needed to learn how to do that.

  I took a deep breath and kicked my shoes off. “You’re right. I guess this isn’t the worst place I could be staying tonight.”

  Tristan nodded and began unlacing his own shoes. “Are you supposed to take these off?”

  I had to hold in my laugh. “When you sleep, yeah. Where’d you get those?”

  He glanced between me and the shoes. They were white and blue tennis shoes that didn’t look like they’d seen much wear—if any. “They gave them to me. Same with the clothes. I have to admit, it’s a lot to get used to.”

  “The shoes, or the clothes?” I slipped my legs under my sleeping bag. The jeans I wore were starting to get uncomfortable. I had a pair of yoga pants in my backpack, but I wasn’t about to change in front of Tristan.

  “Both?” He said it like it was a question. “The shoes were weird at first, but so were the legs.”

  I nodded. I could only imagine.

  Tristan twisted the blanket around himself as if he were a taco and then propped his head up on his elbow and faced me. I turned toward him and did the same. Our blankets were only inches apart.

  “I have a question for you,” Tristan said, catching me off guard.

  I tried not to let my surprise show. If anyone had questions to ask, I should be asking him, prodding him for absolutely everything he knew about us, what his life was like growing up, and more. I’d ask him about all that after his question, I told myself.

  “How do the stories go here in Sea Haven?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your history. What do the stories say about how your people came here? I’m curious if they tell them the same way we do.”

  I resituated myself to get comfortable. I knew this story by heart. My mom used to tell it to me every night as a bedtime story. Everyone in Sea Haven knew this one.

  “It started hundreds of years ago when two groups of merpeople engaged in a war,” I said, repeating the same thing my mother used to say when she’d tuck me into bed at night. “It started when a young girl named Seraphina and a boy named Truan fell in love. They were from different worlds, two different societies. It wouldn’t have been dangerous had they not decided to have a baby together. Seraphina’s people believed they had the right to the child because she was the mother, the caregiver. But Truan’s people believed they had the same rights since he was the father. All they wanted was to live in peace together, but their people—particularly their parents—would not let the issue go. The two ran off together with their child, but the rivalry continued.”

  I tried to read Tristan’s expression to see what he thought of the story, but it remained blank. I continued. “Seraphina’s family blamed Truan’s for her disappearance while Truan’s people blamed Seraphina’s. The fighting continued for so long that eventually they forgot what they were fighting about. Seraphina’s people moved to land in search of new resources to win the war. The war went on so long that those who’d made it to shore eventually settled there. Hello, Sea Haven.” I gestured around me like the old dusty floorboards helped explain the settlement.

  “It went on so long that one generation died while another grew to take their place,” I told him. “It wasn’t long until they met humans, many of whom integrated into their society. When Seraphina’s people—our people—discovered they could no longer return to the deep ocean, and when nobody came for them, they presumed they had won the war against Truan’s people. By now, several generations had passed, and most people didn’t know what they were fighting about anymore. But they did know it was over.”

  I sighed heavily. “I guess they were wrong. About defeating Truan’s people, I mean. I’m glad we’re not still fighting a generations-old battle.” I blinked several times and glanced down at a thread escaping from my sleeping bag. When I looked back up, Tristan’s face remained expressionless. “What about you? How do they tell the story where you come from?”

  He shrugged. “That’s pretty much it. Of course, we believe our people were in the right.”

  “Hey,” I defended. “I don’t think there’s a right and wrong here. If anything, they should have compromised, arranged visitations or something.”

  Finally, an expression hit his face. This time, it was a look of confusion. “Visitation?”

  “Yeah, you know… One parent gets the kid one weekend, the other gets him the next…”

  “That doesn’t happen where I come from,” he said quietly.

  It didn’t happen often in Sea Haven, either. Our divorce rates weren’t exactly high.

  “So, why’d your people stop fighting?” I asked.

  “Same reason yours did. They stopped coming for us.”

  Laughter erupted from my chest. Realizing how ridiculous I must have sounded, I quickly quieted. “Sorry. I just think it’s funny that they stopped fighting just because…I guess everyone got so worn out after so long.”

  “I guess.” He shifted to lie on his back, his eyes turned up toward the ceiling. I didn’t dare do that for fear of dust particles landing in my eyes. “If you don’t have any other qu
estions for me—”

  “Oh, I have plenty.”

  “You do?” he asked curiously, propping himself up once again, this time with an amused smile playing at his lips.

  “Your name… How come it’s so…normal?”

  His brows shot up. “Normal? You mean normal for you?”

  I nodded. “I would have thought you’d have some more…I don’t know…foreign name.”

  “I told you before. My people aren’t completely cut off from the rest of the world. We picked up on many of your customs throughout the years, and it’s not just Sea Haven we’re in contact with.”

  “It’s not?” For some reason, I had assumed from his earlier stories that we were his people’s line to the outside world. “I thought you wanted your privacy. Isn’t that why you put us under this curse? Uh, I mean spell?” Great job, Bree, I scolded myself for letting the word slip. When had I started to think of it as a curse?

  Tristan didn’t show any signs of offense at the word. “Yes, but our other points of contact know nothing of our origins. We have trained professionals who travel ashore. Explorers, if you will. They help gather knowledge about the modern world and bring that back to our people.”

  “What kind of knowledge? It’s not like you can use technology under water.”

  “No. It’s more about curiosity.”

  “Why don’t you just all leave the water and integrate yourselves into human society if you’re so intrigued by it?”

  Tristan pulled away from me just enough to suggest I’d hit a nerve. “You have a pull to the ocean, yes?”

  I hadn’t realized how much until recently. I nodded.

  “And you’re part human. Imagine your need to be near the ocean, only much, much stronger.”

  I didn’t know if I could do that. I could have sworn my need to be near the water was as strong as it got. I guess not.

  “It’s our home,” Tristan continued. “It’s where we belong.”