It must have placed my king-father and queen-mother in a world of pain to set the bond for Xin, knowing the risks, knowing that they were, at worst, choosing to exchange a fine man in return for their daughter.
I drew in a slow breath and started to sing.
Magic welled and eddied around me, even though my voice was barely a rasp against the air. The sea folk were song itself, melody and echo woven into our very being. Song could heal, vibrations coaxing and soothing our spirits and bodies into alignment. It could also kill. There was nothing so dangerous as a screecher when it got summoned into the sea. Internal injuries were the least of what it could do. Entire swathes of the seabed had been cleared the last time some mer had thought it would make for a fine prank, the smaller animals having little to no defense against the power it could unleash with a single wail.
I drew in a breath and gave myself over to the song. Sea foam and high winds. The living velvet of the deep, the water sharp in its cold, tiny shrimp dancing in the veins of warmth that wound through the nourishing dark. Quiet descended and wrapped around me, the tender serenity of water whispering in my blood.
The remnants of chocolate on my tongue helped.
~~*~~*~~
I found Xin in my mind, in song, along a quiet, barely noticeable thread.
Ah. Xin, what have you done? I mourned even as I swarmed around the thread to brush my mind against his. Or was I pouring myself into him the way spring tides rushed up the shore and inland at the full moon?
Silence. But I didn’t need a reply in words.
He pushed a small bubble of thought at me, seafoam delicate.
I retreated, letting it into my mind, and let it expand.
Warmth, relief, and love. So much love. Had I worried about overwhelming him with my emotions? His swept along that small thread, almost visibly stretching the bond. If he could do that when the bond was meant to bind me to him...
Another bubble. Another rush of love and the faintest hint of a chide.
I bubbled the feel of a query and scooted it along the thread. Where was he? Who was with him? How were we going to get me out of the castle and back to the sea?
A flurry came back in response, a mix of images and emotions.
Eldest on horseback, his face, so like my mother’s, set in stern lines. Relief attached to the image, along with fragments of Xin’s expeditions with the crown prince and Xin’s gut-deep certainty that Eldest would do what was necessary.
What would be necessary? He was mine to take revenge on, but Eldest could certainly hold him still for me if necessary. Weight him and his court down with all the force the West Seas had to bear.
Kateri, chattering away at him in that way she had. Gratitude twined with frustration, jagged echoes of the faint pain from biting his tongue to keep from snapping at her. She had brought them the news of my abduction and had placed herself in danger to come help me, but would the land dweller never stop speaking?
My thoughts. His thoughts. My every worry and fear. His anger and fear.
The unrelenting tide of us crashing through his head, slamming the very core of him against a rocky shore, and the girl would not stop spilling out her every fear and worry.
The old woman. Suspicious, so very suspicious in how she melted out of empty shadows just as they arrived inside the city gates, in her knowing precisely who they were and what they were there for. Even more suspect was her refusal to speak of anything of substance, saying only that the princess would be safe enough until they came for her.
I studied the impressions Xin had of the old woman. Hooded, robed, and veiled, she was wrapped up almost completely, the only visible clue the long silver braid snaking out from her hood. Her hands, however, were smooth, with only a slight thickness around the joints. Her voice was low and smoky and she spoke with a casual arrogance, but was that really cause for suspicion? I was where the Fates wanted me, after all. If she meant me harm, she could as well leave me where I was.
Pain throbbed around me, the dull red of an ache muffled through willpower.
I withdrew along the thread, careful to draw up every bit of myself that I could. Too much. Too soon. And too one-sided. If I wasn’t careful, I could so easily overwhelm him and his mind.
Curling in upon myself, I made myself think of the eight-legged brothers. Clever and nimble, they could shrink to fit in crevices no larger than their mouth from a size that could easily engulf me. So must I be the same, coiling so I wouldn’t break anything in my beloved’s mind.
Another small bubble drifted my way.
Love and wonder and good sleep until the tides turned for us.
I stroked the edge of the bubble and forced myself to drift, still singing. They would do what they could, and I would do what I must.
The second day of my captivity in the castle and I was ready to call down the full force of the oceans on everyone in it, innocent or no. Was there even any true innocence here? The witch who bound my powers for him. Those who manhandled me out of the sea and onto land. The men who saw nothing wrong with a king hauling around an unconscious woman. The guards who kept me in this room, lacking even the mercy to allow me an unhurried meal.
Kateri had come and gone with what I thought was the morning meal, uncharacteristically silent. Then again, what did I know of her? I was finding facets of myself I had never thought to encounter. Grace was for those who weren’t bound and rendered impotent. I thought I knew myself, my boundaries and my limits. The worst of this ordeal was finding that I was more of a coward than I knew, incapable of the kind of grace under pressure that I expected from myself.
Metal scraped against metal, a warning.
I crawled back to the lounging chaise from the door and hoisted myself back onto it, squirming until I’d managed to sit up again, and folded my hands in my lap.
Inhaling slowly, I pushed the ever present rage away.
It could be that the guards weren’t allowed to speak to me, not even to acknowledge me when I was standing right there. They were probably told to keep me in my prison with the utmost prejudice, not even letting me take a single step into the hall outside the room I was kept in. He might have ruled that Kateri wasn’t allowed to linger when bringing my meals.
However.
However, I was still a princess of the West Seas and the blood of sirens flowed in my veins. I wasn’t powerless, no matter what he did.
Disdaining the colorful threads, squares of white cloth, and the broken wooden circles he’d left me with, I sang. Leaning against the door of my prison, I poured every bit of magic I had in me out to the guards on the other side of the heavy barrier.
Perhaps they couldn’t hear me with their ears, but I could sing to their hearts and minds. I could will every tiny drop of water that touched me that then touched them to persuade them to soften.
I’d sang until I heard the sounds of his men bowing to him, the metallic scrape and clank warning me to return to where he’d last left me.
I could walk, but I preferred not to when he wasn’t around. Crawling, undignified as it might have been, wasn’t to be snubbed when compared with the pain of walking. Even if I wanted to force myself to dignity, I’d have to save some fortitude for the sort of punishment he liked to inflict.
The door flew open just as I settled myself.
“How is my precious today?” He strode into the room, bringing with him an unmistakable presence and the faintest tang of blood. I smiled at him, bringing to mind the features and voice of another, overlaying his face with the other’s, forcing my eyes to soften, my lips to part as if in invitation.
Bitterness almost choked me. Would that I’d learned the careless joy of flirtation with Xin. Instead, I honed what wiles I had upon this waste of water.
Just as he reached out a hand to my cheek, I turned my head and coughed weakly into my fist. “With your love and care, how could I be anything else but well?”
His eyes narrowed, a cold flicker going as quickly as it came, then that smi
le that never quite reached his eyes unless he was watching me walk toward him. “You’re ill. Is it too cold in this room? Shall I have the maid build the fire up?”
I nearly didn’t hold back my snort of disbelief.
The room was warm, even on the edge of being too hot, since every window was shuttered tightly with panels of wood. If not that it would have broken the illusion of his regard, I suspected he would have had them barred with steel and caged with wire.
I hadn’t seen the sun since my capture. Nor felt the wind. If not for water reassuring me that life still continued outside of my prison, I might have tried to call the storms to me.
“It is nothing.” I coughed again, this time forcing the cough on until it ravaged my breathing and I was gasping for breath.
He took a step back, “You are ill. I will have the maid see to you and find a physician.”
I raised a hand and caught the hem of his tunic, this time giving him the truth. “I need more water, and fresh air. Your witch may have given me legs, but she didn’t take away the basis of what I am, what I came from. If I do not have sea water and air, I will sicken. I need to bathe, to be immersed fully.”
“My precious, I would bring you to the sea, but it is three day’s journey and there are affairs of state I cannot leave at the moment. If you can wait, I will bring you as soon as we are wed, for our honeymoon.”
Three days? That long? Or was it a lie? He’d lied about so much else. But then, there’d been that journey I was unconscious for and how faint I’d been after.
I shook my head, maintaining my weak smile. “The sea isn’t necessary. Perhaps if the windows were opened and I could have access to the air... Or perhaps a bath...”
The look he gave me was hard, his gaze calculating, and I feared that he knew more than he let on, but finally he gave a sharp nod. “I will have the maid prepare you a bath, and perhaps I can have the windows unshuttered. I simply wanted you to be safe while you adjusted to your new home, darling.”
Safe? How droll.
“Wouldn’t I acclimatize better if I could see the world outside of my room? I would dearly love to see more of this country of yours. Perhaps you could show it to me when you have time?” I forced another burst of coughs from my ravaged throat.
He stared at me for a long, long moment before inclining his head slightly. “It would be my pleasure, my darling. After all, you will be queen of this country. It is only fit that I show it to you.”
The hip bath was only about half full, but it was enough. I settled into the bath, curling into myself so as much of my body was covered by water as possible.
Reaching out with my energy, I pushed my personal magic, that of my blood and my heritage, into the water. I could only hope that he was as unaware of mer magic as I thought he was, that he wouldn’t realize his folly and stop me. If even a single droplet of this water made it out of the room, it would carry my magic with it, smoothing the way for my eventual release. Water remembered. Not as well as the earth, but water remembered.
If he kept his promise and allowed me to leave the palace, then I could confirm what water had been murmuring to me. Water told me that my father’s and brothers’ men were coming, by air and by land. Progress was slow as they didn’t move to terrify the innocent populace. Those with winged forms were already in place around the royal city, roosting in nearby forests. Those on foot had to venture forward under cover of night. It chafed, having to resort to the last maidenly trick in the book, that of waiting helplessly for help to arrive.
But there was no better option, and I knew it.
The king was willing to bide his time and wear me down, slowly chipping away at me with pain and deprivation. But all of his gentle words would disappear and the real man would reveal himself should I give him any reason to doubt my devotion. As it was, I didn’t believe for a moment that he was completely taken in by my willing words and soft glances.
There was the sound of footsteps behind me. I froze for an instant before deliberately relaxing myself, sliding further down so I could submerge my head.
“Sweetling.”
I let loose one last wave of magic before sitting up, wiping the water off my face and hooking my wet hair behind my ears. “Yes?”
He stood two paces from me, his eyes fixed upon me. Fear flickered across his expression and I had a moment of glee before realizing he wasn’t looking at me, but at the water.
“If you’re quite done, I can take you riding.”
“You are too kind. I’m sure you must be very busy and I appreciate you taking the time.” I forced the words out, keeping them tender and sweet despite the insult. Who was he to stand before me in my bath and presume to look upon me as flesh upon a carving board?
“Yes.” His tone was abrupt, his eyes glassy before he gestured sharply. “Come out of the bath.” Despite his order, he showed no signs of leaving or moving.
Humiliation and rage flared for an instant before I took my emotions firmly in hand and squelched them. I stood and reached for the towel hung over a nearby chair, biting my lip at the pain arching from my feet, simultaneously loathe to wipe the water from my skin and wanting to shield myself from his gaze.
He reached out a hand, tracing the line of my body from shoulder to breast to hip, his fingers brushing close to my pubic mound. Unlike human women, the sea folk do not have hair in their nether regions. I’d never thought of the difference, but I felt the lack then. Anything to keep his eyes from me.
His lips tightened, anger surfacing in his eyes as he cupped me possessively in his palm and I sent another brief prayer of thanks to the moon, the tides, and the unknown witch.
The king was the sort of man who would believe that bedding a woman was the way toward fuller control of her and I was grateful he couldn’t do what he so clearly wanted to do.
“Do you find me repulsive?” I made my voice small and sad.
He glanced up, his lips twisted. “I merely want to make you fully mine, sweeting. You are so lovely, a very vision that I cannot believe you are mine until I have you firmly in hand.”
I held back a shudder, biting down hard on my tongue until the urge passed.
“The wedding will be soon. I will give the witch until then to make herself useful. If not, she can make herself useful as a vessel for my heirs. Magic is useful after all, is it not?” His last words were silky and knowing, the glance he gave me proof of all my fears.
I thought of Xin, his warm, capable hands, so clever with a spear and magic. I smiled, allowing all the love I felt for him to show in my eyes. “It did allow me to save you.”
The king’s eyes narrowed, then he smiled, as if to concede the point.
“Get dressed. I cannot wait to show you my kingdom.”
Being the vermin he was, he made me walk all the way to the courtyard. Down the hall to the staircase, down the flights of twisting, turning stairs, and then across harsh cobblestone to where the horse was tethered. He kept an arm around me, ostensibly for support, but I felt him shudder with pleasure with every whimper and soft cry of pain I couldn’t hold in.
By the time he tossed me up into the saddle, I was boneless from the pain and could only lean against him, huddling against his chest for support.
Vermin was too good a word for him.
“Perhaps today isn’t the best day. You look rather pale, my love.”
I smiled as I realized I was too weak to even summon up a glare for him, the irony its own pinprick of agony. “No. I did say I wanted to have an outing.”
“Ah, everything has a price,” he crooned.
Everything had a price and I swore again then and there that when I had the tables turned on him, I would make him pay tenfold for every step, every whimper, every iota of suffering I’d been forced to taste at his hand.
He placed me across his lap and the horse shifted under us.
My head spun. Spun harder when he dug his heels into the animal and it shuddered, a long tremor that subsided to pained sh
ivers.
I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t safe for me, it wasn’t really safe for him handling the horse, especially a stallion, that it would place an unfair burden on the horse. Then I saw the way the stable boy cowered, jagged lines torn into his cheeks.
To my shame, I kept my mouth shut and ignored the way the saddle horn dug into my backside. Apparently those spurs could be used on two-legged flesh just as well as it could be used on four-legged.
I drew in deep breaths, breathing out slowly through my mouth, pouring magic into the vapor that escaped my mouth and steamed in the air.
Despair hovered and I pushed it aside.
He shouted at the horse and drove his heels into the horse’s sides again.
The stallion reared and we were off. Across the drawbridge and into the city.
It was a good thing I had an unwanted bounty of recent practice in hiding my thoughts. The royal city was much less than others I had been to and the air wasn’t fresher out under the sky, somehow more oppressive than even my shuttered prison.
Despite the tidy houses, colorful signage, and neatly paved streets, there were very few people out and about their daily lives. Of those people, there were only a handful of women, and they were hard of eye, strong of arm, and more crones than mothers. Not a maiden in the lot.
“Where are the people? Particularly, where are the women?” I wondered aloud, even though I didn’t think he could hear me over the clatter of the horse’s hooves.
“I had my men clear the streets. As for the women, the fortunate ones remain safe at home, tending to the hearth and the children. Those you see have the ill luck to have to work as men do.” He grunted. “Not that those shriveled old hags that would wilt a man’s sword need any worrying over.”
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