“Was he?”
“Yes. There are many drawings and painting of him, but oddly, very few of his father. As a man, I mean. The ones showing Omos as a man were…damaged.”
“Damaged?”
“Yes, Intana apparently…”
His words failed, and I smiled teeth at him. Yes, Intana apparently. No doubt my son had done his best to destroy everything that reminded him of me, though I wondered that he’d left the dragon effigies and portraiture intact.
“Intana, it is said, left his father’s dragon images intact to remind him of the state he wished to attain. Or surmount,” the Brellin said, the last addition very soft.
“No doubt,” I muttered and took another bite of stew. Odd how he’d answered my unspoken thoughts. I wondered if the power I sensed in him was some form of sight. I found this intriguing, but then he ruined it spilling the usual gullible mortal shit.
“It is said he was born of a human woman, and that he was one of a thousand eggs, each the size of a child’s head, that spilled from her womb.”
“A thousand eggs, each the size of a child’s head? Ridiculous.” More like thirty-seven small eggs, like those a sea turtle might make, and Intana’s shell the most incredible mix of opalescent pink, silver and blue. After his mother had expelled the clutch from her womb, I’d laid the eggs in a bath of my power and watched them swell to the size of newborn infants, and then chosen Intana, just Intana, to live. The rest had all been unworthy, their colour brown, normal, mortal. A waste.
“Yes, it seems a bit much, a thousand eggs,” the Brellin agreed. “I imagine this bloated woman with a knobbly stomach all but smothering her.”
“I’m eating here!”
“Sorry.” He offered a sheepish grin that was just too adorable. I wanted to squeeze him senseless, but he continued speaking before I did. “I have always wondered what Omos looked like as man. I’ve travelled around half the world, talking to people of different cultures, and many have legends of him, both in his dragon shape and his man shape. I’ve been wondering if you knew any.”
He lifted a spoonful of stew to his mouth, and I watched, feeling my shaft twitch because of the way his lips closed around the spoon. Damn. Boy was just too beautiful to grow up. I definitely had to pulverise him in my teeth.
“I don’t know any legends about Omos,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me one? What does this Omos look like in his man shape? Supposedly.”
He put his spoon down and looked up at me. His eyes were placid, but I knew he hid purpose behind them. This entire conversation had been loaded with veiled intention, but I was determined to discover what lay behind his inscrutable tranquility.
“Supposedly, he comes into villages in a very mortal guise,” he said. “With none of the natural finery his son displayed. None of that bright silver, the blue fire, the cream pink skin.”
“Not the silver hair?”
“No. Not that either. You knew of the silver hair?”
“Yes. I knew of that.” I remembered to eat and lifted up a spoonful of stew, but my gaze continued to spar with his. Common brown irises. They could have been taken for the brown of any mortal, but there were depths to them, something both distant and yet indelibly warm. On first inspection, they had seemed the same eyes as his cousin’s, but the ephemeral power hinting beneath the meek façade, and those incredible eyelashes, set him off from ordinary.
“Tell me more about this Omos, then,” I prodded.
He looked down and played his crust inside the bowl of stew, and I found myself fascinated by his fingers suddenly. They were strangely unlike his feet, not soft and perfectly groomed, as would be found on some well-treated pet of the people, but roughened with work, and with nails kept very short. They were clean at least. They looked capable.
Damn it. I was getting a stiff again. What was he saying?
“Some legends have him as a tall, blue-eyed, pale-skinned man with very black hair. Sometimes his hair isn’t mortal, but takes on a sheen, like that of diamond salt glittering in the blackest coal. But those are rare stories.”
I tried to focus my mind, but his fingers…I wanted them on my shaft. Being a sailor, he’d have a grip to him, and a damn strong one.
Creation. My new trousers had become too tight.
“I wonder why his hair does that?” I said, shifting position slightly to ease my discomfort.
“Because, as legends would have it, few people survive to tell of it, because when anyone sees that hair, a disaster follows.”
I laughed. I hadn’t been aware of this. Honestly. I’d been ignorant that part of my guise of mortality lapsed when I waxed furious.
“I should love to see his hair this way,” the mortal murmured, and my mirth banked at once. “For surely his skin would change as well. And what would a black ether dragon have for skin? Would it all turn black and starry? Or would he keep some of that pale colouration he pretended and merely play divine fire up and down his length?”
Damn. My shaft truly hurt, and shifting positions wouldn’t fix it this time. What was this mortal, this too young captain that had made Vaal love him?
A growl started in me, rumbling deep inside, but before it broadened into a range that human ears could distinguish, he stood and walked with his bowl and spoon to the washing area.
The growl banked. I stared at his back, at his bottom, at his ugly sandals on his softer-than-hands feet, and I wanted. I wanted a man. Most of them before this, I’d taken because of inconvenience: no women handy. Some I’d raped to make a point. But him. I just wanted him.
It had to be because Vaal had claimed him. Somewhere on that sleek body lay Vaal’s personal brand. I wondered where. I’d rip it off his flesh when I finally took him.
“We’re headed north,” he said, now washing his bowl in a bucket. He laid the dish on a drying rack and turned to me. “I have a chart showing settlements on what should have been this coastline, but I fear we may have a voyage ahead of us before we come across any that survived. Karakut Gulf is no more. The peninsula has slid down the ocean shelf, and there will be no fishing until we find a bank that endured the cataclysm. I have fewer comforts to offer a guest than normal, and so I apologize.”
And now he acted princely. Such a mesh of quality and lowliness in this one. “I’d like to hear how you survived that big wave,” I said.
“We rode over the top. There was no choice.” He leant his bottom on the counter and set his palms there as well. What a position, the entire front unprotected. I thought of wicked things.
“Didn’t your Vaal help you?”
He smiled, and it wasn’t about humour. If anything, he reminded me just then of his divine master, because that was a shark’s smile.
Again I had discovered a quality in him I hadn’t expected. He’d seemed so very gentle seconds earlier. Now he evoked the feel of a merciless predator. At last he’d shown the true nature of his teeth.
“Vaal didn’t help. I wanted up that wave, and so up I took my ship. It was a ride well worth attempting.” He laughed at my surprised expression.
Vaal hadn’t helped him? I couldn’t believe it.
“Not even a little help?” I asked.
He gave me a withering look, came off the counter, and stalked over to the hatch.
“What? How big was the wave exactly?” Even after Valerys’s account of it, I didn’t think it could have been much of a threat, not if he’d taken his ship over it without assistance.
He didn’t answer, just went up on deck, leaving behind a silent condemnation of my scepticism.
Damn. The way he moved. All male. Quiet strength. If he was Vaal’s boy, he hadn’t been chosen for his looks alone.
“I hate men,” I said, but my shaft dictated otherwise about him. Everything about this Haru fascinated me. I needed a cure, and the only one to be had was his delectable cousin, Valerys, but he’d said something to chase her off.
I admit to suffering mental sluggishness at that moment, but eventually i
t dawned on me, as I sat there pondering our short conversation, that Haru, Prince of Brellin, had told Valerys I was Omos.
“Hole of Vaal’s bitch!” I cried. I lurched off the bench to climb into the light and confront my host.
Chapter Three
He’d gone aft next to the wheel. The ship had gotten underway while I’d been below, and the bow bucked up and down in the waves.
Ship roll never bothered my balance, and I strode along the deck toward him, thinking I’d shake him a bit, eat anyone who tried to protect him, and then show him Vaal’s insignificance compared to me. The stupid thing was, the closer I came, the less inclined I felt toward the violent approach. I stopped ten paces off to consider why.
I wanted him. Yes, I wanted him, but not forced. I wanted to sneak him out from beneath Vaal’s snout, the way Vaal had poached my son so many centuries ago. I wanted the boy willing. That would be the perfect coup.
So. How to go about it? He knew who I was. He knew. And we sailed on a ship in Vaal’s territory, the entire fucking ocean. Something of a dilemma. If Vaal’s boy knew I was here, then so did Vaal.
Ah, damn! The shark that had awakened me! Most definitely Vaal knew I was on this ship and that I contemplated his paramour with less than admirable intentions.
Clearly, I had damaged my mind when I’d set off the charge that had decimated a peninsula. I was such an idiot. Planning the seduction of Vaal’s pet in a weakened state and on his territory. Stupid. Stupid. Stup—
“Here, you!” the paramour called to me. “Where’s your kit? Bring it up. I’ll show you your bunk.”
I blinked in surprise. “It’s not down in the forecastle?”
“Hell, no. You think I’ll let you eat my crew? Go and get your kit.”
Well. That settled all doubt in my mind. He knew exactly my true nature.
I stared at him a moment, but he paid me no further attention, and so I backed off a few steps, then turned about and returned to the forecastle. Valerys worked in the galley section chopping vegetables when I arrived, but she didn’t speak or look at me. The chopping knife quickened in pace, produced successively louder thwacking noises on the board. A piece of tuber flew off the counter and rolled along the deck. I picked up my satchel, my too bright boots, and retreated back above.
“Creation blasted mortal females,” I muttered. The only thing good about them, other than the fucking, was that they died. Immortal women were a nuisance for being the opposite—about the not dying, I mean. They could fuck your mind into oblivion, but they’d hang onto you after and drag your ass along for eternity trying to create a meaningful relationship. I knew this because I was still running from such a female.
Vaal’s boy waited next to a different hatch this time. He ducked below the moment he saw me coming, and I followed him into the gloom of the captain’s cabin. There were four bunks, but I smelled only two permanent occupants, him and the woman.
“You sleep with your cousin?”
“She’s there, in that bunk,” he said, pointing to the lower one on the starboard side. “I’m here.” He kicked the lower bunk on the port side. “If you don’t like the top bunk, I’ll switch.”
“I’ll take the top.” I shoved my kit up there. He took it back down at once.
“No, here. Hang it on this peg, or it’ll come off the bunk the first time you stretch your legs.”
He set the satchel on the peg and looked up at me. I suffered a prickle of shock to see his brown eyes so very alert, not passive at all. The new air imparted an older look to his features, stole years from youth. I’d guessed him to be a young man under twenty. But now… What to believe? The lines of his face? Or this ambience of maturity?
“What are you calling yourself these days?” he asked.
“Attrin.”
“Not very Verdant.”
“I left Verdant. It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you know women have been using your naming style instead of men?”
Did he purposely goad me? I stepped in closer, enough to confer my heat. Most of the time when I did this to a mortal, especially a mortal man, the victim became confused and backed off at once, but this one only played his gaze along my shoulders and torso, then pinned my eyes again waiting for an answer. Cheeky little bastard.
“I forbade parents to use my naming style for their sons. I didn’t much care when they started using it for daughters, so long as they understood I had access to any one of them if they did.”
He grinned and slipped around me, but not because I’d intimidated him. He may have known with whom he dealt, but he really didn’t comprehend what this entailed. I was going to enjoy educating him properly.
“Why did you leave Verdant?” he asked. His arm brushed mine as he moved. I endured another prickle of shock, and acquired a determination to have him touch me again. Fuck Vaal. I would get his boy, come what may.
“Woman trouble,” I answered. He laughed, and the sound made the cabin grow warmer.
He seated himself at a desk, which faced the portholes to the rear of the ship. With his torso twisted toward me, he laid a bare arm over the chair back, and I thought of how the length of brown skin would feel, wrapped around my waist.
“Did your son have anything to do with this woman trouble?” he asked.
“He did. Some.” I set the purple boots down and shoved them under his bunk.
“If you don’t like those, I’ll see if I can find some spare sandals.”
“Don’t bother if they turn out to be a pair of disasters like yours.”
He grinned and wriggled his toes. “They’re comfortable. When I’m on board, I like my comfort.”
“And when you’re not, you like gaudy footwear that could blind a man?”
He laughed again. “Yes, perhaps.”
“Why are your feet better groomed than your hands?”
“My hands work harder.”
I sneered in disbelief. He shrugged.
“All right. I like to feel the soft leather of my boots when I wear them, without any insensitive calluses hindering me.”
“You’re a foot pervert.”
“Yes, perhaps,” he repeated, appearing not the least upset over the accusation.
I sat on his bunk, smelled his scent come up off the covers. Damn. Damn! I should have found the odour irritating; instead I wanted to shove my face in his bedding. “Why did you let me board ship if you knew who I was?”
“I need your help.”
That surprised me. “My help? To do what? Ask your cold fuck of a lover, Vaal, for help.”
He rested his chin on the forearm across the chair back. “Is there some particular reason for your intense dislike of Vaal, other than that he balled your son on the day of Intana’s nuptials to Blessed Land’s daughter?”
“Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“Not particularly.”
Well, no. He wouldn’t think so, the little tart.
“It’s a good enough reason,” I asserted, but by the way he regarded me without comment, I knew he didn’t believe it to be my only reason. So quiet his manner, but I felt as if his gaze bored into my soul. I began to growl again, the rumble rising from more than my human avatar.
“There,” he murmured, cutting into my fury. “The beautiful hair. It’s taken on the sparkle of starlight.”
I stared at him, just stared, knowing he’d provoked me, knowing he’d done it to see this lapse in control. Had I been stronger, I might have continued on and destroyed him and his ship, but I hadn’t the energy to spare.
Perhaps, eating him and his crew quickly, I could fly to safety before Vaal came at me?
But I didn’t want to take the risk, not yet. And besides, this boy truly intrigued me.
“What are you to Vaal?” I said.
“Exactly what you think. His lover.” He straightened in the chair, turned and withdrew a logbook from a cabinet built onto his desk. He opened a bottle of ink, dipped a nib in.
“He’l
l eat you. Do you know that? One day, he’ll just eat you. He’s done it to men before you. More than you could count.”
He smiled at the logbook and scratched a first symbol. “Ah. So kind of you to warn me. No doubt, being such a morally higher being compared to Vaal, you’ve never done the same to any mortals you have loved.”
Damn him. “What are you writing in there?”
“That I’ve met you and that we are dealing.” Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
“Dealing?”
“Making terms, coming to an agreement.”
“I know that! About what?”
“About if you will help me.”
Oh, right. “Help you do what?”
“Find your son, Omos. Find your son.”
I came up off the bunk too quickly and cracked my head on the one above. I slumped down, dizzy with pain. “Aiee! Damn it!”
Fuck. I was practically mortal, I could be hurt so easily.
He set his quill down and came over to place a palm on my crown. The pain at once became a memory. I looked up at him, certain he was a sorcerer, and a potent one.
“What do you want with my son?” I asked. His hand fell away, and I almost grabbed his wrist, but jerked my hand back at the last second. His touch pleased me. I wanted more of it, but I didn’t trust him.
“One hundred and eleven years ago, he spurned the island of Verdant and was not seen again,” he said. “There were…signs of him, but three years ago, the signs vanished. I’ve taken this journey to discover his whereabouts.”
“Why should you care?”
He retreated to the chair and sat again. “A man of Brellin helped to set him free. Let a man of Brellin be certain of his well-being.”
“I still don’t see why you should care.”
“It’s a mystery, and I would solve it. That is all.”
I didn’t think so. “Is Vaal sniffing after his ass again?”
I thought he’d frown, show irritation, throw a tantrum, but instead he laughed. “Vaal would also like to be certain of his well-being,” he said. “Don’t you feel the same?”
Loved Him to Death: Omos of the Ether Page 3