It made sense. The pain was probably a physical manifestation of the guilt I felt at kissing someone else even if it was someone I didn’t really want to kiss.
“You are probably right,” I sighed. “It’s not like it’s going to happen again anyway.”
Astrid looked at me as though I was crazy. “Why not? The guy is a dish, and you would go together perfectly. You always wanted an adventure and less than a day after meeting him, look where you are!”
“Hmmm,” I replied without much conviction. Yeah, I was on an adventure, but that didn’t mean I had to date the guy who’d brought me on it.
At the breakfast table, Hayden had a completely different take on the events of the previous night.
In hushed tones, he told me that Josh wasn’t to be trusted at all.
“The pain thing is weird. I wonder if he’s trying to muscle in, knowing that you are a new queen. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s trying to take over in Trifork. Those people from Schnee are very wily and enjoy their power. He might be planning to kill you.”
I snorted, sending orange juice flying out of my nose. He was beginning to sound like Anthony with his theories of other kingdoms wanting to take over and Trifork currently being in a weak position without a true monarch yet. After quickly mopping up the juice, I turned back to Hayden.
“You liked him two days ago,” I pointed out. As I looked over to the other side of the table, I watched him flirting shamelessly with Astrid who was lapping up all the attention. “You need to stop with this jealousy. The guy is a flirt. Astrid isn’t going to leave you for him.”
“I never said she would,” Hayden answered gruffly, and the conversation ended.
I’d always thought an adventure would be...well, more adventurous, but after the hours and hours of monotony of sailing through calm seas, I had to admit I was getting bored. Bored and fractious. Every second we spent at sea was a second longer that my mother and grandfather and all the others had to wait for help. Even if we found these beauty sirens, there was no telling if they could or would help us. Every time I had a conversation with anyone, Seth always seemed to be there, hiding behind a column or chair or whatever he could find. Nothing was private anymore.
In the end, I decided to head up to the bridge to speak to the captain. He was one of my finest naval officers, after all, and so it was about time I introduced myself to him. My father knew the names of every person who worked for him, both in the palace and on his ships. I, on the other hand, barely remembered my own name when I woke up each day. Remembering names and faces was hardly my strong suit. It was something I had to work on.
The captain and first officer both bowed to me as I entered the bridge. I was surprised to find that the captain was a woman, a young woman at that.
“We heard we had a special guest on board, Your Highness,” the captain said, following up the bow with a salute. “I hope you are finding everything to your satisfaction.”
“Very much so, Captain..?”
“Captain Howell.”
She was so young to be a captain, only twenty-eight or nine with a fresh face free of make-up and her auburn hair tied neatly behind her. Her captain’s hat was laid to the side of the ship’s steering wheel.
“Captain Howell, I appreciate you doing this for me.” I walked to the windows and looked down at the deck to see if I could spot Seth. I didn’t want him filming me or even seeing where I was and passing the information back to Josh. The deck was empty, so the pair of them must have been indoors or to the rear of the ship. “I was wondering how much longer it will be until we get to the islands.”
Captain Howell looked a little nervous upon hearing my question. “I’ve sifted through every map I have on board, and those islands aren’t on any of them. At the moment, I’m following this...”
She pointed to a crumpled piece of paper with a badly hand- drawn map on it.
“Let me guess. Joshua gave this to you?”
The captain nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am. I was told by Mr. Harrington-Blythe that I was to follow these instructions, but I had the feeling he wasn’t particularly happy about it. Do you have another route for me to follow?”
I looked back at the map. It was ridiculously simple with no coordinates on it, just some squiggly lines and a couple of place names. I sighed wondering what I’d gotten us all into. Either Josh was indeed the simpleton I took him for, and these islands were a figment of his overactive imagination, or he was, as Hayden suspected, dangerous and had brought us out here for his own agenda. My father would have come up with a plan straight away and would have stuck to it with a strong conviction. I wasn’t sure what we should do. Carry on with this trip which would probably turn into a wild goose chase and a font of bad publicity if people actually began to die while their queen was out at sea, or turn and head home.
Weighing up the options, neither seemed like a good prospect. But by going home now, we would definitely have nothing to show for this trip. At least, if we kept on going, there was the possibility of finding help.
“If the map is accurate, judging by the places on it that you know to exist, how long do you think it will take?”
Captain Howell looked back at the map and sucked in a breath between her teeth. “It’s hard to say, but maybe this afternoon?”
She didn’t sound so sure, but then how could I blame her. The map looked like a kid had drawn it.
“Let’s keep going on this course until this afternoon and reassess then. Thank you for everything you are doing, Captain. It is very much appreciated.”
I spent the rest of the day trying to hide from Josh. I was still confused by what had happened the night before and wasn’t sure whether Astrid was right, and my pain had been due to emotional pain or if Hayden was right, and Josh was out to kill me.
Ok, Perhaps Hayden’s theory was a tad overdramatic, but I hadn’t felt the pain since Josh kissed me. I was still feeling the high I felt when Ari was around.
I was doing a good job of not seeing Josh by hiding in my bunk and reading a book when Hayden knocked on my door and then opened it without giving me a chance to answer.
“Hey! Where are your manners? I could have been changing!”
“I’m sure you’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before. You’ve got to help me.”
“You are so rude! Honestly, I could have you beheaded for less.” I stepped down from my bunk, leaving the book on the pillow.
“Please come and talk to Josh. He’s driving me crazy. This is supposed to be my honeymoon, and I’ve spent most of it watching Astrid staring at him all googly-eyed over his ridiculous stories.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Give your wife some credit, will you? I’m sure she wasn’t googly-eyed as you put it. She’s probably just being polite.”
Hayden scoffed as I continued. “But, you are right. This is your honeymoon, and we’ve hijacked it. Where are they? I’ll take Josh for a walk around the decks and ask the kitchen to send our dinner up to the front deck later so you and Astrid can dine alone.”
“Bow.”
I looked at him through screwed up eyes. “You bow to me. I’m the one who is royal.”
He was just about to call me an idiot when I broke out into a grin. “I know the front of a ship is called a bow. Come on, let’s go. You have some honeymooning to do.”
“Too right, I do,” he replied, following me out of my cabin.
Lured
When I found Josh, he wasn’t with Astrid at all. I found him standing alone, gazing off into the distance at the bow of the ship. I looked out at the endless sea stretching out for miles ahead of us. There was no sign of land in any direction. Captain Howell said we’d see the islands by the afternoon, but the sky was already beginning to lose color, and there was no sign of them.
“I’ve asked the chef to have our dinner brought up here,” I said, sidling in next to Josh.
He didn’t look to me. Instead, he kept his eyes on the horizon.
“Nice...ro
mantic.”
“No, not romantic, just nice.” I turned so my back was to the rail and glanced around the deck for the telltale red light that showed that Seth’s camera was filming. Thankfully, he was nowhere to be seen. “About last night,, the kiss…I’m sorry, but it shouldn’t have happened. I don’t know what came over me.”
“You couldn’t resist my charm.” He turned to me and wiggled his eyebrows. I resisted the urge to throw up over the side.
I shook my head. “Nope. I think it was the alcohol I consumed at dinner.”
That was a lie, and we both knew it. I’d only had a small glass of wine. The truth was, I didn’t know what had come over me.
“You can tell yourself that you aren’t attracted to me all you like, but that doesn’t make it so.”
I pulled on his sleeve so he had to turn to look at me. “The kiss we shared made me physically sick. Please get over yourself.”
The corners of his mouth turned up at the edges. “Say what you like, Queenie, but no one has managed to escape the charms of Josh Davenport. By the end of this trip, you’ll be begging me to kiss you again.”
I scrunched my nose up at him. “You must have a strong neck to carry that big head of yours around.”
“Just wait and see.” He turned back and returned his gaze to where it had been before. I followed his line of sight to the horizon.
“I thought we’d be at the islands by now,” I commented. “The captain seemed to think we’d be there before nightfall, going by your sketch.”
“That was no sketch. I gave her a carefully plotted out map using every bit of knowledge I had about those islands.”
I thought back to the sketch I’d seen. It certainly didn’t look like it was carefully plotted out. Once again, I began to wonder if I was following the directions of a man full of bullshit. So maybe he was a famous adventurer on TV. It didn’t mean any of it was real. The bit of TV I knew about was always carefully orchestrated in the edits afterward. For all I knew, Josh spent all his time in front of a green screen and never left the studio.
“Tell me about Schnee. What made you leave?”
The one thing I was pretty confident about him not lying about was his home kingdom. He certainly wasn’t from Trifork and had the look about him of a person from Schnee. He had the paleness that I associated with people from there.
“Magic,” he replied simply and then stopped. It was unusual for him to not have a lot to say on a subject which made me all the more intrigued.
“What about it?”
Josh closed his eyes and sighed as though this was a topic he really didn’t want to talk about. Eventually, he did begin to tell me, although he spoke slowly as though getting the words out was difficult. “Everyone in Schnee is magic, or at least most of the population is. Most people have what you’d think as general magic. They point to objects and make them move, or they conjure things out of mid-air. The royals are the most powerful, but even the lowliest can perform some kind of magic if they have to.”
I thought back to what I knew of Josh. Both he and Hayden had told me that he held no real magic power of his own.
“But you can’t?”
His eyes misted over, and I began to wonder if I’d pushed the guy too far. This was the first bit of real emotion I’d ever seen from him. Up until now, everything about him had seemed fake.
“I’ve gotta go...do something. I’ll be back for dinner.”
He turned away from me and quickly headed for the door inside. I’d promised Hayden that we’d leave him and Astrid alone, but I had a feeling Josh would go somewhere to be alone. How strange that talk of magic would affect him so. Apparently, he talked about it all the time on his show. It was that which had made him famous.
As I was unable, or at least, unwilling to join Hayden and Astrid, and I didn’t fancy going back to my room, I decided to stay outside and enjoy the early evening by myself. The last embers of sunshine turned the sky a dusky pink and the sea an endless expanse of deep mauve, colored by the dying orb of the sun and hiding its mysteries beneath.
This...all of this was the reason I’d wanted adventure. I wanted to feel the thrill of the wind in my hair as we flew through the waves at high speed, but I wasn’t enjoying it. We should have hit land by now, and there was no hint of it on the horizon. Josh was upset with me, Hayden didn’t want me around, not that I could blame him, and I had no desire to speak to the ever elusive Seth who seemed happiest hiding out and not talking to anyone. Even the bonding feeling—the weird happiness that had plagued me the entire journey was finally beginning to seep away. Maybe I was finally far enough away from Havfrue and, therefore, Ari to not feel him anymore. I let my mind wander to him as it frequently did, before trying to push him out of my mind. There was no point getting myself all miserable again.
A sound behind me made me turn, but it just turned out to be the kitchen staff bringing out a small table and a couple of chairs. They followed it up with a meal of salmon and potatoes with some kind of white sauce. I deliberated going to fetch Josh, but moments later he appeared sitting in the seat opposite me.
He looked back to his normal self, and any hint of whatever had bothered him earlier was now gone.
“Will Seth be joining us?” I asked for want of anything else to say. I didn’t want to upset him again by getting back into the whole magic business.
Josh speared a piece of salmon and dipped it in the sauce before replying. “I think he’s eating in his room.”
I nodded. At least, he wasn’t bugging Hayden and Astrid. The dinner was surprisingly quiet. I didn’t know what to say, and Josh, it seemed, was finally out of words.
All in all, it was extremely awkward for both of us, and I began to wish that I’d decided to eat in my cabin too. By the time we’d finished our dessert, the sky was pitch black, and only the moon and the stars provided any kind of illumination. We’d also not said another word to each other.
I stood, ready to retire for the evening when I heard the strangest of sounds, almost like singing, but much more eerie. A choir of hauntingly beautiful voices filled the night air all around us, and yet, it sounded as though someone was singing under water. When I’d heard the merpeople speaking, the strange echoing sounds they made sounded a little similar.
The ship lurched as we quickly changed course, sending our dirty plates crashing to the ground where they smashed into tiny pieces.
I jumped up, eager to find out what was making the noise, but Josh held me back.
“It’s them!” He rushed to the rail and peered over. In the darkness, it was difficult to see anything, but as the moon came out from behind a cloud, their silhouettes appeared. Beautiful women sitting on rocks. Rocks that if we didn’t change course, we were going to crash into.
“Captain Howell!” I screamed, hoping she could hear me up in the bridge. The ship continued on its perilous path.
Josh appeared completely transfixed by the women who were now beckoning him toward them. The moon picked off sparkles of light in their silvery hair—hair that I wanted to touch. It looked so soft and shiny. I reached out over the railing. There was something about them, something mesmerizing that took us ever onward. In the back of my brain, I knew that if we continued on our path, we would crash straight into the rocks, but the rest of me didn’t care. It would be a small price to pay to be near these wondrous creatures.
Suddenly, there was a massive splash of water in front of them, knocking them all into the sea. The melodic music cut off, and the spell was broken. My heart that had been strangely calm now began the rapid staccato.
“We need to get this ship turned around quickly!” I cried, but before I’d even finished the sentence, the ship lurched again turning away from the jagged rocks and missing them by inches. The rapid movement knocked me over and sent me skidding across the floor.
“I guess now we know why almost no one made it back from here to tell the tale,” Josh said, holding his hand out and helping me to my feet. I glanced o
ver the side of the ship. Hundreds of wrecked boats littered the coast of the strange island leaving a graveyard of sorts.
“I’ve dropped anchor for the night, ma’am.”
I turned to find Captain Howell looking slightly stunned as she gave me a salute.
“They were using magic to lure us onto the rocks,” I pointed out. Relief shone from her face as she let out a long breath.
“They sure did! I’ve never seen anything like it.” Josh danced around like he’d just won a party bag or something. “I need to find Seth and see if he captured this.” He began to walk away, but I called after him.
“What if they try to kill us some other way in the night? You’re the expert. What should we do?”
“They won’t,” he assured me before practically skipping to the door and heading inside. “They’ll leave us well alone.”
Blue Water (A Little Mermaid Reverse Fairytale Book 2) Page 11