A swimmer who, had he been closer, might have been the one to be scarred by their roaring jet engines.
“Axis!” I called, tying down the sail, flat into the wind so that we were stilled in the waters, and looking back behind me. I couldn’t see him anywhere. Where had he gone? Had he given up and gone back? We were out of sight of the dock and spaceport by this time, gone around the curve into one of the coves. Had he drowned?
There was a harsh thudding in the pit of my stomach as I scanned the waters for him… I may not want to be forced into a marriage with him, but I knew he was a good man… I didn’t want him to be lost to a world that needed him…
I bent over the boat, looking deep into the turquoise waters I loved, hoping I would see him rising from their crystal-clear depths. Please, let him be okay…
Three
Axis
My lungs were aching. The sun was setting. How far was this Princess going to sail before she gave me respite?
I had done my research, and I knew that I would be able to swim even faster on Serpul, just a benefit of having grown up on Farian and the natural differences between this terraformed planet and my own. I knew the salt content would make me more weightless, the gravity difference would make me seem stronger, and I would be able to crank after that sailboat with the magnificence of a dolgon. I just hadn’t anticipated what a speedy sailor the Princess would be.
I took half a second to look ahead and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw her recovering from almost capsizing as a race boat sped off. She was safe, she hadn't been hit or flipped, but that gave me a bit of time to catch up.
I took a deep breath and dove down as deeply as I could. It had been an impulsive moment to strip off my shirt, my weapons, and my boots, and dive in after the fleeing Princess, but King Kajo’s words resonated within me: I needed to find a way to make the Princess be on board with this deal. I think that he had also been speaking to me… I had to find a way to be on board with this deal, for more than my kingdom, but also for myself.
It had amused me that the Princess hadn’t slowed down when she had seen me swimming after her; instead, she had sped up. Spirited was accurate. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need my weapons if I caught her, and I hoped that was accurate.
These oceans were gorgeous… A lot of the creatures I saw flashing below me were the same. We had carefully engineered Serpul, but the oceans had existed, to some extent, already. So, some of the sea life had evolved on its own. There were coral and crustaceans I had never seen before. I had studied Serpul in school and had been here twice as a boy but had never met the Princess or explored the oceans much. They were gorgeous. The turquoise of the waters reminded me of the areas of glacial melt on Farian. Our coastal waters were more aquamarine in color, with purple sands making the deeper blue hue of the water. These sands were illustrious browns and tans.
I dove even further, spinning onto my back and continuing to swim, spying her dinghy just ahead. She was looking over the sides. That was good, she was worried about me, or at least looking for me. She had at least noticed I was no longer swimming behind her.
I angled up toward her from underneath the boat so she wouldn’t see me until the last moment. I couldn’t tell if my heart was beating furiously from the physical exertion or from the nervousness of what I was about to do, but then I burst through the water, using my telekinetic Will to level myself and float just up to her, steadying myself, watching her beautiful eyes go wide, noticing the freckles across her nose and cheeks for the first time, moving my face in close, brushing my lips just barely across hers, laying my hands across hers on the side of her dinghy, but not applying pressure to tip the boat, and whispering into her mouth.
“Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”
The sensation of our lips moving against each other was electric. Tingles of desire that I hadn't expected rushed through me and grabbed my throat, my body, my heaving chest, made me tighten my fingers against her. She let me pause here a moment longer than I expected, then she pulled her hands out from under mine and pushed off my chest, so that I went flying back from the boat, but not before I grabbed onto her arms, and pulled her with me, tumbling out of the boat, splashing into the water, her gurgle groan of protest choked by the water as it engulfed us.
I floated back away from her flailing hands and kicking legs, laughing as she fought to get free of me.
“How dare you!” She turned on me in the water, flashing around to glare at me, then rushed a surge of water onto me, so practiced with telekinetic waterpower’s that it swept me up and over, wrapping me into its swell and dunking me under before I could even react. I held my breath just a moment soon enough and then grabbed all my Will and blasted forward from its hold to land up on her dinghy, which was shaking and bouncing in the tumult of water from her telekinesis. She spun in the water to look at me in her boat.
