It made me...sad.
Had Haven, the Gorgon, been acting under a spell?
Bash must’ve somehow broken the spell on the Kraken when he had made it tiny. That was the only conclusion he could come up with.
Either way, both Dair and Bash had assured me that the sea monster wasn’t a threat. The water had promised Dair, and Bash...well...I wasn’t sure how he knew, and he wasn’t in the mood to share with me.
I hadn’t seen the blond asshole since we had left the dungeon.
Dair took my hand and led me down the hall. He stopped only a few doors down, at the room I had noted during my arrival.
Heat emanated from the open door, choking me. Sweat prickled at my skin.
The room was unlike anything I had ever seen before, both beautiful and strange. Jagged, brown rocks lined the walls, melded together in a way that couldn’t be natural. The flooring abruptly switched from wooden planks to sand, burning my toes. At the very edge of the sand was a small pool of water. Waves rippled the shoreline, but from what source, I couldn’t tell.
Slippy chirped happily when he caught sight of me, clambering out of the water and rubbing against my feet like a cat.
If you hadn’t seen a Kraken before, consider yourself lucky. He was so ugly that it was borderline adorable. Long tentacles wrapped around my legs, but unlike before, it didn’t hurt. His one eye stared up at me as if I hung the moon.
My stomach churned uncomfortably when I noted the dark lines grazing the white of his iris. From my arrow.
I wondered if he still felt pain.
“Do you have anyone who could look over him? Make sure we didn’t do any lasting damage?” I asked Dair nervously, bending down to pick up the little guy. He cuddled beneath my chin, and I could’ve sworn that he was purring.
Dair stared at me strangely but conceded with a nod. “I can have the family doctor check him out. We have five, and at least one always stays here.”
Five doctors.
I couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around that, having spent years without any medical care at all.
“You be a good boy for when the doctor comes, okay?” I told Slippy sternly. The little asshole rolled his one eye as if he actually understood me. I gave him a disapproving frown. “I mean it. No fish for you if you misbehave. I’ll feed you the shitty tuna from the marketplace.”
That seemed to pierce his monster brain. His eye widened slightly, almost imperceptibly, and he wiggled to let me know he wanted down. I dropped him at the edge of the water, and he swam away without a glance back in my direction.
I feigned sniffles.
“They grow up so fast.” I punctuated this statement by brushing away an imaginary tear.
Dair snorted, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me out of the hot room.
“And you’re fucking weird. Come. Let me introduce you to my mother.”
DAIR’S MOTHER lived in a tiny, bungalow-style house a few miles off the main shoreline. The white paint looked freshly coated, and a long, wraparound porch held two rocking chairs. Hanging plants adorned the awning overhead; the ground was surprisingly grass instead of sand like I’d expected, freshly manicured, and bedecked in shrubs and what appeared to be tulips. The single tree I noted earlier stood proudly in the waning sunlight, a brilliant collection of green leaves intermixed with a deep burgundy and light orange.
It was an entire little world condensed onto a small island.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was beautiful, the opulence of the house nearly unmatched. After all, the Mermaid Kingdom was just as wealthy as the Genie one.
The seductive pulls of Envy couldn’t be ignored, even by Dair’s family.
I smiled as I took Dair’s offered hand, stepping out of the boat. It was significantly smaller than the one I had ridden with Bash, but it was cute nonetheless with plush leather seats, a canopy overhead, and what Dair had called the captain’s chair.
My Mermaid mate had driven the boat with a skill and expertise that hinted at his years in the water, both swimming in it and riding overtop of it. His cheeks were still flushed, eyes hooded, from the hour long ride.
I wobbled the second I touched the grass, my feet and body adjusting to the steadiness of dry land. There wasn’t a part of me that missed the rocking of the boat and the clenching of my stomach seconds before I expelled the contents of my lunch.
“Seasickness,” Dair had told me.
“It’s beautiful,” I told Dair now, spinning in a circle. In every direction, I could see waves of water. There were no other islands in sight.
“Yes, it is,” Dair murmured absently, but his attention was locked on me. He brought a hand up to cup my cheek, his thumb caressing my bottom lip.
The moment we were inevitably about to have was shattered by an ear-splitting squeal. I immediately went on alert, pushing Dair out of my way and grabbing the dagger I always kept up my sleeve. Was it Aaliyah? Another monster? Tavvy?
My confusion turned into something akin to jealousy when I spotted Dair running to the water’s edge and wrapping a girl in his arms.
She was beautiful, I noticed immediately. A sort of ethereal beauty you would read about in storybooks but never see in real life. Her hair was long and black, molten obsidian stones, and cascaded around her porcelain skin.
I had never seen a female Mermaid before, and I couldn’t help but gawk. Her tail was luminescent, a rich purple that sparkled in the sunlight like thousands of diamonds. Seaweed wrapped up her torso, covering her breasts from view - thank God.
I saw red, literal red dots obscuring my vision, as she continued to hug Dair. I wanted nothing more than to stomp down there and rip her beautiful
