“That wasn’t an invitation for pity,” she snapped. “And it wasn’t a solicitation for your attention, either,” she added quickly, lest he decide she was a wallflower in need of care.
But he wasn’t watching her with pity or with the look of a man whose impeccable manners or innate generosity demanded that no person in his sphere feel slighted. Instead, he was regarding her with an expression she could only define asthoughtful.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no. No.
She was not going to be “interesting” to him. She was not going to be a puzzle he felt compelled to solve. She was not going to be anything to him at all except that third Season he didn’t really notice or think about.
Summer Coruscate! Get your head on straight, and send this man away! Right now!
“Sealord Merimydion—”
“Dilys,” he interrupted.
“Sealord Merimydion,” she repeated with a warning look, “I invite you most wholeheartedly to concentrate your courtship on Their Royal Highnesses Spring and Autumn. I’m quite sure neither is opposed to entertaining a match with Calberna’s prince.”
He took a step forward. “And Her Royal Highness, theMyerialannaSummer?”
His eyes truly were the most amazing gold. Almost metallic. Glittering with light.
She swallowed hard and took an instinctive step back.
Unfortunately, she’d forgotten two facts: (1) that her right foot was still tangled in the coils of rope, and (2) that she was standing very close to the edge of the pier.
Thanks to the foot tangled in the rope, she lost her balance. And thanks to her proximity to the edge of the pier, when she hopped further backward on her unencumbered leg in an attempt to catch her balance, she found all but the very tip of her slipper landed not on solid wood planking but insubstantial ether.
Arms windmilling furiously and entirely ineffectively, Gabriella gave a startled shriek and fell backward into the fjord.
The coils tangled around Summer’s ankle went taut, and the anchor that earlier she’d shoved close to the edge of the pier toppled into the water after her.
The next thing Summer knew, she and the coils of rope and the anchor were plummeting rapidly towards the bottom of the fjord.
The shock of her fall and the breathtaking cold of the water left Gabriella stunned for a moment, then the need to breathe snapped her to her senses. Her instinctive scream when she’d fallen left her with barely any air in her lungs. Kicking and flailing, she tried to swim back up to the surface, but the anchor tied to her ankle proved too heavy. Instead of going up, she continued to sink deeper.
There was a splash overhead as something big hit the surface. She paid it no mind. Her entire being was focused on freeing herself from the anchor that was dragging her to her death. Her lungs began to burn as the need to breathe became dire.
She tore at the rough, swollen rope tangled around her ankle, but the weight of the anchor kept the knots tight. Desperate, she grabbed the rope a little below her ankle in an attempt to relieve the tension so she could loosen the knots and get free.
When something grabbed her, what little air she still retained in her lungs left in an instinctive shriek that sent up a flood of rapidly rising bubbles. Water poured into her mouth and throat. She coughed. More water flooded in, and a few seconds later the strangest sense of calm washed over her.
Dimly, she realized she was drowning, but she couldn’t move her arm or legs anymore. She also realized the “thing” that had grabbed her was Dilys Merimydion, who must have dived in after her.
He caught her arm and tugged. When she didn’t move, it took him half a second to realize her predicament. He didn’t try to unravel the knots tying her to the anchor, he simply swiped a hand down below her feet, and the weight of the anchor disappeared.
As he spun back around and reached out to grab her, his left wrist slid across her right. The red rose birthmark on her inner wrist—proof of her royal Summerlea heritage—flared with sudden, almost explosive heat, and the tattoos inked across Dilys Merimydion’s body lit up with a bright, blue phosphorescent glow that illuminated him, her, and the dark water around them.
His gaze, wide, shocked, golden, bored into hers as their weightless bodies went rigid in the cold depths.
The edges of Gabriella’s vision went blurry, and the world went dark.
The next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back on the wooden pier. Dilys Merimydion was crouched over her, crooning, and what seemed like a veritable ocean of water poured out of her throat as he literally sang the water out of her lungs. A moment later, he placed his lips against hers and blew into her a breath that tingled with warmth and potent magic, and every nerve and cell of her body came roaring back to electric, wildly pulsating life.
When he pulled back, she drew in a long, shuddering breath of her own and stared up into his dark bronze face. His tattoos were alive with otherwordly beauty, the whorls and patterns emitting a phosphorescent glow, as if blue starlight danced across his skin. The stylized wave that curled from the corner of his eye across the crest of his cheekbone seemed to ripple like the surface of the water.
Despite their recent swim, he was completely dry and so, she realized, was she. Her hair was a mess, pins lost, curls spilled out around her, but every bit of her was perfectly dry.
Calbernans, it seemed, were masters of more than just the waters of the world’s oceans.
He was still crouched over her. All that smooth, delicious skin a scant arm length away, fragrant with decadent, tropical aromas and earthy richness that not even their unplanned plunge into the fjord had been able to wash away. Did he always smell thusly? Good enough to eat? Her tongue hungered for a taste and her palms itched to flatten against the swell of his pectoral muscles, to discover if his skin felt as delicious as it smelled.
