What meal?Her voice is an echo around the underground chamber, the loud clanking of our metal cage the only other sound. The cage that now sits above a lake of water.
“What is happening?” Moyrie asks, the first hint of fear in her voice.I wondered when she would crack.No one is immune to their own mortality—even a Silver Sands princess who knows how to use a dagger.
Faced with the unknown, everyone breaks eventually.
Control—it’s a comfort. When one loses it, it’s like free-falling into an abyss. I’ve been free-falling since I left Haven.
The only thing I can do is surrender and pray this is not our end.
twenty-three
Gideon
There’ssomething…No,someoneI should remember.
Light green eyes flash before my mind’s eye. I can’t place them. The mer—Calypso, they keep calling her—tells me I’m hers. She says she’s been waiting a long time for me.
When she touches me, it doesn’t feel right.
Her lithe form sits on my knee in a grand room with tall stone pillars flanking us on either side. When I look up, there’s water. It never falls, though. It just sits there, a shimmering promise.
I sit naked on a large throne, Calypso casually stroking my thigh like we are long-lost lovers. We feel lost to each other because all I see is soft green eyes, not the kaleidoscope that stares back at me.
Even my cock doesn’t react to the female sitting on me. With her fervent glances down every few movements, I know she notices that.
I thought I’d seen everything.
I haven’t because a ball of water descends from the ceiling above. On the sandy floor below, it bursts, and another blue mer steps out of it, this one with green hair the colour of moss.
“Your Majesty.” The mer bows before the throne.
“Oh, come on, Lena, spit it out. Have you roused the pointy-eared one yet?” Seemingly used to Calypso’s outbursts, Lena stands tall, bending her head slightly to the right.
“He has indeed awoken, my queen. However, he doesn’t seem susceptible to our charms.” Calypso goes stiff on my knee.
“How? This scruffy one is under my control.”What control?The thought leaves just as fast as the mer queen turns her large, pink-lashed eyes on me and smiles, trapping me in a daze, only to find green in her rainbow eyes.
“We have tried, Your Majesty, but he keeps thrashing about. We cannot pin him down.” Calypso turns back to Lena, her claws digging into my thigh before she stands.
“Fine, I will do it myself. We only have one more moon before the heat begins. We cannot miss this breeding cycle. It has been centuries.”
Now that she stands naked, I see the curves form around her bottom and up towards her breasts, a mix of light and darker blue tones travelling across her skin. Small, feathered fins linger along her calvesdown to her ankles. Her light pink hair stretches down to the apex of her bottom.
After taking my fill, I realise it doesn’t do anything for me. Not even Lena, who stands off to the side, is enough to arouse my interest. Her eyes linger on my lower half like she will swallow me whole.
“Come, male.” Calypso turns her head so she can lock her eyes on mine. “Follow your queen.”
My body follows.
My mind dreams of creamy, pale skin.
twenty-four
Rivern
Iwillkillthemers.I don’t care if Fury needs them. If they have hurt Dove, if they have touched one hair on her perfect head, I will gut them from arse to sternum.
Naked females in all shades of blue, from the light of the sky to the depths of the darkest ocean, mutter around me, indistinguishable to my ears.
