“Do you ever visit them?” I asked. Maybe all families weren’t flawed and fragmented like mine. Maybe parents actually cared for their children.
“I can’t,” Ursuline said, their voice flat, even though their tentacle brushed along my leg, as if offering comfort.
I blinked, sadness spreading through me, though more questions bubbled up as well. “Sorry” dried on my tongue, feeling paltry. “And you came to the surface?”
Their gaze softened a fraction, their expressions so minute they fascinated me. To anyone catching a glimpse, Ursuline would seem stonefaced, uncaring, but their responses wereso small, so fascinating, as if they kept an ironclad control over themselves at all times. “Let’s just say I’m familiar with arrangements like yours.”
Forced.
I swallowed hard, my fingers twitching. The temptation to reach out and rest a hand on one of their tentacles rose in a real way, but I wasn’t sure if the touch would be welcome. When I looked up at them, their serious gaze stripped me bare.
“Did you have dreams?” The words escaped my lips as we treaded into deeper territory than I’d expected for someone I’d only met twice. And yet, something was familiar about them, their voice. Something that screamed safety.
“Waking nightmares mostly,” they commented in a wan tone. “Though when I do dream, I dream of freedom.”
Their words struck me square in the chest.
I’d never connected with another person this deeply, and their steadfast touch on my leg amplified that all the more. I gripped the edge of the bench. “When I feel that way, I swim,” I murmured.
“Lucky for you, the whole bay is available,” Ursuline responded.
“Do you swim here?” I asked, assuming since they were cecaelia they frequented the water.
“Here, the Sentient Sea, wherever I can find water. I need a certain amount of time in it or I start to feel withered, desiccated.” Ursuline leaned back a bit, tipping their head against the wall. Their flat chest was on display, wide planes of muscle, their shoulders broad. My mouth watered at the smoothness of their skin, at the lingering scent of currants and salt air around them.
“Do you miss living under the sea?” I asked, curiosity bubbling to the surface again.
They shook their head. “Not solely. Peregrine City’s become a home, and I’ve carved out my friendships here too. The Tritons might own my contract, but they don’t own my soul.”
Those words resonated within me, a reminder I needed. Because I was going to be marrying a woman I barely knew, who had no interest in me back.
“There you are.” Arielle’s voice rang through the room, startling me out of whatever spell I’d been under. I shot upright, and Ursuline’s tentacle slid away from my leg. I missed the touch at once, craved it with a fierceness that surprised me.
“I was sleeping off a hangover all day,” Arielle said, flouncing into the room without a care in the world. She flashed a grin at me but then gave Ursuline a sour look. “Were you playing your depressing music again?”
“I was just heading out for the day,” Ursuline stated, rising to full height. Awe filtered through me at the regality of their movements, at the lift of their chin. They didn’t strike me as the sharing sort, and yet they’d sat here with me and done as much. They’d offered a safety raft when I’d been adrift in a loneliness that threatened to wash me under. Ursuline’s gaze landed on mine. “Thanks for the chat.”
I swallowed hard and bobbed my head, words escaping me for a moment. Before I could push them out, Ursuline slunk toward the door in those fluid movements. Arielle strode up to me in their wake. She’d begun to chatter about something she’d drunk last night and a guy who’d hit on her in the club, but my gaze was fixated on Ursuline’s departure.
I watched until they vanished through the doorway, taking the brief glimpse of comfort and safety along with them.
Chapter 8
Aweek had passed in the Triton Estate, and I had yet to run into Frederick or Darla, even though I’d seen Olivia and Pearl on two different occasions. The sisters gave me a nod and little more, clearly uninterested in getting to know me. Ursuline appeared and disappeared like the tides, at the oddest times, and I couldn’t piece together why the lawyer would be appearing like this. Arielle was the person I saw more regularly, but only when she came to find me.
In the interim, I’d gotten to know more of the staff, and I’d put more time in on a multitude of different pieces I was painting in the studio in oils, in watercolors, in acrylics. I planned on asking to leave soon, maybe to visit Jason, as Arielle had assured me I wasn’t trapped here. Yet after spending so long painting in secret, I found relief in being able to go to the studio whenever the mood struck me, no constraints, nothing forbidden.
My parents hadn’t messaged once.
Clearly, I was no longer their problem.
Harsh voices came from the foyer, where I’d not so long ago entered this place, and I found myself drifting in that direction.
“He deserves to know.” Ursuline’s voice rang loud and clear, full of unerring command. “You can’t keep him in the dark forever.”
“That is our choice, Ursuline, not yours.” Frederick’s booming voice echoed through the corridor.
“Amusing you’d defend your right to choose while denying so many others theirs,” Ursuline retorted, a tension in their words like a dam threatening to burst.
