Sea Witch and the Magician
Vivienne Savage
Sea Witch and the Magician
By Vivienne Savage
All material contained herein is Copyrighted © Vivienne Savage 2019. All rights reserved.
* * *
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Contents
Map of the World
Once Upon a Time…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
…Happily Ever After
And After…
Other Books by Vivienne
About the Author
Map of the Eastern Hemisphere of the Realm of Terraina
Once Upon a Time…
300 years ago
Luring sailors from their ships had become Caecilia’s favorite game. On any given afternoon, she could entice at least one man from aboard his ship, and the unwitting idiot would paddle out to her while his screaming shipmates urged him to return.
Once, she’d pulled a captain and his first mate at the same time with a song of riches and untold pleasures awaiting them in her private cove. A siren couldn’t go wrong by appealing to both a man’s greed and his masculine need. This method of fishing always nabbed her the best playmates. From Eisland, she reeled in creative fellows with the most talented hands, and from the Ridaeron Dynasty came the well-endowed giants with the best endurance. Creag Morden’s slim pickings provided too little, their men better suited as intellectuals than lovers. She ignored their flag when and if a rare Mordenian ship passed.
On this day, Caecilia hoped to ensnare an energetic lover, but she hadn’t seen a passing ship in days. Perhaps even a couple weeks. Oftentimes, merchant ships from Eisland rode the southern currents to Samahara, and vice versa, which gave her no shortage of prey and playmates during the warm months.
Using toned forearms to pull herself from the sea, she crawled onto a rock and basked beneath the sun, soaking in the warm rays of daylight. If she stole a lover closer to dark, the ship usually dropped anchor nearby, unwilling to leave a man behind in the clutches of a siren.
Usually. Only Eisland and Creag Morden followed the No Man Left Behind maxim. Naval men of the Ridaeron Dynasty weren’t as tolerant of their sailors abandoning duties for a shag with a siren. During her recent ensorcellings of their kind, she’d chosen officers, which guaranteed they’d not be abandoned.
For strange reasons neither she nor her sisters understood, the men of the surface kingdoms believed sirens devoured their prey. She’d taken dozens of lovers over the centuries without eating any of them. The nerve of those mortals. If anything, the opposite often took place. Those Eisland men had such skillful tongues.
Grinning, Caecilia stretched out her tail and transformed it with a little magic. Two long legs took its place, lithe and strong limbs she’d have wrapped around the man of her choice soon. Of course, she had duties to fulfill and responsibilities to both her kingdom and the sea, but those could wait another day.
Her father had wanted her to adjust the currents and to reshape a few of the dangerous shoals threatening ships passing near the Wai Alei Islands, but most ships knew about the hazards. There wasn’t a captain on those seas who didn’t know to avoid them.
Caecilia sensed the ship before she spotted it on the horizon, an Eisland vessel by the colors flying on her mast. By then, she’d lost the sun and a storm was sweeping in from the east.
At last, she thought. There had to be at least one man on the vessel ideal for a night of fun. Thrilled at the prospect of having a playmate, she waited an hour until they drew nearer, conserving her voice until they were close enough for the evening wind to carry her tune.
As a mermaid, she had the gift of a magical voice, able to seduce any man. She knew the moment her song had worked when most of the sailors gathered on the portside rail and telescopes came out.
Caecilia lazily scanned their suntanned faces, her attention drifting until she found the man of her desires. Today, she wanted the captain. He was a handsome one, long hair flowing dark and wavy behind him on the wind, enhancing a strong jaw. He had the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen on an Eislander, and he wore a red coat instead of the traditional blue. He was, in two words, heartbreakingly gorgeous. And she rather liked the name of his ship, the Queen Priscilla’s Passion.
She knew her spell had worked the moment he took a telescope from a man beside him and focused its lens on her.
So she gave him something to see, feeling particularly adventurous and more brazen than usual, running her hands down her body, though she kept her legs artfully crossed, revealing nothing more.
The telescope plopped into the water, and from that moment, she knew she had him. Scrambling began, but an older sailor grasped her intended lover by the lapels of his coat. She strained to listen. Finding them too far away, she sent a gull to serve as her ears, seeing and hearing through the bird.
“It’s one of those sea witches. Snap out of it, lad.”
“That is no sea witch. Come now, Antoine. A beautiful woman stranded on the rocks, and you dare to call her a witch?”
“It’s magic that makes them gorgeous. Magic and spellcraft. ’Tis nothing but danger awaiting you on those rocks. Why else would she sprawl there with no clothes?”
The captain glanced toward her again. His jaw hardened. “She must be in distress. Perhaps she escaped those damned flesh-trafficking Ridaeron bastards. Regardless, she needs us.”
Most specifically, he needed her. His coat didn’t disguise the bulge at the front of his breeches, and many of his fellow crewmen were sporting equally sizable erections.
“We’re making good time, Henri,” the older man said, voice gentling. “I know this is your first time navigating these waters, but this isn’t the time to risk a delay in our arrival. Those Samaharans value punctuality, lad. We need to keep ahead of this bloody storm.”
“It won’t take but a few moments to rescue her. Then we can be on our way.”
“Captain, perhaps we should be listening to ol’ Antoine,” one of the sailors murmured.
“You can’t be serious. Look at her,” argued another.
“She needs our help,” someone else spoke up. “Captain knows what he’s doing.”
“Antoine says—”
“Bloody eunuch doesn’t have a heart in him,” a fourth sailor spat out. “There’s a helpless woman stranded out there, and he wants us to leave her.”
Antoine stiffened.
Oh no, Caecilia thought, watching the drama unfold.
“Now, Guillaume, there’s no need for that,” Henri said. “He means well.”
“Of course, I know what’s well. And if you were wise, lad, you’d heed my warning. That’s no woman out there. It’s a she-beast if ever I saw one, and she’ll have you in her jaws by nightfall.”
The argument wore on for a moment longer, until the captain stormed to the wheel and whirled it to bring the ship about. The storm was still approaching. Caecilia glanced up through the gull’s eyes, and a few drops of rain hit her little familiar on his feathered head. If it took a turn for the worst, she’d escort her lover to her lair and dazzle him for the night to make up for his delays.
Antoine rushed the helm at once, shouting something about imminent danger, and a spat broke out between them. One punch from Henri knocked the other man to the deck.
Ah, the poor bastard. She hadn’t meant to curve her hooks into Henri so deeply. Thankfully, the worst of the enchantment would fade long before he reached her by longboat. He’d be embarrassed, console himself with her bosom, and then row back to his ship in the morning to apologize to his first mate. Satisfied, she released the gull from her control.
Caecilia didn’t realize the mistake until it was too late, snapping back to her own body in time to see they were approaching the shoals. While the water seemed deep to the northwestern edge of Wai Alei, high ridges and sand bars stretched across the water.
And this captain had never sailed these waters before.
“Wait!” Caecilia screamed. She hurried to her feet and waved her arms. “Turn back!”
He didn’t. And she had no time to sculpt the rocky sandbar, the swift Eislandic vessel crossing the water at a terrifying speed to reach her.
Now the others were screaming, snapped out of their own respective enchantments and no longer affected by the spell.
“There’s no safe passage that way, Cap’n!” she read clearly from one man’s lips. They were all awakening much, much too late.
The sound of the crash filled the air, the tearing of a hull on rocks muffled beneath a few yards of water. A tremendous screeching sound told her what had happened before she saw the panic overtaking the men on the ship. Then the storm swept over them like a furious wave, rushing in and laying down an unforgiving blanket of rain. Caecilia pitted her consciousness against the waves, but they rolled up higher and pushed back with a vengeance, resisting her desperate effort to control them.
The storm swept her handsome captain’s vessel out farther, his boat taking on enormous amounts of water as it sank. Were her sisters present, they could have stemmed the tide and ceased the rain, but alone, she lacked the fine control to affect the weather.
Desperate to save them, Caecilia tried to sweep them back toward the shoal. At the very least, they’d be stranded on one of Wai Alei’s islands.
Her effort worsened their predicament, growing the wave into a monstrous sheet of water. It splashed over the deck and took two men with it. Petrified by what she had done, Caecilia panicked and dove under, transforming before she splashed against the surface. Her tail whipped behind her as she rushed to their aid.
It took only minutes to pull a few sodden bodies from the water, guiding them one by one to pieces of scrap floating from the debris. After the sixth, she searched for the handsome captain with eyes like cerulean jewels and curls darker than midnight.
She found him dead, the back of his skull shattered.
And it was her doing. Bright-eyed Henri who had been sailing his maiden voyage on the Viridian would never steer another ship. Crushed by guilt, Caecilia abandoned her efforts and swam as far as her tail could take her.
* * *
Caecilia hid in her favorite sunken grotto throughout the night, too much a coward to face the consequences of her actions.
Then again, were there actual consequences? No one had to know what had happened, and no one would as long as she didn’t tell her father.
“Caecilia!” Triton called as he swam through the narrow underwater entrance, mystical trident in one hand. Her father was an enormous man with an even bigger voice, and it could bring down mountains—had brought down mountains long ago, during the War of the Divines.
“Yes, Father?” She slid from her seat on a stony ledge above the surface and dove down to meet him, though she promptly regretted it. His dark eyes burned with fury.
Oh, no.
He knew. She didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. And in the pursuit of ending the oncoming argument before it could begin, she dipped her chin to her chest and played the part of the chastened daughter. “I’m sorry, Papa.”
“Your games end today, Caecilia.”
“I didn’t mean to harm anyone. I only wanted—”
“What you wanted is of no matter!”
Caecilia flinched back. “Father, I—”
“For years, I have watched you shirk your responsibilities as demigoddess of this sea. While my other daughters live up to my expectations and legacy, you have done nothing but sow strife wherever you go. You toy with the mortals and turn men into your playthings—”
“It was only a little fun!” she cried. “Nothing more than what mortal men do to the women of their kingdoms. You, yourself, said there were times they should be taken down a notch. Haven’t I done that?”
“Dozens of men are dead today, Caecilia. It is one thing to teach the mortals of this realm a lesson and to appreciate their gifts, but seventy-three men of Eisland are dead for nothing.”
“I saved a few,” she whispered.
“Six. You saved six. A mere fraction of the men slain by your foolhardiness. There are families without fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. Men with higher destinies than sailing aboard a ship were lost today.”
Caecilia faltered. She’d known a few more had likely died after the wreck, but she hadn’t expected the majority of the crew to be lost. “You said yourself they are a cruel kingdom.”
But her father wasn’t listening. He spoke over her again, each word of condemnation hitting harder than an unforgiving wave. “And with them, they have taken thirteen Wai Alei to the depths.”
Her heart sank to her toes. “No,” she whispered.
“As they are a good people, nobler and kinder than all others within my domain, many of their men braved those waves to save the Eislanders. Your sister Andromeda rescued a small number.”
“I will thank her. Father, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. It was only supposed to be a little fun,” said in a desperate rush. “I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to them.”
“No amount of pleading can make up for the atrocity you committed here today.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You care only because the mortals will think you did it.”
“I care because your behavior dishonors not only me, but yourself. You are better than this childish and arrogant narcissism, my daughter, and perhaps the only way to teach you this lesson is to take from you that which you value most.” His mouth pressed into a thin line, the light gone from his eyes. “Your beauty.”
“Wait—”
“There will be no waiting. I will no longer allow your shameful conduct or selfishness.” The water began to churn long before the trident glowed with magic, whipping around them in a glittering spiral.
“Father, please!”
“What I take from you is a pittance compared to the turmoil you’ve caused.”
And then the pain hit her. It struck her from every direction, sizzling down her spine and each nerve ending as her fingers bent and gnarled. The golden-brown hue of her skin faded to gray, and the russet scales on her tail flaked away, leaving behind a slimy, worm-like appendage in its place.
“I disown you from this family.”
“You can’t!”
“And exile you from the underwater kingdom. I strip you of your title, and from this day forward, Princess Caecilia of Atlantis is dead. What remains is a hag as hideous without as the vile soul within.”
Clumps of her
rapidly thinning hair drifted away in the current. What remained was black and fragile, a cloud of brittle strands floating around her.
“How could you do this to me if you claim to love me?”
“Dear daughter, what I do this eve is from love, not anger. I do this in hopes that one day you will be a better person, whom I may once again welcome within our palace halls. Until that day, we will not meet again. You will see neither me nor your sisters.”
“But Mother—”
“Will also not see you. She and I have spoken, and it is done. Goodbye, my daughter.”
“Will you give me no hope?!” she finally screamed, lunging for him and clinging to his shoulders.
“Hope? What hope did you give to others this day?”
When she only wept and clutched him with gnarled, wrinkled fingers, he sighed and touched her back. His palm was warm on her cold and clammy skin. “Dear one, I love you. I promised Andromeda I would show no mercy to you, and yet…I can’t leave you without hope. Perhaps one day, someone will see beauty in your soul and love you for who you are. On that day, your curse shall be broken.”
“Father, please,” she sniveled, even as he pried her fingers from him. “How could anyone love me now?”
“A true man of great worth will love you no matter your appearance, Caecilia. Because, despite what you did this day, I love you even now.”
Then he swam away, out of her grotto and her life.
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