Princess Triumvirate

by Catherine Banks

  His mouth popped open and he yelled, “That’s it!” He lifted the hand that wasn’t holding my wrists and wiggled his fingers.

  “No!” I yelled. “No tickling!”

  He lowered his hand and immediately began tickling my sides and stomach.

  “Ah!” I squealed and struggled to escape his grip. “Stop!” I begged between laughs and gulped for air.

  “Surrender,” he ordered me.

  “Never!” I yelled and he increased his tickling.

  I was laughing so hard that I was crying now and gasping for breath.

  He stopped his assault, hand raised above me, and wiggled his fingers. “Surrender?”

  “Compromise,” I said. “A kiss and no more tickling.”

  He leaned forward slowly and barely brushed his lips across mine. He sat back up and said, “Nah!” and resumed tickling me.

  “Finn!” I yelled.

  “Say it!” he ordered me.

  “You’re a butt!” I yelled between laughs.

  He continued his attack and I finally could not take it anymore.

  “I surrender,” I said.

  He stopped and I stared up at his smiling face with a smile of my own. Even with everything that happened, he still found time to make me laugh and smile.

  “You’re amazing,” I told him.

  “You’re stunning,” he replied and kissed each side of my neck.

  I pulled him down so that he was lying flat on top of me and then rolled until I was sitting on top of him and he was on his back. His eyes sparked with mischief and heat, but I used his vulnerability to grab his ribs and start tickling him.

  “Cheater!” he bellowed and squirmed under me.

  “Say it!” I ordered him as I continued to tickle him.

  In all reality, he could get out from under me easily, but I appreciated him not using his speed.

  He grabbed my wrists and pulled me down until my face was just above his. My hair surrounded our faces like a curtain, hiding us and making this all the more private and intimate. “You’re mine,” he whispered. “And I won’t ever let you get away.”

  My heart fluttered in my chest and warmth spread throughout my body. I kissed him deeply and he responded in kind and sat up with me in his lap. I slipped my hands up beneath his shirt and ran my fingertips across his warm flesh, enjoying the way his muscle felt beneath my hand. He pulled his shirt off and I kissed his bare shoulders and chest. He slid his hands beneath my shirt, gripping my back and stroking up and down my sides. At least twice on our sailing adventures, I had been forced to strip in front of him, but both times had been out of necessity.

  I climbed off of the bed despite his protests and slowly lifted my shirt over my head. He watched me intently and when I dropped the shirt, he walked to me, his muscles flexing as he moved, and stared down at me in silence.

  He untied my pants and slid his hands beneath the waistband and pushed them down. I stepped out of them and he moved back, his eyes roving over my body slowly. A slow predatory smile spread across his face and he whispered, “You are perfect in every way imaginable.”

  The blush that had begun to warm from his silent stare disappeared as he kissed me and pressed our naked chests together. He was incredibly warm and I felt petite when he held me like this. I reached down to untie his pants, but he took my hand and lifted it to kiss my palm. “No,” he whispered.

  “Finn,” I complained.

  He lifted me up so that I had to wrap my legs around his waist as he kissed me and walked to my bed. He lay me down and kissed every inch of my body, even making me turn over so he could kiss his way from my shoulders to my toes. He rolled me back over and said, “There’s no need to rush things. We have a very long time together.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him I knew that, but he flicked his tongue out at the same time that he used his hand lower and it tore a gasp from me instead of words. I arched my back as pleasure swept through me and he didn’t stop.

  I thought I knew what pleasure was until he scooted down. I gripped the sheets of the bed and moaned softly. Pressure had begun building since he had begun and right when I was sure that I couldn’t take it any longer, the pressured spilled over.

  “Finn,” I whispered breathlessly.

  He smiled at me and said, “This is nothing compared to what our wedding night will be like.”

  He pulled the blankets up over us and wrapped himself around me while I tried to remember how to talk.

  “Can we get married tomorrow?” I asked finally.

  He laughed and squeezed me. “Good things come to those who wait.”

  I didn’t want to wait.

  Chapter Five

  Esmeralda made us wait two more days before she agreed that I was fully recovered before allowing us to leave for Judby. Faxon tried unsuccessfully to convince Finn to stay behind once more. Finn refused and we set sail at dawn the next day. Finn and I ran around the ship, happy to be sailing again and climbed up and down and around everything. Faxon watched us with silent amusement.

  Our disguises were surprisingly non-magical and even more surprisingly, fairly convincing. Most people didn’t know what we looked like anyway, but these disguises definitely helped. I had to leave the Dragon’s Tooth behind because the sword was just too recognizable. I knew that, but I felt bad for leaving it sitting in my room. The replacement was a good blade, but it just wasn’t the Dragon’s Tooth.

  “She’s pouting again,” Faxon commented.

  Finn stopped the carving he was working on and looked at me. “Why?”

  “I miss my sword,” I admitted with a sigh and plopped down on the deck next to the barrel Finn was sitting on.

  “I’m sure the sword will be perfectly fine while you are gone and no doubt will be right where you left it when you get back,” Finn assured me.

  “I know.”

  Finn had a new pair of axes, their wooden handles were wrapped with leather and the heads shone in the sun. Jared had made them by hand for Finn and presented them to him right before we left. Finn looked like he had been given an island, he was so happy.

  “What are you carving?” I asked Finn, tilting my head back to look up at him.

  “You will see it when I am finished,” he chastised me.

  It was only the fifth time that I had asked him.

  “Sounds like you need to do some meditation,” Faxon told me.

  I sighed, more than anything irritated that he still made me meditate when I didn’t have my magic anymore, but I obeyed.

  I scooted my butt forward so that I wasn’t touching Finn or the barrel, and set my linked hands in my lap. I closed my eyes, inhaled and exhaled, and relaxed everything. The sounds of the ocean and our ship grew louder, sharper, and I began to separate each sound, focusing on the sound of Finn cutting into the wood in his hand, the sound of Faxon’s breathing, and the sound of the ship cutting through the water. I turned my focus inward, searching for any speck of a spark that could still be there…

  Nothing.

  Despite my frustration and sadness, I let the feelings wash away and reminded myself that I had saved Faxon and Esmeralda. I had done something many would never have done. Peace spread through me and I relaxed.

  After a few more moments, I stood up and stretched.

  Faxon nodded approvingly. “Good.”

  “How many Seers are there in the world?” I asked him.

  “As far as we know, three. Me, my enemy, and Eric.”

  “Eric?!” Finn yelled in shock.

  Faxon nodded. “I thought you would have known that.”

  “That’s why he said that he could see through my disguise and see what I looked like. I thought it was just an ability, but it makes sense that he would be a Seer to be able to do that,” I commented.

  “He still has a lot to learn, but he refuses to work with me. He thinks he should focus on the King’s Steel instead of working on his magic.”

  “He would be able to help the King’s Steel bette
r if he could use more of his magic,” I said.

  “I’ve been trying to tell him that, but he won’t listen to me. Maybe he will listen to you.”

  “Doubtful. He has been keeping me at arm’s length and refusing to talk to me,” I admitted.

  “Ah,” Faxon said and looked at the pebble he was holding.

  “Oh,” Finn said after he stopped his carving. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  “Tilia, he would only be doing that if he was interested in you,” Finn told me.

  “I don’t think that is it,” I argued. “It has something to do with his return to the King’s Steel. Something happened that he is not happy with.”

  “He doesn’t like knowing that Finn is higher rank than him and can give him orders,” Faxon informed me.

  “Do you know that for a fact? Or are you just guessing?”

  “You can think what you want, but men are pretty similar and we are pretty easy to understand,” Faxon told me.

  “He’s right. You haven’t noticed, but he does not like seeing us together. He almost always finds a convenient excuse to leave when you and I are in the same room,” Finn said.

  “When we went on that trip to Blith we went over the fact that he and I are just friends. And that was when I was not with you, Finn.”

  Finn cringed at the reminder.

  “Perhaps he, as your friend, saw how upset you were over Finn and grew to dislike him on your behalf. If you had not needed me to treat you and look after you when you came home that night, I might not have been able to stop myself from finding Finn and disintegrating him,” Faxon told me.

  Finn looked at Faxon in shock and then at me. “Why did he have to treat you?”

  I looked away and pretended to be mesmerized by a cloud passing by overhead.

  “She walked through a storm to the castle and was drenched when she arrived,” Faxon informed him. “Had I not dried her, she would have become sick and most likely would have developed a fever. If I had still been with Jared and Esmeralda she could have died.”

  “Died?” Finn asked. “Are you serious?”

  “Why would I joke about her death?” Faxon snarled at him.

  Finn looked at me and I shrugged. “I told you that I could die on land. Besides, nothing happened. Faxon was there and he took care of me.”

  He shook his head in disbelief and went back to his carving. He kept carving it from different sides so I had no idea what he was working on.

  “How much longer until we get to Judby?” I asked Faxon.

  “Probably a day and a half,” he answered.

  “Why couldn’t we teleport again?” I grumbled.

  “Because I could teleport us right in front of someone important or someone who could report it to others and then we would get caught,” Faxon said.

  “You would not let them catch us,” I replied with a roll of my eyes.

  “No, but still.”

  “I think he just wanted to escape Esmeralda,” Finn teased him.

  “Why?” I asked curiously.

  “She’s been making him go through all of those boxes of papers even though we have someone assigned to it who has the ability to read faster than normal.”

  “It’s torture!” Faxon yelled.

  “Has any more information come up?”

  “Nope. Most of the stuff we found was regarding their experiments with trying to crossbreed animals. I don’t know why they were so focused on trying to create new animals, but that was a majority of their work.”

  “Creepy,” I mumbled.

  “You don’t know the half of it!” Faxon yelled. “They were trying to cross a crocodile with a horse! What on earth would that be useful for?”

  “Well, if it had a horse’s body and the crocodile’s leathery skin, it would make them harder to injure in battles. Or if they could figure out how to give them the long breathes of a crocodile they could have horses with riders under the water waiting to attack people,” I guessed.

  “Tilia,” Faxon said in shock, “I’m going to tell Esmeralda that you should look at the notes.”

  “No!” I said loudly. “You are not tossing the burden off on me.”

  He waved his hand dismissively, “That’s not what I am trying to do. Maybe you can see a connection that I cannot. I had not even considered what you just said.”

  “I don’t want to be bored and read a bunch of creepy notes,” I whined.

  “If you could discover what they were up to though…”

  Faxon didn’t need to finish his statement. I understood what he was trying to say.

  “I will try it for one day and then decide if I will keep doing it or not,” I said, giving in.

  He smiled. “Wonderful.”

  “I’m not helping you,” Finn told me.

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “You would just distract her anyways,” Faxon said.

  Finn swiveled his eyes towards me and gave me a smirk. Smug jerk. I would not admit it to him, but just that look made me warm and want to lock ourselves in a room for a week without any distractions.

  I hurried away from him before Faxon noticed my change in attitude and leaned against the rail. The water was cold and dark through here. If someone could hold their breath and create a light that water wouldn’t extinguish, they could go to the bottom of the ocean. What was down there? Were there strange animals? Or was it just littered with sunken ships and skeletons of drowned sailors?

  “Has anyone ever gone to the ocean floor?” I asked Faxon.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, clearly confused by my topic shift.

  “I know that you can create a light source that water does not extinguish.” He nodded. “And I have heard that people can make a bubble of air stay around their heads while they are underwater.” He nodded again. “So, has anyone used that to go to the bottom of the ocean to explore the floor?”

  “I tried once,” he admitted. “But there was a group of sharks and well…things didn’t end up the way I thought it would. I surfaced and never tried again.”

  “You let sharks chase you away?” Finn asked with a laugh.

  “There were ten of them!” Faxon countered.

  “Why didn’t you just kill them?” I asked.

  “I was intruding on their home. They didn’t deserve me to kill them just because of my curiosity.”

  “There are stories of parts of the ocean so deep that no man can survive reaching the floor,” Finn said.

  Faxon nodded his head. “I’ve heard that as well.”

  “Oh, we’ve been near one before,” I told them. “When I was on Dad’s ship he sailed to one area and we dropped a can on a string to the bottom. When we pulled it up, it was dented. They say it is because there is too much pressure that far down and it would just crush our bones.”

  “Fascinating,” Faxon said.

  “The first time we tried to put a can down it only made it halfway before something bit through the string,” I recounted with a laugh. “Dad wanted to jump in and kill whatever had ruined his experiment, but we tried again and that was a successful drop.”

  “What’s your least favorite part of the ocean?” I asked Finn.

  “Whirlpools,” he said instantly. “We almost got sucked down into one when the former Captain was in charge.”

  “How’d you get away?” I asked him and sat down to listen.

  “I honestly have no idea. I was too busy cowering and clinging to the ropes on the mast to do anything else,” he admitted.

  “That must have been terrifying,” I said. I could not imagine going through something like that.

  “It was. So, what’s your least favorite part?”

  “Mermaids,” I said.

  Finn and I locked eyes and then started laughing. My hair had grown out fast and I was able to braid it again.

  “Mermaids?” Faxon asked. “Did I miss something?”

  “A mermaid attac
ked her while we were in the Fire Ring,” Finn explained.

  “She tried to drown me,” I said.

  “Yes, but the mermaid did not win and Tilia injured her enough to escape.”

  “What did she look like?” Faxon asked.

  “Like someone crossed a shark with a woman,” I told him. “Her face was hideous.”

  “I wonder if it was a crossbreeding.”

  “I don’t think you could do that,” I said despite the churning feeling in my gut. If someone was able to do that, what else could they create?

  “Let’s play a card game,” Finn suggested.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Finn went down to his cabin to get cards and Faxon picked at his fingernails while we waited.

  “I am surprised that you have never seen a mermaid,” I whispered.

  “I searched all over, but they have always eluded me.”

  “Maybe if you throw me overboard we can catch one.”

  “Let’s not try,” Finn said with a scowl as he returned.

  “Maybe they’re jealous of women’s faces and so they drown the pretty ones,” Faxon said and smiled.

  “Finn’s a better-looking woman than that mermaid,” I grumbled.

  Finn pretended to fan himself and batted his eyelashes. “I think I’d make a lovely lady.”

  I laughed loudly and clutched at my stomach.

  “I disagree,” Faxon said, “you would make a wretched lady.”

  “Well good thing I’m a man than,” Finn said.

  He shuffled and then dealt the cards and we played until the sun set. After eating a meal together, we went our separate ways, heading for our last night’s sleep before we infiltrated Judby.

  I lay on my back staring up at the wood above me and wondered what Judby would be like. It was a rarely discussed Kingdom, which was odd in and of itself, but even Esmeralda and Jared did not discuss it. Was it because of Esmeralda almost being killed there? Maybe it brought up bad memories so they avoided it.

  Perhaps the entire Kingdom avoided it because they knew what had happened there to Esmeralda and that Jared had split it up. What would Finn and I add to the Realm of Olanze once we ruled? Would there be grand tales about us and our feats? Or would the Crilan name shrink once we took over?