by Zoe Chant
Instead, she pulled away from his kiss, ducking her head. He made an inarticulate noise of protest, but the growl turned into a low gasp as she ran her tongue along his collarbone. She could taste the salt of the sea on his skin, and a deeper, wilder scent that was all his own.
She explored him with her mouth, slowly, savoring every hard line of his muscles. His fingers ran lightly over her own back, exploring her in return with a delicacy that belied his strength. He stroked her as if she was some fragile, priceless treasure.
“Neridia,” he murmured into her hair, longing singing in his voice. “My mate. My mate.”
Tears welled in her eyes at being so cherished. Even as her whole body turned to liquid pleasure, a bittersweet pain caught in her throat. He was choosing her, he had chosen her…but she knew what it would cost him.
I can’t. I can’t let him do this.
He went tense in her embrace, as if he’d sensed her sudden hesitance. His huge hands closed over her shoulders. She gasped as he tossed her back onto the bed. A rustle of fabric, and then he was on her, covering her body with his own.
Before, in the water, she hadn’t truly been aware of just how massive he truly was. His solid weight pressed demandingly against her. She felt wonderfully small and fragile, utterly dominated by his strength.
His naked cock slid against her soft stomach, hard and slick with his desire. The feel of him burned away the last shreds of her self-control. No matter what the cost—or who would pay it—she needed him.
She cried out as he slid into her, wrapping her legs tight around his hips. He moved in her as powerfully as the sea, sweeping her away on waves of ecstasy. He was over her and in her, body and mind. She lost herself completely, willingly, dissolving into him even as he emptied himself into her.
Afterwards, they lay in a tangle of limbs, like driftwood washed up onto a beach. Neridia buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in his scent, trying to reassure herself that he was truly there. Even with his heavy, sweat-slick body pressing against hers, she couldn’t shake a feeling that this was just a dream; that any moment, she would wake up, and he would be gone.
His rough fingers gently combed through her hair. She could feel his heart beating. Although her own was slowing, his was still fast. Despite the exhausted relaxation of his muscles, the mate bond betrayed his tension.
“I cannot bear to be parted from you,” he whispered into her ear. “Please. Stay with me.”
She stiffened underneath him, her own contentment popping like a soap bubble. “I thought…I thought this meant you’d chosen to stay with me.”
“I cannot,” he said, his voice the barest breath.
“Then what was this?” She pushed angrily at him, trying to shove him away, but he didn’t move. “You broke your honor just to say goodbye?”
In the darkness, she felt more than saw the shake of his head. “I did not break my honor. I spoke with my Knight-Commander. He released me from my vow of chastity.”
“What? Why?”
“I told him that we were in danger of losing you utterly. I told him of your fears, and how the Master Shark had preyed upon them. I told him…I begged him to allow me one last chance to convince you not to throw away your heritage. I asked permission to show you what it was that you were sacrificing.”
A turmoil of emotions flooded her. Outrage at how he’d inadvertently misled her, relief that he truly hadn’t sacrificed his honor, a surge of sheer annoyance at his arrogance, joy that he was still fighting for her, terror that she could still lose him…
She settled on annoyance. “Wow, you really do think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
“I did not mean this.” John traced the shape of her face, as though trying to read her expression with his fingertips. “Not just this, at least. I know…I know I am not sufficient inducement. But he did not only release me from my vow. He also gave me permission to show you the true reason you cannot turn your back on the sea. Even if you cannot shift, he will allow you to enter Atlantis.”
She closed her eyes, knowing that she should move away from his gentle touch, unable to bring herself to do so. “John…”
“Please,” he breathed, desperation weaving a staccato melody under his words. “Please, come. Let me show you your true home. I swear on my honor that I will protect you, from any foe, if you will but come. Please. Come to Atlantis.”
She wanted to say no. But if she did…she didn’t know what he’d say. What he’d do.
I cannot bear to be parted from you, he’d said.
But he was a sea dragon. She knew by now that he would face any challenge, any pain, if that was what his honor demanded.
She couldn’t bear to be parted from him either. And she wasn’t a sea dragon.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll come.”
“Oh my mate, my heart, my Empress. I swear to you, you will not regret this.” His arms tightened around her, pulling her close. “You will understand, when you see Atlantis. And whatever happens, we will be together, like this, every night and day. All will be well, as long as we are together.”
Neridia curled into her mate’s embrace, listening to his soft words of relief and reassurance, surrounded by his strength and love. She had never felt so alone.
Chapter 22
*You’re sure this is the place?* Dai’s telepathic tone was dubious. His horned head dipped, his eyes narrowing as he peering down at the apparently featureless waves below. *I don’t see anything.*
*This is as far as you will be able to take us, kin-cousin,* John sent back. *Atlantis is protected by powerful magics, which prevent either shifter or human from crossing the city’s borders.*
Neridia straddled Dai’s broad red-scaled neck in front of him. Overhearing their telepathic communication, she turned her head to catch his eye. She shouted something, but the wind whipped her words away.
John shook his head at her, gesturing between their foreheads. *Mindspeech, my mate. You must learn to become comfortable with it, since you do not yet know our spoken language.*
She grimaced, screwing up her face in concentration. Wobbly and ill-formed, her halting psychic projection brushed against the edge of his mind. *We’re…getting…off?*
*Yes,* he replied. *We must make our own way from here.*
She swallowed hard, her face tight with apprehension. He tried to send her encouragement down the mate bond, but his silent reassurances washed around her without effect, like water swirling around a silent stone.
Last night, their bodies had been as close as it was possible to get. Today, he had the terrible sensation that her soul was further away from him than ever.
She is simply nervous, he told himself for the thousandth time. When she is embraced by the sea, her fears will be swept away. All will be well.
He tightened the straps across his chest, checking that both his sword and his pack were secure. He’d worn his armor, of course—there was no need for human clothes any more.
There would never be need for anything human, ever again.
He tapped Dai’s scaled shoulder. *If you would oblige me by swooping low to the water, kin-cousin?*
Dai curved his head to look back at him. A dragon’s face was not capable of expressing emotion like a human one, but John could tell the sorrow behind Dai’s burning green eyes.
*This is really goodbye, then?* Dai asked.
John laid his palm flat on the red dragon’s hot neck for a moment. *If all goes well, then yes. The Empress must stay in Atlantis, and I must stay by her side. We will not be free to leave the sea.*
*And if all does not go well?*
John shrugged one armored shoulder. *Then I will not be alive to leave the sea, kin-cousin.*
Dai blew smoke out of his nostrils in a long sigh. *Then, much as it pains me…I wish you the very best of luck.*
The red dragon swept his wings back, dropping into a dive. John swung a leg over Dai’s broad neck, holding on with one hand to the curving spines running
down the dragon’s back. With his other, he gathered Neridia close.
“Hold your breath,” he shouted into her ear, not trusting her erratic telepathic abilities. “Are you ready?”
Wide-eyed with fear, she nodded. She grabbed hold of the straps of his harness, clinging to his chest.
Dai’s crimson wings flared. The dragon had managed to swoop so low to the ocean, the tip of his tail cut a furrow through the waves as he leveled out.
Holding tight to Neridia, John jumped.
He was shifting even as he hit the water. Exploding into his true form, he swirled in a tight coil around Neridia, bearing her back up to the surface. She spluttered, spitting out sea water as she scrabbled to sit astride his neck.
Dai’s shadow swept over them. John sang a farewell in his own language, the notes shaking the water, and the red dragon dipped a wing in response. Then he was gone, beating his wings hard to spiral back up into the sky.
He couldn’t see Neridia, perched as she was behind his head, but he could feel her shiver as the wind blew across her ocean-drenched clothes. She huddled against his scales, drawing her feet up out of reach of the waves.
Despite the salt water soaking her to the skin, she was as human as ever.
“Now what?” she asked out loud, looking around at the empty sea. “There’s no one here.”
John hid his disappointment, not allowing even the faintest tinge to taint his mental voice. *To human senses, perhaps. But not to mine.*
In the water, sound was a matter of touch, felt with the whole body. He stretched himself out to his full length, luxuriating in the sweet vibrations whispering along his scales. Only the need to keep Neridia above the surface stopped him from diving and rolling, wrapping himself in music.
Oh, I have missed this. I did not know how much.
A sea dragon song could carry around a quarter of the globe. This close to Atlantis, the entire ocean shook with their voices.
The martial chants of knights patrolling the border, the sweet piping calls of infants playing; the duets of lovers and the call-and-response of hunters; some singing for purpose and others simply for the pleasure of being alive. It all blended into one great tapestry of song, the song of his people.
He could not put his head under the water to add his own voice to the chorus, but his presence had not gone unnoticed. The nearest knights were several miles away, but they had seen Dai fly overhead, and heard the splash of their entry into the water. Their deep voices shook John’s bones as they focused their songs on him in challenge.
“Identify yourself,” one of the unseen border guard sang to him, in harsh notes as warning as a bared fang. “Who seeks to enter Atlantis in silence? Why do you not sing?”
“Peace, peace, honored Knight,” sang a higher, much closer voice, in rippling melodies of delight. “They are known, they are expected, and oh, they are welcome!”
Air did not carry sound as well as water, but John called out anyway, his heart unable to contain his song. “Little sister!”
Her familiar, beloved head broke through the waves, sea water streaming from her indigo scales. “Little brother!”
He rumbled in delight at the old joke, curving his head down to rub his cheek along hers in greeting. Hatched from the same clutch of eggs, it had always been a matter of debate which of them was actually the eldest. She claimed to have cracked her shell first, while he had always countered that he had fully emerged before she had. In any event, he had not been "little" compared to her since their seventh year.
They had been inseparable as youngsters, and even though the tides of duty had carried them far apart since then, they would always share a bond deeper than words. He had missed her greatly.
“You have not changed,” he said fondly. Her strong, graceful coils were as beautiful as ever, and her song still sparkled with her irrepressible zest for life.
She studied him for a moment, her turquoise eyes troubled. “You have.”
Before he could ask what she meant, she lifted herself higher in the water, curving her neck. “Is this really her? Your mate?”
“Yes.” John’s chest swelled with pride as he bowed his head to display Neridia. “This is the Empress-in-Waiting. But we must use mindspeech. She does not yet fully understand our tongue.”
“She is very small,” his sister said doubtfully. “Smaller than I expected. How can someone so tiny truly be the Empress-in-Waiting?”
He was glad she hadn’t said that in mindspeech. “There can be no doubt, my sister. The very sea proclaimed her status.”
His sister gave him a rather dubious look, which was understandable given that the sea certainly wasn’t doing so now. The waves rolled unconcernedly about their business, to all appearances utterly ignorant of the fact that their ruler perched above them. Had John not heard for himself the ocean’s first greeting to Neridia yesterday, he too might have thought that she was nothing more than any other human from its current lack of reaction.
“The sea is wise,” he said firmly, ignoring his inner human’s uneasy silence. “It hides its devotion now, so as not to reveal Her Majesty’s presence to unfriendly observers. It does not wish the Master Shark to find her. Once she takes her throne, her full glory will be revealed, I assure you.”
His sister clicked her fangs, still looking less than convinced. “Well, if the Knight-Commander is willing to allow her into Atlantis, then I suppose she must be more than she seems.”
Neridia flinched back into his neck-ruff as his sister bent to peer at her more closely. *What’s she saying?* she asked him privately, down the mate bond.
*It does not matter,* he sent back. He widened the mental contact to include his sister. *Sister, you are being rude. I told you that we needed to use mind speech.*
*I am sorry,* his sister told Neridia, still inspecting her in fascination. *It is just that you are the first human-ah, that is, the first dry-lander I’ve ever met.*
*Oh.* John felt Neridia lean back a little, craning her neck up to examine his sister in return. *Well, you’re only the second sea dragon I’ve ever met. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re smaller than I expected.*
His sister’s iridescent neck-ruff bristled with laughter. *And I hope you will not judge us all based on my brother’s sole example. In brute size, or any other respect.*
Neridia laughed too, her nervous tension easing a little. *John didn’t say which one of you was older, but I’m guessing you’ve got to be his big sister, right?*
His sister shot him a triumphant look. *I like her already.*
John bared a fang at her, though his own neck-ruff betrayed his amusement. *I did not summon you merely in order to disparage me to my mate. You are here to perform a duty, if you recall.*
She flicked water at him with the tip of her tail. *That’s my brother. Always duty first. Especially if it allows him to avoid an embarrassing conversation.*
He growled, neck-ruff flattening in real irritation, as Neridia giggled. *I am not avoiding anything except sharks. It somewhat defeats the purpose of flying to Atlantis if we then bob about on the surface all day like foolish baby seals.*
*Oh, very well.* His sister blew a stream of bubbles impudently at him as she sank back down beneath the surface. *But don’t think this is anything more than a temporary reprieve. Your mate and I are going to have a nice long chat once we’re all safely in Atlantis. I have many stories to share with her. Many, many stories.*
Behind his head, Neridia chuckled. “I was nervous about meeting your sister,” she said out loud, in human speech. “But now I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
*And I was not nervous about you two meeting,* John replied. *Now…I am not quite so sanguine.*
Still, at least his sister’s jibes had lightened Neridia’s mood. John would happily endure days worth of teasing for that. Which was just as well, seeing that he probably would have to. His sister had never been one to make idle threats.
Neridia giggled again as sh
e sensed his resignation, patting his scaled neck in sympathy. Then she leaned over, looking down through the glittering waves. “What’s she doing now?”
*What I called her here to do.* Even without being able to put his head underwater to track his sister’s position, he could sense the swirling currents of her movements. *She is dancing.*
In a spray of sea foam, his sister broke the surface some way off. Her body hung in a breathtaking arc for a moment, the tip of her tail coming clean out of the water with the force of her leap. Her webbed forefeet spread wide, as if she sought to gather the entire sky in her embrace.
With an ear-splitting crash, she dove back under the water again. Trails of silver bubbles rose in her wake. Twisting elegantly, she swirled her body around them, herding them together. Beneath the water’s surface, a delicate, gleaming sphere of air started to form.
Leap by leap and twist by twist, she captured the sky and coaxed it under the sea. John sang his sister’s name in admiration, saluting her artistry.
He could tell Neridia was equally impressed. “Oh, she’s so beautiful. I’d never have imagined something so big could move so gracefully.”
*My sister is a master of her art,* John sent, pride filling his mental tone. *This form of dance does not come naturally to most of our people, but she has always had an affinity for air.* His jaws parted a little in a wry smile. *Do not tell her this, but I sometimes think that she would have made a much better Walker-Above-Wave than I.*
His sister had finished trapping a glimmering sphere of air within her coils. Carefully, as if putting on a complicated necklace, she manipulated it so that it rested between her shoulders, at the base of her neck. She made a few experimental loops and turns, checking that it was secure, then looked back up at them both.
*I’m ready,* she called up mentally. *I’d normally draw down a much larger quantity if I was restocking Atlantis’s air, but that would take too long. This will be enough to get us there, at least.*
*Hold your breath, my mate,* John told Neridia. *And keep a firm grip.*
