by Bailey Dark
There was a harsh thudding in the pit of my stomach as I scanned the waters for him… I may not want to be forced into a marriage with him, but I knew he was a good man… I didn’t want him to be lost to a world that needed him…
I bent over the boat, looking deep into the turquoise waters I loved, hoping I would see him rising from their crystal-clear depths. Please, let him be okay…
Three
Axis
My lungs were aching. The sun was setting. How far was this Princess going to sail before she gave me respite?
I had done my research, and I knew that I would be able to swim even faster on Serpul, just a benefit of having grown up on Farian and the natural differences between this terraformed planet and my own. I knew the salt content would make me more weightless, the gravity difference would make me seem stronger, and I would be able to crank after that sailboat with the magnificence of a dolgon. I just hadn’t anticipated what a speedy sailor the Princess would be.
I took half a second to look ahead and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw her recovering from almost capsizing as a race boat sped off. She was safe, she hadn't been hit or flipped, but that gave me a bit of time to catch up.
I took a deep breath and dove down as deeply as I could. It had been an impulsive moment to strip off my shirt, my weapons, and my boots, and dive in after the fleeing Princess, but King Kajo’s words resonated within me: I needed to find a way to make the Princess be on board with this deal. I think that he had also been speaking to me… I had to find a way to be on board with this deal, for more than my kingdom, but also for myself.
It had amused me that the Princess hadn’t slowed down when she had seen me swimming after her; instead, she had sped up. Spirited was accurate. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need my weapons if I caught her, and I hoped that was accurate.
These oceans were gorgeous… A lot of the creatures I saw flashing below me were the same. We had carefully engineered Serpul, but the oceans had existed, to some extent, already. So, some of the sea life had evolved on its own. There were coral and crustaceans I had never seen before. I had studied Serpul in school and had been here twice as a boy but had never met the Princess or explored the oceans much. They were gorgeous. The turquoise of the waters reminded me of the areas of glacial melt on Farian. Our coastal waters were more aquamarine in color, with purple sands making the deeper blue hue of the water. These sands were illustrious browns and tans.
I dove even further, spinning onto my back and continuing to swim, spying her dinghy just ahead. She was looking over the sides. That was good, she was worried about me, or at least looking for me. She had at least noticed I was no longer swimming behind her.
I angled up toward her from underneath the boat so she wouldn’t see me until the last moment. I couldn’t tell if my heart was beating furiously from the physical exertion or from the nervousness of what I was about to do, but then I burst through the water, using my telekinetic Will to level myself and float just up to her, steadying myself, watching her beautiful eyes go wide, noticing the freckles across her nose and cheeks for the first time, moving my face in close, brushing my lips just barely across hers, laying my hands across hers on the side of her dinghy, but not applying pressure to tip the boat, and whispering into her mouth.
“Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”
The sensation of our lips moving against each other was electric. Tingles of desire that I hadn't expected rushed through me and grabbed my throat, my body, my heaving chest, made me tighten my fingers against her. She let me pause here a moment longer than I expected, then she pulled her hands out from under mine and pushed off my chest, so that I went flying back from the boat, but not before I grabbed onto her arms, and pulled her with me, tumbling out of the boat, splashing into the water, her gurgle groan of protest choked by the water as it engulfed us.
I floated back away from her flailing hands and kicking legs, laughing as she fought to get free of me.
“How dare you!” She turned on me in the water, flashing around to glare at me, then rushed a surge of water onto me, so practiced with telekinetic waterpower’s that it swept me up and over, wrapping me into its swell and dunking me under before I could even react. I held my breath just a moment soon enough and then grabbed all my Will and blasted forward from its hold to land up on her dinghy, which was shaking and bouncing in the tumult of water from her telekinesis. She spun in the water to look at me in her boat. I untethered the sail. “Don’t you dare take my boat!”
“What? Don’t you think you could swim after me and catch me?” I taunted her with my eyes, then laughed a little out loud, shaking loose the sail, letting the dinghy move forward a little, shuddering a slip, as if it were ready to take off without her, too.
She bobbed up and down for a few moments, watching me, spitting out the water she took in as she bobbed. Her gorgeous red hair was slicked down her face, tendrils wrapping about her mouth and curling about her eyes. She trod water in the ocean waves, her breasts occasionally rising above the swells, the light blue blouse she wore slicked down to their beautiful curves. It was hard not to let my eyes trace every movement of her body beneath the crystal-clear waters.
“Don’t worry, Princess.” I extended my hand to her in the waters. “I won’t take your boat without you.”
She reached for my hand, then turned her palm to it and puffed it away with a telekinetic shove. She pushed herself out of the water with a floating Will and landed beside me on the boat. She shook herself gently, but her clothes just clung ever more succulently to her graceful, athletic body.
“Commander, please have a seat and let me have my boat back.”
“You don’t trust me to sail it?
”
“From what I hear, you spend most of your time killing Bordash soldiers, and less of your time protecting your oceans. Why would I trust you at the rudder?”
Her words actually struck a deep chord within me, because I knew them to be partially true. I had had the siege with Alpha Jase against Tarsine to attend to… He needed me there. And a good thing, too, or we may not have found Jase and Vania in time, then who knows what might have happened down in the depths of that fight in that storm. Now Jase had his Destin. But the blue had been impacting my Oceans for three months at that point, and I had not been an attentive Prince to my waters…
"You don't know how right you are, Princess. Though killing Bordash is in order to save Curans… But I am trying to do my best now, and you are, it seems, what would make me be my best."
She seemed taken aback by my frank words. She started to say something, then stopped. Started again, then stopped again. She couldn't seem to come up with a smart-aleck come back to something so honest.
Two firefins jumped out of the water nearby. She smiled and chuckled to herself.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, they just think your tattoos are funny.”
I looked down at my chest and smiled. I had two firefins, tribal style with stark outlines in the traditional Curan entwined geometric lines and curls, crossing my chest. They stood out boldly to the setting sun and the firefins as they swam around the dinghy. The two firefins were twenty-feet long, their large red heads looked like dragons staring up at us, with horns and feathered cheeks, lanky bodies that snaked from side to side, and four fins going out of their bodies into slender wing-like fins. Their long tail was barbed and could fire poison darts. They had six orange fins along their underside. Their scales were tough and hearty. They were fantastic battle animals, and the Serpul had trained them as warrior animals in civil wars centuries before, though they were no longer used as such. Princess Ceritha saw to it that these animals had their own rights and were honorably protected. I was sure she would institute such rules on my lands, as well.
“What else do they say?” I asked, as the firefins continued to circle us. Ceritha put her hand down and stroked their scaled and thorny backs as they swam around, which made them emit a gurgle
under the water, the timbre of a growl.
“They wish us well. They say they will miss me…”
“You have relationships with all these animals?”
Ceritha looked at me with something between a glare and a sadness, as if I could just never understand.
“They are my friends. If you could speak to them, you would understand.”
“Well, let me try.”
“You’re not gifted enough.”
“You don’t know me. Let me try.”
I spoke to her telepathically to try to prove to her that I could try.
"It's because I don't know you, that I won't let you."
“Princess… You will have to get to know me better from here on out, and that will mean we need to trust each other. Why not start now?”
I placed my hand on her leg gently, and she looked down at it with a frown. I removed my hand, but with a caress, more than with a jerk. She frowned again, but then took my hand and I felt that little tingle of excitement again that I had felt with our lips earlier. I wondered if she felt it, too. She gave no sign that she did. She held my large palm in her two, much smaller, hands. She moved us to the edge of the dinghy and seemed to be speaking telepathically to the firefins because they swept up beside the edge, both of them lifting their heads up to us. Their heads were two feet wide, their eyes large and bulbous like fish, but their skulls more dragon-headed and beak-like. They were gorgeous, fearsome creatures, who could bite us in two, if they wanted. They could jump up and break the boat with their weight.
I had been close to dolgons and firefins before, but not in this way. I had never been close to them as a friend. I had been their warden, their protector. From poachers, to help our scientists tranquilize them, but never of their own will. It was mesmerizing!
Ceritha brought my hand close to the snout of the first one and then the other firefin, letting them sniff me. Then, she laid my palm across one of the firefins' foreheads. He gurgled again and the other chittered a sweet little song.
“You can feel what they feel, with the same Will that you use with telepathy and telekinetics. Use your emotion. Take that intention and focus on their intention. It isn’t words that they convey. It is feelings and emotions. You will have to learn to read them and each species has a different way of conveying their emotions. So, it won’t be easy. But… I can teach you. I am sure it will difficult on your planet, since no Farian has ever tried to communicate with your animals. Most of all, you have to open yourself up to this being possible, okay?” She squeezed my hand and made me look at her. Her eyes were serious. “This is important to me. You have to know it is possible to let it be possible.”
I nodded, but I was still unsure in my heart. I had heard Serpuls could communicate with animals, and it sure seemed like she was talking to them, but… it was not anything I had ever been interested in.
I took a deep breath and looked into the firefin's eyes. I opened myself up to the telepathic communication around us and tried to pulse some of my emotion and feeling toward the firefin. I tried to believe it could talk to me, that I could feel a connection from it, to it, with it…
This is such bullshit… Talking to a stupid fish…
No. I can do this.
Okay…
Arguing with myself is not going to let it happen.
The firefin looked from me to Ceritha and I realized that it might be reading my mind, but I wasn’t able to access it. I looked at Ceritha quickly and she was frowning, that cute little pout of a frown... Maybe the firefin had just told her what I had thought!
Ceritha laid her hand on mine, and her other hand on the other firefin. A pulse of energy rippled through my palm. Ceritha’s Will.
Suddenly, an image of the firefin’s home, a coral reef not too far away, but one I hadn’t seen yet, with glorious sea fans, with yellows, purples, pinks, reds, and oranges. With brightly colored fish and anemones. The firefins protected this reef. There were twenty of them in the tribe. Then a rush of happiness and warmth entered me. The firefins were welcoming me.
I turned to look at Ceritha, stunned. The firefins chittered to each other and pulled back from the boat, flicking away in a fury of reds and oranges, flashing water droplets onto our faces.
I laughed and stood up, pumping my fist into the air. I pulled Ceritha up with me. The dinghy swayed a little beneath our feet.
“Holy shit! That was amazing!” I grabbed her and twirled her up in the air. “Thank you! Thank you for letting me feel that!”
Ceritha laughed and grabbed onto my shoulders. I looked up at her as I raised her above me, the gentle stars starting to wink into being behind her head, the sunset fading in the sky to our left.
“I want more! I want to talk to them more! That was absolutely magical!”
“It is magical, Commander,” she said. “Now put me down.” She laughed and pulled at my hair. As she pulled at my hair, a rapid flicker of desire pulsed through my entire body. I dropped her down in my arms, letting her still slightly wet body slide down my bare chest, her small hands gripping at my skin. I caught her just as her face was next to mine. She looked from my eyes to my lips, my eyes to my lips.
“It’s gotten so late,” she said, starting to push off me, but she was still held in the air, a foot off the floor of the boat.
“Princess…”
“Commander, I think…”
I saw a flash of firefin behind the boat and then it rocked and I tumbled backward, Ceritha in my arms, holding her tight as we fell to the boat’s floor. She gripped to me tightly, both of us laughing. She pushed off my chest to look at me thoughtfully as I kept my hands on the small of her back. She brushed at my hair, then traced the lines of the firefins on my chest.
“These are a gorgeous representation of the firefins.” Her fingers were like little points of fire igniting burning desire within me. I caught my breath with each gentle tap she made on my skin. Could she not feel this power? This pulsing between us? Surely, she had to feel this… “They weren’t really laughing at you…” She kept tracing the lines, oblivious to what she was doing to me, but I was getting so hard, and she was so gorgeous, her alabaster skin in the fading sunset just enough to make her blue eyes glow. “They were more—”
“Ceritha.”
She stopped talking as I breathed out her name.
“Kiss me.”
I put my hand on her cheek and she nuzzled into me before she could stop herself. Her eyes were wide as she bent down to kiss me, the dinghy rocking gently, starlight glowing down at us.
Our lips brushed and electricity rocketed through my entire body. I brushed my hand through her tangled, slightly damp hair, letting her guide the pressure of our kiss, excited by the tentative nature, by the mental hold our telepathy had, as she answered me…
“Axis… I think that we should…”
“Ceritha, just kiss me…”
She moved on top of me and slowly moved against me, her hands finding mine and gripping them as she gyrated against my hard dick. Her eyes were wide as she pulled back from the kiss for air. I licked my lips and looked at her in amazement. She took a deep breath and looked to the setting sun as its last little blip evaporated with the green flash. I reached up to pull her back to me and she leaned forward, but her hand landed on a little medical kit and she stopped.
“No!” She stood up immediately, pulling the medical kit to her chest. “We have to go back home. There are more important things than us.”
I swallowed deeply and took a deep breath, shaking my head, trying to clear the buzzing sound and the rippling going through my body.
“What, what’s wrong? But I thought…?”
“No, Commander. I’m glad you were able to connect to the firefin. That’s probably all you were feeling right now, was the joy from that. It is exhilarating. But we have more important things to think of. Like, not everything your animals will tell you will be joyous. You’re going to hear a lot of pain from them on your planet. You should be rea
dy for that. Now, let’s go back to my castle, so I can get ready to be your alliance bride.
”
Ceritha sat down at the back and untethered the sail before I could even get myself situated again. She let the sails and the wind lead us back to her Capital City. I finally caught my breath as we made out the lights of the port. I didn’t dare speak to her, a scowl on her face as she maneuvered the boat to the port, but I was confounded and dizzy, and a little hurt. She didn’t speak the whole way back, as we tied up her little boat, and then she stomped away to her castle. I found a soldier who led me to my quarters to tidy up for the celebratory dinner.
I looked at my hands as I tied my tie. I flexed them into fists, still remembering the pulse of power that had come through them as Ceritha and I touched the firefin together. What was that? Was that what it felt like to connect to an animal? Or was that what it felt like for me to connect to Ceritha?
At least I have a lifetime with her to figure it out…
Four
Ceritha
“You can’t ignore him the whole night.”
I looked at my sister with disgust. “Wanna bet?”
“You have to dance with him at least once. Everyone is expecting you to have at least one dance with the man you’re supposed to marry.”
“Isn’t marrying him like I’m expected to enough for them, Nerite?”
“What in the world happened after he jumped into the water to swim after you?” Nerite poured some more champagne into my glass. I rolled my eyes at her.
“Like that’s going to help me forget what I have to do.”
“Just think of all the animals you are going to save. All the animals you will be able to protect.”
I took a deep breath. That thought did always help. That was the only thought that helped. I would be able to get through anything if I was able to just keep thinking of that.
“At least Cowrie and Murex are going with you, right?”
