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As the elven girl had advised them, Zelda and Calain moved further along the beach, away from the port, traveling in the direction of the rocks that loomed in the shallows, wet from the waves and shining in the sun. It was where the mermaids usually sunbathed, according to the girl, but as they approached, Zelda’s heart sank, for she could see none. The rocks were bare except for seashells and strings of seaweed.
Clinging to Calain’s hand for balance, Zelda climbed out onto the rocks, found one that was leaning out like a precipice, and walked along it to the edge, beyond which the glittering Arinath Sea spread away to the opposite shore. Somewhere on that opposite shore, in the heart of Dark Bloom Forest, Zelda’s daughter was waiting for her!
There was another rock growth at the precipice ledge that grew upright like a natural podium, and Zelda rested her hands upon it, looking out at the water. “My daughter is out there, Calain,” Zelda said happily. “She will love you. I cannot wait until you have met.”
Calain slid her strong arms around Zelda and hugged her sadly from behind. “I am sorry I was not there to help you birth her. You should never forgive me for abandoning my duty. Even if you had wronged me, you needed me. I should have been there.”
Zelda rubbed Calain’s arm. “It doesn’t matter now. Let us put the matter behind us and think of all the happy days we shall spend together, watching Aereth grow to a woman.”
“Is that what you named her? Pretty.”
Zelda’s eyes narrowed in thought as she gazed at the sea. “I wonder what she shall grow to be. A knight? A sorceress?” She smiled. “A basket weaver?”
“Melvalda wanted her for her power,” Calain reminded Zelda. “That’s what you said. She is to be a great sorceress.”
“She’ll have the natural ability, yes,” said Zelda, “but she doesn’t have to choose that. Look at Cassandra! She chose to be a knight. And you!”
Calain laughed softly. “Could you see me as anything other?”
“No,” Zelda admitted, and they both laughed.
“I would never have fit into the world of motherhood and gowns,” said Calain. “My father sent me away to Falcon Isle to give me a chance to be as I am and thrive. I know that now.”
“And your mother?” said Zelda quietly. She had not forgotten what she had seen in Edolel’s book, the memory of Calain learning that her mother had abandoned her, and now that they had reconciled, she couldn’t help asking. She suddenly wanted to know everything about Calain there was to know.
Calain was still and silent for a time, then she said heavily, “I spent my entire life furious at my mother for abandoning us. Then I abandoned my family when they needed me most!” Calain smoothed a grieving hand over Zelda’s flat belly, which once had been large with child. “Now I am no different from Lowri,” she said in a low voice. “I cannot even hate her anymore.”
“I am certain your mother had good reason for leaving,” said Zelda soothingly.
“Yes, I know,” said Calain. “Tis what angers me. I spent years thinking my mother an evil woman for turning her back. Now . . . Now I wonder if there wasn’t some grave reason for her absence, and I spent all the time pointlessly angry. Perhaps my pa wronged her. Perhaps her family forced her to come home. There could have been a million reasons, and my pa kept them from me, never told me the truth! I suppose he wanted me to love him and not her.”
“Couldn’t you find your father and ask him?” Zelda suggested gently.
Calain was quiet for so long, it made Zelda anxious. Finally, she said in a low, unhappy voice, “I cannot return there.”
“But why?” Zelda wondered. “You may learn the truth! And you needn’t beat yourself up over leaving me any longer. I may have done the same in your place. I confess, when I felt you with that other woman, I wanted to find you and strangle her.”
Calain chuckled. “I did not think you capable of such fury, sweet Zelda. Not until I was standing there in the forest, and you screamed and screamed at me. In an odd way, I suppose I enjoyed it.”
Zelda laughed as well. “You enjoyed it?”
“Well, I did not think you would care if I lay with another,” Calain said. “Not when you were off with Melvalda and Raven’s Cross. But then I saw how hurt and angry you were, and how you looked upon me as if you wished to burn me alive . . . and I knew you cared.”
They laughed.
“Well, at least I finally got through to you. But you mustn’t harm Arryn if we see her again,” Zelda scolded. “She saved me from the wolves in the mist. She saved you as well! She has done nothing but watch over us and protect us.”
“I suppose she hath nothing else to do,” said Calain darkly.
“Calain,” Zelda begged.
“All right!” Calain relented irritably. “If we see Arryn again, I shall try to be civil. I owe her my life, but that does not entitle her to my woman!”
Zelda smiled when Calain’s arms closed tightly about her. She had to admit that she enjoyed how possessive Calain was. In all her life, no one had ever . . . wanted her. Her uncle had hated her and had dumped her at Vira’Toss, and most of the other mages at Vira’Toss had scorned and ignored her. She was a peasant and a lover of women, and so the women had avoided her. Zelda suspected that Wick alone hadn’t feared befriending her because Wick, too, desired women. But Wick hated her as well. Before Calain, only Sian had ever cared about Zelda, cherished her, protected her, and now Sian was gone. She hadn’t seen her since the day her uncle kicked the girl in the face, breaking her nose. Like Zelda, Sian had been dirt-poor and wouldn’t have been able to afford a healer. It was likely the broken nose had become infected and she had died. In other words, her uncle had indirectly murdered Sian. Zelda decided to push the thought away.
“Who was the woman you laid with?” Zelda asked, startling Calain.
“Why the devil would thou wish to know that?” Calain asked in amazement.
“You know all of my lovers,” said Zelda. “If you wanted, you could go forth and find Melvalda and chop her head off. But I have no idea who you’ve lain with! What if I wanted to slay them?”
Calain laughed in disbelief. “So I should give you their names, that you might slay them?”
“Yes!”
They laughed again.
“But I’m curious,” Zelda said, serious now. “I keep wondering what they looked like, what you saw in them.” What could have made Calain’s heart stray, she wondered.
“Well, why did thou want Melvalda? You share your secrets first.”
Zelda smiled. “I suppose I wanted her because she’s older and experienced. And she knows things. I enjoyed learning from her. Not that way!” she cried when Calain laughed quietly.
“I bet thou enjoyed it,” Calain muttered, reminding Zelda of her conversation with Selene just days before. She wondered what Selene and Gweneth and Cassandra were doing. Were they playing with little Aereth? She tried to imagine them tossing Aereth in the air and tickling her and the thought made her smile.
“I lay with the woman who helped me escape the Gold Keep,” Calain confessed. “You would not know her, so it isn’t as if you could find her. She was an assassin, so I guarantee you could not.”
“What did she look like?” asked Zelda, disappointed. She would have liked to scry the woman, at least. See her with her own eyes. But if the woman was an assassin, she probably wore a charm against such invasive spells.
“She looked like you,” Calain softly admitted.
Zelda blushed a little. “So you have a type, then.”
“Perhaps. . .” Calain said absently, and Zelda knew she was looking at her breasts. Zelda was wearing a pale blue gown, which was low around her bare shoulders, exposing her swollen cleavage to the cold sea air. It was a gown with nursing folds in the front, so that she could quickly free her breasts to feed Aereth. Cassandra had brought it to her along with the goats she’d purchased in town.
Zelda’s suspicions were confirmed when Calain’s strong hands closed on her breasts in fistfuls. “By the gods . . .” Calain muttered. “I have missed the feel of your massive tits in my hands.” She tugged gently at Zelda’s laces and watched the fabric fall away, exposing her high, plump breasts, which were still full of milk. The tiny pink nipples were rigid. “I suppose you missed my feeling them,” teased Calain, referring to Zelda’s hard nipples.
Zelda blushed to her hairline. She was indeed aroused from Calain’s hungry touch, but she would not be distracted. She covered her breasts quickly with the loose fabric and said, “Who was your first love?”
Calain paused. “Why art thou asking me so many questions?” she said with a laugh.
It was because Edolel’s book had made Zelda realize just how little she knew of Calain. The other Knights of Falcon knew more about Calain than she ever would! The way they had sat around the table with Calain at Wolf Fortress, laughing and teasing over food and wine. Zelda suddenly craved that intimacy, not just with Calain, but with all the knights.
“I want to know you,” Zelda said.
Calain seemed pleased by that and closed her arms around Zelda’s waist again. “As my lady commands,” she said. “My first love? Don’t believe I ever loved a woman before you. But my first kiss, that was Siobhan.”
“Siobhan?” Zelda asked with interest. “Who was she?”
“Her parents died when she was little. She was our neighbor and had nowhere to go, and her father had been my father’s friend, so Pa took her in,” said Calain. “I was five when Pa sent me off to be a knight. Siobhan was four. She grabbed me and hugged me and then . . . kissed me on the mouth. Before that I’d thought she was my sister and asked Pa what was wrong with her, slobbering on me so.”
Zelda laughed.
“She was my first kiss,” Calain said a little wistfully. “Pa said she was always asking for me when I left. I used to dream of going back to the farm and stealing her away.” For some reason, Calain grew quiet and sad, and Zelda wished she had not pried. It sounded like a painful memory, not unlike her memory of Sian. She was too afraid now to ask what had become of Siobhan.
Zelda turned to face Calain and kissed her on the mouth to sooth her. “Well,” she said breathlessly, “I’m glad you chose to stay at Falcon Isle and become my knight. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Calain.”
To Zelda’s disappointment, Calain only looked down at her doubtfully.
“I place more faith in actions, fair Zelda,” Calain said. “Not words. But I haven’t forgotten how you screamed at me,” she added with a smile, “so I shall believe thee for now.”
Zelda smiled back but still felt a little sad. So she was right: Calain needed Zelda to do something to show that she cared. Words would never be enough.
Without warning, Calain took Zelda by the waist and lifted her easily, sitting her on the rock podium behind her. And then she roughly yanked Zelda’s gown back open—which she had laced shut – so that one of her heavy breasts trembled free. Zelda blushed a little when Calain cupped it in a meaty hand and squeezed, watching with narrow eyes as the white milk beaded out. She leaned down and suckled deeply, and Zelda gasped when Calain’s other hand yanked up her skirts and roughly plunged down the front of her panties, fingering her sex until her cheeks flushed, and she grew moist over Calain’s roughly coaxing fingers.
Zelda fumbled blindly for the back of Calain’s neck and cradled her head as she suckled. Her head fell back with a swing of her golden curls, and sitting there, legs wide, as she was fingered, sucked, and licked, she had to admit that she had missed Calain’s rough aggression, her strength, and her relentless, unapologetic hunger. Calain was desperate to get at Zelda, pushing up her skirts, tugging at her laces, impatiently yanking at her panties, as if she longed to rip her clothes off right then and there. But it was the only gown Zelda had at the moment, and Calain was struggling so terribly to control herself that she was trembling.
In a daze of lust, Calain trailed hot, sloppy kisses up Zelda’s neck to her mouth. Her tongue extended, so did Zelda’s, and they closed mouths in an eager kiss. Calain was still fingering Zelda, her fingers gliding deeper and deeper through her moisture, curling so that Zelda’s hips were almost thrusting with the motion. Zelda’s lips gasped against Calain’s, and Calain nibbled Zelda’s pink bottom lip as she slid her fingers deeper, harder, until Zelda was rhythmically gasping and her cheeks blushing.
“Shall my lady scream for me?” Calain whispered huskily. She kissed Zelda’s cheek and whispered in her ear, “No one is near . . .” She pulled back to glance over Zelda’s body. She was looking at Zelda with green eyes that glittered hunger, and Zelda knew what she must’ve looked like to her: one breast hanging out, her golden hair tousled, her skirts hiked up, and her thighs spread. Calain had not removed her panties, and they were stretched over her muscly hand as she continued fingering, deeper, faster, Zelda’s moisture washing over her again and again.
Calain showered Zelda’s neck and shoulder with frantic kisses, and Zelda knew she was close to a climax. Her mouth found Zelda’s nipple again, she sucked on it slowly as her fingers plunged deeper, her thumb gently massaging Zelda’s clitoris. Zelda’s lashes fluttered as her clitoris throbbed beneath Calain’s firm touch, pulsing harder and harder, until she could not stifle her cries and indeed began to scream softly, breathlessly, again and again. With her head back as Calain suckled her large breast, she stared, unseeing, at the blue sky, her pink lips parted, and she screamed in shock and delight as she climaxed, her body trembling all over.
Calain suddenly closed her arms around Zelda and held her tightly, kissing her neck, her cheek, as Zelda trembled in the strong wall of her arms. In the wake of her climax, Zelda sagged in Calain’s arms, panting to catch her breath and deliciously tired. Calain was still holding her so tightly.
“If only . . . I could rip off . . . thy gown,” panted Calain, pulling back to look down at Zelda with the same hungry eyes. She kissed Zelda’s lips and whispered, “You shall sit on my face one day, shant you?” She kissed Zelda’s mouth again and again. “Shant you?” she whispered between breathless kisses.
“Y-Yes,” Zelda panted, blushing bright at the thought, and caught Calain’s lips to hers, sliding her tongue in her mouth in another passionate kiss.
“You sat on Gweneth’s face but not mine,” said Calain. “Tis not fair!” She dropped her forehead against Zelda’s, and they laughed, staring warmly in each other’s eyes.
“What is all the screaming and moaning about? And may I join?” asked a delighted voice.
Breathless, Zelda and Calain glanced around and noticed a woman’s head and arms had appeared on the rock at their feet. She was leaning forward out of the water . . . and she was completely naked. No smallclothes, nothing. Her narrow, naked back disappeared into the water, and her big breasts sat on the rock, crushed together in great mounds of cleavage. Long red hair framed her heart-shaped face, falling smooth either side bright blue eyes with pupils that were narrowed like a beast’s. Zelda would have thought her an elf if not for her startling eyes.
“What . . . Who are you?!” cried Zelda, hastily tucking her breasts away.
“You don’t look very bright, bless your heart,” answered the woman in the water, “so I shall tell you plainly: I am a mermaid.” Behind her, her legs splashed up, and the toes were webbed. They could momentarily see her backside bobbing on the surface of the water before she dipped her hips down again.
“Oh,” said Calain, happily relieved. “We’ve been looking for thee all morning!”
The mermaid glanced up and down Calain’s muscular frame. “Have you now, my beauty?”
Calain smiled at that, but when Zelda looked at her indignantly, she sheepishly cast her eyes down.
Zelda snapped up from the rock podium, standing pointedly in front of Calain. “Yes,” she said sternly, “we have. We are stranded here on Menosea. We need a way back, and a girl at the port told us you could help.”
“The elves wouldn’t help you, eh? Typical,” said the mermaid, highly amused.
Zelda went on to explain about the ship the elven girl at the port had mentioned, and to her surprise, the mermaid listened to her politely, leaning her folded arms upon the rock and staring up at her intently, as if Zelda and Calain’s unfortunate situation were of the utmost concern. Zelda wished the woman would cover her breasts or at least sink them beneath the water, but she seemed to enjoy Calain’s discomfort and her silent struggle not to look at them.
When Zelda had finished speaking, the mermaid tisked. “Hmm. That is a predicament, isn’t it? Yes, my fellow mermaids and I do know of a sunken ship nearby, and yes, I could point you toward it . . . But then,” her eyes moved to Calain, “you would leave me!” she said, sticking out her bottom lip in a pout. “And I would miss you so terribly!” She smiled up at Calain and fluttered her lashes prettily. Behind her, her little foot came up again, playfully kicking the water, the webbed toes spread.
Calain smiled, amused by the mermaid’s flirting, but Zelda was not amused. She said at once, brusquely and coldly, “No. You may not have Calain. She is my knight. She is Bound to me!”
“And yet, she doth lay with other women,” pointed out the mermaid, smirking. “I heard you arguing up and down the beach. You were loud enough to wake the gods themselves, but mermaids have fantastic hearing regardless.” Her pointed ear, which was webbed along the bottom edge, twitched as she spoke.
It was true that Zelda and Calain had argued. Zelda, who was anxious to return to Aereth and feared they were stranded, had lost her patience, blaming Calain for the situation they were in and yelling at her once more for having lain with other women. Calain had shouted back – like a stammering adolescent – that Zelda had started it by lying with Melvalda. They bickered until they were exhausted, and somehow, had wound up making love on the rock.
Zelda didn’t think she could withstand it again so soon, feeling Calain’s excitement as she lay with another. She was still furious about the last woman Calain had lain with – while Zelda was off weeping for her, giving birth, and being attacked by monsters in dark dimensions!
“You expect me to let you lay with Calain,” said Zelda through her teeth, “or else we shall be stranded here?”
The mermaid smiled and blinked innocently.
Zelda started to glow with power. “Do you understand that I am a sorceress? That I could turn you inside-out by blinking?!” Her voice was rising.
“Whatever you can do,” returned the mermaid in a bored voice, “it mustn’t be much if your knight hath strayed.”
“Oo!” Zelda screamed and raised her fist, prepared to dive down and punch the mermaid square in the face. Behind her, Calain gasped her name in shock and grabbed her slender wrist to stop her. Calain’s big arm locked around Zelda’s waist, holding her back as she squirmed, intent on attacking the mermaid. Realizing she could not break free of Calain without magick – and not wanting to harm Calain—Zelda took a breath to control herself. Calain hesitated and let go.
The mermaid didn’t seem bothered by Zelda’s anger. “I shall meet thee on the beach in one hour’s time.” Her eyes moved between them, silently laughing. “I shall let the two of you . . . mull it over.” With that, she sank away beneath the water with a soft plop.