The porpoise flicked his tail and swam off when Mariel fell into her husband’s arms, and they sank beneath the waves, clinging to each other.
He was swimming with her.
She closed her eyes and gave praise to the heavens as Trystan’s muscled arms held her safely, and they bobbed below the surface, lips meeting in relief and love. She knew what he had done, for her. But right now, all she could absorb was that he wanted her enough to come after her, even after she’d revealed her uncanny abilities to the world, effectively banishing both of them from the homes they loved.
But as much as she might crave it, they couldn’t live in the sea forever. With Trystan’s arms around her, her head against his shoulder, they eventually bobbed to the surface. Mariel didn’t wish to ever let go, but it could be a trifle difficult scrambling up the side of the ship while wrapped in each other’s arms.
“I love you,” she murmured in his language and hers. “I worship and adore you.”
Trystan’s grip tightened and his chest heaved, but no words emerged. He leaned his bronzed cheek against her head, and she understood. Her multi-lingual husband had lost all the words available to him and was mute from the terror they’d just experienced.
She had no desire to relive those petrifying minutes under the sea with the fire raging overhead while her husband fought for life and death. She’d done all she could to direct her ocean-faring companions out of the harbor and away from the smothering oil. But she had been helpless to save her home. Trystan had done that for her, just as her mother had predicted.
To the triumphant shouts and cheers of the sailors above them, she clung to Trystan’s shoulders and kissed him until they nearly drowned within sight of the ship. Then once she had him weak and willing, she shoved at his great shoulders, grabbed for the rope ladder, and raced up, with him hot on her heels.
Nick and his family and Trystan’s crew were flinging the fish intended for their supper at her merry band of dolphins. Her cheerful friends leaped and cavorted, catching their meal in the air, diving headfirst into the water, and flapping their tails to send sprays of water up the side of the ship in their idea of celebration, to the delight of all those watching.
Aware that she wore next to nothing, that she’d just revealed her deepest secret to Celeste and the chevalier, Mariel felt exposed in so many ways, she preferred not to think at all. She gratefully plunged her arms into Waylan’s enormous coat even though it was damp. Wrapping it around her, she sought Trystan’s embrace after he clambered on board. She refused to lift her head from his shoulder once he cradled her against his chest.
Near death made all other concerns irrelevant.
They remained speechless too long for Nick’s impatient eagerness.
“Can you ride whales, too ?” he demanded. “Why don’t you drown?”
There was the problem in a nutshell. After all these years of concealing her secret, she had now revealed the freak she was.
And she was relieved.
“Mariel can swim like a fish,” Waylan growled, but Nick wasn’t so easily satisfied. He waited expectantly.
Lifting her head to Trystan, Mariel smiled. “We’ll have to cast him overboard.”
He chuckled deep in his throat. “I’m in enough trouble already without drowning a chatterbox.”
“You interfered,” she said sadly, her smile disappearing.
“By letting Murdoch and his dangerous knowledge loose upon the world, Aelynn has interfered. I could do no less.”
“I am eternally grateful that you saved my home. But what happens now?”
Nick looked from one of them to the other with puzzlement. The tall Aelynn men backed away to give them privacy.
Trystan tugged Mariel’s hair free of the coat and smoothed it over her shoulders. “I am not a Seer. I can only take one day at a time. For now, we sail the de Berriers to England.”
The baroness rushed forward to hug them. “The two of you were marvelous. We’ll never forget what you have done.”
The chevalier stepped forward, hat in hand, and bowed formally. “I do not think I wish to have the events of this day explained to me. I am merely grateful that we came away with our lives. With bankruptcy looming, I foresee the need for others to move their investments out of France, and I will be in a position to help them, thanks to you. Our home will be yours.”
“Do you think we can buy a christening gift for Marie-Jeanne in England?” Mariel asked.
Reminded of the twins Mariel carried, Trystan pushed her toward the cabin. “We will buy everything her heart desires. For now, I need to lie down and return my heart to beating. I think I am paralyzed.”
His crew laughed knowingly and parted to their separate tasks. The chevalier and the baroness steered their ward to the bridge to watch the dolphins.
And Mariel clambered below to celebrate the wedding night she hadn’t expected to have, with the husband who accepted her as she was, who had forfeited his world for hers.
“I love you so much, I think I may burst of it,” she told him quietly as he led her inside his cabin. “I don’t know what lies ahead, but tell me we never must part again. I thought I would expire of regret the moment I saw you sailing away.”
Trystan grabbed fists full of her hair and drew her toward him. “I hope you will never know what I felt when you did not appear after that fire. I think I’ll wring your neck for scaring me like that.”
Instead, he covered her face with kisses, captured her mouth with his, and drank the breath from her lungs.
Fortunately for both of them, she didn’t need much air to breathe.
Which meant he had to come up for air first. Laughing, they fell into the bed, stripping off their soaked clothing as they did so.
Kneeling over her, Trystan ran kisses across every inch of her exposed skin. “I love you, mermaiden,” he declared while she gasped in pleasure. “It is not a word I comprehended until today. Love is not about possession. This is not a manacle that binds us unwillingly. It is a force within our hearts that hold us together, mi amacara.”
“You are quite possibly right, husband.” Mariel reached up to tug Trystan’s head to her mouth where she could brand him with her kisses. When he gasped for air again, she concluded, “We must dedicate the rest of our time to testing your theory.”
Placing his big hand over the place where their children grew, he looked solemn for a moment. “I have learned my lesson. I cannot bear to be parted from you again. If you will not stay in the safety of my home, then I must go with you. Your world is too dangerous without my protection. Are you prepared to return and rebuild your village, to live there as we are?”
With people thinking them freaks, talking of witches and magic, making the sign of the evil eye against them? As opposed to his home, where all was peace and calm?
Mariel finally understood the Oracle’s ambiguous prediction. Looking him in the eye, she tried to convey what she understood in her heart. “I am prepared to live where I am needed,” she said quietly. And she meant it. Her family would always love her. She need not seek approval elsewhere.
“I love you even more for that,” he agreed, nuzzling her ear. “It is time we recognized that what affects the Outside will ultimately affect Aelynn. I am needed more off Aelynn’s shores than within them. If Murdoch lives, we must guard against him and his kind.”
Thinking of the devastating weapon the banished Aelynner had unleashed, Mariel shuddered. “Your peaceful world is lovely,” she said in regret. “I hate that you might have to give it up. I see now why your people have been forbidden to interfere.”
“But we’ve done it and must live with the consequences. Our peace is derived from selfishness. Dylys will have my head for saying so, so let us not impart our discovery to her. For now, I much prefer the role of besotted newlywed.”
With that, he turned his attention to more important subjects, like pleasuring his wife.