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Water rushed down her airway, cold and dark and salty and relentless. Halie gasped and gagged, and then gave in to the sea around and inside her. She floated, weightless, anchored only to the hard body of her killer
“Good girl.” He caressed her cheek tenderly. “Breathe. You’re over the hard part.”
Her lungs felt like they’d burst, and then... they didn’t. They expanded? The sea still filled her, but it felt right. Who’d have thought drowning was so peaceful?
“You won’t drown. You can’t drown, Halie. Relax. Your body remembers.” His words made no sense, but she had no strength left, so she inhaled again. There was no pain. No panic.
Was she dead? Did she seriously just go into the sea and get herself killed because of a worthless jackass? Did the man with the gem eyes even exist, or did her alcohol-soaked brain conjure him while she lay face down, dying in shallow water?
“If I let go, promise not to hit me?” he asked.
She nodded. She might somehow breathe underwater—or in this disturbed near-death hallucination or afterlife or what-fucking-ever—but she didn’t trust herself to speak.
The moment he let go, Halie spun with impossible speed and aimed a punch at his face.
He easily sidestepped—sideswam?—her and closed his large palm over her fist. “After the first couple-dozen times, I learned to avoid this,” he said with a chuckle.
Did he often drown helpless women?
He looked offended. “You’re not helpless, and all my practice has been with you.”
Okay. Totally a figment of her imagination, if he could read her mind.
“I’m not reading anything. Your thoughts are louder than a foghorn. Try not to project them, until you remember everything.”
Right. The memory loss. Her gap. Was he from her past?
Was the underwater mind-reading green-haired hottie from her past? Halie snorted, and this time the water didn’t bother her as it slid down her nostrils. Odd, how her last thoughts in this life—or the first in the next—were the stuff of fairy tales.
“I’m not a fairy. I’m a... Shit. You have to remember the basics on your own. Anyway. Come. Nereus and Doris are waiting. You cut this one close.” He clasped her wrist.
Where were they going?
“Down,” he said, and she looked there instinctively.
Gasp. More water down the gullet. But hey, she barely noticed now. She was too preoccupied with the— “You have a tail.” She spoke the words, but the sound reached her ears garbled, so she pointed at the shiny, scaly, blue thing and thought really hard, “You have a tail.”
The guy let go of her, to clasp his head with both hands. “The entire Vythos heard that. Try to focus your thoughts, please.”
She concentrated on thinking at him, “But you have a fucking tail. A fucking tail. Like a fish. Are you a... mermaid?” And what was a vythos?
He crossed his arms over his admittedly impressive sternum, and his lips twitched. “You said mermaid first, so I’m cleared to tell you that no, I’m not a mermaid—or merman. I’m a sea daimon.”
A demon? She flapped her arms, trying to get away, but he grabbed her by one wrist.
“Not a demon, a daimon. They mean the same nowadays, but I’m the sort supposed to lead people to their destiny,” he sent her.
Okay... “Like, to my death?”
“Like, to Vythos.” He let go and held out his hand with a wink. “Delphinos, as you’ll soon remember.”
She ignored his gesture. “What’s all this remembering crap? What am I supposed to remember? And why can’t I?”
“Nereus or your—or Doris will tell you what you need to know, if the memories don’t kick in immediately.” He flexed his palm. “Shall we?”
She could try to swim to the surface, but the darkness beneath called to her. Tugged at her heart.
Reluctantly, she put her hand in his. A jolt spread up her arm at the contact. This was familiar. Easy. Neither of which made sense.
“It all will, soon.” He ran his thumb across her knuckles. “Make sure to sway your tail left to right. The up-down motion only works on TV.”
Her tail? She leaned forward and took in the shimmering silvery scales that covered the bottom half of her body. “What the actual fuck?”
Delphinos laughed and darted downward, pulling her with him.
He might be a jerk, but he was right; her body did remember things her conscious mind couldn’t grasp. It remembered to swish her hips from side to side, so after the first few lengths, she swam beside him. It also remembered they swam faster when she held on to his back. She glanced at him, and he nodded and held still long enough for her to plaster her body along his back and wrap her arms around his neck. If she still had legs, she’d spread her thighs around his hips.
She’d done that before, too.
She didn’t know how, but she remembered being wrapped around him, only her breasts hadn’t been pressed to his back...
His body vibrated with his laugh, and he dove deeper. Faster.
All light disappeared, and Halie squeezed her eyes shut. This was it. Her soul or whatever was leaving her body, and the fantasy would end.
“Open your eyes,” Delphinos said inside her head.
She was tempted not to—why delay the inevitable?—but the sense of familiarity made her do as he asked and peek over his shoulder.
Someone spiked her drink, earlier, at the party.
It was the only explanation.
She was passed out on Joss’s leather couch, making all this up.
Because she couldn’t really be seeing an underwater city, bathed in a pale golden light and filled with mermaids.
“Wait till we’re inside the bubble,” Delphinos said.
Bubble?
Bubble.
What looked like a huge crystal dome surrounded a golden castle in the middle of the city. It wasn’t the only one—more bubbles glistened around smaller constructions that resembled sunken boats—but it was the largest. And Delphinos steered them straight for it. Literally. He didn’t slow down even when they were inches from the dome, and Halie buried her face in his back and braced herself for impact.
It never came.
Instead, it felt like they pierced a wall of water and tumbled down on velvety pillows on the other side.
She lifted her knees to Delphinos’ sides and clung to him for dear life, until they stopped rolling.
Knees?
She had knees again. And she breathed through the nose. Like, real air.
She looked up and scampered away from him. Shit. She was naked from the waist down, since the magic that gave her a tail before also made her thong disappear, and her tattered dress barely covered her upper body. She squeezed her thighs together and crossed her arms over her breasts, where the soggy fabric clung to her hardened nipples. “What the...?”
Delphinos rolled on his back and propped himself up on his elbows, making no effort to hide the hard-on he sported. “In the bubbles, we have our human form. Give it a couple seconds.”
“To what?”
He didn’t have to say anything, as the answer to his question slammed into her in a bazillion of fractured memories.
Living in the palace with way too many—forty nine?—sisters and a brother.
Her mom and dad, crowns on their heads.
The merpeople—her people.
Herself as a child, playing with a dolphin.
Her first time on dry land.
And men.
So. Many. Men.
At one point or another, she’d thought she might love each and every one of them.
Was she that fickle?
Over the years, she’d gone to the surface time and again, to find true love. She fell for mortals and lost them. Lost herself.
It never worked, but she kept trying and failing and forgetting, and Delphinos... So many of her memories involved him—in this form, in his half-human one, and as a dolphin. He checked in on her when she went to shore. And he was there when she got lost. “You always bring me back.”
Delphinos nodded. “Always.”
“Thank you.” Halie no longer cared that she was naked in front of him. He’d seen her before. Had her before. He might have been her happy ever after, but even if he saw her as more than a friend, she wasn’t meant for him. She was meant for a mortal she hadn’t met yet. The witch deemed it so.
She crawled back to Delphinos and claimed his lips. He tasted like home and happiness, and she’d have to give him up again and keep looking, or Vythos, this kingdom in the bottom of the Ionian Sea, was doomed.