Page 44 of Hooked By a Hero
“I’m…I’m sorry,” Elias said again, pulling his hands away. “I do not know if you want…that is, now might not be the time.”
“I have more to show you,” Caspian said, his voice rough with desire and fear. “This is only part of it.”
“It is?” Elias asked breathlessly, his face flushed with heat.
Caspian nodded. He reached out a hand to Elias, then somehow managed to say, “Come.”
Elias swallowed hard, then grasped Caspian’s hand and stood. Their eyes met and held for a long, scintillating moment, then Caspian walked down to the waves, still holding Elias’s hand.
He had to let it go once they reached the edge of the surf. Elias still had his shoes and trousers on, but more than that, Caspian needed to be free so that he could walk out into the ocean as fast as the breaking waves would let him. He fought against a few that broke just in front of him, but once he was out into the relatively clear, turquoise water up to his waist, he turned back to find Elias.
Elias still watched him from the shore, although he’d removed his shoes, like he’d intended to follow Caspian into the water but stopped. Elias stared at Caspian in confusion. Caspian smiled, then turned back toward the ocean and dove into the water. As soon as he was completely submerged, he willed himself to change, then deliberately flicked his tail out of the water so that Elias could see it.
Fifteen
Something compelled Elias to go into the water with Caspian. It was as if a hook had stuck in his gut, in his very core, and was dragging him into the salty deep. He had to follow Caspian. Every part of him screamed that nothing else in the world mattered but following Caspian and being with him, no matter what, as if he were one of the sirens of old.
He’d gone so far as to pull off his shoes and toss them aside, and he reached for the fastenings of his trousers before stopping dead and blinking at the incongruous sight in front of him.
Caspian had dived under the waves…and a long, sleek tail, like a gigantic tropical fish, swept up out of the water in the exact spot Caspian should have been.
Elias blinked again, frozen in place as the surf rushed up across the beach and covered his feet, shifting the sand beneath him. His entire world felt like that sand, particularly when Caspian surfaced again, twisted to face him, and the beautiful, iridescent tail flashed up over the top of the water once more.
“You’ll be able to see better if you come out here,” Caspian called to him. He was about thirty yards away, past the point where the waves broke on their way to the shore, but Elias could still hear him clearly. “If your mind cannot believe your eyesfrom a distance, I promise you that you will believe when you are close.”
Still, Elias stood rooted to his spot. It could not be. It was entirely impossible. The sight before him was something out of an ancient legend, a sailor’s tale. Such things simply did not exist in the real world of thoughts and cares about mundane things, like drawing water from a spring or catching enough food to survive off of.
And yet, there he was. Caspian dove under the water once more, and just as before, the undulating shape of a long, aquatic tail skimmed the surface of the water, catching the sunlight, as if Caspian was swimming in such a manner on purpose so Elias could see.
The bone-deep urge to know what he was seeing propelled Elias forward once more. His stunned silence gave way to frantic energy as he splashed into the surf, then fought against the surge of wave after wave to make his way out to Caspian. Everything suddenly made sense. As Elias jumped against rolling, whitecapped waves, then beyond them to where he could swim, so many things became clear in his mind.
Caspian had disappeared for long stretches of time on the ship. Elias had been unable to find him anywhere, and when they were reunited, Caspian had merely laughed off his absence, joking with Elias by saying he’d gone swimming. Hehadgone swimming. Elias had believed it to be impossible on a ship sailing as fast as theFortunehad been, but no, watching Caspian gamboling in the waves now, it was clear that he truly had been swimming alongside theFortune, even if no one aboard, including Elias, had seen him.
The last three weeks on the ship. Elias’s thoughts sped forward as he kicked and stroked through the tide to reach the spot where Caspian waited for him. Caspian had been ill, whether he’d been willing to admit to it or not. Could it be thatstaying aboard the ship and not taking to the ocean was what had affected him? Caspian had said that he would feel better in a bath of salt water.
“You did not die when Tumbrill made you walk the plank during the storm because the ocean is your natural habitat,” Elias gasped once he reached Caspian and treaded water a few feet away from him.
“Yes,” Caspian said with a nod, keeping himself upright in the water by swishing his tail in a tight pattern under him. “In fact, that swim restored my strength, which had been flagging from going so long without touching the ocean.”
It was exactly as Elias had just thought, and he nodded. The gesture drew his attention to what he could see of Elias’s tail in the surprisingly clear water. Everything was visible, from the transition area around Caspian’s hips where his pale skin faded to iridescent greens and blues, then dappled in smaller, softer scales, like the sort Elias had felt on his legs while on the beach, to larger, more elaborate scales that continued down what should have been his legs, but was now a solid, sleek mermaid’s tail. Or rather merman. It ended in a long, fine, voluminous caudal fin.
“You’re—” Elias did not know if he could even say what was right before his eyes, it was so outlandish. “Are you a merman?” he asked instead.
Caspian nodded, his usual cheeky smile giving Elias at least a taste of something ordinary that he had come to love. “I am,” he said. He shifted to swim in a circle around Elias, who had more and more trouble treading water by the moment as shock over came him, as if to show off.
“But that is impossible,” Elias said with a rush of disbelieving breath. “Mermen do not exist. They are myths and legends only.”
“We are myths and legends,” Caspian said, stopping in front of Elias once more, “but we are notonlymyths and legends. Wesimply recognized the need to conceal ourselves after too many stories of our kind reached the land and hunters came after us to capture us as oddities.”
“But you cannot be real,” Elias blurted, still not believing what was directly in front of him. “I must have gone mad. I must have died in that first storm, and now I am in some other place or dreaming all of this before my spirit leaves me.”
Caspian laughed again, though Elias could sense genuine concern from him. “I can assure you, I am very real.”
To prove his point, he leaned toward Elias, catching him around his waist and pulling him close. It was a relief to Elias not to have to exert what little strength he had to stay afloat. Caspian’s arms around him felt as familiar and comfortable as ever, and he took great solace from that feeling. But where he expected his legs to tangle with Caspian’s, he felt only the solid length of his tail instead.
Mad though it was, a strong part of him wanted to wrap his legs around Caspian’s tail where his thighs should have been and hold on forever.
That instinct caused him to gasp, then flush with embarrassment as the least appropriate thought for that moment struck him. “Your, er, anatomy,” he said.
