Page 20 of Depths
I gritted my teeth and glanced over at Felipe, who’d been standing by the door, spear in hand, throughout our conversation. “We can send him home without a few fingers, can’t we?” I asked my guard.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
Maiming Declan had become a bit of an inside joke for us the past few days, and I had to physically tamp down the thrill that traveled up my spine when Felipe’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. I really needed to stop the banter; it wasn’t doing anything to quell my attraction to a man who wasn’t interested, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. If only I’d gotten to choose the competitors for the tournament.
“Har har,” Declan replied, not fazed in the least, as he gathered up a parchment he’d filled with notes and tick marks. He stopped to cross this meeting off his list before turning to my siren adviser. “Sahar, do you think you could introduce me to the stable master? I’d like to discuss travel arrangements and security with him for this whole tournament fiasco that my little sister insists on having.”
“Certainly.” Sahar nodded.
Camden reached the door and pulled it open for all three of them. After they swam out, another siren swam hesitantly in, hands clutched in front of him. He must have been the man Sahar had arranged for me to meet.
I smiled as I tried to recall his face. He was blond haired and beautiful, like all sirens, but his aura was different from most of the others. They donned sexuality like it was a shirt to be worn in public. He did not. He felt more like a sculpture: beautiful and open to interpretation rather than instantly understood. I got the feeling he was not as shallow as the others. Of course, I’d met him for all of three seconds during the ball’s introductions, so that was merely an impression. And it wasn’t long enough for me to even remember his name. Dammit.
His shy smile was the only reason I remembered him at all. None of the other sirens had an ounce of shyness. He was less cocksure despite his beauty, which was impressive. His skin was golden, his perfectly formed chest bare, and his golden calves were sculpted beneath the short pants he wore for modesty. His liquid blue eyes dipped down to the floor, his lashes painting soft stripes on his cheeks. He was every bit as alluring as a siren was meant to be, but he did not use that allure on me.
It immediately made me soften toward him, a man who finally seemed as intimidated by this process as I was.
Behind the siren was a man who didn’t fit in with all of the other competitors. His name I recalled, if only for its oddity. Humberto. He was a bit squatter, a bit round about his middle, not a strapping example of manhood. But his face was kind. Humberto had bright black stripes on his skin, on the outsides of his cheeks, across his chest and arms and legs, even in human form. He had black hair on top of his head that was tightly curled. I tried to recall what kind of shifter he was. He’d told me, but we’d been interrupted by some of the rebels getting rowdy and toasting Watkins as a sellout. Was it … a cardinal fish? Yes, that sounded right.
I nodded toward him.
Luckily, Sahar swam back into the doorway, announcing, “Your Majesty, thank you for granting an audience to Stavros and Humberto. I’ll be back shortly.” Thank goodness. She’d saved me from the embarrassment of having to ask. What would I ever do without her?
I nodded in gratitude, and she left, water wavering behind her as a guard pulled the door closed to provide us the semblance of privacy, even though he and Felipe remained inside the room.
I smiled with teeth, gesturing for the two suitors to sit, hoping that they couldn’t sense my discomfort. Getting wooed by two or three men at once felt unnatural to me, even though I knew it had been done this way for centuries. I reminded myself that Mateo and I had been unusual. I’d met him when he’d accompanied his father, an ambassador from Macedon. It had been love at first sight, the kind that I’d only ever read about in fairy tales set before the curse that changed the kingdoms of Sedara forever, the curse that made it so incredibly difficult to bear female children. Mateo’s brown eyes and dimples had been my undoing. But his playful nature and his willingness to help me in my shenanigans to set up Bloss with her husbands had cemented my affection. His deep kisses and dark touches had transformed affection into something more. Our love … I’d thought it invincible. But that was before I’d realized I wasn’t human, before I knew I was the daughter of a monster.
I attempted to focus on the present moment, because there was nothing I could do about the fact that a dragon and the truth had sent my life spiraling in an entirely different direction. “Welcome to our main meeting room. If you win the tournament, you’ll get to spend so many hours in here that your seat will wear down to have a permanent impression of your …” I trailed off.
Stavros chuckled, while Humberto glanced around at the tapestries hung from the walls, his brown eyes bouncing from one to the next. They depicted various sea animals: turtles, dolphins, and of course a seahorse tapestry hung behind my chair at the end of the table. The woven hangings added a bit of beauty to the space but also helped muffle the sounds so that meetings couldn’t easily be overheard.
“So, this is basically an auditory torture chamber?” Stavros asked softly, surprising me with his wit.
I laughed lightly. “Exactly. Welcome.”
We all sat, Humberto twiddling his thumbs. Stavros dug a nail into the arm of his chair before meeting my eyes and giving another shy grin. Neither spoke, waiting for me to take the lead.
“So, this is where we learn a bit about one another,” I started. “But to be honest, if we stick with the normal questions, I’m never going to remember a thing. All the answers blur. Hometown. Favorite color. There are already twenty answers floating through my head for those. Would you mind if I ask some things that are a bit more unusual?”
Humberto’s fingers clenched together, but he nodded quickly. “Of course.”
I glanced over at Stavros, whose eyes were on a tapestry, but once he noticed my gaze, he quickly flickered his bright blue eyes to mine before sliding them away again and giving a silent nod of his head.
Both men seemed a bit reticent. They did not lead off with stories of their own exploits like some of the others. Did I need husbands like that? I could see the value of it…men who listened. My sister’s husband Quinn never spoke, and he made an excellent spy. So perhaps there was potential, even if I didn’t feel some grand attraction yet. I needed to draw them out a bit, so I decided on a question to test their mettle and their minds. “Great. If you could plan a murder, how would you do it?” I kept my tone conversational.
Humberto paled, even his black stripes dulled to grey.
Stavros narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, almost as if he were evaluating me, deciding what kind of answer I’d want to hear. Interesting. Maybe Quinn could work with him. Teach him a thing or two about spy work and the other, darker skills, the ones that required visits to the dungeon.
I tried to break the tension with a laugh. Clearly, both men thought me a bit unhinged to ask such a question. Then, to my own horror, I realized that it might sound to them like the kind of thing my birth mother would have asked. Her reputation for cruelty was only exceeded by Sultan Raj’s in all the kingdoms. “This is all theoretical, of course. You will not be required to implement your theory.” Part of me wanted to hide my face in my hands. I couldn’t help a hot blush that stole up my neck. But queens didn’t hide.
“Of course.” Humberto nodded, but the smile he gave was still washed out. I wasn’t certain he believed me.
Stavros used his thumb to trace the wood grain on the tabletop before he answered thoughtfully. “I’d feed them to the giant squid that supposedly lives near Nowhere.”
“There is no giant squid, that’s just a myth,” Humberto grumped.
“It’s just a theoretical murder, isn’t it?” Stavros replied, raising a brow. “I mean, I suppose I could say that I’d do something worse, like tie them to a buoy above the water and let them slowly suffocate. Is that better?” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s awfully mean. Or I guess I could say I’d get them stuck in a fisherman’s net and let him do the dirty work for me. You like that more? Or you want worse? It might take me a minute.” Stavros glared at Humberto.
