Page 43 of Depths
My eyes watered with humble, grateful tears, and I swam forward to grasp Humberto’s hands. A soft thank-you fell from my lips. And then I leaned up to place a chaste kiss near Humberto’s lips.
He ripped away from me, swimming backward as if I’d tried to attack him.
I put my arms up in front of me, showing I meant no harm, though I was shocked by his reaction.
Humberto waved his hands frantically in anXin front of him and shook his head as he shrunk to the size of a normal man. “I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. I mean, we just met, Your Majesty.”
My eyebrows shot up. My face grew red. My neck grew hot, and my hand flew to my mouth. Embarrassment painted my vision a bright white for half a second. I’d just tried to kiss him in thanks, not attraction. A simple peck, but still his public rejection stung like a whip. “I’m sorry.”
Humberto scrambled off, legs thrashing as he swam away and shrunk down to my size, then smaller. He must have been half human.The price for his giant magic must be shrinking,I realized dully. A common theme in Evaness, where so many people were part human, part magical. But not as many part humans survived under the sea. The ability to breathe water was rarer.
Humberto kept going, morphing from my size to a small boy’s. He couldn’t get away fast enough. He was a smart one. The other competitors should have done the same.
I watched him go as all the gratitude I’d felt ebbed away like the tide, and reality, stark and nasty, smacked me across the face. Humberto, a man I’d judged to be one of the more basic, honest men here, wasn’t in this tournament for me. He couldn’t even stand a thank-you kiss. Which meant he was here competing for other reasons. Ones that I, in my wisdom, had clearly overlooked.
“Don’t let your mind go there.” Sahar swam calmly over to hover beside me as Humberto shrunk to the size of a house cat. She whistled harshly, and one of the guards sped over from the whale.
“Yes, my lady?” the merman asked.
She nodded in Humberto’s direction, where the cardinal fish shifter had become approximately the size of my fist. “Go scoop him up before he gets eaten by something in his panic.”
The guard nodded and shot off, tucking his spear into a strap on his back so he could have both hands free to catch the man I’d sent off in a horrified tizzy, who had just become the size of a mouse.
Wonderful.
I couldn’t wait until this story reached Bloss’s ears. She’d devise a million nicknames for me no doubt. Death’s Kiss. Fish Lips. Dog Breath.
It shouldn’t have mattered. I should have been comforted by the fact that Valdez had very much wanted to kiss me and had seemed to enjoy it before we were interrupted. My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for a pink dolphin. I didn’t find one, but Valdez’s pink hair was visible on the far side of the whale and my eyes latched on. Someone wanted to kiss me. Someone besides Mateo. An incredibly handsome someone. A pirate. Gah! The mad scribblings I’d done in my journal when I was younger, a secret little bit of embroidery I’d hidden under my bed—both came rushing up through my memories. I’d never been able to resist a pirate. I’d written about sailing away, sewn a secret little fantasy image of me and a swashbuckler on a ship. And Valdez … my entire body hummed at the thought of him. Our conversation. The way he’d just grabbed me and kissed me. His tongue had plundered my mouth and the world outside had ceased to exist for a moment.
Until we were attacked.
That kiss should have balanced things out. But my damn need to please everyone still roiled in my stomach, and the fact that Humberto hated me mutilated all the other good things I could stack up. My fingers clenched.Dammit.
I blew out a breath and gave myself a pep talk. I needed to turn and focus on the others, to make sure that everything was alright. I needed to give a little speech, calm them. But feeling stupidly blindsided by Humberto’s motives, on top of feeling magically useless, cut me up inside.
“Don’t look so brokenhearted.” Sahar grabbed my elbow before breaking protocol and throwing an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into her side for a hug.
The gesture warmed me in a way nothing had for quite some time. Even Queen Gela had never been so casually affectionate with me. I let my arm drift around Sahar’s waist as I rolled my eyes. “I’m not brokenhearted.”
“You look like you just realized your favorite dinner was baited with a human’s hook,” Sahar challenged, her eyes glinting.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not it, and you know it.” I poked her ribs.
She chuckled. “I’ll have to tell Keelan he’s got fierce competition.”
“Don’t.”
“I like this.” An evil smile lit her face. “Humberto is number one. You desperately wanted that kiss. I’ll make sure all the maids spread the word.”
“I’m just upset I misjudged him,” I finally admitted.
She sighed and the teasing stopped. “I know.”
“I thought he was one of the more decent ones, you know? In this thing for the adventure, perhaps, but not in it for the power.”
