Page 48 of Depths
“What do you know about pink dolphin shifters?” I asked casually.
“Ohhh …” Gita’s smirk plumped her cheeks like apples. “Well, I hope you haven’t seen one.” A naughty smile crossed her face before she added another star.
“Why?” I tried not to wrinkle my brow and ruin her painting. But her comment and grin made me immensely curious.
“Well, first of all, they’re so rare that they’re legendary. They are supposed to be terribly seductive, more so than sirens or mermen. Dangerous even to those under the sea.”
Hmmm.That certainly felt in line with my interactions with Valdez. He created a sense of longing and curiosity that were quite intense. It was almost a relief to realize they were magical.
Not a disappointment, a relief,I chided the tiny bit of my head that disagreed. The tiny romantic part of me that still wished that a single man in this competition was here for me, rather than riches or glory.
That was a fool’s wish. And I wasn’t a fool. At least, not most days.
“Pink dolphins are also supposed to give you nightmares. Lurid nightmares. And … they’ve been blamed for more than one unmarried maid showing up with a swollen belly.” Gita paused in her painting, chewing her thick bottom lip in thought as she both studied her work and let her thoughts wander to legendary creatures.
“Oh.” I pressed my lips together.
Gita paused her painting and went back to my hair. She had twisted it up into a series of seven golden spikes that looked like conical shells and began adding tiny bright pink sea stars into my spikes in spirals.
My dress itself was a very thin, light pink silk that had been sewn with pleats so that the wide skirt resembled a shell as it fanned out around my mid thighs. It was far shorter than anything I’d ever worn, but still more modest than Gita wanted.
I wore no shoes. Instead, when Gita finished with my hair, I stared at my reflection in the mirror, noting how the blue paint made my violet eyes look even lighter than normal as my maid bent down and used the same paint she’d put on my face to decorate my legs with wild waves. I couldn’t help but bark out a laugh when her paintbrush swept over the bottoms of my feet, tickling them.
“I can’t believe people paint their feet! Who can stand it?” I asked, gritting my teeth and grabbing my small makeup table as she continued her work, unbothered by my twitching.
“Discipline, Your Majesty,” Gita scolded teasingly. “You must be able to bite down on your discomfort, just as you do a million times a day at court or watching these two.” Her head gestured toward Ugo and Felipe, who’d just finished a thorough search of my chamber, which involved tapping on every wall and pouring at least two potions across the doorway. “Those idiots would ensure my tongue had constant bite marks.” Ugo bit his thumb at her in an obscene gesture, and she just giggled. “Paranoia is often the first sign of madness,” she warned him.
He rolled his eyes and continued.
Meanwhile, I conceded that Gita had a point—I did need to practice focusing on something else. I sucked in a breath when her brush circled over the middle of my foot, and my eyes darted around for a target before they landed on Felipe.
That was a mistake. He’s just begun preparing himself for the parade, painting bronze swirls onto his pecs. I’d never been more jealous of a paintbrush. His muscles tensed and swelled as he made the brush move precisely where he wanted it. After he painted his left nipple, he looked up—probably to get more paint—and met my eyes.
His expression remained as impassive as ever, but his eyes darkened. My breath caught, and suddenly, the tickle at my feet faded, and an entirely different sort of tickle captured my senses. The kind that made my belly clench and butterflies flutter from my chest up into my throat. It wasn’t the magic intensity of Valdez. This was far more vulnerable.
“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Gita asked as she backed up and examined her work critically.
Felipe’s eyes roamed down my figure, and his look was as scorching as any touch. He nodded slowly, and a warm heat spread between my thighs.
When his voice came out a rough scratch, I had to hide the tremble it sent down my spine. I looked down and rubbed my hands on the scales that lined the outsides of my arms, feigning a chill I didn’t feel. In fact, I felt the opposite. I was on fire.
“Your Majesty …” I felt certain the soft familiarity in his tone was only my overactive imagination, until he asked, “Can I have a moment?”
My breath caught, and for a single second, my eyes flashed to his in stunned silence. Then I remembered myself, and the million practical reasons he’d want a word, and the million reasons related to Mateo he might want a word. I nodded.
Gita silently packed away her things and swam out with Ugo, the two of them chatting softly as they closed the door behind them.
I ended up knotting my fingers as anticipation coated my brain in oil and made my thoughts into slippery, blundering fools.
Felipe swam closer. My heart rate sped up, and I had to press my lips together so that I didn’t gape foolishly at those massive pecs as he approached.
“I think we need to question Watkins.”
Inside, I deflated at those words. But I smacked my mind. Felipe hadn’t muttered what I wanted in my wild imaginings. But he’d said what I needed to hear, addressed a practical matter I needed to think about. “The attack?” I asked, though I knew his intentions.
Felipe nodded. “The route was secret. Only I and a few guards knew. The stable master. Very few people. But if Watkins allowed the rebels to place some sort of tracking spell on him, it would have been easy enough for them to find us.”
The press of my lips increased to a nearly painful degree. “Yes. Bring him in. Better to get it over with now, before the parade. Before something else can happen.”
