Page 50 of Surfaces
“Wait. Am I missing something?” Ugo piped up from where he’d stuffed his cheeks with crab roll since we’d stopped near the table.
“Nope,” I told the orange-haired merman as he tried to chew faster in order to swallow and ask more questions. “Not a thing.”
But Felipe’s gaze sparkled and he had to bite his cheek to hide his grin and maintain his formal demeanor as Sahar approached. I let the siren lead me off to mingle with the locals—a big crowd of inventors—so that I wouldn’t have to endure any other questions from Ugo.
After nearly an hour of maintaining perfect posture and the perfect smile, my goblet was empty and I was ready for a break.
Sahar, political genius that she was, noticed my fatigue and deftly ended our conversation with a delusional man who was trying to convince me that wheeled wagons had a future under the sea.
Right. Because whales are so inefficient, slow, and untrustworthy.
“Thank you for the rescue,” I whispered as Sahar led me over to a table.
“Part of the job description, Majesty. Guards protect your body. I protect your mind from drivel.”
I raised a sardonic brow. “Is that what you were doing tonight? I thought you were exposing me to the drivel.”
She gave an impertinent shrug that made her beaded silver dress shudder. “Perhaps my job is a bit of both.”
A gentleman swam over and she excused herself to chat.
Meanwhile, I sunk gratefully into my cushioned seat, hardly even caring that Gorgono hadn’t set aside a throne space for me apart from everyone else. Valdez, the winner of the ridiculous flipping challenge I’d engineered during the afternoon, swam over and ate with me. There wasn’t much conversation between us, because apparently, tall dolphin shifters were starving at the end of the day and attacked lobster as if it was the most glorious thing on the planet.
At least he was neat about it—not leaving splatters everywhere and meticulously cleaning his plate—but he definitely had his priorities.
I might have interrupted his gorging to speak, but courtiers kept stopping by to chat with me. I only got through an appetizer or two, some kind of fried sea cucumber creation, while staring around at the townspeople in the gaps between interruptions.
After the stunt with the ship had gone so well, the vibe inside the ballroom wasn’t quite as antagonistic as I’d expected, though I suspected it was different behind closed doors.
However they felt about me, mermen groups and their wives kept swimming on up and introducing themselves, eager for the memory of actually meeting the queen face to face.
In between one of those rolling, repetitively bland introductions, the orchestra began to play a melody that was sad and slow, one perfect for a dance.
I swayed in my spot, fingers tapping on the table, and Valdez stood up next to me. His hazel eyes locked onto mine as he floated close enough to bump my hip. That got my attention and I swung my gaze up to look at him, his head far above me because he was so damned tall.
The pink dolphin shifter backed up the slightest bit, bowed formally with one hand against his firm stomach and the other tucked behind his back. He was shirtless tonight, which was a rarity for him, and a massive distraction for me because it turned out that I found the rings on his pierced nipples quite…eye-catching.
“You could almost be mistaken for a true gentleman,” I commented as he rose, the rings in his ears glinting in the projected light from one of the camera obscuras.
“Don’t insult me, Majesty. I’ll never be one of those.”
I grinned as he held out his hand, that intoxicating aura of his immediately snagging me and drawing me in. “May I have this dance?”
“You’re asking, not taking?” I teased, but he grabbed my hand before I even finished speaking, drawing me out to the ballroom dance space, a wide cube of water set aside for dancers to swirl and flip at various heights.
Rather than politely dancing at the bottom half of the dancing area like most couples entering the space, Valdez swam right for the top near the closed skylight. My green train snaked through the water, winding around other dancers blocking their view, and evicting a pair dancing just below us when he finally stopped.
"You did that on purpose," I accused him.
"Of course I did," Valdez responded as he pulled me in tight before gentling the grip of his hand on my waist. His expression was not repentant. "All eyes should always be on you, my beautiful queen."
I shook my head at him. “You know slathering me with compliments won’t—”
“Are you sure? Not even if I tell you that your lavender eyes are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?”
“Stop.”
“And the way you handled yourself today, even after that ambush—”
