The Sea King by C. L. Wilson
As a Siren, Gabriella carried within herself the great, vast power of the seas, but it was the love provided through a trusted network of deep, emotional bonds that kept her alive. It was love that allowed her to tap that power, to master and share it. The bond between mates was a Siren’s greatest source of strength, followed by maternal connections to her children, then bonds of family and friendship.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Dilys felt true hope blossom in his heart. Because, although Summer had made a master’s art of avoiding Dilys and running from their bond, the link not only existed . . . it was already extremely strong. Strong enough to accept the flood of live-saving love and devotion Dilys poured through it. Awake, Gabriella might fear what he was to her. Her subconscious, however, not only recognized his right to protect her and tend to her needs, but accepted his care without hesitation, drinking down his devotion and responding to his voice and his gifts the way an imlani female responded to her chosen mate.
That knowledge set his mind and his heart at ease. Whatever her reasons for wiping his memory, it had nothing to do with lack of desire for him or their compatibility as mates. They rest they could work through in time.
One by one, Dilys felt the demands on his magic diminish as Nurse Greenleaf repaired Summer’s lungs and stopped the worst of the bleeding. One by one, Dilys cautiously released his hold on each of the damaged blood vessels until he had drawn back all but an observational connection to Summer’s blood. He maintained the connection, following the flow of blood through her veins to be certain no life-threatening leaks remained. There weren’t, and Dilys could already feel Summer growing stronger.
He bent to press his lips close to her ear. “You did it, moa kiri. I knew you could.” With the immediate danger to her life past, he was able to focus all his remaining strength and send it pouring down their bond. “A gift, moa kiri, freely given. Whatever you need, so shall I provide.” He stroked her hair and closed his eyes, resting his forehead against hers and sending up a silent prayer of thanks to Numahao.
Beside him, Tildavera positioned several growing lamps to shine on Summer’s chest before returning her attention to the open surgical wound near the kidney. The results must have pleased her, because she stitched up that wound, administered more green powder and magic, then came back to close the incision along Summer’s ribs.
“That’s the best I can do.” The healer sat back on her heels and regarded King Wynter, who had remained a silent, glowering presence throughout the surgery. “She needs rest and sunlight. I’ll keep her under observation in case of infection, but she’s in the gods’ hands now.”
“Can she be moved now?” Wynter asked.
“As long as it’s done very carefully. Barring any abrupt jostling, the herbal seals I applied should hold.” She glanced over in Lily’s direction. “I’ll take a look at the girl before we go.”
Wynter gave a curt nod and barked orders to his men to bring a stretcher. As Nurse Greenleaf went to check Lily and the Wintermen rushed to obey their king, Dilys turned to clasp hands with his cousins and the others who had laid hands upon him to feed their magic and strength into him.
“My thanks,” he told them. “You saved our lives.”
“No thanks needed, cousin,” Ryll said.
“You should all go get some sleep. You two, in particular.” He gave Ari and Ryll an exhausted grin. “You both look terrible.”
“Ha.” Ari snorted. “Look in the mirror.”
“Ah. Well, I guess it’s a good thing my future liana has yet to awaken . . .”
His cousins laughed, and the three of them clapped each other on the back. The Wintermen with the stretcher arrived. Dilys hovered until he was certain Gabriella had been safely lifted from the floor and placed on the conveyance with no ill effects, then pressed a final kiss to Summer’s brow. He would have followed them to wherever they were taking her, but a massive hand clamped down on his shoulder and kept him from getting to his feet.
“No need to accompany her. She’ll be well looked after.” Wynter fixed Dilys with a look of frozen steel. “For now, you and I need to have a few words.”
Normally, the curt order would have made Dilys bristle, but he was so drained and so happy Gabriella was safe that all he could do was nod wearily. Besides, in all fairness, although Wintercraig’s king wasn’t known for his patience, he had held all his questions, kept his anger in check, and not interfered until after Gabriella had been healed. That earned him enough goodwill to keep Dilys’s battle claws sheathed.
“Of course, Your Grace.” Dilys accepted Ryll’s outstretched hand to help him rise, then laughed a little as he stumbled dizzily. He’d been kneeling on the floor for at least an hour, and his legs had gone numb. “I’m at your servi—”
His voice broke off as the numbness in his legs spread to every part of his body and a heavy black wave crashed over him. Then he was falling, weightless, and his ears were ringing with the echoes of Ari and Ryll shouting his name from far, far away.
The next thing Dilys knew, he was waking to the soothing sound of running water and the warmth of sunlight on his face.
For a moment, as he lay there with his eyes closed, he couldn’t quite place where he was. Not on the Kracken. The bed beneath him smelled of spruce and juniper rather than salty sea air or the familiar tropical scents of the Isles, and it wasn’t rocking with the rhythm of the sea. A small fountain burbled somewhere nearby.
He peeled one eye open, squinting a little at the glare of sunlight shining through the unshaded windows near his bed. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes and groaned softly as a sharp pain shot through him. His arms—his whole body—felt heavy as lead, and bruised, as if someone had taken a bat to him. He was especially tender around his ribs and back.
A rustle of cloth made his ears twitch. There was a soft patter of feet, the click of a door latch, then a woman’s quiet whisper. “Tell the king he’s awake.” Feet took off running. The door clicked again, and the room fell silent. The woman—whoever she’d been—had left. Voices were murmuring in the hall outside. The language foreign but familiar. Ice Tongue.
Konumarr. He was in Konumarr. In his bedroom in the palace.
And with that realization, the dam burst and memories came flooding back. Konumarr. Courtship.
“Gabriella!”
He sat bolt upright in bed, threw the covers off, and leapt to his feet.
Then promptly grabbed for the closest solid object as dizziness assailed him and his legs started to buckle. Goddess, he was weak. And starving. And parched.
He reached a hand towards the small stone fountain that someone had placed near his bed—the source of the running water he’d heard upon waking—and called the water to him. His sea gifts flickered like a sputtering candle. The water continued tumbling over the pyramid of glossy stones, not responding to his call.
Dilys stared at the fountain in mute consternation. He was drained. Completely. That hadn’t happened to him in years. Not since he was a boy just learning how to wield his magic. He’d given Gabriella everything he had, holding nothing back for himself.
With a sigh, he shuffled over to the fountain and shoved his hand into it. He stood there, eyes closed, absorbing the revitalizing energy of the water as it flowed over his skin. What he really needed was an ocean pouring over him, but since he barely had the strength to crawl across the room, this would have to do. Slowly, he felt his body strengthen until his legs no longer felt like they would collapse beneath him.
Someone had left a large pitcher of water and an empty glass on the dressing table against the wall. Ignoring the glass, he lifted the pitcher to his mouth and drank the contents down. It was lightly salted, and draining the pitcher helped significantly more than putting his hand in the fountain. By the time it was empty, he felt worlds better. Still not ready to move oceans, but at least able to walk without feeling like he was going to fall over with every step.
He wouldn’t be a great deal of use to Gabri
With that in mind, he made his way to the wardrobe containing the selection of brightly colored shumas he’d brought with him from Calberna and pulled out a turquoise blue reminiscent of the tropical ocean waters that surrounded his family’s isle, Cali Kai Meri. With that he matched a set of emerald, coral, and turquoise bands dotted with small gemstone reef fish.
Dilys was just securing his shuma around his waist when the door to his chamber opened and Wynter Atrialan strode in.
“Good. You’re not dead. I was not looking forward to telling Calberna’s queen that her only son had perished in my kingdom.”
It was a measure of Dilys’s state of mind that his first words weren’t a cheeky, “What? King’s don’t knock in Wintercraig?” but rather, “Where is Gabriella? I need to see her.”
White brows rose over cold blue eyes. “Do you? Well, I need to get some answers. Starting with a thorough explanation of what happened two nights ago.”
“I’ll be happy to discuss all of that with you once I see Gabriella.”
“And I may let you see her once I’m satisfied I know what transpired.”
Aggression flared. Battle claws pressed against the tips of Dilys’s fingers. “I insist you take me to her,” Dilys persisted. He tried to summon susirena, intending to make Atrialan step aside, but the magic didn’t respond to his call. The water had replenished some of his physical strength, but not his magical stores.
“Is that how it works in Calberna? Foreigners bark orders at your mother, the Queen, and she obeys?”
Despite his agitation, Dilys felt his cheeks grow hot. Atrialan was right, much as Dilys hated to admit it. The Myerial would be ashamed at her son’s lapse in protocol. He took a breath and forced himself to calm down. “Forgive me, Your Grace. My concern for Myerialanna Summer has made me forget myself. You know how badly she was injured. She may need my help again.”
“She doesn’t. Her recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. In fact, while you’ve been lying in bed doing your best imitation of a death sleep for the last two days, she’s been awake and outside soaking up the sun. She’s already almost fully recovered. Tildavera tells me we owe Summer’s life and a good portion of her swift recovery to you, which is why I’m going to overlook your impertinence just now. But that’s where my goodwill ends. Until I get some answers, you’re not getting anywhere near her.”
Atrialan’s teeth snapped together in a sharp, cold smile. “So what’s it to be, Your Highness? Do you want to stand here arguing, or are you going to stop wasting both our time and explain to me exactly what the fark is going on? Including why you and every Calbernan in Konumarr ended up in the queen’s school with a dead man and my wife’s sister beaten nearly to the grave, and why your men have taken it upon themselves to post guards and erect that”—Atrialan jabbed a finger towards the window at Dilys’s back—“around my palace?”
Dilys turned to see what Atrialan was pointing at, and his jaw dropped a little. A shining wall of water shimmered a few inches from his balcony, so crystal clear it was almost completely transparent. A sea veil. Similar to the protective veil of water he put around his room each night as he slept, only much stronger. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it.
“Ah.” Dilys rubbed his jaw to hide his discomfort. “I didn’t realize they’d done that.”
“Done what? What is it?”
“It’s a sea veil. A protective ward. Nothing dangerous.” That wasn’t entirely true. The sea veil did offer protection against attack and intrusion, but it also allowed the Calbernans to identify everyone who passed through the veil, and to trap or drown any or all of those people, should the situation warrant. Atrialan didn’t need to know that, however. “I can only assume my men thought it best to add Calbernan protections to your own, given my weakened state and the attack on Gabriella. I wouldn’t know for sure, as I only just awakened and you’re the first person I’ve spoken to.” He blinked innocently and offered a small, congenial smile.
“And the Calbernans who seem to think they have some right to set themselves up as Princess Summer’s personal guard?”
They would have. Of course, they would have. They’d stumbled across the first Siren born in twenty-five hundred years. Every Calbernan in Wintercraig—in all of Mystral, for that matter—would die to protect her. Just as, to a man, they’d also die to protect the secret of what Summer was.
“I am their prince. I intend to make Gabriella my liana and the mother of Calberna’s future Myerial. My men know this. They therefore protect her as they would their own princess.”
“Summer is the Season you plan to marry?” Atrialan’s voice dripped with disbelief. “Wasn’t she the one you dismissed out of hand your first day here? What was it you called her? Oh, yes,”—his eyes narrowed—“milked tea.”
“Does everyone know about that?” Dilys groaned and scrubbed his face. He was never going to live that down. “I apologized to all three Seasons for that bit of stupidity the day it happened. The apology was accepted.”
Atrialan raised his brows. “And they say Calbernans understand women.”
Dilys grimaced. He deserved that. But how it stung to be lectured about dealing with women by Wynter of the Craig.
“We’ll come back to the situation between you and Summer later,” Atrialan announced briskly. “I still have more questions about what went on the night she was attacked. Witnesses say you and your men all started running at exactly the same time—even those of you over on this side of the fjord—and every one of you ran straight for the school. How is it possible that every Calbernan in Konumarr realized Princess Summer was in trouble at exactly the same instant? And how did every one of you know exactly where to go?”
That one was easy to answer without evasions or lies. “We are gifted with acute hearing. We heard her scream. When a woman screams the way she and her companion did, Calbernans come running. It’s in our nature.”
“Princess Summer’s attacker was literally reduced to a bloody pile of meat. You claim you did it, but you have no injuries—not even a scrape on your knuckles—and the only blood on you belonged to Summer. How is that possible?”
“Did you see what that filthy krillo did to Gabriella? I slaughtered him so fast, he didn’t have time to fight back. As for why there wasn’t a drop of his blood on me, the healer—Nurse Greenleaf?—has no doubt already informed you my sea gifts—the ones that grant me dominion over water—also grant me at least limited control over blood, including the ability to remove it from my person, which I did before I laid my hands on Gabriella. And before you ask, I used that same ability to stop Gabriella’s internal bleeding and keep as much of her blood pumping through her veins as possible until the healer completed her work and Gabriella was no longer in danger of bleeding to death.” He met Wynter’s gaze full on and told him with complete sincerity. “Had it been necessary for me to give my life to save hers, I would have done it without a second thought.”
“Hmm.” Atrialan grunted. He appeared slightly mollified, which meant Dilys hadn’t yet contradicted anything Ari, Ryll, or the others might have already told him, but also still clearly suspicious. He possessed a much stronger instinct for sussing out lies and evasions than Dilys had realized. But it was also clear that he had recognized the ring of truth in Dilys’s last statement. “You have spent every day since your arrival courting Spring and Autumn. In fact, my sources tell me you and Summer have avoided each other since day one. So how is it, Sealord, that you suddenly decided the woman you want for your wife is the one woman you made a point of disdaining from the start? You haven’t shared more than a dozen words with her since the day of your arrival, and now suddenly no other woman will do and you are so devoted you’d give your life for her? A woman you know nothing about. A woman you made clear you were not interested in courting. How exactly does that happen?”
“I was never not interested in Gabriella.”
Dilys bit back a sharp retort. He told himself Atrialan had every right to be protective of the women in his family. The quality was an admirable one. Highly Calbernan, in fact. It was just a pain in the ass to be on the receiving end of that bristling, intrusive protectiveness.
“You want the truth? Fine. Here it is. I am the only child of Calberna’s queen. When I marry, my daughter—should Numahao grant my wife and I the blessing of a daughter—will become the next queen of Calberna. As with every other nation on Mystral, it behooves Calberna to have a strong ruler. Which is why, before I left the Isles, I was instructed by the Queen’s Council to marry either Spring or Autumn. The opinion was that they were the two strongest of the Seasons and therefore the best choices to mother Calberna’s next queen. I am a dutiful son. Despite my attraction to Gabriella—which contrary to your belief, was both instant and strong—I tried to do what the Queen’s Council expected of me. But as the days passed, it became increasingly clear that while duty required me to pursue Spring or Autumn, my heart kept leading me back to Gabriella. It’s true, she has been avoiding me. I do not know why. But I intend to spend the rest of my time here getting to the bottom of that mystery and convincing her that I am the right and only man for her.”
Dilys leaned back against the dressing table and crossed his arms. “Now, please, Your Grace, I’ve answered all your questions. I need to see Gabriella. I need to make certain with my own eyes that she is as fully recovered as you say.” He smiled tightly. “It’s a Calbernan thing.” And it was. He’d been separated from his future mate for two days, and the need to be near her, to touch her, to make sure she was all right, was beginning to claw at him.