Chapter 12

Nyall lay with Caroline in his arms, thinking on the moment earlier when Jamaran had risen from their makeshift bed. His friend had quietly added a split to the fire before pulling on his garment. When he looked down at them his expression had been content, and the stream of his thoughts the same.

Look after our lady, Brother.

The commander had said nothing more as he'd silently left the cottage. That didn't dismay Nyall. He understood the enormity of what had happened here tonight, and what that meant to them both.

"Mmmm." Their lover stirred, touching him with her fingers before she reached for the commander, and then frowned and opened her eyes. "I went to sleep with two gorgeous men, where's the other one?"

Nyall kissed her brow. "He left."

"Why?" Caroline looked over at the door. "I wanted us to spend the whole night together."

"He couldnae." He gathered her closer. "He needs the sea as you and I need air. Too long away hurts him, and may even end him."

She turned over onto her back. "I keep forgetting that he needs to breathe water." She glanced at him. "Next time, wake me up so I can kiss him goodbye, okay?"

"Aye." He watched her face for a few moments, expecting to see some show of discomfort or dismay. Instead she looked as content as his friend had, perhaps even more so. "You've no regrets, my lady?"

"About the best night I've ever had in my life?" She pretended to think before she said, "None. How about you?"

"The pleasure, 'twas beyond my dreams." Admitting as much should have shamed him, but he refused to tarnish those long, slow hours of delight they had shared. "You astonish me, Caroline."

She chuckled. "I don't know why. You know all my secrets now. Well, maybe not this one." She rolled atop him, straddling him and pushing him back. "I like having sex as soon as I wake up. I even like it when I'm half-asleep. Cooperate, and I'll make sure you don't suffer."

He gripped her thighs, his cock swelling as she reached between them. "Indeed. I must wake you every morn, then."

"I also like afternoon sex." Caroline rose as she fitted him to her, and then slowly sank down, impaling herself on his shaft. "So you should come and find me after you've done your morning duty—or I could come to you. The doors in the garrison hall have bars on them, too, right?" Once she had him buried inside her, she bent down to kiss him and said, "I'd like to spend some nights with Jamaran."

That was something he hadn't considered. "Do you want him alone?"

"You mean, like I have you all to myself now?" She began to move, lifting herself and then coming back down on him, her quim gripping and releasing him sweetly. "Sometimes, yes, I would, but only if you're there to watch us"

Nyall's baws tightened as he considered that. "If you'd permit him the same pleasure, I reckon I may convince him."

"You reckon, huh?" She grinned and then put her mouth next to his ear to whisper, "We're going to have so much fun."

He allowed her to do whatever she wished to him, and Caroline took swift advantage. At first she tormented him with slow, shallow movements, allowing him to come inside her halfway before she rose again, denying him the full thrust he desired. She then shifted down, allowing him to slide from her hot, slick quim before she began toying with his cock. She kissed him from tip to root and back again, and then suckled him until he thought he might flood her mouth with his cream.

"Not yet, Captain." She slid up over him, tormenting him with the delicious weight of her breasts on his abdomen before clasping her thighs outside his. "You need to work for it this time."

What made him take hold of her and flip her over onto her back, Nyall didn't know. He needed to fack her deeply, and somehow she understood, for she parted her thighs wider and welcomed his hard thrusts. The wetness of her body around him and the gentle tugs of her muscles as she clasped him drove him nearly out of his mind. When she ran her hands over his chest he caught her wrists and pinned them to the ticking.

"Seeing your mouth suckling him nearly made me spill inside you," he told her, his voice coming deep from his chest now. "Dinnae offer more than you may give, for I shall want you every morn, every noon, every night. To take you and see you taken. To fill you as he shall, and hear you moan for us."

"I'll give you everything you want," she said, gasping as he plunged so deep his cockhead nudged the mouth of her womb. "Nyall."

He loved seeing her reach her bliss, hearing the helpless sounds she made, and knowing the way her body would arch under his and shake with the power of her delight. He drove her through that sweet heated explosion and never let her fall, but stroked her with his cock again and again until she came for him a second time. Then, in the very heart of her joy, he jetted inside her, emptying all of his seed into her tight, wet quim.

Holding her as she gasped in the aftermath made him wonder if he could ever again sleep alone. He also knew what they had done together created all new difficulties for the three of them. Yet the shame he'd expected to overtake him never came. This was how she had wished to be with him and his friend, and it seemed exactly right.

"Don't do that." Caroline reached up and rubbed her fingertips against his brow. "You think too much, Captain."

"'Tis a failing of mine." He kissed her hand. "Should you ever wish choose between us, I shallnae stop you."

"You like ordering me around, too," she said, and sighed as she cuddled closer to him. "I'm a live-for-today girl. Tomorrow isn't here, and yesterday can't be changed. Let's just see what happens."

Jamaran accompaniedMerrick back to the bay, and thought only of the duties he needed to attend after escorting the king to his palace. Everything else from the night before, he kept locked away, a treasure of memories he knew he would take out and relish again and again for the remainder of his days. He grew startled when the other man swam around the settlement for the dock where their fishers kept their ghost boats, and there climbed out of the water.

"Come, lad," Merrick said as he stepped into one of the boats, sending ripples across the calm water. "We need time away so we may talk."

Once they set off Jamaran steered the vessel around the islets and past the cove, taking advantage of the southern winds to fill the sails. After spending half the night with Nyall and Caroline, and then coming to the king's side at the labyrinth, he'd already grown weary, but later he would rest. Soon the ghost boat rounded the southern tip of Caladh, where Merrick gestured for him to slow as he watched the sun rise over the horizon.

He didn't have to read the other man's mind to know he was trying to avoid being overheard by any of the Selseus. "'Tis something you wish me do, my king?"

"You've done well thus far. I much like Caroline and Nyall." Merrick's expression grew serene. "I wish you ken I'm happy for you and them."

During the night he'd neglected to school his thoughts and emotions, which of course the king could read. He'd just never imagined he'd do so after they parted, or from such a distance.

"'Tisnae a custom among our kind, sharing a female with a brother," he finally said. "Still, I shallnae ask your approval."

"Why should you?" Now Merrick frowned at him. "I didnae bring you here so I may browbeat you, lad. Indeed, after the stream of pleasures that came through those hours, I envy you as no other man. You showed no hesitation, either, so I reckon 'twasnae forbidden among your mortal people."

They had never had to confide in each other, thanks to their connection. Yet Jamaran wondered if the king's approval of his unconventional affair would now create new problems for them both.

"In my homeland, 'twas called l'amour courtois," he said. "The courtly love of a lady for her husband and her knight, who shared her affections. The lord I served shared his wife with his younger brother, who sired some of her bairns. 'Tisnae the same with Nyall and Caroline, as they've no' wed. Yet I'm happy serving as the lady's chevalier."

"As I guessed, you've yet tell her of your past, aye?" Merrick sighed. "You should, you ken, for such secrets may cause a rift between you and the lady. I saw Margret last night, and she yet pines for me, near as much as I do her. I'd step down from rule this moment and leave with her, only she refuses me still. 'Tis the sea that stands between us now."

He'd tried to stay out of the king's obsession with the chambermaid, but now it seemed he wanted him involved. "You desire my advice now?"

"'Tis no easy solution, but one." Merrick's golden hair veiled his face. "When I leave, desire you both Caroline and Nyall as your consorts?"

"The people, they'd never..." Jamaran realized what he was saying, and rested his brow against his fist. "Fack me."

"For that, you must seek your woman and your brother." He grinned at his own jest. "Your longing and your pleasure, 'twas clear as good water last night. Indeed, 'twas a call to my own conscience. I've kept you at my side too long. For all you left behind in Francia, a part of you loves them both."

Love, that he'd successfully avoided for centuries. Yet Nyall he did love, more so than as a brother or a friend. Since discovering their connection the captain had become part of his thoughts and his life, seamlessly and effortlessly. As for Caroline, he'd fallen for her the moment he'd pulled her from the sea. She would never take the first place in his heart, but he sensed the same was true of her. Perhaps he should have suffered some dread over sharing his heart with them, but nothing plagued him. For the first time since his transformation he had grown complete.

"In my fashion, aye, I do. I never imagined such a thing possible, but as three together we're happy," he admitted. "I dinnae ken what shall become of us if you name me your heir. Surely you cannae, my king. I wasnae born Selseus. My blood, 'tis common. My people, ever they served their lords. I've naught to offer the people."

"'Tis no one I trust more than you, lad," Merrick said. "That you once lived as a mortal makes little difference. You're Selseus now, and you'd serve as a wise and strong king. Every man in the settlement respects you. Yet ruling means choosing a queen to bear your son and begin your bloodline. Caroline may bear you a son. Nyall could then serve as her knight."

Bearing children preoccupied the Selseus like no other matter, primarily because most would only sire a single son during their long lifetimes. That singular birth also made the issue of changing mortal females into suitable mates one that remained ever present in the minds of the aquatics. If he did become king, he would face daily pressure, not only to mate but to produce a blood-born heir.

"The Norse butchered everyone I loved in Francia," Jamaran said slowly. "You've seen my memories, so you ken all those bastarts took from me. As sport, they wouldnae permit me end myself, but beat me and chained me helpless. When they brought you to the slave pens, they'd rendered me near an animal. You remember."

"Aye. Never had I seen a mortal so filthy, nor one with so many wounds. Yet you fathomed quickly that I wasnae mortal, and covered my gills when the overseers came. At night you put me in the water trough so I might breathe, and kept me alive." The king put a hand on his shoulder. "When you helped me escape, 'twas the same as ending yourself, and still you set me free."

"I couldnae bear watching you become the thing I was." The old shame filled him, for the Norse had truly brutalized the very heart from him. "When they drowned me, you brought me back, and gave me a new life of worth and purpose. You've honored me time and again by training me, and then naming me your commander. 'Tis enough for settling any debt between us. You owe me naught, my king."

"'Tis your life I wish better, lad." Merrick glanced back at the bay. "In the pens I saw how much you wished die. How you wept for your lady and the bairn never born. Even before your change, I saw into your heart. I stole that death from you, the death you longed for, the quiet dark where you would never again suffer. In truth, I feared if I let you go, my heart should make me follow."

The king had always been so alive and forceful that it stunned Jamaran to hear him admit such a thing. "You love Meg."

"Only she came for me much later." Merrick's grave expression shifted to mirth, and he laughed. "Och, if you could see your face now, lad. 'Twasnae romantic love I had for you. 'Twas that of a father, for your courage made me wish I'd sired you. When I had the chance to give you life again, I couldnae resist."

"You honor me." He tried to think of how he could explain his own tangled emotions. "I dinnae share your aim, for such nearly ended me. The price of such endless love, 'twas too high for me ever pay again."

"And if you sire a son on Caroline Parish during your courtly love affair, then?" the king asked gently. "Shall you turn your back on her and Nyall?"

Jamaran had already considered those consequences. "Nyall cannae give her bairns. I shall never risk such when I'm with her."

"Then for now, think on what I've said." Merrick looked out over the bay. "As I must with my future."

Speal wentto the railing to watch the sunrise, where Teine joined her and handed her a mug of ale. Most of the Cait Sith remained below, still recovering from their full moon night. Because they had spent it on a vessel surrounded by water they had been unable to run free as they did every other month when they changed. She vaguely remembered her sisters screeching their fury before turning on each other, and how she had held onto her own sense long enough to herd them below deck.

"How many injured?" she asked the one-eyed shifter.

"All," Teine said. "Dearg's tending to the worst. We'll need another week so they may fully recover. 'Twould be faster on land where we might hunt some mortals. That Ronalsee island–"

"No' there." The thought of their sisters becoming entrapped by the standing stone, as she had been, made her bilious. "'Tis deserted, and barren. We must return to Insii Orc."

The sound of the door to the captain's cabin opening made them both glance over their shoulders at Dearg, who looked as if she had been threshed by a hundred flails. The little shifter quietly closed the door before hobbling over to them.

"Our princess shall sleep the day." She touched a wound on her lips. "She changed last night, but no' into her true form. She became a woodland Fae."

"How can you remember such?" Teine demanded. "We're all but mindless when we go to fur."

"She cast her magic over me to end my change, and then spoke of her love for Mar for hours and hours." Dearg sagged against the railing. "I could sleep for a year now, I reckon."

Speal frowned. "How could words wound you?"

"She mistook me for Eilonwy, the prince's murdered wife." A yawn spoiled her pout. "At the end she lost her temper and promised beat me to death. She nearly did, and then she wept, asking my forgiveness." She moved her shoulders. "She forgot all but her own notions, I reckon."

What she wasn't saying or thinking suggested there had been more to the night than Derdrui's ravings and tantrums. The little shifter's pretense of indifference concealed her fear, but not completely.

"Help her below," Speal told Teine, and then kissed the little shifter on her bruised brow. "You did well."

Once the pair had gone into the hold Speal walked over to the cabin and pressed her ear against the door before she opened it and slipped inside. The large room appeared ransacked by marauders, with torn gowns and splintered furnishings covering the floor. Trace of magic still shimmered in the air, which smelled of a dark, heavy perfume, and the walls bore fresh red flecks over the old blood stains. On the bare ticking of the bed lay the enchantress, most of her dark beauty restored after her long night of revelry. Only her hands remained gnarled like old crooks, with talons still curving on the ends of her fingers.

Speal went over to open the window on the far side of the cabin to let in some fresh air.

"Eilonwy was the only one who loved him as much as I," Derdrui murmured. "For that I loved her, even before I killed her."

"She's been gone a thousand years now, my sovereign." She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath before she faced her, and nearly screamed.

The dead fish monger's wife now lay on the bed, her heavy body naked against the rumpled linens.

"You know what love is, do you not, my faithful one?" the enchantress asked as she ran her taloned hands over her altered form. "This one you adored at first sight, and meant to make your lover. Only a mortal stole her from you, just as Eilonwy did Mar from me."

Speal knew she should cater to their sovereign's obsession with her past, and allow her this chance to torture her and appease her twisted Fae needs. Yet to have the one she had truly loved used as the means for that made all she had suffered well up in her.

"I ken love." She walked over to the bed and looked over her dead love's bountiful curves. "'Tis what I and my sisters hold in our hearts for you, my princess. Yet you seem bent on destroying us, one by one. You nearly beat Dearg to death last night during your ravings. Now you torment me. How long imagine you shall we go on loving and serving one who but punishes us so cruelly?"

"You bovine idiot." The enchantress shifted back into her darkly beautiful form, and rose from the bed. "I should kill you for showing me such disrespect."

"Aye, end me, just as you did Fiacail," Speal countered. "And the next leader you choose, doubtless she shall soon need killing for some annoyance or disrespect. Shall you slay her in your endless anger, or wretchedness over the past, or simply your boredom? How many of us can you butcher before you're left alone in the midst of the sea, with no one sailing the facking boat?"

The air between them grew thick with Derdrui's magic, but the enchantress simply stared at her as if she didn't recognize her now.

"I vowed serve you forever, and so I shall," Speal said, weariness making her sit on the edge of the bed. "Until the end of my life, I'm yours. Only ken I cannae give you what you wish if I'm dead. Nor may the others. You need the Cait Sith in the mortal realm, my sovereign. We're no' your enemy. Show us your mercy and permit us serve, I beg you."

Slowly the air cleared, and the enchantress turned away from her.

"I have needs that you leave unattended," Derdrui said. "I will not explain it to you, for you cannot understand the true Fae. If you wish to spare yourself and the others suffering, find mortals to entertain me."

"We shall return to Insii Orc for a time, then." Speal bowed.

A knock came on the door, and Teine peered inside. "Forgive the intrusion. We've sighted a large fisher sailing toward us."

The enchantress grinned with delight, looking in that moment eerily like Dearg. "It seems we do not have to return to the island of pigs. The swine have come to us."