Page 29 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)

Fifteen

S omething compelled Elias to go into the water with Caspian.

It was as if a hook had stuck in his gut, in his very core, and was dragging him into the salty deep.

He had to follow Caspian. Every part of him screamed that nothing else in the world mattered but following Caspian and being with him, no matter what, as if he were one of the sirens of old.

He’d gone so far as to pull off his shoes and toss them aside, and he reached for the fastenings of his trousers before stopping dead and blinking at the incongruous sight in front of him.

Caspian had dived under the waves…and a long, sleek tail, like a gigantic tropical fish, swept up out of the water in the exact spot Caspian should have been.

Elias blinked again, frozen in place as the surf rushed up across the beach and covered his feet, shifting the sand beneath him.

His entire world felt like that sand, particularly when Caspian surfaced again, twisted to face him, and the beautiful, iridescent tail flashed up over the top of the water once more.

“You’ll be able to see better if you come out here,” Caspian called to him.

He was about thirty yards away, past the point where the waves broke on their way to the shore, but Elias could still hear him clearly.

“If your mind cannot believe your eyes from a distance, I promise you that you will believe when you are close.”

Still, Elias stood rooted to his spot. It could not be.

It was entirely impossible. The sight before him was something out of an ancient legend, a sailor’s tale.

Such things simply did not exist in the real world of thoughts and cares about mundane things, like drawing water from a spring or catching enough food to survive off of.

And yet, there he was. Caspian dove under the water once more, and just as before, the undulating shape of a long, aquatic tail skimmed the surface of the water, catching the sunlight, as if Caspian was swimming in such a manner on purpose so Elias could see.

The bone-deep urge to know what he was seeing propelled Elias forward once more.

His stunned silence gave way to frantic energy as he splashed into the surf, then fought against the surge of wave after wave to make his way out to Caspian.

Everything suddenly made sense. As Elias jumped against rolling, whitecapped waves, then beyond them to where he could swim, so many things became clear in his mind.

Caspian had disappeared for long stretches of time on the ship.

Elias had been unable to find him anywhere, and when they were reunited, Caspian had merely laughed off his absence, joking with Elias by saying he’d gone swimming.

He had gone swimming. Elias had believed it to be impossible on a ship sailing as fast as the Fortune had been, but no, watching Caspian gamboling in the waves now, it was clear that he truly had been swimming alongside the Fortune , even if no one aboard, including Elias, had seen him.

The last three weeks on the ship. Elias’s thoughts sped forward as he kicked and stroked through the tide to reach the spot where Caspian waited for him.

Caspian had been ill, whether he’d been willing to admit to it or not.

Could it be that staying aboard the ship and not taking to the ocean was what had affected him?

Caspian had said that he would feel better in a bath of salt water.

“You did not die when Tumbrill made you walk the plank during the storm because the ocean is your natural habitat,” Elias gasped once he reached Caspian and treaded water a few feet away from him.

“Yes,” Caspian said with a nod, keeping himself upright in the water by swishing his tail in a tight pattern under him. “In fact, that swim restored my strength, which had been flagging from going so long without touching the ocean.”

It was exactly as Elias had just thought, and he nodded.

The gesture drew his attention to what he could see of Elias’s tail in the surprisingly clear water.

Everything was visible, from the transition area around Caspian’s hips where his pale skin faded to iridescent greens and blues, then dappled in smaller, softer scales, like the sort Elias had felt on his legs while on the beach, to larger, more elaborate scales that continued down what should have been his legs, but was now a solid, sleek mermaid’s tail.

Or rather merman. It ended in a long, fine, voluminous caudal fin.

“You’re—” Elias did not know if he could even say what was right before his eyes, it was so outlandish. “Are you a merman?” he asked instead.

Caspian nodded, his usual cheeky smile giving Elias at least a taste of something ordinary that he had come to love. “I am,” he said. He shifted to swim in a circle around Elias, who had more and more trouble treading water by the moment as shock over came him, as if to show off.

“But that is impossible,” Elias said with a rush of disbelieving breath. “Mermen do not exist. They are myths and legends only.”

“We are myths and legends,” Caspian said, stopping in front of Elias once more, “but we are not only myths and legends. We simply recognized the need to conceal ourselves after too many stories of our kind reached the land and hunters came after us to capture us as oddities.”

“But you cannot be real,” Elias blurted, still not believing what was directly in front of him. “I must have gone mad. I must have died in that first storm, and now I am in some other place or dreaming all of this before my spirit leaves me.”

Caspian laughed again, though Elias could sense genuine concern from him. “I can assure you, I am very real.”

To prove his point, he leaned toward Elias, catching him around his waist and pulling him close.

It was a relief to Elias not to have to exert what little strength he had to stay afloat.

Caspian’s arms around him felt as familiar and comfortable as ever, and he took great solace from that feeling.

But where he expected his legs to tangle with Caspian’s, he felt only the solid length of his tail instead.

Mad though it was, a strong part of him wanted to wrap his legs around Caspian’s tail where his thighs should have been and hold on forever.

That instinct caused him to gasp, then flush with embarrassment as the least appropriate thought for that moment struck him. “Your, er, anatomy,” he said.

Caspian laughed loudly, tilting his head back so that the sun caught the highlights of his hair and the sparkling droplets of water that clung to his shoulders and face.

“It’s all still there,” he said, gazing at Elias with a smile so full of love it began to calm Elias’s addled brain.

“My people live both in the water and on the land. We mate in our more human forms, though women give birth in the water.”

Elias gaped at him for a moment, then blurted, “You’re amphibian.”

Caspian giggled as if the idea was endearing. “Not quite. We are nothing that has been classified or quantified by you Englishmen.”

Elias caught his breath as even more hints from the past few months struck him.

Caspian had never truly lied about what or who he was.

He’d said things, small hints, from the very beginning that had set him apart as something different.

Elias remembered them all. He’d interpreted them to mean Caspian was foreign, but he hadn’t made the leap to guess just how foreign.

“I have so many questions,” he said, moving his hands from where he’d circled his arms around Caspian’s shoulders to touch his face. “You have just obliterated everything I thought I knew about the world, and now…now I am uncertain what to do with myself.”

“I am sorry,” Caspian said, though he was still smiling. “There is more that will likely upset your mind as well.”

“More?” Elias blinked.

“So much more,” Caspian said, sliding his hand up Elias’s back beneath his floating shirt.

He pulled Elias close and pressed his mouth against Elias’s in a kiss.

Despite the madness of who and what Caspian was, Elias still wanted him.

He melted into the way his lover held him and parted his lips with a sigh to deepen their kiss.

Caspian seemed hungry for more and played his tongue against Elias’s before delving deeper.

A sudden feeling of buoyancy filled Elias.

He closed his eyes and gave in to the sensation.

It was nothing he’d ever felt before and certainly nothing he could explain.

The lightness that filled him as he kissed Caspian harder, wishing that the two of them could tangle up together in whatever form and enjoy pleasure beyond telling went so much farther than anything he’d felt when kissing Caspian before.

It was like the strong pull he’d felt on the shore, the need to be with Caspian always, but so much more potent.

When Caspian shifted to kiss him from a different angle, Elias opened his eyes…and nearly shouted with alarm.

They were underwater. Both of them. He could see the surface just a few inches above his head, but they were most definitely under the waves. And yet, somehow Elias could breathe.

No, it was not that. It was as if he had no need of air in his lungs at all.

Something else was feeding his body the oxygen it needed.

Something that had come from Caspian’s kiss.

More than just that, instead of being distorted and murky, everything around Elias was crystal clear.

He could see through the water as if it were nothing.

The shock was too much, and he pushed up, surfacing and gasping. Part of him expected to gape like a fish on dry land, but no, the moment his head broke the surface of the waves, he could breathe as usual.

“What just happened?” he gasped as Caspian surfaced beside him.

Caspian’s grin was absolutely cheeky. “Merman magic,” he said teasingly.