Page 45 of Sea of Evil and Desire (The Deep Saga #1)

43

Morgana

W ind bit at my cheeks, its vicious howl cutting through the air. Slowly, its oxygen was revitalizing me.

My seal fur corset was still stretched across my breasts and down my arms. I tried to swim forward, but I couldn’t move—there were strong arms around my waist.

I thrashed out, peering over my shoulder, and found myself face-to-face with Finn. His dark hair was wet and messy, curling in the breeze, and his black eyelashes were encrusted with salt.

“You’re okay,” he breathed.

I turned away from him, taking in my surroundings. We were in the middle of a gray sea, but a spec of land was on the horizon. Out here, there were no crashing waves; there was only swell, and our bodies were rising and falling in unison.

Finn, or the merman who looked like him, held me tight against his muscled torso. I recognized his tattoos. The cuffs around his right wrist had that same strange lettering I couldn’t read—runes. They were the Runes of the Ocean. He had the same scars hidden underneath them as well.

My fur-covered breasts, nipples peaking with the cold, pressed into his arms as we bobbed in the swell, and my body betrayed me as the heat rose between my legs. I pulled myself from his embrace, needing to take him in fully and get a grasp on what the fuck was going on.

On Finn’s left pectoral, I saw a crescent moon tossed over a stormy sea—the Symbol of the Ocean. I hadn’t seen him shirtless before, so I had never noticed it.

Am I dreaming?

Finn dragged his gaze across my furry corset, which I knew outlined every curve of my body, and color burned my cheeks. His eyes found mine, and he held my gaze so hard my chest constricted. I looked away to gather my thoughts.

The prince had been about to kill me, and then Finn was there, and he had saved me. I turned back to face him as the reality of the situation dawned on me.

Grinning, he pushed his wet hair from his forehead. It was as if he enjoyed seeing the cogs in my mind working overtime.

My heart hammered, and I pulled my gaze beneath the waves. There, protruding from Finn’s torso, was the glittering green tail of Prince Aigéan. Its crimson tips flapped gracefully to keep him afloat.

“Y-you’re the prince ?”

“Are you the only one allowed to have secrets?” He raised a dark brow.

“You’ve been like this all along and didn’t tell me? You laughed at me when I said I heard the Mer’s song!”

“I wanted to tell you.” His tone was strained as he moved closer, reaching beneath the waves. His hand grazed my waist, but I slipped from his grasp—I couldn’t think when he was touching me.

“It was you who sang on the rocks.” I used my fingers to comb my sopping hair from my face.

“We were not alone that day.” A shadow passed over his face.

“And it was you who saved me in the Therme Skótos forest. Wait, a minute—what did you mean ‘this is the girl’?” I pulled further away from him.

A pained expression flickered in Finn’s eyes, as though he could see the mistrust taking shape on my face.

“My father is obsessed with finding the lost prophecy. When he heard Iona, the last of the ancient Selkies, was dead, but her granddaughter had come to Ruadán’s Port, he sent me to observe you and report back.” His eyes seemed to be pleading with me to understand.

“That’s why you came to Ruadán’s Port . . . for me?” My thoughts spiraled as I replayed that night at his house. He had been intent on finding out about my family. Were any of the things he’d said even real? The probing questions I thought meant he wanted to know me better had just been him gathering intel. I was struggling to breathe again.

“No, you were secondary. I was running another errand for my father.”

“Is that all you do in life? Run errands for Daddy?” My eyes narrowed on his muscular torso, which flexed with every flick of his magnificent tail.

“Yeah, I guess so.” The gills along his neck flared.

He was silent. I’d hit a nerve. Good .

Finally, he sighed, and the shadow that had passed over his face was gone. “I tried to tell you, Morgana, in the grocery store, and that morning after we kissed in the waves—”

“When you said everything about us was wrong ?” The clouds thickened into mist above us, and rain beat against my furrowed brow.

“I’ll admit, at first I intended to get close to you to gather information.” He held my gaze, unflinching. Drops of water clung to his bottom lip, and I couldn’t stop staring at them.

“So you only invited me to your house on your father’s orders.” I inclined my head in challenge.

“Yes, but then . . . then I started to want to be around you. I was going to tell you, but I couldn’t find the words for these feelings, as they are not something I’m accustomed to.” His expression changed, and sadness seeped into the waves. “I thought if you knew who I was— what I was—things would change between us.”

“No shit.” Heat rose in my face, and I hooked my wet hair behind my ear.

Finn hung his head, rain tracing paths down his creased brow.

“You’re still engaged?” I batted my lashes against the drizzle.

“Yes.”

“On land or in the sea?”

“In the sea—well, both, I guess. But it’s not what you think.” He exhaled slowly, his expression filled with many things. “I’ve never had a choice. It’s the kingdom . . . my duty. I’m trapped.”

Princess Glacies. Of course!

I moved away from him, but his webbed fingers closed around my arm. “Morgana, I can’t fucking breathe without you.”

My heart thudded, but I shook myself free of his hand and dragged myself further from him in the swell.

I glanced at the sky. It was late in the day, but the evening was still a few hours away. The sea splashed clumsily at my mouth, and Finn wouldn’t keep his eyes off me. He was making me feel aware of every stray hair.

“Where are we?” I asked coolly.

“We are close to home.” He gestured toward the faint sliver of land barely visible through the rain-streaked horizon, his tail keeping him afloat easily.

I pulled my gaze from his and began to move toward the shore.

“A thank you for saving your life twice might be nice.” Finn caught up with me, and we were now swimming alongside one another.

“First of all, you were only able to save me because you were stalking me, and secondly, an hour ago, you wanted to torture and kill me mercilessly.” I shook my head. Typical .

“Technically, I wasn’t stalking you. I asked Pháos to do that, and luckily I did, because my uncle almost pulled you into his clutches.” Finn’s fists were clenched beneath the waves. “He took my mother from me. I won’t let him take you, too.”

So the fierce, beautiful merman in Therme Skótos had been Taranis.

If Finn was Prince Aigéan, then the purple-haired Abalone, who I had found so mysterious, must have been his mother. So much had happened that I had completely forgotten he was the one we had set out to see.

“So you had your pet follow me.” I thought of the white-bellied dolphin I had seen clicking in his ear.

“Pháos is no pet. He is a wild animal of the sea. He chose me.”

The gray clouds were still hanging low overhead, and the rain continued stinging our skin as we swam in silence. I glanced sideways at Finn, and he met my gaze.

I wanted to punch him in his smug face. But I also wanted to kiss him again.

Oh, gods, I wanted to kiss him.

I can’t fucking breathe without you. His words wrapped around my thoughts, and my cheeks flamed. Okay, let’s stick to punching .

He had lied to me . . . He had been sent to follow me! I cast another side-look at him, taking in his dark brows, angular jaw, and the dripping wet hair he had just pushed from his forehead. Damn him. Despite it all, the desire was still there. When he was near, he consumed my every thought. Maybe it was just the enticement of the forbidden? No, it was something deeper, something pulling us together. And that’s what terrified me. If only I could sense his feelings, I’d know if he was telling the truth. But wasn’t that exactly why I wanted him—because I couldn’t?

Rain had obscured the horizon, and the ocean tossed about us as the wind picked up. Finn slid in front of me. I moved to slip past him, but he was quicker and blocked my path. His gaze locked on to mine, and unwanted heat curled within me, but I didn’t look away. I stared at the droplets running off every inch of his beautiful face.

“Wh-where’s Edward?” I asked, suddenly realizing we had left him behind.

“He is safe and will be treated well.” Finn waved a hand. “Now, tell me what you know of my mother.”

“I read about her in—” I was interrupted by an engine whirring, and a small motorboat pulled up beside us.

“Morgana?” A voice called from its deck.

Great. I don’t have the powers of invisibility.

I clasped my hands over my fur-covered chest.

I glanced at the sky again. The sun was hidden behind clouds, but based on my seal’s intuition, it was still about twenty minutes until sunset, and someone on that boat knew who I was.

“Who’s there?” I spluttered as the idling engine doused our faces with seawater.

“It’s Barry. Your granddad is on board. What on earth are you doing out here? I’ll pull you up and take you straight to the hospital. It’s all going to be okay.”

A hand reached toward me in the water, but I hesitated. My fingers and toes still had webs, and my body was half-coated in sleek fur.

“Morgana?” Barry’s pinched face peered out of the rain. I continued to hover in the swell, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“Barry, is it? Thank goodness you guys found us.” It was Finn’s voice. He had scrambled over the other side of the boat and transformed into his human self, covering his nakedness with a blanket that must have been on board. He couldn’t have pulled off that maneuver without some Mer magic. I rolled my eyes. He was saving my ass again, and he wouldn’t let me forget it.

Sure enough, I looked up to find him grinning at me. He was holding his hand out from beneath the blanket. I scrambled into the boat and wrapped the throw Finn had waiting around my deformity while Barry hovered at the wheel. Granddad sat bundled up in the hull but gave me a smile and a little wink. Barry didn’t notice, as he was now busy shoving buckets of dead fish and tackle out of the way to make room for us.

Barry and Granddad were wearing jackets and beanies. This made our situation look even more ludicrous.

Finn sat down beside me. I glanced to where his emerald tail had been to see bare legs protruding from beneath the rough wool fabric. I moved my eyes up to his torso. Now that my fear of Barry seeing my Selkie skin had passed, I was acutely aware that Finn was naked under that covering. I chewed on my lip and cast my eyes to the space between his legs, wondering what was there now that his tail was gone.

He lowered his voice and grinned. “Yes, when we take human form, we come with the whole package.”

I swallowed, and my cheeks burned.

“Robbie,” Barry growled. I had been so preoccupied with Finn’s crotch that I hadn’t noticed his narrowed eyes on us. “Aren’t you going to ask your granddaughter what she was doing this far out at sea and why he is naked?” He nodded at Finn. He must have mistaken my fur for clothes.

Shit . How were we going to explain this?

My granddad was chewing his gums nervously, as if wondering the same thing.

“You could have been killed! What if we hadn’t found you?” Even through the drizzle, I caught the flush in Barry’s sallow cheeks, his narrowed eyes set deep in his weather-beaten face. “How did you even get out here? Did he try to have it on with you, Morgana? Tell us now, and we’ll chuck him overboard.” His face turned almost gleeful as he jerked a thumb at the swollen waves.

“Okay, that’s quite enough,” interjected Finn. He stared hard at Barry, and the man met his gaze.

I only knew Barry a little, but he was a stern old guy, and Finn wasn’t scaring him. Yet, to my surprise, his expression softened. He continued to stare at Finn, but his eyes became full. His tight jaw slackened.

“We came out fishing with you,” Finn continued, his voice like silk. “We’ve been in the boat the whole time. Morgana caught that large one right there.” He gestured to a big brown-skinned fish in the bucket by my feet. “We are wet and cold from the rain but will be fine.”

Barry’s hardened face came back to life when Finn stopped talking. His dark eyes narrowed momentarily, but then his face split into a grin. “You caught a beauty today, Morgana!” he croaked, squinting against the spit of the rain.

“Erm, thanks,” I mumbled, looking at Finn in disbelief.

What the fuck was that? My stomach knotted itself.

Finn turned his gaze to Granddad, but I grabbed his arm

“It’s okay. He knows,” I whispered.

Finn shrugged and settled in next to me.

“That night at your place, when you looked into my eyes and asked about my family, that’s what you were doing? You were trying to hypnotize me?”

“Well, yes.” Finn looked bashful and reached for my hand. “But Morgana, it didn’t work on you, which fascinated me. At first, it seemed like my powers of allure still worked, but then I realized they weren’t affecting you either, or you overcame them. By that point, I was hooked. I had to know more.”

Powers of allure? Asshole !

“But we can read heightened emotions, so you should probably learn to hide those.” Finn spread his legs under the blanket, and his thigh pressed against mine. “Anger, sadness . . . arousal.” He raised his eyebrows.

That’s just great. Usually, I can read emotions; now he can read mine, and I’m blind to his.

The wavelike structure intertwined with Celtic patterns adorning the right-hand side of Finn’s chest protruded from the blanket. On the left side, I now knew he had the same inky symbol as me. I hated being so curious about the rest of him . . . I wanted to slide my hand underneath the fabric and feel all of him. I glanced sideways, and he was grinning again.

Damn it. I needed to keep my emotions in check.

“How can you read my emotions but not hypnotize me?” I leaned forward, letting myself eye him curiously.

“Like the fact that you’re wondering what’s under this blanket?” He raised his brows.

Shit . I flushed and focused on the swirling sea.

“I was joking. I can’t sense your emotions, Morgana. They are written on your face. After years of interrogating Drowned and humans, I have learned how to read people.” He slid his knee across so it found mine again.

Smug bastard. I rolled my eyes.

“If you . . . if you are naked when you take human form . . .” I allowed myself to bring my eyes back to him and willed my traitorous cheeks not to burn. “Then how do you not draw attention to yourself when you acquire clothes?”

The rain had eased, and the lights of Ruadán’s Port twinkled in the distance, and I pictured a nude Finn, strolling casually out of the sea, waving to people as he sauntered down the boardwalk.

He snorted a laugh, and his whole face lit up. It was nice seeing him like this. He had been so stern since we’d emerged from the castle. From his father.

“We can make ourselves invisible to humans”—he choked the words, still laughing—“but if I weren’t with you, I would probably go up the front of the cliff.”

I fought the corners of my mouth from tugging upward. “It would have been nice if my Selich ancestors had granted me that invisibility magic.”

“All the Houses of the Ocean have unique magic. Think of it like genetics. We grow into the magic we need or that our ancestors acquired through some dealing with the gods.” Finn tilted his head. “Selkies never needed invisibility from humans because, under the sea, you look like a seal, whereas we Mer with our magnificent tails and opulent castles . . .” He smirked. “We really need it.”

Prick.

“As for walking on land, Mer royalty acquired that skill thousands of years ago thanks to Eríkos and Angeliki . . . but that is a story for another time.”

Stars twinkled above us as we pulled the motorboat into Ruadán’s Port. My human form had returned. Glancing down the front of my rug, I saw I was fully naked apart from my fur coat.

My bare feet were stiff and cold, wedged between the tackle and buckets of dead fish. Granddad had been silent for most of the trip. Perhaps he was too old to go out in such a small boat in this weather, but I knew he’d rather die than be deprived of the open water. On the other hand, Barry had been jubilant since Finn had had his way with him. He’d chattered aimlessly about the day’s catch, the weather, and rumors he’d heard at the pub.

The boat’s engine jogged to a stop, and we all climbed out. Finn took my hand, and Barry helped Granddad.

“What a night! Just look at these stars.” Barry caressed the skies with his hand. “Shall we go to the pub? I feel like I might get lucky on the slots tonight.” He nudged Granddad, who nodded his assent.

Granddad looked like he needed a drink. I didn’t blame him. He had seen his granddaughter in a seal costume swimming with a naked man and watched his best friend be hypnotized, all in one night. At least now, he would have read the diary pages I left behind and let go of the guilt he harbored for trapping my grandmother.

“You two want a lift?” Barry jerked his thumb at the white truck parked by the boardwalk.

I looked sideways at Finn. We still had things to talk about.

“Did you want to come to mine?” I asked in a would-be casual voice.

Amusement danced in his eyes. “What, to watch Netflix?”