“Well?” her aunt barked, her voice hoarse and her breast heaving.
Meg’s lips parted twice, three times, in a vain attempt to speak, but it was no use. She had no defense, at least not one Adelia would listen to, much less accept. Should she tell her at midnight on the morrow it would no longer be an issue? She would be away with her selkie lover? She didn’t get a chance to decide.
Wailing like a banshee, Adelia wrenched the cleavers out of their brackets and glanced about the shed. Spying a spade, she seized that, too, taking them with her as she reeled out of the little bait shed and dropped the bar, locking Meg inside.
“I know your mind,” Adelia said. “You’ll not use these to make your escape!”
“Aunt, please!” Meg cried, pounding on the door with both tiny fists. “I beg you, do not leave me here! Let me out! Let me
out,
I say!”
“You will remain right where you are until your uncle returns day after tomorrow on the eve of the solstice,” came her aunt’s muffled voice from the other side. “He will decide what’s to be done with you.”
There was no time left. Adelia’s footsteps crunching in the sand brought Meg’s fists to the door again. “Aunt, please!” she cried. “After midnight on the morrow, I will no longer be a burden to you or Uncle Olwyn, but you must let me out if I am to spare you! Simeon is coming for me…to take me away, where we can be together….” The crunching sound ceased, though there was no reply, and Meg went on quickly. “Let me go, I beg of you. I do not want to be initiated into the Order. I want to be with him. Aunt Adelia…
please!
”
For a moment there was silence, deadly and deep, the kind that is tasted like death, before the crunching sound resumed and grew distant, carrying Adelia away.
S
imeon tossed beneath the quilts of woven moss and seaweed. Meg was holding him, her tiny hands flitting over his naked skin. She spread his legs and moved between. He could feel her hardened nipples scraping against his inner thighs as she arranged herself in position to take his cock in her mouth. Her fingers tightened around his shaft, stroking, squeezing, bringing it to life.
He tried to open his eyes, but he could not. It was one of those dreams where no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force his eyes open. He hadn’t had one like it since he was a child. He strained and strained, but it was no use. His eyelids wouldn’t budge. It almost angered him. He wanted to see. He wanted to watch Meg take him. It would heighten his pleasure to watch her mouth gliding up and down the bulging veined shaft of his cock, flicking her tongue over the burgeoning head, finding the rim of the opening with the tip of her pointed tongue, and teasing it until she’d nearly driven him mad, until the fine, milky pearls of pre-come began to leak from it. His climax was always intensified when he watched his shaft slip in and out between her lips or penetrate her slit like a sword sliding into its sheath.
A soft moan escaped him. His cock was throbbing, his breathing rapid. This was pure fantasy, though his dreams had brought him to the brink of climax. Most of his imaginings had never occurred, but he wanted them to. Oh, how he wanted them to. Meg was an innocent, but not one spoiled by the rigid sensibilities of her mortal existence like others above the waves that he had known. She was possessed of a passion that matched his own. She could have selkie blood for the depth of that passion. He had never met the like among mortals. He had never felt like this before. Could he be experiencing what mortals called
love?
It wasn’t practical for a selkie. Where could it possibly lead? Somehow, that didn’t matter; neither did the fact that it was happening so quickly. He had to have Meg, whatever the cost. No one would ever satisfy him now, not after her life had made his live. Not after he’d formed her sex into the perfect sheath to fit his sword and made her his own.
Absently, still in the dream, Simeon reached to soothe his throbbing sex. But it would not be soothed. It wanted Meg.
He
wanted her. No other would do. Her beautiful face wandered into the dream, and all at once, it was her hand stroking his cock—her fingers flitting across its aching head—her sultry voice calling his name. His release was a throbbing, pumping explosion that brought his eyes open finally, but she wasn’t there. He was alone in his bed made with quilts of woven seaweed and lush aquatic moss as soft as eiderdown.
Simeon groaned. Swinging his feet over the side of the bed, he took his head in his hands. It was no use. It was still hours before dawn and a whole day to get through before his assignation with Meg at midnight. Too restless to sleep, he decided to swim to the Pavilion and assess the damage time had conferred on it before taking Meg there.
Surging to his feet, he left his chambers and went to the edge of the water tunnel. Parting his lips, he shut his eyes and hummed the mantra that would bring his summoner. Vega would be out of earshot and asleep at this hour. The vibrations his voice made reverberating in the water would not rouse him at his distance, but it would bring a creature that could fetch his brother to him. Minutes later, an elegant swordfish broke the surface of the water, leaping and dancing. Then hovering beneath the surface, the great fish awaited instructions.
“Bring Vega,” Simeon charged.
The swordfish streaked off, parting the water, and Simeon waited somewhat less than patiently for his valet to appear. It was only minutes later, though it seemed like an eternity, when Vega entered, his sharp eyes dulled with sleep.
“What now, Simeon?” he said, not a little annoyed, Simeon thought, judging from his brother’s rigid bearing and tight-lipped expression.
“I cannot sleep.”
“Neither can I, so it seems,” Vega said caustically. “What is the press?”
“I’m going to the Pavilion to see for myself how badly it is in need of repair before I take Megaleen there.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. It’s best that you remain here and keep an eye on the consorts.”
Vega loosed a lecherous chuckle.
“I’m not liking their absence of a sudden,” Simeon said, ignoring the levity. “They’re up to something; I’d stake my life on it. Besides, I thought you ought to know where I’ve gone…just in case. Something isn’t…right. I can sense it. I can feel it, and I always trust those instincts.”
“It’s a long distance. Will you be wanting your sealskin?”
“No,” Simeon said.
“Your eel skin then? I’ve fashioned you a new one.”
Simeon hesitated, giving it thought. “Yes,” he said at last. “It served its former owners well enough for warmth and speed, though I’ve never used it traveling so great a distance before.”
“As you wish, then.”
“What?” Simeon said, addressing Vega’s clouded expression. Darkly handsome, only subtle differences marked his half brother as older. “I know that look. Out with it.”
“Very well,” Vega responded, squaring his posture. “Since you insist…Do you really think you can keep her under the waves? You certainly have no difficulty breathing while under water—neither do I because I am half selkie. Our bodies are conditioned to breathe in the deep in either incarnation. We have gill cells in our lungs that extract oxygen from the water when we are below the waves in human form, but she does not. She is
mortal.
Why, she—”
“And my breath empowers her with the same advantage,” Simeon interrupted him.
“Temporarily,” Vega pronounced. “Look what happened earlier. You barely got her to air in time. What happens if you are not there one day when such a situation arises? She would die, Simeon. She would never reach the surface from the deep in time unaided. You will kill the very thing you love!”
There was that dreaded word again:
love.
Simeon heaved a sigh. It must be so if Vega saw it…His insights were legendary. Worst of all, he was right. Meg could not exist for long periods under water. She was not a magical creature of the fey. She was a flesh and blood mortal. Somehow, he would find a way, but now the night was passing. He needed to put what was left of it to good use. He needed to spend some of the volatile pent up energy that was ready to explode. He needed to still the anxious flesh of his cock that even now threatened to rise against him. He needed to replace the gloom of utter frustration with the ray of hope the Pavilion offered, and there wasn’t much time. Soon the dawn would break. Everything must be in readiness by midnight. There wasn’t a moment to lose if he were to do what he planned and return in time to meet Meg on the Isle of Mists.
Simeon shut his eyes, listening to the vibrations in the water. They were strong tonight. He turned to Vega. “Ready Elicorn,” he said.
“You
ride
to the Pavilion?”
Simeon nodded. “A storm comes,” he said. “The surf runs high. The waves will be capped with white, just as Elicorn likes them. We need to reach an understanding, that waterhorse and I. He nearly killed her, Vega. That cannot happen again. If all goes as planned, she will have to be safe alone with him on occasion.”
Vega chuckled skeptically. “I wish you luck,” he said. “A waterhorse will do what is in its nature to do, little brother.”
Simeon gave a crisp nod. “So will the Lord of the Deep,” he said, and said no more.
Meg sagged against the scarred bait shack door and heaved with dry sobs. She was too devastated for tears. Why hadn’t Adelia let her out? It was the perfect solution. Praying her aunt would realize that and change her mind, Meg slid down the length of the door to the sand underfoot and slumped against the boards heavy with the sour smell that salt leaves behind over time in seasoned wood. Combined with the stink of tar drifting from the nets piled in the corner and the smell of the horseshoe crabs, it threatened to make her retch.
It was dark as coal tar pitch. She could barely make out the shape of the partitioned bins that housed the crabs, though there was comfort in the squishing sound they made crawling through the sand. It whispered of the sea connecting her to Simeon, but that brought a new terror. She wouldn’t be waiting in the cove at midnight. Would he come searching for her? Or would he think she’d given in to the demands of her aunt and gone to the temple to be initiated in spite of her lost virtue?
The temple wasn’t on the Isle of Mists, though there was an order that resided there at the training hall, where she would go to be mentored in the Witching Way to bring out her natural gifts once she’d been installed as priestess. The temple itself was on a little rockbound spit of land connected to the Isle by a stacked-stone jetty that appeared only at low tide just after dawn and dusk. Otherwise, it was sunken too deep to access. There, on what was called Shamans’ Mount, the temple stood like an ancient folly, a round stone fortress three stories high hewn of the rock it stood on. If such were to be the case, Simeon would never find her there. None but the chosen were permitted to cross over. Shamans’ Mount was impregnable.
All at once, there was a sound. Meg pricked up her ears and listened, scarcely breathing. Someone was coming. Aunt Adelia had relented after all. Scrambling to her feet as the footsteps drew nearer, Meg smoothed the indigo gauze kirtle over her trembling breasts and shook out the hem to loosen the damp sand clinging to it. Dawn had broken. The first bleak rays were showing through cracks in the wall boards that she hadn’t even know were there. She could scarcely contain herself until she heard the rasp of the wooden bar being raised outside.
“Oh, aunt!” she cried as the door came open. “I knew you wouldn’t…!”
But it wasn’t Adelia who crossed the threshold and took hold of her, though her aunt was there, barking commands. It was two hulking eunuchs from Shamans’ Mount.
“Just take the whore!” Adelia shrilled. “I wash my hands of it! I want shot of the harlot before my husband returns.” Then to Meg as they half dragged, half carried her out of the bait shack kicking and screaming, “You brought this down upon your own head, my girl! You could have lived in luxury as a priestess of the temple. See how you like life among the shamans’ whores! Take her away and good riddance!”
Adelia said more, but Meg scarcely heard as the two hulking brutes dragged her away. She had heard nothing past, “the shamans’ whores.” What were the shamans’ whores? Meg had never heard of this. All Arcus knew the shamans’ took no oath of celibacy. Sexual congress was part of their hushed mystique, never spoken of openly, though all knew and feared them for it. To be called before the shamans for whatever infraction of the Arcan laws was every mother’s dread for her female children. If a woman was barren and a shaman was called in, she was soon miraculously with child, and many a poor unfortunate woman called before the shamans was found wandering the Isles stark-staring mad after the interview. These were mysteries never spoken of, though even on the mainland they were known and feared.
But the
shamans’ whores?
And she was to become one of them?
Meg fought her captors with all her strength, kicking and biting as the reality of her predicament became clear. She would not be at the cove at midnight, and Simeon would never find her on Shamans’ Mount. But her bare feet failed to make a dent in the eunuchs’ thick shins, though she drubbed them soundly. All that came of her struggles were smarting toes that tingled with pain while the eunuchs hauled her along the strand to the jetty that made the Mount a peninsula at low tide.
The stacked stones were hard and unyielding beneath her feet as they propelled her along. The Mount was gated, wreathed around by a high stone fortification. The eunuchs hauled her through a gate in the wall that was virtually undetectable to an untrained eye. They steered her inside the round tower, down a steep, narrow staircase chiseled from the same rock as the rest, and into a dank subterranean bathing chamber. Here, they stripped off her kirtle and left her.
Dazed, Meg rubbed her arms which smarted from the eunuchs’ grips on them. Her first instinct was to run, but a bolt being thrown above stopped that. It was no use. There was no way to escape, and she hugged herself in a vain attempt to stop her quaking.
Thick steam rising from the center of the room called her nearer, albeit warily. It was spiraling up from what appeared to be a large round tub sunken in the stone floor. Waving the mist aside with her hand, Meg saw that it was shallow and large enough for several to bathe together. The water looked so inviting, rippling blissfully. How good it would feel on her willow switch stripes and sore feet. She glanced about. She appeared to be alone in the little chamber. What harm to sooth her aching flesh—her feet at least? She padded to the edge of the sunken tub and sat down, dangling her toes in the water.
It felt even better than it looked, and a low moan escaped her lips as she threw her head back, indulging in the luxury of the steamy bath. It felt like silk between her toes, and she groaned again, lost in the delicious fragrance of wild botanicals wafting toward her nostrils from the water. It was like a drug. The rapturous feeling spread from the tips of her toes to the scalp of her head, welling in the deep epicenter of her sex. There was no bathing tub at the cottage. Meg hadn’t submerged herself in one since she lived in her home on the mainland. That wasn’t so very long ago, but she’d forgotten how delicious it was to sink up to her neck in a scented tub. Her body ached for it. Her soul longed for it. She was just about to satisfy her longing to do just that, when three handmaidens appeared from the shadow-steeped periphery of the room. How long had they been standing there? Had they been watching all the while?
Meg’s posture clenched as they approached her. They were scantily clad, bare breasted, and barefooted, wearing only loin cloths of gold tissue between their legs that barely covered their mons area. All three were dark haired, their long tresses styled in elaborate plaits and cascades. One was carrying a cobalt-blue glass jar. The second was laden down with a sumptuous fur rug and a stack of thick towels. The third carried a garment of bottle-green gauze so sheer the woman’s arms were visible through several layers draped over them. Meg watched them guardedly, at the same time searching the shadows for a means of escape.