Chapter 39
Asta had not been conscious the first time she had traveled between Orntali and Naltania and she was pleased to find that the trip would take under a day.
It was a strange feeling, discovering an undersea kingdom had been so close to her home all this time.
However, it made sense as to why Kaid and his father had settled in this half of the country.
Asta leaned down and stroked Thurs’s neck, the kelpie whinnying in response. The princess could not wait to tell Linnea everything she had discovered; everything she had done.
“Almost there now,” Soren announced to the group. Asta looked at Kaid who nodded his chin to her in response, flashing his rakish smile. She rolled her eyes.
If Asta were being honest, she had been avoiding Kaid since the rescue. Was she a fool for thinking he had meant everything he had said in the cave? He had not done anything to make her believe so since, but with his past behavior…
“Think any harder and bubbles will pour from your ears, blondie,” Kaid mocked.
Asta held up a particularly offensive finger and the siren prince chuckled.
Thurs began ascending and their surroundings changed, the sunlight shining brighter through the surface as the water became more and more shallow.
Home.
The kelpie’s head broke through the water, drawing in a deep breath through her large nostrils. Asta felt a sharp twinge in her chest before she had the urge to pull in a breath as well. The sea air coated her lungs, transitioning her back to her human form.
Thurs trotted up to the shore, her fish tail disappearing and her color returning to a dapple gray. The other kelpies surrounding them transformed just the same.
Asta wiggled her bare feet as they dangled from the mare. The muscles felt tight, but not sore. It might take her a few laps up and down the beach to adjust to her human figure again.
She jumped down and untied her pack from the horse, the hooved beast darting off down the beach the second she was free. Asta smiled, knowing that Thurs would always remain a free spirit—even though Asta was the leader of the Northern Sea kelpies.
As she watched the kelpies dash away, Asta heard an oof from behind her. She turned to see Kaid clumsily dismounting his steed. His sea legs must be worse because he was not only in siren form for many days, but also hardly allowed to leave a bed.
Asta ran over and caught Kaid by his forearm to help him balance.
“Amateurs,” Revna mumbled as she steadily marched toward the castle.
“Amateurs,” Kaid said in a mocking voice. “I haven’t known that one long but somehow, she is more irritating than you.”
Asta patted his chest. “Oh shut up. She grows on you.”
Kaid grabbed Asta’s hand that was resting on his forearm and slid it down toward his hand. Her heart skipped a beat. Was he really about to march into the castle—where he had previously been engaged to one princess— holding the other princess’s hand?
Asta’s hand slid over his cuff, a piece of the chain still dangling from his wrist. But as her hand passed over the iron, the latch unclasped and the contraption fell to the sand.
Kaid startled. “Did you just—”
“I didn’t do anything,” Asta shook her head.
She looked down at her hand, flexing her fingers and observing her Blomvin signet ring.
“It couldn’t be,” she mumbled.
Asta bent down and grabbed the cuff, closing it once again then placing the signet ring against it. The cuff immediately sprang open.
“Where did you get that ring, Asta?” Kaid stared, brows furrowed, at her hand containing the metal band.
Asta averted her gaze to the ring as well, shaking her head. “It was my mother’s. I’ve always had it, just never worn it. I wanted to bring a piece of her with me when I turned in case I never made it back.”
The corners of Kaid’s mouth pulled back. “I think your mother had a lot more to do with siren affairs than anyone knew.”
They had one of the iron keys.
Asta tapped her doorframe then entered her suite to find it empty besides Dyri.
The massive canine barreled over to her, slamming his side into her legs so hard that she nearly toppled over.
Someone had clearly been taking care of him, seeing as his food dish was full, but Linnea was nowhere to be found.
Once Asta had finished searching all of her rooms, she concluded that Linnea was gone. But where?
Kaid entered her bedroom. “No trace of Halsten. Linnea?”
Asta shook her head.
A piece of parchment on her vanity caught her attention and she immediately recognized her cousin’s impeccable penmanship.
The note explained that Linnea, Gyrial, Liva, and Niklas had left for her mother’s old manor to search for the comb and mirror. Kaid read over Asta’s shoulder and somehow noticed when her heart began to race, based on his comforting hand that came up to rest on her shoulder.
Asta had always pushed her cousin to be more confident, but she never meant for her to go on a quest to the old manor that she had been abused in for the entirety of her adolescence.
The last part of the letter blatantly told Asta to not worry, and not come after her.
Asta huffed a laugh at Linnea’s instinctual knowledge that she would try to chase after her.
Kaid moved to massaging Asta’s shoulders. She stiffened, but relaxed once she realized how good it felt.
“She’s fine, Princess. She is with a fae and a sea dragon. And Niklas. For whatever that’s worth.” Kaid’s lips lightly grazed the side of her neck. “Relax for a moment. You’re home.”
Nothing made Asta less relaxed than being told to relax.
She turned toward Kaid to tell him so, but his mouth was already crashing into hers.
Their lips moved together and Kaid’s arm wrapped around her back to pull her flush with him.
He pushed her until the backs of her thighs hit her vanity and she hopped up to sit on it, Kaid settling between her legs.
Kaid broke away from her mouth and his ocean eyes peered into her soul. “I’ve been waiting days to do that. I missed you.”
Asta smiled and caressed his face. “I missed you too.”
He dove forward, capturing her mouth again.
“Kaid,” Asta whispered between kisses.
He only grunted in response.
“Kaid, the others will come looking for us,” Asta managed to rush out.
Kaid pressed his cheek against hers so his lips tickled her ear. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, blondie, I don’t give one single fuck about the others right now.”
A whimper escaped Asta and she cursed herself for letting him make her so weak.
Kaid nipped at her ear before trailing kisses down her neck, toward her chest. One hand gripped her waist while the other traced tantalizing circles on her inner thigh. Her button up shirt only allowed Kaid access to the top of her breasts before he would have to start removing it.
To her surprise, he dipped to the side and caught her pebbled nipple in his mouth, using the friction of her shirt fabric to coax little moans from her.
Asta’s hips bucked forward in response and Kaid smiled before returning his mouth to hers. He rolled his hips into her center and her thin cotton pants did nothing to hide how much this brief kissing had affected him.
A knock on the door had them both pausing.
“Asta?” Tova’s voice was muffled through the heavy wooden door. “There’s something you will want to see.”
Kaid sighed. “To be continued.”
“Well? What was so important that I couldn’t rest for a bit?” Asta scanned the faces of Tova, Soren, and Revna.
Tova muffled a laugh with her hands. “I don’t think you were going to get much rest.”
Soren turned away so he was no longer making eye contact with the princess and Revna stared at Asta and Kaid in disgust. Having a group of friends with preternatural hearing made it difficult to have any privacy.
Asta’s face heated, but she brushed off the comment. “Well?”
The door to the hallway opened and a familiar fae waltzed in, his arms spread wide for his usual greeting.
Asta immediately ran for Gyrial, springing into his arms. He caught her and spun her around. Once she was back on the ground, she pulled back and beamed at him.
“How are you here?”
Gyrial made his way to the sofa and took a seat.
He explained that once his crew was about a day’s ride home, a familiar gray mare approached them and insisted that Gyrial go with her, nudging him and tugging his shirt sleeves until he mounted her.
Thurs ran faster than Gyrial had ever seen a horse ride before.
The world around him had turned to a blur, as though they were traveling faster than the speed of sound, returning Gyrial to the castle in a few hours rather than a full day.
Gyrial pulled the mirror from his pack for everyone to observe and Asta could not deny the uncanny resemblance of the hand mirror to her mother’s comb on her vanity. That was when Gyrial explained that all these years, Asta had been using a lost siren artifact as her everyday hair comb.
Asta got up and brought the comb out, holding it next to the mirror in Gyrial’s hand. The two items hummed, turning warm in their hands and Asta dropped the comb onto the plush chair next to her.
She paced the room, the tension in her chest coiling tighter with each step. How was her mother so involved in the fate of this war and no one knew? It likely hadn’t helped that her father’s memory had been manipulated by the finfolk queen.
“So, what now?” Tova asked.
“Now, we find the Trident,” Kaid stated.