Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
The sea always collects. And so do kraken.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
My plan to help Sebastian see me as a strength solidified as he escorted me from the throne room. The blood in my veins bubbled like life-giving champagne. He might be methodical, but I was diabolical.
“That smile is frightening,” he said, eyeing me. “Why the garden, and why such feral delight?”
I nestled closer into his side. “I have something fun for us to do.” He’d blamed “forgetting the circumstances” for the horrors that had occurred during our date. But everyone, even kings—especially kings—required times of merriment to recharge. Otherwise, they burned out.
My plan? Prove that laughter could make a man stronger without ending in tragedy.
Joy wasn’t a hindrance. Happiness wasn’t a liability.
Rather, they were sources of great power.
And he’d been denied both for far too long.
Ever since he was forced to take the throne.
The man had spent his youth battling a primordial when he should have been...
well, doing whatever carefree teenagers in Krakenstrond did.
“After everything that’s happened and everything soon to happen, I crave a moment to just… be.” The truth as well as the scheme. Wise as a dragon; harmless as a ballerina.
“And how does a dragon princess just be, hmm?”
“You’ll see,” I sang.
In minutes, we stood within an ancient coral forest of iridescent lavender, glowing aquamarine, and stunning seafoam. They stretched high, seeming to disappear inside the dome while their arms linked, creating a lattice of shade.
“This is known as the Singing Reefs,” he said, moving into a beam of golden light reflected from the dome. The air glittered, weaving reality into a dream.
“It’s so beautiful.” A steady ocean breeze slipped through countless hollow channels, creating music. Deep tones mingled with delicate whistles. I closed my eyes and swayed for a moment.
“This is your show,” Sebastian said, unable to mask his eagerness.
I kept mental notes. King Sebastian 101. He responded well to anticipation.
Pasting on my most serious expression, I grasped both his hands in mine. “Are we safe?” I asked, earnest, wanting him to know I took this part seriously.
His features turned fierce, but his touch was gentle as he traced the line of my jaw. “I have guards all around. Nothing will harm you here.”
Perfect. Exactly what I needed to hear. “So prove it. Relax.” I inched closer until only a breath separated us. “Play with me.”
His brow furrowed. “Play. A game.”
“Ja.” I ran my hands up his chest and toyed with the ends of his hair.
“It’s called Catch Me If You Can. I’ll run from you, and you’ll try to catch me.”
Interest lit his eyes. Interest and a look I would forever call The Naughty King. “The rules?”
I had him.
Welcome to my trap, King Kraken. “Each round lasts only two minutes, or until I’m caught.
A point for you if you manage to brush your fingertips against any part of my body, a point for me when you don’t.
” I drew my teeth over my bottom lip, loving it as he watched the action and licked his own.
“Ten rounds. If there’s a tie, and there won’t be a tie, we crown the winner through a final bonus round. ”
He took a moment to absorb my words, then smiled with languid satisfaction. “You truly think you can escape me?”
Triumph was heady. “Give me your best, my muffin.” I offered him my sweetest smile, knowing exactly how much he would secretly hate the endearment. Or not so secretly. “I want my victory to sting.”
The most luscious excitement tinged his features. “We start in three…two… one.”
He swiped out his arm so swiftly his limb blurred—
Yet I danced away from his reach, avoiding contact. I smirked at him. “Gotta be faster than that, darling.”
He wasted no time, swiping out again. Missing again. My giggle drew a genuine, no-agenda smile from him. A smile he quickly tried to hide behind a mock affront.
“That’s how you speak to your precious, is it?” After a moment’s consideration, he unfastened his jacket with care, only to drop the garment on the ground and roll his cuffs.
Another giggle slipped free. “I’m certain you’ll soon hear worse.”
“And I will make you pay for it.” With no more warning than that, he dove for me.
But I expected the move. I expelled my smokewings and twirled out of his reach. And oh, how good it felt to fly so easily after everything that had happened. “At least try a little bit, Bastian,” I taunted, hovering just above the coral crowns.
“Very well, my treasure.” He lowered his chin, laser-focused on me. “Just remember. You requested this.”
The battle was on, a whirlwind chase filled with our laughter and my delighted squeals. We went high, and we went low. Around coral pillars. Through branching reef formations. He was fast, but I was nimble and always managed to dance out of range. Exhilaration colored everything around us.
Just before the clock zeroed out, he reached. I spun above a wall of leaves, and he caught me with a shadow tentacle, holding me suspended midair.
Our gazes met, locked, both of us grinning. Victory turned his eyes into an ocean at sunset, and I drank in the sight, instantly intoxicated.
“One point for me,” he said, slowly lowering me to the ground.
“Congratulations. But I’m not worried.” I ghosted my fingers through the shadow, amazed to find it solid around me, but also as intangible as warm mist. I’d watched him slice and dice mers with these tentacles, and yet they now cradled me so protectively.
He sucked in a breath at the moment of contact, his smile gone. Then I was the one sucking in a breath as the tendril drew me closer. “Want to change a rule before we go again?”
“What are you suggesting?” Needing leverage, I didn’t tamp down my desire to draw closer. Nein, I flattened my palms on his chest, peering up at him through the thick shield of my lashes. “That I slow down? Tie one hand behind my back and make it less difficult for you?”
His mouth quirked. He cupped my hips, fingers twitching against the upper edges of my backside. “That’s big talk for the round one loser. Nei, I suggest you chase me every other go-round.”
I slid my hands up and toyed with the ends of his hair.
“Very well. But I want more than a point when I succeed.” Leaning in, letting a promise of more hang between us, I all but purred, “You must tell me a secret or a story about your life. Not now, but later.” When we were sealed inside his bedroom, the one we were sharing, just the two of us.
Desire sharpened in his gaze. “Deal. But you’ll give me the same.”
He wished to learn more about me? Heat rose, painting my cheeks with pleasure.
He noticed, because of course he noticed. I expected another dose of triumph, but it was awe that he projected. He bracketed my face with reverent hands before stiffening, releasing me and backing up.
Before he could overthink himself into rebuilding his defenses, I wrenched backward and cried, “Go!”
His lids narrowed. His gaze fell to my mouth. I smiled… and unleashed my wings, propelling myself straight into his—
Air, only air. Ugh.
“Looking for someone?” he asked behind me, as casual as ever.
Parts of me clenched with awareness. “Sneaky, sneaky, majesty.” I slowly spun and blew him another kiss.
“That was only the beginning.” He melted into a reef with the ease of a creature who belonged in shadow.
My pulse skipped. “You cannot hide from a dragon. But I can hide from a kraken.” I released a stream of smoke, cloaking myself, and launched after him.
I almost nabbed him, but he darted just out of reach.
After that, the game blurred into motion and breath and touch.
Every lingering brush between us awakened another note from The Singing Reef until the air thrummed.
I grazed his chest with my nails, putting myself on the board and winning a story.
We went again and again, completing ten rounds.
And tying. But the more we played, the less we laughed.
Touches lingered longer and longer. Humorous taunting turned to low groans.
Slow stalking replaced speed. No longer did it take the full two minutes to declare a victor.
By the fifth round, the chaser always won in less than sixty seconds.
The game no longer revolved around the need to teach him something. Hunger muddied my aim, but I didn’t care.
At the end of that tenth go, I was panting. Aching. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his mouth.
“Bonus round,” I rasped. I owed him five secrets. But he owed me five as well. “Start the clock.”
“Clock started,” he replied, balling his hands into tight fists. He wasn’t panting, but his breaths emerged rough and ragged.
A challenge, if ever I’d heard one. Heart thudding, I stepped toward him.
He didn’t move.
I took another step. Then another, and another. Finally, there was no space left to close. We stood face to face, breathing the other’s breaths. His gaze met mine, raw and unguarded, and the wanting between us drew so tight it hurt.
“We’re both winners. But whatever happens before convergence will not alter what must happen after. You will leave, and that is nonnegotiable.” He tipped his chin, looking wrecked, as if the world was about to end. “Do you understand?”
Oh, I understood. He intended to force me out. His fear of losing someone important to him demanded he part with me before he fell. Well, too bad. “Tell yourself whatever you must, as long as you kiss me.”
The next second, he was thrusting his fingers into my hair, and I was slinging my arms around his shoulders. Our lips met in a melding of total surrender.
Everything but desire for him ashed. The past faded; the future ceased to exist. Only the present mattered. Sebastian consumed the air, the seconds—me.
But as I poured more of myself into the kiss, the tension in him shifted from frenzied need to savoring. It mounted, pulsed, and sharpened until the same tidal wave crashed into me.
His ocean found my flame, and instead of one extinguishing the other, they twined together, as if they never should have parted.
He tilted his head, and I tilted mine, and the kiss deepened. A kiss he slowed, growing deliberate, desperate, and intentional all at once. As though he was committing to memory something he’d sworn never to need.
An indistinct sound rumbled in his chest just before he tore from the kiss. But he didn’t release me. Rather, he settled his hands at the sides of my throat and rested his forehead against mine, our mouths almost touching as our breaths mingled again.
The pause was an agony far worse than the kiss itself. I gripped his shirt, wrinkling the material. “Why did you stop?”
His eyes closed. “Many reasons. Too many.”
Nein. I deserved more than that. “Tell me one good reason.”
“That is easy. You are even more potent than I realized.”
With his words, the sea seemed to mold itself around the dome to listen. I tried for humor, hoping to lighten his mood. “Honestly, Sebastian. My potency sounds like a good thing.”
He softened, but only slightly. “It is. And that is why you are a danger to my very existence.” The more he spoke, the more his voice became the consistency of sandpaper.
The fire in my blood cooled. Had my mission failed so spectacularly? “You still see me as a weakness?” A danger to his power. Not because I was a dragon with ties to the dragon crown. Because I made him feel.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I cannot afford what you make me want, princess.”
Nein. Nein! “You can.” I was his firebrand, and he knew it. “But you are afraid.”
“I am.”
The lack of denial shocked me into silence. He’d admitted it. Admitted he feared losing me.
With his guard down, I could have asked about the cost of the rune.
Draining, as I suspected? Could have requested he share one of his secrets now, not later.
But I’d just spent an hour teaching him that being close to me didn’t have to hurt.
I’d not undo that lesson on questions sure to put his guard back up.
He released me, second by second, piece by piece, lifting his head, withdrawing one hand, then the other, then stepping away. Determination hardened his expression.
I knew he would walk away. He had before, when I’d gained too much ground too fast. First at the Tideweave, then during our date. I wrapped my arms around my middle, the inches separating us beginning to feel like a chasm without a bridge.
“Gunnar will escort you to our room. I’ll see you at the ball.” He strode off without another word, as expected, but this time he wasn’t quick about it. He moved at a snail’s pace, as if he warred within himself.
I took comfort in that and didn’t chase after him. Didn’t demand we continue what we’d started. What that kiss promised. That would be foolish. The wiser course of action was to think this through and plan my next move.
Gunnar arrived to collect me, and he looked shell-shocked. “This way, majesty.”
Majesty. A title for a queen.
Trembling, I followed him past the reefs. As we passed line after line of guards, they watched me as if I were some kind of apparition. “Why are they looking at me like that?” I whispered.
“You made him laugh.” A quiet wonder laced Gunnar’s words. “Out loud.”
Had he not before?
I almost smiled. Confirmation that I’d reached him. And now, he’d had a taste of the good stuff. Us, together. Soon, he would want another. And another.
I would be his only dealer.
I would make him laugh again. And again.
I would make him admit what I was to him.
Give up now? I’d rather die. When the ball arrived, I’d have a new plan locked and loaded. My firebrand wouldn’t know what hit him.