The chill in the air hit me out of nowhere and I shook my limbs out. I was still wearing my boots and was afraid of taking them off. I wasn’t standing in the snow but I was still afraid of the chill in the sandy dirt shore.
When my toes touched the ground, instead of a chill, I found the ground to be warm. Which was odd. I leaned over and touched the snowy ground. There should have been steam rising off of the shore but there was nothing. There was no way to know the ground was warm here without touching it. Jesper winked at me before he dove right into the bright, sparkling water. Alric and Reva stared at him in horror, I was sure my face mirrored theirs. Reva’s face changed and she was diving in right after him when he didn’t resurface as quickly as we thought he would. I knew there was nothing wrong with him. No one had a body like that, used their body like that, and couldn’t swim. He said he loved the tree tops but his home was by the beach, I didn’t see him as someone that would sit by and watch.
They both resurfaced out of breath. Reva pushed her red hair out of her face and grinned. “The water feels incredible.”
“I thought the mermaids were at the ocean,” Alric deadpanned and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “I don’t like this.”
“They’re at the ocean floor, beneath us. I will have to swim pretty deep, I don’t know how we will even make it down there.” Jesper’s strong arms were treading the water easily, like he was born to swim. His long white hair floated around his shouldersin the water and I wondered if it was as soft as it looked. His horns glittered almost as much as the water and they made me curious. What did they feel like? I blinked myself out of the lustful state I always found myself in around him and I gazed up at the treetops.
Well, it would be nice to have some kind of answer as to how we are going to meet the mermaids. I thought up to the gods, wherever they were. I knew they could hear me.
There are snails in the bushes that let off a light blue glow, you will tuck them into the inside of your lips and they will allow you to breathe underwater. The gods replied in my head.
My lips curled in disgust. Snails? Is this some kind of joke?
They didn’t bother with a response so I knew, unfortunately, that it was not some kind of joke. My stomach churned as I slipped my feet back into my boots. Did I have it in me to put a snail in my lip? I didn’t think so. But what if we needed the mermaids too? The gods knew more than I did. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I began digging in the bushes.
Alric approached me slowly. “What are you doing?”
“Listening to the gods,” I sneered. This was the last thing I wanted to do but no one ever said being a queen would be easy. If only I could send others to do my dirty work for me sometimes, like now. I had an advisor.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. No. This was my duty. All I ever wanted was to be useful, to have a purpose, and here I was. Purpose and all with stupid snails.
It didn’t take long for the little snails to appear within the branches. They weren’t any bigger than my thumbnail but the thought of sticking one in my mouth had my stomach churning. My breathing came out rapidly as I pulled a few off of the leaves. They weren’t overly slimy but they certainly weren’t pleasant. I let out a deep breath and shook my head. How in the seven hells was I going to be able to do this?
Be strong.
The first snail inside of my lip did not go well. Being strong didn’t happen. I immediately bent over at the waist and expelled all the contents from my stomach. I put the remaining snails back, shook my hands out, and paced in front of the bush as I tried to get my nerves back up. This was insanity.
You’ve done worse. I tried to remind myself but as I was pacing there, I couldn’t recall anything worse than this. I let out a few more shaking breaths and picked up another. I closed my eyes, tucked it on the inside of my bottom lip, and breathed through my mouth. As long as I didn’t focus on it, I could do this. Right?
Wrong.
Once again, I was bent over in the snow dry heaving.
“I guess this is karma for you laughing at me when I was sick from flying on the sky beasts,” Alric remarked as he leaned against a nearby tree. I hoped he was freezing.
I held one of the snails out to him and put on a fake smile. “You do it then. If you’re so big and bad, you put this on the inside of your lip and you swim down to the depths of the ocean to meet with the mermaids.”
He scrunched his nose and didn’t move from the tree.
“That’s what I thought,” I said before I put another one inside of my lip. This one wasn’t so bad and after a few seconds, I couldn’t feel it there. I wondered if this was an act of the gods because I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own.
Thank the gods they didn’t have a taste or smell. If they had, I would have abandoned ship and sent someone else. I would have definitely shirked my duties over these dumb snails. There were three left, I hoped the others had stronger stomachs than I did.
“This is why I was never able to meet the mermaids,” Jesper grinned as he popped a snail into his bottom lip. He’d been one of the most attractive men I’d ever met but when he put the snailin his mouth, the meter on that dropped significantly. Not even his rippling muscles could save him today.
Alric only threw up once and the second one was fine. Reva shrugged, put it in her lip like Jesper and dove under the water. I looked like the biggest baby compared to these three. Alric shrugged, jumped in behind them and went under the water. Jesper watched me with kind eyes as I jumped in the water. There was no shore, it was like jumping straight into a hole. There was absolutely no gradual drop, it was a straight drop-off. For a moment, my body felt heavy and I didn’t know what to do with my limbs. I thought back to fighting the waves with Alric and I remembered, for the most part how to tread the water, but it was difficult.
A strong arm wrapped around my middle and helped me tread the water a little easier as Reva and Alric glared at each other from the depths of the lagoon. They really needed to get this fling out of their system before it got me killed. Thankfully, Jesper was watching. I knew they wouldn’t intentionally let anything happen to me, but they were so wrapped up in their own drama that they forgot the sworn duties they had made. I hated it for them. I didn’t want this life for either of them, but I didn’t have anyone else.
Surprisingly enough, I didn’t feel the urge to breathe. The thought of the snail in my lip became less and less of a thing the longer I was under the water. But how did we communicate?
Jesper pointed down and his brows furrowed as if to ask me if I was ready. I would never be ready, but I didn’t know how long we would be able to breathe under the water with the snails so I nodded. He grabbed my hand in his, kicked off of the wall and down we went. My stomach dropped with the momentum and I found myself elated. It was like riding the sky beasts. It was like freedom. Our bodies glided through the water and I triedmy best to keep my eyes to myself but with Jesper’s backside on tight display, it was hard to focus on anything but his butt…
Reva bumped her body into mine and lifted a brow. She’d been staring, as well. It wasn’t her fault Alric didn’t strip down to his underwear and give her something to stare at. He left us to gaze at the other incredible male specimen. Eventually, the murkiness in the water dissipated and there it was.
The mermaid’s underwater city.
