My father tries to comfort me with hollow words. “Triton is my oldest and best friend aside from Ragnar. He is trustworthy and an excellent warrior. He will keep you safe. There is nobody I trust more.”
The great god behind me clears his throat. He can probably hear what we’re saying. Because he has functional ears.
“You might not like him, but you do not need to like him. You just need to do as he says.”
It isn’t that I don’t like him. It is that I do.
I like him a little too much.
A lot too much, actually. Triton is hot. The kind of hot that feels out of my league, and nothing ever felt out of my league until I met him.
“You are welcome in my kingdom, Lucy,” Triton rumbled. “Undersea awaits your pleasure.”
Pleasure. That word on his lips sends completely sinful notions rushing through my mind. I’m still not able to meet his gaze. I hold onto my father’s sleeve, like I used to when I was a small girl. I really do not want to be exiled. I want to stay. For a while now, I have been feeling somewhat outcast from the family. Raine and I, my fathers and my mother made up our little circle for most all of my life. Then, on our eighteenth birthday, everything changed. Raine met the god who would become her mate, and then Sapphire came along and somewhere along the way, I stopped being an integral part of the unit and instead became the single aunt. At nineteen years of age, my family has outgrown me.
“I’m not going!” I take refuge in recalcitrance, because I have nothing else to hide in.
“You are going,” Helios says. “Every moment we argue is another moment Entity becomes stronger. We need to mount our defense, and you need to get to safety.”
“Let me stay. Please.”
“I can’t let you stay. This is war, Lucy. You're not equipped to deal with war. Go with Triton.”
I am not being given the chance to prove myself. I know I am loved, but to have true worth, I have to do something.
But it’s too late. I am out of time. Helios looks over my head.
“Take her.”
Those two words explain everything about the way I am treated. In the end, I am nothing more than a possession. Something to be kept safe, but not respected, and certainly not listened to.
The ocean roars behind me, water rising in a great crested wave. Triton is doing as my father says, and he is coming for me. I start to run away from the water. He can’t get me if I’m suitably far inland. At least, I don’t think he can.
It turns out to be a moot thought, because I don’t get more than two or three steps before the surging water becomes great godly arms, each one almost the full length of my entire body, reaching out to wrap around me.
“NO! NOOOO!” I scream my refusal at the top of my lungs, but this has happened once before and I know there is no escape once I am in Triton’s grasp. The sun disappears behind a glassy wall of disturbed water. The last I see of the world is my father’s face disappearing into the distance as I am dragged down, down, down through the foam and the waves, down through the bright blue sea and then the green depths, down into the true dark depths of the ocean.
Triton does not say a word to me, but it wouldn’t matter if he did. I couldn’t hear anyway over the rushing torrent of water. I can breathe because of his enchantment which allows anyone he pleases to live in his watery domain, and because I am probably immortal. We’re not certain if I am or if I am not, and we haven’t tested the theory.
This war would be an opportunity to find out if I can take damage and die, but I guess I am not going to get the chance to find out. Raine is mortal, and yet she will be in the midst of things. Raine was born ten minutes before me. Now she is ten years older than I am and has a ten-year-old daughter. I am being left behind in every way.
3
I am outcast.
I am furious.
I am sad.
And I am afraid.
I have no way of knowing if I will ever see my family again. For all I know they will be devoured and I will be the sole survivor, left here for the rest of time.
There is no option except to give in. With Triton’s great arms wrapped around me, I am a passenger on this trip straight to oceanic hell. It is dark as Hades where the water presses down with incredible force and not a speck of light can penetrate. I am the daughter of the sun, but now I am cast in complete darkness.
But there is always light. I have been to Triton’s realm before. That is half the reason I do not want to come back. What happened here is something I haven’t been able to forget.
Triton draws me ever deeper and in time the darkness of the depths starts to give way to a glimmering light.
Undersea.
I remember this city. I have dreamed of it often. I was here for a matter of hours, and in those hours I saw so many wonders my mind has been filled with them ever since.
My father, Helios, considers his golden palace to be the center of Okeanus. His palace has become a vast and sprawling place, but it is nothing compared to this city of many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of buildings built with the most delicate and intricate architecture and adorned in a multitude of colors from delicate jade to perfect coral pink and everything in between. I do not think there is a more beautiful sight on all of Okeanus than this, and I know I am fortunate to see it, for Triton allows precious few to come here.
Helios’ palace is empty besides my family, and we are small in number. But Triton’s ocean city is populated and alive. It is busy in a way which makes the palace on the land seem dull and dead by comparison. This is the last city of the sea elves. Or at least, that is what I call them. They are alien to me with my human form. I have two arms, two legs, a slim waist, and full breasts. I was made in the image of mankind.
They are lithe creatures with large, soulful eyes. They are like people in many ways, but they swim with fins which expand from the rear of their arms, and their heads are shaped to flow with the water, broad browed and then tapering like a tear drop toward the rear. Their legs are not legs at all. From their hips they taper into scaled tails of the most iridescent beauty which allow them to glide through the water without resistance.
I am clumsy beneath the waters. They are not. They are agile and elegant, and beautiful beyond compare. The female sea elves are naturally jeweled, their scales flashing brightly with every rippling motion of their tails. They wear pearls and opals, every jewel in the earth and outside it.
There’s something about those scales which makes me ache with nostalgia for a time which never was. Above the water, I am the most beautiful creature on Okeanus. Below it, I feel less than average. I am limited. My fins do not flow beautifully in the water. My limbs terminate in impractical stumps. My feet are especially egregious here in a world where walking is practically unknown because every creature chooses instead to glide.
Triton carries me above the bustle of the city, and I watch as his happy little subjects swim about their business, unaware that I am being taken as an unwilling captive.
The palace below the ocean sits at the top of an underwater peak. Unlike the land around my father’s palace which is a flat meadow which meets the beach and then the sea, this is a city with an abundance of geography. The city sits in an oceanic valley, above which the palace is perched. There are small volcanoes surrounding the city proper, and an underground river running through it. Corals and sea plants grow hither and thither, making the landscape a vibrant rainbow. This is far too brilliant a city to be held prisoner, and yet that is what I am. Triton will have to hold me against my will to keep me here.