I am determined to resist him and this place, but everywhere I look, there is another distraction from my misery. Deep-sea dolphins play amid the warm streams emerging from cracks and crevices in the ocean floor. They are sleek obsidian in hue, but they have bright flashes of bioluminescence running down their sides in spots and stripes. No two dolphins share the same markings, but it seems to me that there are some who share more similarities than others. They are family, I surmise. I miss my family already. I fear for them. For what they will do, and for what I will not be allowed to do.
I have often daydreamed of Undersea. The irony of the situation is that the first time I came here, I wanted to stay, but was not allowed to. This time, I want to leave, and I am still not allowed to. It seems to me that everything to do with Okeanus is designed to frustrate and annoy.
Triton carries me to a grand balcony and releases me gently, allowing me to sink down to stand upon the oceanstone paving. I know he has put charms on me to make this possible. If I were a normal human here without his permission, the pressure of the depths would crush me instantly. Instead, I stand here as easily as I would have stood on my own personal balcony in the golden palace.
I can’t look at him. Being held by him has brought back many humiliating memories of the last time I was here. Instead of looking at him, I look up. The ‘sky’ as I am used to thinking of it, is black. Completely dark. There are no stars in the ocean.
It would take me an eternity to swim back up through the water with my simple human style limbs, but I would take that eternity to see the sun again.
“You are welcome here, Lucy,” Triton says.
“I want to go home.”
“In time, you will return, when it is safe. For now, you will make your home here, in my palace, among my people.” He looks at me with those eyes which know so much and say so little. “You wanted to stay here once, did you not?”
That question makes me blush bright red. He is referring to a particularly shameful episode which happened on the evening of my eighteenth birthday, the night that my hopeless crush on him started.
One year ago…
It is my birthday. I am eighteen. Finally. I have been waiting to turn eighteen since I found out that eighteen means you get to be whoever it is you really want to be and nobody can tell you what to do ever again. At least, that’s how I always interpreted my mother’s frequent orders to wait until I was eighteen.
Our parents threw us the biggest party Okeanus had ever seen. Raine’s not really interested, but I have made the most of every moment of it, and I’m not done with the evening yet.
One of the gods at the party invited me to his island. I said yes, because I am saying yes to everything. Yes to life. Yes to freedom. Yes to finally being my own demigoddess and not forever under the watchful scowl of my two fathers and the kindly gaze of my loving mother.
Everything was going amazingly, until my sister turned up. Killjoy Raine, older by a matter of minutes, she must have missed out on the fun gene. She just showed up, squawking about how going away with strange gods is dangerous and how everybody is missing me, simply frantic with worry, apparently.
I told her I wasn’t going to go with her, but she’s made me feel guilty, so I decide to head back with her. She has a boat down by the water. I can see her standing there, talking to the god of the island, arguing with him, probably.
“Raine! I’m coming!”
Before I can get near her, or the boat, the water surges and I am dragged from the beach by cold arms of powerful water.
“Triton! What the…”
There’s only one god capable of a feat like this one. I’ve known Triton all my life. He’s the only god my fathers tolerated near us.
He’s not the friendliest god, nor the nicest one. He’s kind of been like wallpaper in my life, there, but not really significant.
But now, the wallpaper just ruined my dress by plunging me into salt water, and I am not happy about that.
“Triton! Let me go! Triton! Idiot! You’re ruining my clothes! Triton!” It doesn’t matter how much I scream, it’s just all bubbles and flailing. For most of the journey my dress and or hair are over my head, obscuring my view. By the time they clear away, I am standing inside some kind of palace. I’d pay more attention to it, but my view is taken up entirely by the massive bulk of Triton himself.
“What are you doing?
“Protecting you from yourself,” he says. “Tanuk’s island is no place for an innocent princess.”
“Well, I was just leaving, so…”
“You should not have been there in the first place,” he lectures.
I never noticed how muscular he was before. I saw, but I didn’t really see. I met many dozens of handsome gods this evening. Not a single one of them is nearly as attractive as this one, whose face is carved from eternity, hard lines, high cheekbones, aquamarine eyes narrowed in annoyance at me. I’ve never seen him below water before. He makes so much more… sense down here. The way his dark hair moves in the water is mesmerizing, like it has a life of its own, a masculine mane of hirsute magnificence. The dappled light being emitted from glowing fixtures and my own enraged self plays off his eyes and reflects back to me.
I am angry. He is incredibly handsome.
I do not care for the way he is speaking to me. I prefer the appreciative gaze of the other gods, they who worship me as I deserve to be worshipped. I have received a lot of those gazes tonight, which makes his paternalistic judgement even less appreciated.
“I already have a father. Two, actually, so you do not need to worry about me.”
“You may have two fathers, but neither of them have ever disciplined you properly.”
“Why would they? I can do no wrong.”
He stares at me for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs. “You truly believe that, don't you.”
“Of course I do.”
“You can do wrong. You have done wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m not arguing with you, I’m telling you.”
“You have no authority over me, Triton. You are of the sea. I am of the sun. Do you know what that means?”
He folds his arms over his chest and gives me a look which in retrospect I realize is one of warning. For the moment, I still believe that he needs to be enlightened.
“My father is a sun god. There is no god higher than the sun.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, continue.”
“As daughter of the sun god, I have free rein to do as I please. I can go where I wish, with whomever I wish. I can speak to any god, visit any island on Okeanus. You have no right to sweep me off a beach and lecture me in your water shack.”
This is actually a much more impressive palace than my father’s, but I can’t admit that. Not to myself, and certainly not to him.
“I saw you at the party earlier,” he says. “I saw you display yourself to the gathering.”
He’s referring to my unclad entrance which was immediately ruined by Ragnar.
“I can be naked if I want.”
He lets out a growling sigh. I believe he is losing patience. That makes two of us. I have just stepped into a world of freedom only to immediately be reined back in.