He brushes away my tears with the pad of his thumb and somehow, I hear a silent yes.
“Your tears are beautiful,” he murmurs, only just avoiding the question. "You are transcendent. The idea of anything happening to you…”
“Like some brute capturing me and whipping me until I’m red and sore,” I sob.
I cannot take any more of this. I do not know how many slaps have landed, or how many more are yet to land, but I know that I am at my limit.
Somehow, he knows the same thing.
“Poor baby.” His words are gentle as he lifts me from his lap and stands with me, holding me to his chest. I am sore. My legs are shaking a little from the adrenaline overload of my ordeal. I feel weak and floppy and more than a little disoriented, but Triton keeps hold of me, snuggling me against his burly frame.
I am embraced in his arms, looking up into his beautiful aquamarine eyes. I feel him throb against me, a long, thick promise of something which will tear me apart and turn me into something new.
Danger is all around me. It comes from within this great beast of a god who claims to want to protect my virtue, but seems hungrier for it than any other god I have yet met.
This is not the Triton I have known all my life. This is a new entity, a god of lust and deep desire.
His mouth descends on mine, the bristles of his beard scratching my face lightly as he brushes a chaste kiss over my lips.
“You’ve stopped crying,” he murmurs.
I half-wonder if he is going to make me start again, if he might enjoy my pain more than he enjoys my smiles. I should be afraid of that, but the thought makes all the private places inside me tighten with anticipation.
“Lucy!” My name is spoken in two voices by two gods who should not be here.
My fathers have arrived. At precisely the wrong moment. They’ve come to take me back. They won’t let me stay, no matter how much I argue. I beg Triton to tell them to let me stay with him, but for reasons I do not understand but which hurt to my core, he says his farewells and I depart, sore, sorry, and deeply disappointed.
And back to the present day…
There hasn’t been a day that has gone by since Triton laid his hands on me that I haven’t thought about him. I can somehow still feel his palm whipping against my flesh. Even now, I blush with the memory. He laid a chemical imprint on me somewhere so deep I don’t think I would ever be able to erase it even if I wanted to.
That is why, even though I want to yell and scream and demand to be taken back to the surface, I restrain myself from acting out in a way I know would lead to another one of those shameful altercations which I must lose and he will inevitably win.
“I’m going to make sure you’re comfortable,” he says. “You’re going to enjoy yourself.”
“I’m not going to enjoy myself while Okeanus is at war. I’m not that spoiled and selfish.”
“There is nothing to be gained from being miserable just because others are miserable,” he says calmly. “If you think that way, you’ll be miserable forever.”
I’m going to be miserable today. There is no way to stop that. There is also no safe way to express it. I want to rage and tantrum. But I don't want Triton to see me doing any of those things.
He is brutish, but he is also refined. There is a gentility to him which makes me feel ashamed of my temper even before I’ve expressed it. He commands and dominates and controls without lifting a finger. All it takes is a lift from his brow and I very much think twice about expressing my more crude and tempestuous thoughts.
But this isn’t fair, and he has to know that. What I won’t tell him is that I don’t intend to stay captive here. As soon as I am given the chance, I am going to go to the surface and I am going to prove myself to my family who think they have no use for me.
I want to cry, but instead, I force a smile on my face. Arguing does nothing and screwing my face up makes it uglier which pretty much decimates my only advantage when it comes to dealing with people.
My whole life, I’ve been told how pretty I am. I used to think that it mattered, and that it would make me powerful. But it doesn’t. When war comes, pretty means nothing.
“Come inside,” Triton says, taking my hand and gesturing to the castle which rises in front of us with tall spires and great towers. It is not a building constructed for protection. It is one made for elegance, to inspire a sense of awe. It does that in great measure.
The sea elves watch me with curious eyes as Triton walks me through the halls and foyers. He has a staff of hundreds. I do not know what they do, but they seem to be both busy and important. Some of them are wearing what might be called regal jewelry, pendants and rings and other fine accoutrements which suggest nobility. They bow to Triton as he passes, some of them making fanciful gestures with their graceful limbs.
The place I come from seems like a hollow facsimile of this life. The whims of our family are all I am accustomed to thinking about. Here, there are thousands of sea elves, each with their own agendas, wishes, and needs.
Triton leads me up an opalescent staircase. He holds my hand in a courtly way which makes me feel like a princess, valued and treasured. I like the eyes of the sea elves on me. I can feel them watching me. They must be wondering who I am and why I matter.
Already, I am starting to enjoy myself. But I cannot allow that to happen. I force myself to remember the war and all the painful separation which goes with it.
“I have had a chamber prepared for you,” Triton tells me as he leads me toward a fine room. “It adjoins with mine. They call it the princess suite. It was designed in the old times, for the bride of a king.”
“But the bride of a king is not a princess. That’s a queen.”
“True. But usually, she is a princess from somewhere before she becomes a queen of here.”
I look at him, curiously. Is he implying something? Am I down here for some reason other than pure protection?
I step into the room and find it… practically empty.
“There’s no bed.”
"You don’t sleep.”
“That’s true.”
“So you don’t need a bed.”
“There are other uses for beds.”
“I wouldn’t think you were familiar with them,” Triton says, deadpan. I look at him out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m familiar with a great many things you might not think I know about.”
“Is that right.”
I find his expression hard to read. Is he surprised? Impressed? Something else entirely?
I have known Triton all my life, and yet I don't know him at all. When I was very young, he used to growl at us for messing with his water. Then we got older and he taught us to sail — or rather, he taught Raine to sail. I was learning to ride my father’s horses.
Then something happened. Something changed.
I guess I changed.
One day he was terrifying, the next he was desirable.
He does not have fins or a tail, but somehow he moves through the water just like the sea elves do. He commands the ocean. He can make the water part, send waves many miles high, or he can still the waters and becalm sailors for months or even years at a time, until nothing but their drying skeletons are left on their vessels.
I know that, because it was a story he told one night in the golden palace. Raine and I weren’t supposed to be listening, but when Ragnar and Helios and the other old gods get together they can’t help but tell one another stories of how awful they were on Earth. None of them were particularly nice or merciful. I remember thinking at the time it was no wonder humans stopped believing in them, but I didn’t say it, because we were small, and nobody listens to small people. We were also supposed to be asleep, and if Ragnar had caught us up one more time, he might have eventually followed through on his threats to discipline us. We were spoiled little princesses back then. I suppose I still am.