“Gladly,” Lucy says, throwing her napkin down. She stands up, casts what can only be called an impetuous and imperial gaze over the room, and storms out.
I am tempted to follow her. She needs to be disciplined. A good welting spanking with a belt should do the trick. But she will keep. The banquet will not end because one spoiled princess decides to make a scene. Lucy has to learn that unlike her father, the sun, the world does not revolve around her.
Lucy
The party is still going on in the banquet chamber. I hear the voices and the musical instruments rising after a short lull of shock at my departure.
I cannot believe how easy this is going to be. I knew the moment I sat down that I was going to pick a fight with one of the others. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s bicker. Raine and I practiced our entire lives. I can squabble like nobody else on this planet or any other.
Being sent to my room was my plan all along. I knew I was risking Triton’s ire, but all my plans risk Triton’s ire.
I’m not staying down here. I’m going to be free.
Escaping isn’t hard. There are windows everywhere and I float right out of them. Apparently Triton was planning to keep me here with a mixture of social pressure and vague threats. They’re not very effective.
Swimming up through the waters under my own power is going to take forever, but there are other modes of transportation. I have seen dolphins harnessed down by the palace stables, and know that they are ridden by royal courtiers from time to time. I have ridden horses extensively. I am sure dolphins will not be much different. They're basically water horses, right?
Eee! Eee!
The dolphins begin to squeak with excitement as I approach their stables. They’re keen to escape their little enclosures, and so am I.
5
Triton
She’s gone.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I have known Lucy from a distance for a long time, but I have not known her as she is now. I thought she would be compliant to at least a small degree. I did not think she would be brave enough to tackle the near infinite depths of the ocean. It is terrifying even to experienced merpeople to leave Undersea and strike out into the dark unknown. There are ceremonies every year where the merwarriors earn their manhood by going out alone and slaying a hostile shark. For a princess to have wandered into the oblivion of the ocean is either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid.
The banquet is still continuing in the great hall. I decided to check on Lucy not more than half an hour after she was sent away. That means she has had sufficient time to float into the depths of oblivion. I suppose I knew she’d make a break for it sooner rather than later. I never expect obedience where humans or gods are concerned, and Lucy is both.
The problem with the ocean is that it is impossibly vast. Once one loses something in it, it is almost impossible to find.
“Er, sire?”
A young courtier is approaching me.
“Yes, Swimmingsley?”
Swimmingsley is a young merman, the youngest son of my eldest knight. He is bright but quiet and lacks confidence in all things.
“I know where princess Lucy is. I… if that’s who you’re looking for.”
Well, that was easy.
“You do?”
“She took a dolphin mount, but it threw her off,” he says. “I believe she was headed due up when I met her.”
“You met her?”
“Yes. She is at my father’s house. She is playing with the undersea dolphin pups.”
“How did that come to pass?”
He gives the minutest of shrugs. “I asked her if she wanted to come and see them, and she said yes.”
“So you managed to distract her. Good work. Let’s go get her back.”
I am furious at Lucy. She knows what is at stake, and yet she refuses to act as though she does. Her immature behavior is no longer something to be indulged. It is something to be punished. Harshly.
We arrive at Swimmingsley’s house in very short order. I have no intention of wasting a single moment to get her back.
“She’s in there, sir.”
He points to the pen inside the breeding chamber. I see Lucy there, crouched among the pups.
She is happy. I have never seen that smile on her face. She literally lights up the room in which she sits with the dolphin pups playing around her. These deep sea dolphins do not need to visit the surface as their shallow cousins do thanks to charms laid upon them, the same charms I have laid upon Lucy, as a matter of fact.
“Hello, Lucy.”
I step into the room. It dims when she sees me. I feel an ache at the realization that I am a villain in her world. To all of undersea, I am a revered king. To Lucy, I am nothing but her captor.
“Hello,” she says. “Have you come to scold me?”
“I have come to retrieve you.”
“I’m not a starfish to be thrown and caught,” she says. “But you seem to be the kind of dog who likes to play fetch.”
Lucy
The expression on Swimmingsley’s face is one of horror. Apparently, one does not speak to Triton, King of Undersea, that way.
I knew he was going to thrash me when I said those words. I invited his discipline for a reason. I want to hate him. Have to hate him. There can be no escape if I have even the softest feelings toward him. That's what’s holding me here. Not dolphin pups, or young squires begging me to return so they do not get in trouble. It’s him.
I hate how much I love him.
I love him?
Dammit. By all the gods. I love him.
I hardly know him but I’ve been infatuated with him for a year. And now I’m taunting him. Tormenting him. I’m talking to him in a way which I know will anger him and make him touch me. Intimately.
The only question is will it happen here, or will he take me back to the castle and deal with me there?
“Come here, Lucy,” he says. “I’m taking you home.”
“No, you're not. You’re taking me to your cut-rate castle.”
“Enough,” he growls.
I fall silent. It is enough.
Triton takes me by the hand and draws me back through the waters. It is a long walk, or swim, I suppose. But he does not say a word during it. There is not a lecture. There is not a warning. There are no threats of what is to come. I am left to the flowing of the liquid around me, and the growing feeling of something like guilt in the pit of my belly.
In a single day, everything I know has fallen apart. My comfortable, regular life has been blown into a thousand pieces, along with the exterior of the golden palace which is now a shattered ruin.
I have every reason to be angry and scared, and to act out. But I also know that I am not helping the war effort by making Triton chase me around Undersea. It was a distraction to argue and escape, and it was an even greater distraction to play with those sweet little undersea dolphin pups. They were like I was once: innocent. They don’t have anything to worry about. They don’t have the concept of concern. I was like them, yesterday. Today I am something different.
Triton returns me to the palace, undergoing the formality of traversing through the doors. It makes me wonder if he always lived in the great waters, or if he is holding on to some distant dry land existence.