Portal (Nina Decker) (13 page)

“Looked normal,” I said.

“Let’s make sure.”

Dani sprung on N’Tasha and pushed her in as well. She surfaced and looked shocked and mortified. I laughed some more. 

“Maybe we need one more test,” said Dani as she stalked me.

I grabbed her wrists and she grabbed mine. We swung around together and both landed in the water. It was warm like a bath and free of the sting of chlorine. It was like a fresh mountain lake that wasn’t freezing cold. I came up and found Dani bobbing next to me.

“How’s that feel?” she asked.

I laughed then ducked her head under.

Suddenly I was thirteen again and I was with my friends. The elf boys were keen to jump in and joined the fun.  We laughed, splashed, raced and wrestled. R’Agan and N’Tasha didn’t know what a chicken fight was. Dani and I had fun cleaning their clocks.

After a while Dani and I floated on our backs at the deep end.

“Thanks,” I told her.  “Why are you always helping me?”

“I figured you were due.”

“Due for what?”

“Something good,” She answered. “You’ve been a fairy princess your whole life and never got a single moment joy out of it. Sweetie, believe me when I tell you that’s the saddest thing I ever heard.”

I appreciated the sentiment but it just showed how different our experiences had been.

“Your father was from Earth. Was he fae struck?” I asked.

“Nah. He’s from Earth but he isn’t a pure mortal. He’s an alchemist. Like a wizard he gets a pass on the fae struck thing.”

“It must be great having him fully there,” I said.

“Well he’s not really in my life that much. My parents disowned me.”

“What? Why?” I asked. I was unable to hide me shock.

“I didn’t want to go into the family business. So I went my own way and they stopped having anything to do with me. That was about ten years ago. I was seventeen when it happened.”

“What did you do?”

“I made it to Los Angeles. I did the acting thing for a while. I got four commercials and even got a line. Then I did the personal assistant thing for six months. Now I do my own thing.”

“What is your thing?”

“Basically my contact list is long. I know people in dozens of companies, agencies, and studios.”

“But what’s your job?”

She shrugged and said, “That is my job.”

Dani had told me a lot of things but this was the first time she had completely lost me. But at that moment I didn’t want to know about the ins and outs of the entertainment industry. R’Agan, N’Tasha and the boys were at the other end of the pool. It didn’t look like they would overhear us.

“How would I free Severin?” I asked.

Dani and I held onto the granite edge of the pool.

“First you need to find a fae warrior who isn’t afraid to joust with J’Tara.”

“Is she that good?”

“She’s hell on a black horse. Then you have to hope your warrior is good enough to draw with J’Tara because there’s no chance of beating her. But if the champion makes it through the required number of passes then the joust is a draw and the prisoner would go free.”

I knew a lot about medieval jousts. Sometimes the opponents would charge at each other a certain number of times with different weapons. So they would announce three passes with the lance and then three more with a mace or a sword.

“Is this a contest to the death?” I asked.

“Not any more. Well it still is for Severin. But if the champion fails then his freedom is forfeit.”

“Forfeit how?”

“He or she becomes a slave and is auctioned off to the crowd,” Dani explained.

“That’s horrible.”

“It does have some benefits. J’Tara gets the auction money so she tends to spare her opponents. I understand she used to be murder, literally murder. Now she’s more interested in collecting the gold. Still there was this one time. Her opponent must have pissed her off somehow. During the first pass with the lance she splattered his guts all over the place.”

A shadow fell over us. I stared up at the muscled form of Dashrael who stood over us.

I heard splashes at the other end. R’Agan, N’Tasha and the boys clambered out of the pool. They didn’t stop there and continued to retreat through the garden.

Dashrael gazed down at me. He was built like an Olympic swimmer. His white hair was flowing. He wore a pair of shorts that looked like they’d been fashioned in Nightfall. As in barely there.

“Ladies, I hope you don’t mind if I join you.”

Dani didn’t say anything but she looked nervously at the Chancellor.

Dashrael dove into the water. He made hardly any splash. Beside me Dani looked from side to side.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Never swim with a merman,” she muttered.

She let out a shriek and was suddenly yanked beneath the surface. She didn’t come up for a good ten seconds and I thought I heard a man’s voice, very muffled coming from underwater.  Then her hand shot back up and grasped the pool’s edge. When she surfaced, she spat out a mouthful of water.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She pulled herself out of the pool and coughed some more.

“I’m so sorry,” said Dashrael, with a small smile, which only made him look even more sinister.

He floated right next to me and I hadn’t heard or felt anything.

Dani backed away from the pool’s edge. She looked at me guiltily as she grabbed her towel and headed into the garden.

“I forget how fragile you air breathers are,” said Dashrael. He swam around me. His body was as sinewy and as graceful as I had imagined it. Comparing him to an Olympian was a disservice. A professional athlete could only dream of attaining a body like his.

“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” I said to him. Despite Dani’s warning I swam next to him. I’m a good swimmer but I felt like a clumsy, dog paddling child next to the merman. His swift, graceful movements through the water made my insides a little warm.

He said, “I must confess I wanted to talk to you in private.”

“We’re alone now,” I said.

He dove down. I treaded water in the center of the deep end. The place became deathly quiet and I grew a little nervous. Dashrael came back up.

“You have a fine form,” he said. "And strong muscles. I would almost believe you had some merfolk in you.”

“I’m having enough trouble being high fae,” I said.

This close I could see that his skin was made of perfect tiny scales. I hadn’t noticed when he was dry. Despite this he looked as ravishing as ever.

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” I asked him. “My form?”

“Not at all. I was hoping I could be a friend to you the way Lady D’Aniela has been,” he told me. “You need many friends here.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“As a friend I should tell you what you did yesterday wasn’t smart.”

“Oh?”

“Severin Saint Morgan is hated here. You didn’t win yourself many allies.”

“I didn’t come here to play politics,” I said.

“Neither did I,” Dashrael confessed. “But I ended up playing the game anyway. No task is ever pure or simple. There’s always politics.”

He seemed genuinely tired and sad and regretful. A rare difference to the rest of the political players of court.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”

He reached out to brush away a damp strand of hair from my face. I let him. I expected his touch to be rough from the scales but it was smooth. His hand lingered on my cheek and moved down my neck.

But then I remembered the attack at my pond back in Vancouver. Something had reached out of the water, grabbed me by the neck and tried to drown me.  I recognized that hand and that touch.

I backed away from Dashrael. I was still a several strokes away from the pool’s edge.

“You,” I said. “It was you!”

I tried to swim for the shallow end. But Dashrael cut me off without any effort.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“You tried to kill me back in Vancouver.”

“Princess N’Lina, you are mistaken.”

His hand shot out towards me. He gripped my shoulder and pushed me under, then quickly let go and I popped back up.

“I’m trying to help you.”

He grabbed my upper arm and yanked me down again. I was underwater less than a second and came up.

“I’m trying to keep you from meddling in court affairs.”

Down I went again. The constant ducking was worse than being held under. When I popped back to the surface I tried to take a breath only to be yanked back under.

“And I don’t
try
to kill people,” he hissed.

“Stop it!” I yelled before he pulled me back under. Water rushed down my throat. I surfaced and spat it out. My arms flailed about as I panicked in the deep water.

“Those whom I target, die,” said Dashrael.

I went under again before I could take a breath. The world began to spin and I fell into blackness.

Chapter 15

I was drowning, the slow painful demise as air escaped my lungs not to be replaced by anything but water. Dashrael kept pushing and pulling me under, letting go then then pulling me down again. I tried to steal a breath of air and sucked down
more water.

Then he let go and I scrambled for the pool edge. As I took a long ragged gasp, I looked up and there was J’Tara with a group of armored guards. Dani was next to them with her towel wrapped around her body.

“Is there something wrong here?” as
ked the captain of the guard.

“Perhaps I played a little too roughly with the princess,” said Dashrael, with a smug look on his face.

Dani pulled me out and threw a towel over me. Even though my legs wobbled I wanted to get away as fast as possible.  We left J’Tara and Dashrael. As we wound our way back through the gardens I felt a little better.

“Are you all right?” Dani asked. “When he held me underwater he told me to get out of there. I didn’t know what else to do so I got the nearest help I could find. I’m sorry for leaving with him.”

“He’s kind of scary.” I wondered what if anything would happen to him. “Think he’ll end up in a cage in the town square?”

“Unlikely. He’s down a lot of dirty work for Lord Wolfstriker in the past. You weren’t hurt or least not that bad.”

And I’m not exactly the favored grandchild
, I silently added.

Just then J’Tara caught up to us with long strides. She was the last person I wanted to see.

“I hope you’re all right,” she said. There wasn’t a gram of sincerity in her tone. I got the feeling she would have been happier to find me floating face down.

“Lord Dashrael explained to me it was all a misunderstanding,” she went on.

“That was some misunderstanding,” I sputtered. “I could have drowned.”

“Oh if Dashrael wanted to kill you he would have succeeded, especially in water. That was just how merfolk play. Besides, why should he want to kill you, who will decide all our fates?”

Dani was holding my wrist. She squeezed it extra hard when J’Tara brought up the little prophecy.  I gathered that bit of information was supposed to be on the QT.

“You’re talking about the Great Codex,” I said.

“Some scribbles Simeon discovered,” said J’Tara with a grin. “I tell you if there’s anyone who should want you dead it’s me.”

“What do mean?”

J’Tara said, “I meant no insult, princess. Just look at it from my perspective. I have trained as a warrior my entire life. I have worked my way up the ranks to become Nightfall’s supreme military commander right alongside Lord Wolfstriker. For this coming war, and yes there will be another war because it is inevitable, I have spent countless days and nights planning and preparing. I have drilled my soldiers relentlessly and prepared miles of defenses. Yet according to some all of that is for naught. You see all my skill, talent and several lifetimes’ worth of effort don’t matter at all. It will come down to one half breed royal to decide who wins and who loses. I might as well have spent the whole time sitting on rump and getting fat eating sweet cakes.”

She drew up to her full height. She was nearly a head taller than I was and I was 5’ 9’’. She glared down at me which clearly meant to scare the piss out of me. And she was doing a pretty good job of it.

“Fortunately for you I don’t believe in such nonsense as prophecies. I believe we make our own destinies.  If I thought otherwise, well, I might have held you under myself.”

I realized we were alone with J’Tara. She wore a sword and her hand gripped the pommel. Then it relaxed.

“But I do not believe such things. Come let us get you to your nice dry chambers.”

I practically ran the rest of the way with Dani beside me.

I went to my room. The door didn’t lock so I moved a chair against it. I didn’t take my meals. I didn’t even let Dani in.