Three Rings (The Fairytail Saga) (3 page)

Tristan’s eyes shifted to Lincoln, and his alarm faded to amusement to see a startled looking Lincoln do what no unexperienced, horny as hell mer ought to-

He looked down.

And swallowed.

Tristan grinned and stepped back, suddenly praying that Lux performed as well for Lincoln as she had for him.

Ivyanne paced her bedroom floor in bare feet, feeling claustrophobic to be in such a small space, with such a loud voice crackling down the line. She knew she’d hurt her dad. She knew how he hated Tristan. But she also knew that there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it and she didn’t regret it the way he wanted her to. Had it not been for the crappy timing, she wouldn’t have regretted giving herself to Tristan at
all
!

Only Lincoln’s inclusion in her world, and the risk of being pregnant, were cause for remorse. As far as breaking the wedlock rule went, she was as ambivalent to it as her father was furious.

And she was sick of him calling daily to lecture her about the only mistake she’d ever made.

‘...I’ve got plenty of other stories Ivyanne.’ Her father went on, as he had been for twenty-five minutes. ‘Your mother had me feature him in a flick a few years ago, and do you know how many of my human production staff he seduced in the three days we were there?’ He paused. ‘And not
one
at a time either, sweetheart.’

Ivyanne’s stomach rotated slightly at the mental picture her father was intent on painting for her, but it was quickly eclipsed by a memory that was far more disturbing. She decided to play it dumb for a moment, giving into the childish need to rile her father up. One she’d never actually had before.

‘Dad!’ She tried to sound scandalized. ‘Do you mean, that Tristan had a
threesome
?!’

‘That’s precisely what I mean!’ The king snapped. ‘Right in the damn solar-powered beach house he’d built!’

‘Oh!’ She smiled, catching sight of his crown on his nightstand, looped over an antique framed picture of her mother. ‘Was it like that time I busted you, mum and Aubrielle together at that summer solstice bonfire….?’

Dead silence greeted her.

Ivyanne smiled.

‘W...what?’ The superior tone had abandoned her fathers voice.

Ivyanne moved towards the window. ‘Oh you know…’ she said casually. ‘I was about fifteen. We were in Hawaii, visiting the Londeree’s resort, and Mano had talked you into trying that Palm Wine. Anyway, I think Leah and I were swimming when you guys thought we’d gone to bed...and we saw that Mum and Aubrielle were kissing in the water. I was shocked to see that, and wondered if she was cheating on you-but just then you surfaced between them. Lord knows what you were doing or to who but-’

‘Hey!’ Her father snapped. ‘That’s enough young lady!’

‘
Young lady?
!’ Ivyanne’s amusement turned to wrath. ‘I’m almost
thirty
, father! And while we’re on the subject of age, menages at three hundred and something are about as inappropriate as royal conduct
gets
! So before you judge Tristan for that kind of conduct as a single man, why don’t you ask what kind of message you guys are sending me about monogamy...or
lack
thereof? ’

Her father made a spluttering sound. ‘I don’t have to justify anything, Ivyanne. What your mother and I do-’

‘While
wasted
on Palm Wine-’ She interjected.

‘
Ivyanne Constance Court!
’ He bellowed.

Ivyanne ended the call with a stab of a trembling fingernail and tossed the phone to the bed. She was beyond being annoyed with her dad’s running commentary on her love life-she was
hurt
. She wasn’t an idiot, and she wasn’t naïve. She knew that mer couples messed around with other mer couples on occasion, just as she knew that what had gone down with Aubrielle and her parents
hadn’t
been an isolated incident.

But she didn’t judge them for it! So why was he holding her, and a man she cared for, to a standard
he
couldn’t even stay abreast of? It was one thing for him to want the best for her, but quite another to have expectations that were impossible to live up to.

Though if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit that thinking of Tristan having wild sex like that, even though she’d suspected he’d done that and worse in his years before her father had dumped it on her, made her feel insecure. She was pretty sure Lincoln hadn’t lived that kind of lifestyle, and that with him, exclusivity would be not only a given, but a demand-forever.

What about with Tristan?
She made herself ask the question.
The man has an appetite! Who knows what you’ll be considering doing to please him three hundred years from now?

The phone rang again and Ivyanne slanted her eyes at the lit screen, considering ignoring it. But the picture she’d snapped of her dad from a photo of them together was on the screen, begging her notice. With a sigh, she sat on the bed, and answered the call.

‘Yes?’ She asked, frostily.

He sighed. It was probably the first breath he’d taken and expelled during one of his calls yet. ‘I’m sorry.’ He said woodenly. ‘Maybe I am being a bit overly judgmental, Ivyanne, but it’s only because I want what’s best for you. I can hear it in your voice-you’re too blinded by him to listen to reason, so I’ll stop wasting my breath on the matter.’ He paused. ‘I won’t let you hang up on me on his behalf-that’s letting him win. So the high, silent road it is. At least, until we know more.’

Ivyanne’s brow furrowed. ‘Dad….
no
. You’re missing the point. This isn’t about me being blinded by Tristan-it’s about
you
being oblivious to him, and the favor he did you by...by doing what he did.’

There was a few beats of silence. ‘This I have to hear…’ The king drawled. ‘But I’ll warn you now that the word ‘grandchildren’ won’t work in his defense yet. Not for another fifty years or so, so take heed.’

Ivyanne made another face. She really didn’t want to have this conversation with her dad, but she was beginning to see that it was inevitable. And she’d rather it take place on the phone when he was thousands of kilometers away, then in person, where the humiliation factor would be considerably higher.

‘You’re mad that I went to bed out of wedlock, and with someone you don’t like,’ she said softly. ‘But how mad would you have been, if I’d done the same thing with Lincoln, three weeks ago?’

‘I already told you, Ivyanne-anyone would have been preferable to Tristan!’

‘Really?’ She asked skeptically. ‘Even if meant that I could be pregnant with a half-breed now, instead of a possible Marked child?’

The silence communicated that Ivyanne’s point had been driven home at last.

‘Hang on…’ her father said. ‘Three weeks ago? When Lincoln was a
human
?’

‘Yup!’ Ivyanne didn’t see any reason to gloss the matter over. ‘I was that close to ruining one thousand years of undiluted Court blood, with a
bartender,
behind his girlfriend’s back, in a
chlorinated
pool in a resort past its prime.’ She bit her lip, letting
that
sink in. ‘If Tristan hadn’t shown up when he did, looking like he did, I can guarantee you, that you’d have three or four more reasons to be freaking furious with me right now. And I’m
not
making this up to take the heat off the mistake I
did
make, dad.’ She exhaled again. ‘Tristan’s seductive and manipulative and a complete game player, so I whole-heartedly agree with you on that. But if he wasn’t… I would have ended up in bed with the
only
other man who’s caught my interest in this lifetime. And it wasn’t Bane or Ardhi, father. It was
always
Link-and he tried every bit as hard to steal me away from this kingdom, as Tristan did to keep me within it. For that effort, you owe Tristan gratitude
-not
disgust.’ She got to her feet, seeing movement on the beach through the delicate lace curtains. ‘Mum too. You really need to stop giving her a hard time. She loves you dad, and she misses you like crazy. You should be at her side and mine, helping us right now-not avoiding us because you’re afraid you can’t hide your contempt.’

‘Ivyanne…’ Ash Court sounded lost. ‘I didn’t realize how hard this was for you. I mean, every Court woman before you waited until quite late in life to uh, cross lines…’

‘It was a different world, and none of them were silly enough to fall for a human at the age of thirteen either. The fact that the man I cared for was forbidden made it that much more of a temptation.’ She shrugged, seeing Lincoln walk across the beach towards the house, and her eyes lingered on the place where his wet board shorts drew down, revealing paler, intimate skin. Yep, he was a liability, all right, and her attraction to him had doubled now that he was mer, and in her face every day.

But her attraction to him wasn’t exclusive either, and she wondered that if things worked out in Lincoln’s favor, would the commitment be as infallible as in her youthful fantasies? Or would the memory of Tristan’s touch make her tremble decades from now? Would she gather with them one night, drink too much palm wine, and beg Lincoln to let Tristan join them in the water? The fantasy was far too appealing and her face flushed like she’d run a mile. She glanced at Tristan’s boat, bobbing in the shallows, and the heat spread lower.

‘I’m weak, I’ll own that. But…’ she smiled, wondering if she was going to piss him off or amuse the king with her next remark: ‘Maybe a full-blood Marked child will be stronger, hmm? After all, all of the fathers in our line were former humans. Maybe
Tristan’s
child, will be more resilient to withdrawals than yours was.’

Her father snorted. ‘I’ve been with you so far Ivyanne, but if you expect me to swallow that the child of the kingdom’s biggest player
and
the first princess to have pre-marital sex will have a
lower
sex drive than its predecessors did, I am going to
laugh
at you.’

Ivyanne laughed, and it felt wonderful. ‘Okay, you might have the point this time.’

‘Thank you.’ He muttered grudgingly.

Just then, a glimmer of gold diverted Ivyanne’s gaze from Tristan’s boat, and she shifted in time to see a soaking wet figure wrap itself around Lincoln, rubbing his back, a blissful smile on her familiar, face. It wasn’t until the woman pulled back that a surge of recognition sluiced through Ivyanne. She saw now what had thrown her before-the hair color. Flaxen where red ought to be. Ivyanne’s lungs constricted.

‘Dad?’ She didn’t wait for his response. ‘I have to go.
Now
.’

Ivyanne ended the call and pocketed the phone as she leapt over her mother’s bed and flung open the door. Her already overwrought heart began to race as she jogged down the hall, almost taking out a shocked-looking Saraya when she emerged from the bathroom.

‘Do I hear a Scottish accent?’ Saraya asked, her doe-like brown eyes wide.

‘You do.’ Ivyanne said grimly. She took the stairs two at a time, the feelings within her too conflicting to detangle. Ardhi’s Lux was there and she was terrified of having to face her, and seeing the accusation in Lux’s remarkable eyes. But there was so much more to the other woman’s arrival to distress Ivyanne than
that
-a suspicion confirmed when she came to a halt at the foot of the steps to see Lux holding Lincoln’s face close to hers under the guise of studying him.

But it wouldn’t be a guise. It
never
was with Lux. The only man she’d never made a play for, was the one she had come to mourn. Aside from Ardhi, the oversexed mermaid regarded every man as fair game. And because she’d been turned after being rendered infertile as a human-every man actually
was
a potential lover for her, human
or
mer. The rules didn’t, and never would limit her options, the way they did every other mer.

And Lincoln’s face was in the grip of her perfectly polished red nails. Ivyanne’s stomach tightened.

‘..Just so damn adorable!’ Lux was murmuring. ‘Gosh honey, if she doesn’t snap you up, swear to god that you’ll hunt me down. Or prepare to be
hunted
.’

‘Lux!’ Ivyanne tried to sound eager, but jealousy tightened her teeth around the greeting. ‘Where have you been? Have you seen the Kayu-Api’s yet? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

Heads turned to Ivyanne, and their expressions were varied. Vana looked perplexed, Tristan looked smug, Lincoln looked dazed, and Lux’s expression lost its animation. There had been an undercurrent of tension between them every time they’d crossed paths in the past, which wasn’t often. Probably because they were polar opposites of each other, and possibly because they’d both considered themselves Ardhi’s closest confidante.

And now, Ivyanne had inadvertently brought upon that boy’s death, and the accusation was written all over Lux’s face. As the guilt and worry was on Tristan’s face beside her. He didn’t think she knew, but she knew. It was just one more piece of information her father had dropped into her lap as part of case-building against Tristan.