Blood of Destiny (Witch Fairy #6) (13 page)

It’s taking me a long time to swim back.  I just don’t have the leg muscles for it like Kallen does.  Tired of waiting for me, Arie says something to Kai and he swims back to me.  “Get on,” he says gruffly and then he turns his back to me.

“I can help her,” Kallen says between clenched teeth.  Good to see I’m not the only one who can get jealous.

Kai shakes his head.  “You need to save your strength for Octavian.”

I think Kallen’s going to argue, but he doesn’t.  Hey, I am not going to pass up a free ride.  This swimming everywhere is hard.  I wrap my arms around Kai’s neck and my legs around his waist.  As soon as I’m in place, he starts swimming again and I can feel Kallen’s glare all the way back. 

Just before we get to the city, Kai stops.  “It would be best if Queen Undine not know that I have assisted you.”  Arie nods in agreement.  I let go and swim to Kallen who doesn’t look very happy with me at the moment.  I guess I wouldn’t have wanted to watch him be that close to a hot girl so I don’t say anything.

When we get back to Undine’s mansion, there are already Merpeople scrambling to put her house back together.  Everyone stops working when they see us.  Undine is already giving me the evil eye.

Kai stops in front of her and bows his head.  “My Queen, I regret to inform you that the Fairy was the first to retrieve his love.”

Oh, I thought she was mad before.  If she wasn’t in public, I think she’d hit him.   Turning her eyes to Kallen, her expression softens considerably but she is definitely still mad.  “You are strong.  I will enjoy having you live among us.”  Live with her is what she means.  I do not like her one little bit.  “Now, we will see how truly strong you are.  Octavian!” she calls out like she’s calling a dog.

Or an octopus.  One of the ones that we squashed against the wall earlier I believe.  It still looks pissed.  And I think it’s grown a little bit in the last hour.

Undine reaches out and pets the octopus.  “Octavian here loves to wrestle,” she purrs looking at Kallen like she wished it was him that she was petting. 

“You want him to wrestle an octopus?”

“Unless he would rather concede defeat now and save himself the trouble,” she says.  I really want to use my magic on her.

“I will continue with the challenge,” Kallen says. 

Undine looks disappointed but she turns to the crowd and says, “Make room everyone.  You know how Octavian likes to thrash about.”

The Merpeople back away and form a large circle.  To their credit, none of them look as if they’re enjoying Undine’s little show.  No one is stopping it but it’s good to know they’re not as psychotic as their queen.

Undine backs away from the octopus and says to Kallen, “You will wrestle Octavian until one of you admits defeat.”

Kallen looks as puzzled as I feel.  “How does an octopus admit defeat?”

She laughs.  “It has never happened so I honestly do not know.”  Yeah, that was funny.

Kallen approaches the octopus and it lashes out at him with one of its tentacles.  He avoids it and in a move similar to what he did in Ireland, he uses the octopus’s momentum to swing it around in a circle sending it spinning towards the crowd. 

When it stops spinning, it goes on the attack again.  Shooting back to Kallen, it goes after him with several tentacles and Kallen isn’t fast enough to avoid them all.  It reels him in and covers his face with a giant suction cup. 

I will wait until the count of three and if Kallen hasn’t gotten free then I am going to hit the thing with so much magic that it will literally explode into tiny little pieces.  Fortunately, I don’t need to do that.  Good, I wasn’t looking forward to picking little bits of octopus off from my wet suit.

Kallen forces the suction cupped tentacle off from his face but keeps hold of it.  With his legs he grabs several other tentacles.  Then, he stretches out as far as he can pulling the tentacles in opposite directions.  It’s like he’s playing tug of war all by himself.  The octopus starts thrashing around but Kallen holds his grip with both his hands and his legs, so the octopus is only hurting itself by struggling.  Wow.  I always knew Kallen was strong but this is amazing.

I glance over at Undine and she looks torn between being angry with him for possibly winning and in love with him because he’s so strong and sexy.  I think the strong and sexy part is winning.  I hate her.

Kallen is starting to look tired but he doesn’t let go until the octopus stops struggling.  Letting go of it, he quickly swims away.  He turns back towards it ready to keep fighting.  Octavian doesn’t seem to want to keep fighting though.  I didn’t know that octopi could look sullen but apparently they can.  Kallen moves towards it and it backs away.  The crowd parts and the octopus goes off to wherever it came from.  Kallen won!

There’s a lot of murmuring in the crowd.  The louder they are the more pissed Undine is getting.  Good.  Maybe she’ll be as mad as I am soon.  I’m getting really tired of her making it so obvious that she wants Kallen.

I swim over to Kallen and throw my arms around him.  He’s still breathing heavy after exerting so much strength, but he pulls me to him and kisses me.  A long, open mouthed kiss that is probably making the crowd uncomfortable.

“You have not won yet,” Undine growls.  “There is the last challenge and you will fail against my magic.”

I feel her pulling magic.  A lot of magic.  So do I but Kallen grabs my shoulders and forces me to look at him.  “Xandra, you cannot use your magic on her.  That will allow her to win without any effort on her part.  Trust in me that I am stronger than she is.”

But that’s so hard when I have my magic pulled and ready to use.  I know that Kallen’s magic is strong and I am ninety-nine percent sure that he can take her.  It’s that one percent I’m worried about.  With a sigh, I let my magic go.

“Thank you,” Kallen says.  Turning to Undine, he says, “I am ready when you are.”

Undine smiles and raises her arms.  “Loving sea now at its gentlest, your Queen calls you into a raging tempest.”  I’m loving how short these Merpeople spells are.

The water around us begins to swirl until we are in the eye of an underwater hurricane.  The Merpeople swam for cover as soon as they realized what she was going to do.  Cowards.  The walls of the hurricane are moving closer to us, ready to send us flying any second now.  Kallen sends out his magic and I can feel when it touches Undine’s.  Their magic sparks against each other.  It’s not like when Kallen’s and my magic press against each other; there’s no line of magical lava.  This is more like an electrical storm.  As Kallen keeps pushing against hers, Undine’s magic slowly recedes and the storm begins to quiet.  The madder she gets about that, the more her magic falters.  It doesn’t take long before the storm quiets.  I love Kallen so much.

As the last of her magic is pushed back inside her, Undine screeches in anger.  Kallen just smiles at her.  Yup, I love him even more now.

“I believe I have won all three challenges set before me,” Kallen says with remarkably little triumph in his voice.  I would have been jumping up and down and rubbing it in her face that she lost.  I’m tempted to do it anyway even if I wasn’t the one who beat her.  I refrain with what I think is an impressive show of restraint.

Undine takes a moment to answer him.  I don’t think she trusts her voice right now.  Finally, she clears her throat and says, “Indeed you have.”

“So, we can go now right?  We’re tired and would like to get out of here as quickly as possible.”  Yes, there’s some triumphant snark in my voice.

Undine narrows her eyes in my direction.  “You are a dreadful little thing.  I should have you locked up to teach you more respect.”

I’m about to tell her what she can do with that idea when I feel Zoe’s hand on my shoulder.  “I believe the child truly is tired, my Queen.  I do not believe she meant to anger you with her inappropriate tone of voice.”  Yes I did.  But I probably shouldn’t admit that.

Zoe’s right.  I should try to be more tactful so I don’t get us into any more trouble.  “Sorry, I’m just really tired and would love to go home.”

Zoe moves to Undine and puts her hand on her shoulder now.  “Understandable after such an experience.  Don’t you agree, Queen?”

Undine looks at Zoe and her face softens slightly.  Looking back at me, she says, “Let us part on civil terms.  Your trespasses are forgiven, but I am as much in favor of you leaving our realm as you are to go home.”

Wow.  I just got kicked out of the Merpeople realm.  That’s a blow to the ego.  How many people get kicked out of an
entire realm
?  From the way Kallen’s looking at me with that half smirk, I’m thinking not very many.

I nod.  “Thank you and I’m sorry for the trouble I caused.  I didn’t mean to.  I’m just learning a lot of this magical stuff and sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Undine’s face softens a little bit more.  She tilts her head and almost smiles.  “It takes a brave soul to admit as much.  Perhaps someday, in the distant future, we can attempt meeting again.”

In other words, don’t come back any time soon.  “Okay, thanks.”

“Coralia, please escort our visitors back to where you found them so they may travel home.”  With that, she turns and swims away.  I guess we’re dismissed.

Zoe smiles at us.  “That went better than I thought it would.”

I nod.  “I agree.  Are you coming with us?”

I can tell that she wants to say no, but she nods.  “Yes.  I am curious to discover the reason for my summoning.”

I am so relieved.  It would have really sucked  to go through all this and then still not bring her home with us.  “Thank you.”

Kallen, Zoe and I start to follow Coralia.  She and Zoe are swimming way too fast for me.  My legs are so tired.  Who knew swimming was so much harder than walking?  Kallen keeps pace with me and the Mermaids have to keep stopping, waiting for us to catch up.  Finally, I can see the underbelly of a Zaratan in the distance.  I really hope it’s the one that wanted to eat us.  Now, there’s a strange sentence.

Apparently, it’s the right Zaratan because Coralia brings us as close as safety allows, and then she says goodbye.  She and Zoe exchange a hug and a few tears and then she swims away.  Finally, we get to go home.

Chapter 12

When Coralia is out of sight, Zoe turns to me with a smile.  “I assume you have a plan to get us back to the Fairy realm?”

I nod.  “It’ll just be a second.”  I close my eyes after giving a last look at the Zaratan to make sure we’re really out of eating range.  Doing what I always do when I open a realm, I peel back the fabric of each realm creating a gateway.  I swish my hand into the gunky stuff so it’s safe.

Zoe is impressed.  “You are a wonder,” she says with a smile.  With an impressive jump, she goes through the gateway, landing in the ocean in the night of the Fairy realm.  I thought it would be mean to open the gateway onto the sand. 

This does make it a little harder for me and Kallen, though.  We don’t have nice fish tails to help us leap out of the water.  Maybe I should have thought this through better.  It’s not like we’re going through a window; we can’t hold onto the ledge of the gateway and pull ourselves up.  Even Kallen looks a little weary of trying to leap through it.

“Need a little help, cousin?” an amused voice asks.  Kegan’s wading into the water.  “Nice Mermaid, by the way.  Where did you get her?”

“We’re starting a collection,” I say dryly.  I’m not in the mood for Kallen and Kegan’s bickering.  I’m tired, cold and obviously wet.  “Will you please just help us already?”

Kegan’s eyebrows shoot up.  “Someone is in a mood.  Have you been taking lessons from my cousin?  I see many an argument in your futures if you are both going to be grouches.”

He’s right.  “Sorry.”

He grins.  “Much better.  After all, I did not have to wade out into the cold ocean to offer my generous assistance,” he says as he offers me his hand.

I roll my eyes but smile as he easily lifts me out of the water in the Merpeople realm and into the ocean of the Fairy realm.  “Oh, my hero, how can I ever repay you?”

“Be careful how you answer that question,” Kallen threatens.  Kegan just laughs as he offers his assistance to him now.

To me, Kegan says, “We will have to discuss that in private later.”

“Will you now?” a cool voice says from the shore.  Alita has her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.  If I didn’t know her, I would think that she was actually upset, but she has a twinkle in her eyes that can’t be missed.  She’s not jealous in the least.

Kegan on the other hand looks a little sheepish now.  That makes me laugh.  “Careful, silly statements like that mean a lot more now.”  He nods as he blows Alita a kiss. 

She laughs and shakes her head.  “Are you three coming out of the water sometime soon?”

“Definitely,” I say, wading quickly through the water to the shore.  When I’m on the sand, I say to Zoe who has been watching us with a smile on her face, “Do you need anything?”

She shakes her head.  “I am fine.  Please call to me when you have more information.”

“I will.”

“Then please, go warm yourselves before you become ill.”  She dives underwater, presumably off to find her own shelter for the evening.

I am with her on that one.  As much as I’m sick of the water, I really need a nice hot shower.  My skin and clothes are crusted with salt. 

Alita puts her arm around me in a half hug.  “You are freezing,” she says, rubbing her hand up and down my arm.  My teeth are beginning to chatter, so I just nod. 

“What in the world?” Tabitha says from the terrace.  “You two look like Tasmanian devils someone decided to drown.”

I’ve seen a Tasmanian devil.  That’s not a compliment.  “We f-feel l-like that, too,” I say through my chattering teeth.

“What happened to the two of you?” Mom says from behind Tabitha.  She must have just arrived.

“Merpeople realm,” Kallen says.  Tabitha nods in understanding but Mom still looks a little confused.  Grandma didn’t fill her in on a lot of this stuff, so it’s new to her too.

“You two get on upstairs.  Isla is already in bed and I do not want to wake her.  She has been in a foul mood since you two disappeared again.  We will meet in the morning to discuss what happened to you,” Tabitha says, shooing us towards the house.

Mom agrees.  “She’s right.  You two look like you need about ten hours of sleep before you’ll look like yourselves again.”  I don’t miss the accentuation on the word sleep.  That was subtle.

Kallen and I walk into the house with everyone and then quickly say our good nights.  I want to get to our room, strip off these awful clothes and step into my nice warm bath.  Kallen must be able to read my mind because as soon as the bedroom door is shut behind us, he replaces my clothes with a big, warm robe.  I smile at him as I head to the bathing room and my Olympic size tub.

He hesitates in the doorway and I look up at him with a question in my eyes.  “Are you coming?”

“I am debating how safe it is.”

I give him a funny look.  “What do you mean?”  I think the risk of drowning was a little more significant while we were in Mermaid hell.

“I am imagining you in the bath and I am already having a hard time keeping my hands off from you.”

I roll my eyes.  “I don’t recall asking you to keep your hands off from me.”

He steps into the room and closes the door.  “No, you have not.  That does not make it right in our current situation.”

Our current situation?  Does he mean recovering from the Merpeople realm, the fact that we’re not really married, or that I might already be pregnant?  I think about it for a heartbeat and then I decide that as this moment, I don’t care.  After making sure the Angel rock made the transition into my robe pocket, I shrug out of the robe and walk into the tub.  I hear him groan loudly right before I put my head underwater to get the salt out of my hair.