Page 61 of Forged Bonds

“That was my first thought, too.”

“What if we give her a reason to be patient? Something to do in the meantime?” he suggested.

“We are doing something,” I said, confused. “The last mission was a disaster. We’re training.”

“Yeah, but there are sixteen waking hours in the day and not all of them are spent training or fucking. We could give her something else.”

He had a point. We were stretching the limits of how long we could safely train for as it was, and we still only spent five hours sparring. Any strategizing was pointless. Altair and Sky had left to scope out the location and were feeding us more intel day by day. We’d all wanted to go, but Nolan had made the valid point that if Kylan caught wind of any of us, he’d cancel his plans. Risking it wasn’t worth it, so we sent the two with the lowest bounties. Yeah, they still had bounties, but at least their faces weren’t plastered all over every news site. They’d been living with the risk for fifty years.

“Are we supposed to make her take up crochet, or something? She would gouge out my eyes with the hook.”

Emmett snorted. “I was thinking more along the lines of figuring out what happened to her sister.”

My entire body stiffened. “That will only make her worse.”

“I don’t think so. She’s being rash because the threat is against her. With the threat being against her sister, she’ll think it through. We can plan some kind of op for after we kill Kylan.”

Fuck. I had no idea if he was right or completely off base, but I couldn’t let her look into her sister. She would find out Nolan and I had hid Maisie’s predicament from her, and it would only make our teamwork worse. There was something else we could use to get her mind off it.

“She’s a nymph,” I blurted, the thought coming to me abruptly. “We can have her training to breathe underwater and use her water abilities. She’s never connected with them, but with practice she has it in her blood.”

“I want to ask why you’re opposed to her looking into her sister, but I’d rather not know,” Emmett said.

Fucking intuitive bastard.

“This is a good idea, though. It’s a project, she can focus on it, and it’s not destructive.”

“I can teach her,” I said. “It’s been a while, as I’ve mentioned, but merdemons and nymphs function in similar ways. She’s not going to grow a tail like I do, but we breathe the same way.”

“Only problem is we don’t have a pool.”

“Luckily, we do have a really big bathtub.”

* * *

Staring down through the crystal clear water at the porcelain bottom of the tub, I sighed. Something about the water made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I’d half lived in the water growing up. My visits to lakes had been infrequent before being cursed, but they had existed.

Yet something about this much water was unsettling.

“I think this is stupid,” Freya proclaimed behind me, her fingers grazing my torso.

She was getting naked, and I’d opted not to look. If I looked, we would end up fucking, which wasn’t the point of this exercise.

“It’s good to practice,” I said. “See if you can do it. Maisie is married to the Duke of the Depths, and I’m assuming your first order of business after dispatching the threat on your life is getting your sister out of Zemterra using Nolan’s connections. It’ll be easier if you can go down to the castle.”

“Underwater castles were Maisie’s dream,” Freya muttered. “Now I bet they’re her nightmare.”

I didn’t verbally agree, but she was likely right. Zemterran Dukes in general weren’t the most savoury, and of course I had more inside knowledge of Maisie’s than I was telling Freya.

She rounded me and stepped up onto the edge of the tub, dipping her toe in. It was hard to avoid focusing on her body when it was so proudly on display. Every inch of her was gorgeous. I managed by focusing on her face, which was twisted up into a displeased expression after she’d dipped her toes into the water.

“This is barely lukewarm,” she said.

I chuckled. “Did you think Cala Lake was heated to the temperature of a hot bath? You’re going to have to get used to a little cold water.”

Holding onto my shoulder for balance, she put one whole foot into the tub. I watched it go beneath the surface, my unsettled feeling intensifying.

Fuck, I couldn’t watch. What was wrong with me?

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