He trusted me, but it would take more time for him to be comfortable around Maddox and Briar too. After tossing him another smile, I returned to the beach and plopped back down beside them.
“We should head back.” Maddox stood from the sand.
“Already?” I whined. “But I just sat down. Like, literally.”
“I agree with the captain.” Briar stood and offered me his hand, which I took with a sigh and allowed him to pull me to my feet. “We’ve been here for over two hours. Too much exposure to the sun isn’t healthy.”
“Can we swim for just a little longer?” I asked, batting my eyes at him, then at Maddox. “Pretty please?”
Briar visibly faltered but Maddox held firm. For a moment anyway. As I made my eyes even bigger—and way more pitiful—his deep blue eyes narrowed.
“Very well,” Maddox said, a tic in his jaw. He then ducked low and crashed into me, hoisting me up onto his shoulder.
I squealed as he walked toward the water. And since he was a damn giant, the ground looked so far away from up high. “You love me, remember? I’m your precious and adorable muffin lord. You wouldn’t throw me into the—”
He threw me into the sea.
After having been mostly dried off from the hot sun, the water was a shock to my senses at first. It wasn’t too deep. I found my footing and broke the surface, slinging water from my hair. I was about to spout off to him when something brushed my calf beneath the water.
Something with scales… and a fin.
Of course, my mind chose that moment to remember all the shark movies I’d watched. Ones with megalodons and great whites with a taste for human flesh. Images of gruesome attacks and blood darkening the water replayed in my head.
“Shark!” I screamed and lunged toward Maddox. “Oh my god, it almost bit me!”
Alarm flashed in his eyes as he caught me against his chest. That alarm then transitioned to amusement. “Take a look at your shark.”
I turned, expecting to see a huge dorsal fin charging at me and big black eyes set into a white face full of sharp teeth.
I saw a man instead. A shirtless man with golden skin and teal blue hair. Shades of cyan wound through the medium length strands, and his eyes sparkled like sapphires. He wiggled his fingers at me in a small wave.
“But I felt—”
The man dove under the water, and a massive blue tail breached the surface before slapping back down.
“—a fin,” I said, voice higher in pitch. “Holy shit, is that a merman?” I flipped around to Maddox. “They’re real? Seriously?”
“Real? Of course they are.” He cocked his head to the side.
“Are you feeling all right, love?” Briar asked, stepping into the water behind us with a worried scrunch to his brow. “The sun may be getting to him, Maddox. We should get him to the shade to cool off.”
Crap.I still hadn’t told them the truth; that I wasn’t from their world. I was afraid of how they would react. What if it was the one thing about me they couldn’t accept?
Lake stepped from the tree line, worry on his face too.
“I’m okay,” I said, inwardly cursing the slight increase in my pitch. “I only meant I’ve never met one before.” Hopefully they bought it. I turned to look at the merman. He had swum farther out and floated on his back, tail slowly flipping as he stretched out in the water. “He’s amazing.”
“They can be quite mischievous.” Maddox rested a hand on my hip, his gaze on the merman. “I’ve seen that one before. He’s friendly.”
“Some of them can be wicked,” Briar said, knee deep in the water. “They’ve been known to lure sailors to their deaths.”
“Like sirens?” I asked. “They sing and lure in unsuspecting men, then drag them to the depths of the sea and drown them.”
“Precisely,” Briar said. “But not all merfolk are like the sirens. Many are gentle.”
I stared in awe as the merman continued to float around the cove, the tanned skin of his stomach and chest glistening.
What if the fairy tales from my world were true? Maybe other people had been transported from one world to another. I had been sent to Bremloc. It wasn’t unreasonable to believe someone from this world could’ve been sent to my old one too.
