The Tied: Possessive Gods, Book Three Read online

  “She had it in her,” Ned smirks. “She gets it from her father, doesn’t she?”

  Ragnar gives him a look of such pure loathing I think it would be better for Ned’s sake if he just dropped dead where he stood.

  “Nobody has manifested that form in eons without help. I myself have never incarnated as a dragon.”

  “I merely opened the door,” Ned smirks. “She flew through.”

  “You pushed me,” I mumble. Nobody's listening. Ragnar and Ned are too busy fighting to listen to me.

  “And almost died,” my father snarls.

  “Almost is the operative word.”

  My mother does not take kindly to his flippancy. “Do you not see what you have done? What toll your antics have taken!? My daughter is a fish!”

  “I am NOT a fish. I am a mermaid, and if you don’t like it…”

  The sweet moment of reunion has been ruined in the way my family ruins everything. In the best, most welcome way. I don’t know what it is about families which makes one feel simultaneously very loved and also incredibly shitty about oneself.

  “You’re a very pretty mermaid,” my mother reassures me. “And more importantly, you saved Okeanus. You were brave. You were stronger than any of us could ever have imagined. Perhaps we don’t need to worry who did what to whom when. Perhaps we can celebrate all Lucy gave for us?”

  Her tone is very pointed right now. I do not think all is forgiven. I am sure it will not be forgotten. There will be consequences days, or more likely, decades, or millennia in the future. But for now, they want me to be happy. They think I am sad because I lost my legs and gained a tail, but I am not sad at all. I did what I wanted to do. I proved that I had strength, and I used that strength to protect those I love. And I am still here. Those are blessings few ever enjoy.

  I do have some questions, however.

  “So who is this guy?” I point at Ned.

  “This is one of the dragons from beneath Yggdrasil,” Ragnar growls.

  I look at Ned askance. “So you’re not my animal?”

  “Animus. No. I’m just a simple dragon,” he smiles brightly.

  “That means you watched us. Triton and I…”

  “Most entertaining thing I’d seen in a very long time,” he smirks. “Triton, you really need to pay more attention when you are in flagrante delicto, as we say.”

  “And I’m not a dragon?”

  “You have a piece of it inside you. Everybody in Ragnar’s line does. That’s the only way to protect Yggdrasil. A god which lacks any dragon in his own soul cannot keep other dragons contained.”

  “You never told me I was part dragon,” Raine interjects. “You never said anything about that.”

  “You never listened properly,” Ragnar grunts. “I tried to instruct the pair of you, but…”

  “Oh, there are all manner of secrets these old gods like to keep, especially from their families,” Ned smiles with glee at the fact he is stirring up endless amounts of shit. I knew he was a trickster god. I never suspected he was a trickster dragon. Those two qualities together seem, well, dangerous.

  “Did Entity attack Yggdrasil?” I change the subject.

  “Entity does not know how to attack gods. It was coming for rebel humanity. There is nothing an authoritarian nightmare hates more than those who are free,” Helios replies.

  “And are the humans safe?”

  “All of them,” Raine says proudly. “…except for the ones who died.”

  I raise a brow.

  “There were casualties,” she admits. “But not as many as there could have been.There are still a hundred humans left on Okeanus.”

  “So Entity can come back for them whenever it pleases?”

  “I don’t think so,” she smiles broadly. “They’ve been given a divine gift so they will no longer draw Entity here. As has our mother.”

  “You’re saying there are a hundred new gods on Okeanus?”

  “A hundred and one,” my mother says, referring to herself. “You would have thought your fathers would attend to that sooner, wouldn’t you?”

  A hundred and one brand new gods, all from the most humble of human beginnings. I can’t imagine how that will affect Okeanus, or the universe, for that matter.

  I put the matter out of my mind. It doesn’t feel like it is my problem. I have solved all the problems I intend to solve for now, and perhaps forever.

  “I am so glad to see you all,” I say. “But it’s time I tried my new tail. Toodles!”

  I flip myself free of the bed with one surprisingly natural motion and feel myself propelled through the water and out the window with all the grace and alacrity I used to admire and envy in the mermaids.

  I was alway beautiful, but now I am… I’m going to have to consult a dictionary to discover what word means even more beautiful than beautiful.

  13

  Triton

  It feels like an eternity before I am able to get Lucy on her own away from her family. I have invited them all to stay in Undersea until Helios rebuilds the golden palace, which he seems to be in no particular hurry to do. I think they enjoy the change of scenery, and the relaxation they are able to indulge in while being in someone else’s realm. The war has left scars across Okeanus which will remain in evidence for a very long time. Down here in Undersea, things are as they always were. Even gods crave certainty and comfort at times like these, and I have the luxury of being able to provide it.

  Lucy has made herself elusive, not because she’s running away, but because she is more mobile than ever and she seems intent on exploring all the physical capabilities of her new body. Once her family is settled in their respective rooms, I go after their errant daughter.

  She is swimming around the spires, diving down the sheer faces of the palace, and there is a smile on her face broader and more full of joy than any I have ever seen. She’s glowing with happiness. It radiates from her every pore.

  I was worried she would feel deformed by her tail, that she would feel I had taken something from her, though in truth I did the only thing I could to save her. I hope above all hope that I never have to see her hurt again. She gave her everything for Okeanus, and I’ll give her everything I can.

  “You,” I say, grabbing her by the wrist as she swims past. “You and I need to have a conversation, don’t we?”

  She smiles just a little too brightly, the way she does when she wants to charm her way out of something.

  “About what?”

  As if she doesn’t know.

  “Come with me, Lucy,” I say, drawing her back inside.

  She flaps about in my grasp, using her tail to try to resist me.

  “I’m not going to tie you up and beat you, don’t worry.”

  “You’re not?” She sounds disappointed. There will be time to tie her up and have my way with her in the future. For now, we need to talk. What is done is done, and what a doing it was. I can no longer pretend that Lucy is a pretty little weakling who needs to be protected. It was always a pretense, on both our parts. In truth, I was never protecting her. I was trying to contain a force of nature, and I was always doomed to fail.

  I take her to my room, the last bastion of privacy in this palace freshly filled with refugee gods.

  “You ran from me,” I say, releasing her. “You escaped the dungeon and you fled to the sky.”

  “You left me no choice. I don’t think Entity could have been defeated without me. We are a family for a reason. You can’t just leave parts out. I belonged on that battlefield…” she starts throwing out all the reasons to justify her actions. She needs none of them. I understand perfectly.

  “I know. You are right. Though I would bind you again to stop you.”

  “And I would find a way out again, if I had to.”

  “Brat,” I growl, loving the way she smiles when I tell her what a bad girl she is. “Do you like your tail?”

  “I love it. I am so elegant now,” she smiles and does a twirl in the water, spinn
ing about with what seems to be natural agility. This is Lucy all over. She could be mourning her legs, but instead she is embracing her new form, finding the beauty in it and using it to full advantage. She has morphed before my eyes from an all-too-human seeming princess, to a beast capable of defending Okeanus, to a stunning mermaid who is ready to rule the waves by my side. She truly does make a beautiful mermaid. She’s going to make an even more beautiful bride.

  “Lucy, will you…”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Whatever it is you are asking, yes,” she says, floating off with a flip of her tail. “That is my answer to everything now. Want to go through a weird door? Yes. Want to be a dragon? Yes. Want to save the world? Uh huh, yes!”

  I capture her, and cup her face in my hands to focus her. She’s so brilliantly happy it is hard to keep her attention, but I think I’ll have it once she hears what I have to say.

  “Lucy, I want you to be my bride. I want you to marry me. Become queen of Undersea, and reign over these waters by my side.”

  Her eyes light up and a smile broader than any I have seen before spreads over her lips. “Queen? I’d get to be queen? Do you know what that would mean?”

  “What?”

  “No more princess suite! Even better, no more dungeon!”

  “No more dungeon,” I agree. She’ll never be out of my sight, if I have anything to do with it.

  “And something else,” she says, archly.

  “What?”

  She reaches out and tugs at my hair. “Your potency.”

  “You want a baby?”

  “I want a lot of babies,” she smiles. “I want a whole swath of them. Not just two like my mother had. I want dozens of princes and princesses, all of them with my dragon lineage. I want Okeanus to be protected forevermore by our family.”

  “Shall we try for one first? See how you like it? Then perhaps consider a multitude more? And before we try for one, would you do me the immense honor of becoming my wife?”

  She smiles so brilliantly and beautifully the water around her shimmers like gold.

  “Yes! A thousand times, yes.”

  I catch her by the hand and draw her back to me. I want her to feel every word I have to say. “I love you, Lucy. I love you more than anything on this planet. I love you more than anything in existence. I was born in the void before anything was, and I love you more than that.”

  “So you love me a lot then?”

  Her smile is arch and gleeful. I reach for her but end up in her wake as she darts away from me with a flick of her tail. If I didn’t know better, I would think she had been born with it.

  Lucy belongs down here. With me. Now that the war is over and the battle won, she is free to go as she pleases, as far as her tail will take her. But she will not go. She will stay where she belongs. Right by my side. Not because I make her, but because this is where she wants to be.

  Epilogue

  Ned

  And so it was that Lucy, temporary dragon and current mermaid, became the queen of Undersea, ruling over a realm as beautiful as she with her husband, Triton, by her side.

  I was not invited to the wedding, but that does not stop me watching from a distance as she proceeds down the aisle, resplendent in a gown with a train nearly as long as the aisle itself, held by two dozen courtiers swimming with difficulty under the labor of the garment which must surely have put great pressure on the royal neck.

  There goes the greatest hero Okeanus has ever known, a princess who transcended the notions of what she was to become and everything she was born to be. Her potential lay hidden behind an appealing facade, was broken by the fury of the dragon, and has now given way to an even greater beauty.

  The threat of humanity was conquered by the daughter of the daughter of man, who also happened to be the daughter of… well, the family tree becomes complicated, but there can be no doubt her breeding helped. The machine intellect, Entity, has been forced to wind its mechanical tentacles back to the planet from which it came and reconsider its choices.

  Of course, none of this has come without a cost. After all, the dragon the gods themselves feared has been set free.

  Everybody will live happily ever after.

  Especially me.

  I am the one god who is not content with merely having repelled Entity. I believe humanity needs to be freed from the grasp of the machine intellect which has enslaved it, and then thoroughly thrashed for having allowed it to happen in the first place.

  But that’s another story.

  Literally.