The Tied: Possessive Gods, Book Three Read online

  “Your room has a bed,” she says when I open the doors to show her my adjoining room.

  “It does,” I agree.

  “Do you take your sea elves there?”

  She asks the question archly, boldly. I wonder if she is trying to shock me or impress me with her carnal knowledge.

  I do not know how to answer, and so I choose not to. Helios is a very old friend. He has trusted me with his daughter. I am going to let at least ten minutes pass before giving into the urge to seduce and deflower her.

  “I have business of many kinds,” I tell her, avoiding her question entirely. “And it often takes up much of my day, such as the days are down here. But I am going to give you free rein of the castle and its surrounds. Nobody will harm you here, but outside the boundaries of the city there are predatory beasts. Sharks, giant squid, leviathan octopuses, that sort of thing. You would do well to avoid them.”

  “Good tip,” she says, trying for a smile.

  I know she isn’t happy. Her thoughts are above the waves. But I plan to distract her. She is a princess, and princesses are well known for their fairly simple likes and dislikes.

  “There will be a banquet in your honor tonight,” I tell her. “There are many lords and ladies excited to meet you. You are already very popular in my realm.”

  “I am?” Her eyes light up upon hearing that.

  “Yes,” I tell her. I do not mention that she is popular because I have decreed her to be so.

  “That sounds like it could be nice.”

  “It will be.”

  4

  Triton

  I have gathered the glittering youth of Undersea to join me at the palace. These are the ones who have the most in common with Lucy. They are the sons and daughters of the nobility, well bred, spoiled, and easily distracted, as I am hoping she will prove to be.

  The energy in my palace is usually more sedate, but I am enjoying this shift. New blood is essential for a healthy society. Sooner or later, the young people arriving now in their finest jewels will be the courtiers, lords, and ladies of my realm. This gathering therefore serves a double purpose. It will set Lucy at ease and allow me to pick out those who might be suitable for future positions of influence.

  Lucy is by my side, sitting in the chair usually reserved for the queen or princess regent. She does not know this, but her seat has remained empty for a great many years.

  She is more shy than I thought she would be. After seeing her descend the stairs naked at her birthday party, I was expecting a display of extroversion at the very least. Instead, she barely speaks to anyone. She picks at her food, pretends to sip her wine, and is thoroughly distracted.

  Young lady Ardwen is passing by and attempts to make conversation.

  “So you’re a princess of the land?”

  “Yes,” Lucy says, giving her a monosyllabic answer.

  “I like your hair.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy says stiffly. “I like your….” She lets her eyes drift over Ardwen a full minute past what would be a polite pause. “…bangles.”

  I am beginning to wonder if this wasn’t a mistake. Too much too soon, not so much a welcome and necessary distraction as being thrown in at the deep end.

  “Here,” I nudge my glass of coral wine toward her. “You may have a little of this.”

  She looks at it askance, then lifts the chalice to her mouth and sniffs it. I assume she is going to reject it, but a moment later, it is gone, the entirety of the vessel poured down her delicate throat.

  “Tasty,” she decrees in that elegant way she has. Lucy is exceptionally well bred. Helios’ godly essence mixes well with human DNA. She has more than a little of her father in her. With just one glass of wine inside her, she begins to glow, both literally and socially.

  She turns to the young mermaid to her right, and initiates a conversation. The mermaid’s name is Esel, and her mother is the keeper of the treasury. I chose to sit Esel there for a reason, she’s a sensible young woman and I thought she would provide some stability for Lucy.

  “What is it like having a tail?”

  Esel looks at her, thinks for a moment, and answers the question with a question of her own. “What is it like having legs?”

  Lucy considers that question for a long moment before replying with one of her own. “What’s it like breathing out of your butt?”

  “What is it like talking out of yours?”

  Lucy’s first courtly conversation is not going well. She has not been trained in the art of fine conversation, and that is painfully obvious. She asks questions which are too direct, borderline insulting, and Esel has not spent enough time at court to learn how to deflect them in a charming manner. What I thought would be a good match is quickly turning into a disaster.

  “Esel, enough,” I say. Esel should know better than to be rude to Lucy. Even if she is young, she knows better than to return Lucy’s innocent rudeness with rudeness of her own.

  “My apologies, your highness,” Esel says smoothly and glibly. “I did not realize that the two legs would be so uneducated.”

  Two legs is an insult which I am surprised to hear Esel use. It is coarse language which belongs in a backwater bar, not the castle. I think perhaps the wine has been flowing a little too freely tonight already.

  “Do not forget, I am also a two legs,” I remind Esel.

  Those few words make the little mermaid crumble. “I did not mean to cause offense, your highness,” she stammers, clearly having forgotten that pertinent fact. “I mean a two legs from the dry lands. A proper two legs. A human one.”

  “We eat your kind,” Lucy says. “I’ve seen Ragnar descale and…”

  “Enough,” I growl.

  Esel is staring at Lucy in horror, and Lucy is now looking particularly pleased with herself for having upset Esel. I understand the urge for her to get her own back, but references to what amounts to cannibalism cannot be tolerated at a dinner party.

  “May I be excused, your majesty?” Esel makes the request very politely, and I grant her the wish.

  “You have to be more diplomatic,” I say to Lucy.

  “I don't have to be anything. I’m a prisoner here. And she insulted me.”

  “How many prisoners have banquets thrown in their honor?”

  “At least one,” Lucy replies pertly. “Me.”

  “You are not a prisoner. You are an honored guest, but if you cannot behave in a civilized way and make polite conversation with the guests, then you may retire to your room.”

  “Gladly,” Lucy says, throwing her napkin down. She stands up, casts what can only be called an impetuous and imperial gaze over the room, and storms out.

  I am tempted to follow her. She needs to be disciplined. A good welting spanking with a belt should do the trick. But she will keep. The banquet will not end because one spoiled princess decides to make a scene. Lucy has to learn that unlike her father, the sun, the world does not revolve around her.

  Lucy

  The party is still going on in the banquet chamber. I hear the voices and the musical instruments rising after a short lull of shock at my departure.

  I cannot believe how easy this is going to be. I knew the moment I sat down that I was going to pick a fight with one of the others. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s bicker. Raine and I practiced our entire lives. I can squabble like nobody else on this planet or any other.

  Being sent to my room was my plan all along. I knew I was risking Triton’s ire, but all my plans risk Triton’s ire.

  I’m not staying down here. I’m going to be free.

  Escaping isn’t hard. There are windows everywhere and I float right out of them. Apparently Triton was planning to keep me here with a mixture of social pressure and vague threats. They’re not very effective.

  Swimming up through the waters under my own power is going to take forever, but there are other modes of transportation. I have seen dolphins harnessed down by the palace stables, and know that they are
ridden by royal courtiers from time to time. I have ridden horses extensively. I am sure dolphins will not be much different. They're basically water horses, right?

  Eee! Eee!

  The dolphins begin to squeak with excitement as I approach their stables. They’re keen to escape their little enclosures, and so am I.

  5

  Triton

  She’s gone.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I have known Lucy from a distance for a long time, but I have not known her as she is now. I thought she would be compliant to at least a small degree. I did not think she would be brave enough to tackle the near infinite depths of the ocean. It is terrifying even to experienced merpeople to leave Undersea and strike out into the dark unknown. There are ceremonies every year where the merwarriors earn their manhood by going out alone and slaying a hostile shark. For a princess to have wandered into the oblivion of the ocean is either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid.

  The banquet is still continuing in the great hall. I decided to check on Lucy not more than half an hour after she was sent away. That means she has had sufficient time to float into the depths of oblivion. I suppose I knew she’d make a break for it sooner rather than later. I never expect obedience where humans or gods are concerned, and Lucy is both.

  The problem with the ocean is that it is impossibly vast. Once one loses something in it, it is almost impossible to find.

  “Er, sire?”

  A young courtier is approaching me.

  “Yes, Swimmingsley?”

  Swimmingsley is a young merman, the youngest son of my eldest knight. He is bright but quiet and lacks confidence in all things.

  “I know where princess Lucy is. I… if that’s who you’re looking for.”

  Well, that was easy.

  “You do?”

  “She took a dolphin mount, but it threw her off,” he says. “I believe she was headed due up when I met her.”

  “You met her?”

  “Yes. She is at my father’s house. She is playing with the undersea dolphin pups.”

  “How did that come to pass?”

  He gives the minutest of shrugs. “I asked her if she wanted to come and see them, and she said yes.”

  “So you managed to distract her. Good work. Let’s go get her back.”

  I am furious at Lucy. She knows what is at stake, and yet she refuses to act as though she does. Her immature behavior is no longer something to be indulged. It is something to be punished. Harshly.

  We arrive at Swimmingsley’s house in very short order. I have no intention of wasting a single moment to get her back.

  “She’s in there, sir.”

  He points to the pen inside the breeding chamber. I see Lucy there, crouched among the pups.

  She is happy. I have never seen that smile on her face. She literally lights up the room in which she sits with the dolphin pups playing around her. These deep sea dolphins do not need to visit the surface as their shallow cousins do thanks to charms laid upon them, the same charms I have laid upon Lucy, as a matter of fact.

  “Hello, Lucy.”

  I step into the room. It dims when she sees me. I feel an ache at the realization that I am a villain in her world. To all of undersea, I am a revered king. To Lucy, I am nothing but her captor.

  “Hello,” she says. “Have you come to scold me?”

  “I have come to retrieve you.”

  “I’m not a starfish to be thrown and caught,” she says. “But you seem to be the kind of dog who likes to play fetch.”

  Lucy

  The expression on Swimmingsley’s face is one of horror. Apparently, one does not speak to Triton, King of Undersea, that way.

  I knew he was going to thrash me when I said those words. I invited his discipline for a reason. I want to hate him. Have to hate him. There can be no escape if I have even the softest feelings toward him. That's what’s holding me here. Not dolphin pups, or young squires begging me to return so they do not get in trouble. It’s him.

  I hate how much I love him.

  I love him?

  Dammit. By all the gods. I love him.

  I hardly know him but I’ve been infatuated with him for a year. And now I’m taunting him. Tormenting him. I’m talking to him in a way which I know will anger him and make him touch me. Intimately.

  The only question is will it happen here, or will he take me back to the castle and deal with me there?

  “Come here, Lucy,” he says. “I’m taking you home.”

  “No, you're not. You’re taking me to your cut-rate castle.”

  “Enough,” he growls.

  I fall silent. It is enough.

  Triton takes me by the hand and draws me back through the waters. It is a long walk, or swim, I suppose. But he does not say a word during it. There is not a lecture. There is not a warning. There are no threats of what is to come. I am left to the flowing of the liquid around me, and the growing feeling of something like guilt in the pit of my belly.

  In a single day, everything I know has fallen apart. My comfortable, regular life has been blown into a thousand pieces, along with the exterior of the golden palace which is now a shattered ruin.

  I have every reason to be angry and scared, and to act out. But I also know that I am not helping the war effort by making Triton chase me around Undersea. It was a distraction to argue and escape, and it was an even greater distraction to play with those sweet little undersea dolphin pups. They were like I was once: innocent. They don’t have anything to worry about. They don’t have the concept of concern. I was like them, yesterday. Today I am something different.

  Triton returns me to the palace, undergoing the formality of traversing through the doors. It makes me wonder if he always lived in the great waters, or if he is holding on to some distant dry land existence.

  His grip on me never wavers.

  I stay as silent as he does, though I want to ask him so many questions. I want to know if he is angry with me, though that is hardly a question I need to ask, I suppose. I tried to make him angry. So of course he is.

  Everything he has tried to give me, I have thrown in his face. He’s probably going to put me in some kind of dungeon and not let me go anywhere or do anything until the war is over. That’s what I’d do, if I were him.

  Triton leads me all the way to his room. Not my room. His. I look at the bed, the great expanse of soft foam and silken sheets. It seemed strange at first, to see a bed in the water, but already the water is starting to seem just like the air used to. I am becoming accustomed to breathing it. It no longer feels wet against my skin. Instead, it is starting to feel as though I have been given the gift of much greater agility. Perhaps I have been given that gift. My experience of this realm is entirely mediated by Triton. I am sure if Triton willed it, I could become heavy and broken and cold beneath these waters as thousands of generations of my human ancestors have.

  All that stands between me and the end of myself is him.

  “Stay,” he says. It’s just a single world but it finds me in my gut and makes me obey. The thrill of disobedience has disappeared entirely. Now I am wondering what the inevitable consequences will be.

  He goes to one of the many fine chests in his chamber, reaches in, and begins to pull out loops of something that looks like rope. The sight of it brings a whimper to my lips, even though I don’t yet know what he has in store.

  Triton walks toward me, and drapes a piece of the rope over my shoulder. It is innocent, for a moment, then he draws it down over my shoulder, down my belly between my breasts, and then up again between my thighs.

  I gasp and jump a little, but he does not allow it.

  “Stand still,” he says. Another two words which feel like welcome relief from the silence. I wish he’d tell me what he’s thinking. I want to know what the… my thoughts are disrupted as he winds the rope around under my breasts. There is a method to this, and it is more than tying me up to stop me leaving. If that’s what he wanted to do,
it would be more simple than this.

  “You will not stay where you are left, and I will not have you stealing dolphins and engaging in acts of pointless rebellion. You can and will be harmed if you are not careful - and you are not careful. You do not know Swimmingsley, and yet you followed him to his home. There are fresh hatchlings who know not to go with strangers who tell you they have puppies.”

  He winds the rope around me. It is smooth, but strong, like the leather of the ocean. It snugs against my sex, tightening against my lower lips with a grip which feels intimate and yet disciplinary.

  I am in trouble.

  The real kind of trouble. Not the naughty-girl-gets-sent-to-her-room kind of trouble. The kind where I lose something that matters.

  “There is a time to obey, and when it comes to me, that time is always.”

  Triton is many things. A god. A king. He has also become my captor and tormentor.

  I squirm, testing the bonds, but I know instinctively that they will not loosen. Triton is not careless. I thought I was getting away with something when I slipped out of my room, but he knew what I was doing all along. He anticipated my moves before I made them, and now I cannot make any moves at all.

  He does not stop at one tie, or two. His hands are rough, but careful as they wind around my body, my dress becoming an irrelevance as the tightening of his ties makes it fit my form perfectly. They wrap around under my breasts, holding them up like a brassiere. They also snake around my waist, with the effect of corseting me tightly.

  Triton

  She is supple and nubile. She is willing, and by the scent drifting through the water, I can surmise that she is wet, her essence becoming one with the ocean.

  “You will stay in these until the morning comes,” I tell her. “You were given enough freedom to demonstrate your refusal to obey. Now you will understand what it is to be without freedom. To be completely captive. Never again will you complain about being controlled when the truth is you were being given as much freedom as was safe.”