Sadly, Anso’s cousin had rediscovered her self-control. Lifting her chin -
which really was regal - she strode without another word from the dining room.
“I thought you wanted dessert,” Ty tossed after her. At some point, he’d sat back down in his chair. He lounged in it lazily, the perfect picture of bad-boy insouciance.
“Ty,” Anso said scoldingly. “There’s no need to bait her.”
“Sorry.” Ty grinned so they knew he wasn’t. “Watching Ellice get her comeuppance was the most fun I’ve had in a while.” His eyes cut to James and gleamed brighter. “Make that the
second
most.” James made a low sound beside her. He covered it by clearing his throat and turning to address the king. “What will your cousenemy do?”
“My what?” Anso asked.
“You know, a frenemy but a cousin.”
“Ah.” James had made Anso smile, which pleased Olivia in complicated ways. “I expect my
cousenemy
is heading straight for the family lawyer.”
“There
are
precedents for what you’ve done,” Ty confirmed grudgingly.
“William the Second’s queen was a pre-married Outsider. And Conjugus the Magnificent’s - though that was prior to Oceana being magically transplanted to the Pocket. The legal parallels might not apply perfectly.”
“Blood law trumps everything,” Anso said. “The legalities at least I have no worries about.”
He sighed, which suggested he had worries on other fronts. He released Olivia’s fingers, freeing her from the dilemma of whether to comfort him again.
“Your mother was an Outsider?” she asked, too curious not to.
“From New Jersey. Her name was Denise.”
He sounded tired when he told her.
Queen Denise
. Perversely, she thought
Queen Olivia
had a nicer ring.
“Well, I want dessert,” Ty announced. “Say what you will about Ellice, this apple crumble looks delicious. Who besides me wants some?”
“I could have a bite,” James said tentatively.
They all could, evidently. Their appetites whetted by the drama, they sat down together and polished off the treat.
* * *
“Forgive me,” the king said as he came back. “I don’t wish to abandon you on your first night here, but I need to speak to the head of my King’s Council. It’s important that I ensure my cousin isn’t spinning the news of your arrival to suit herself. Ty, I’ve pulled together some viewing material in the library. Could you show the ... Forsters how to work the machine?”
Ty rose, the deference in his manner seeming very natural. Sardonic ways aside, Ty respected his friend’s position. “Of course. Do you want me to join you with Lord Noth when I’m through?”
“No. I’d feel more comfortable if you stay here to watch over them.” Did he mean
watch over
or
guard
? James couldn’t tell from his demeanor.
“Are we in danger?” he asked aloud.
Anso looked at him, and James understood why Olivia was affected by those deep-blue eyes. They weren’t just beautiful, they were soulful, as if the man behind them were both sad and kind. Right that moment, the expression in his eyes was very serious. James wondered how old Anso was. He’d implied he was over thirty, but he could have passed for younger.
“Generally,” Anso said, “we’re a peaceful people, but no one close to a throne can truly claim to be safe. If you’d remain within my apartments, that would be best for now.”
“For now,” James said.
“For now,” Anso repeated.
The king was definitely taking his measure with that steady stare. Interest coiled in James, centering on an organ lower than his brain. Pushing that aside as more than he could deal with right then, he watched Anso nod at Ty and leave.
“Come on,” Ty said to both of them. “I’ll show you how to work the digital viewer.”
The library was everything the name suggested: dark wood, dark leather, floor to ceiling shelves packed with old and new volumes. Someone was a fan of Ian Fleming. His books occupied an entire shelf. Ty settled James and Olivia on a long leather Chesterfield. He pushed a button to elevate a large flat screen from the center of an old carved table. Then he handed James the remote. The device very much resembled ones he was used to.
“If I know Anso,” Ty said - and assuredly he did, “he’ll have put the serious documentaries at the front of the queue. If that gets boring, skip ahead to the sexy ones.”
“Because that’s what you’d watch first?” James teased.
Ty didn’t laugh, and James recalled Ty calling himself the Great Whore of Oceana. Had his joke been too on the mark?
“Sex always matters,” Ty said. His face was difficult to read, his gaze holding James’s with an intensity that threatened to make him squirm. God, this man ignited his pilot light. “I’ll be in the room next door, if you need anything.”
“Ty,” Olivia said as he turned to go.
He faced her with a small but noticeable reluctance.
“Thank you for being so considerate of us,” she said.
This seemed to strike Ty as unexpected - perhaps as unexpected as Anso’s declaration of respect.
“Anso is my king,” Ty said hoarsely. “To be considerate of you shows the same to him.”
“Nonetheless, this situation is challenging for everyone.”
“For Anso as well. When his father, King Lobodon died last month -” Ty shut his mouth, perhaps thinking this too much information to give them. He had a harder time restraining his eyes. Now that he’d finally looked at James’s wife, he couldn’t seem to wrench his stare away. A blush stained his cheeks, and his lungs went in and out more quickly.
James’s brows went up as recognition struck. Ty desired Olivia. He wasn’t solely attracted to men, though clearly he wasn’t as comfortable interacting with women. A serious erection was even then beginning to strain the leather laces on his trousers.
Realizing this himself, Ty offered a jerky bow. “Forgive my inappropriate reaction, Your Majesty. You’re very beautiful.”
“I am ... not insulted,” Olivia responded carefully.
Ty exited, leaving both of them dumbfounded.
“Well,” Olivia said shakily. “I wouldn’t have guessed I could strike him speechless.”
“Neither would I,” James admitted.
Recovering her humor, Olivia waggled her brows at him. “Jealous?” He laughed and elbowed her. “Just for that, I’m not sharing the remote.” It was good to joke with her, to know that however awkward their circumstances, neither of them was as freaked out as they could have been. James slung his arm around Olivia’s shoulders and flicked on the viewing screen.
Ty had been right about the documentaries coming first, though they certainly weren’t boring. Fascinated, James and Olivia both leaned forward to take them in.
In some ways, Oceana was like cities they were used to. Housing half a million souls, the underwater metropolis was home mainly to wereseals, though other races did live and visit here. One documentary examined why elves so often went into medicine. Another was an architectural tour of different areas of the city, touting their appeal for magic historians.
Plain old historians would have liked Oceana too. The older parts resembled Venice, side-by-side palazzos packed with baroque porthole windows that stretched along twisty streets. The difference was that here the canals had swallowed everything. The buildings and the graceful bridges contained the air. In the underwater streets, people swam or rode in black gondola-shaped submersibles. There was also a modern monorail, which presumably was more economical.
James couldn’t deny he
really
wanted a ride on it.
Once he and Olivia had finished blinking over the half-familiar, half-alien old city, they moved on to a news clip of a two-hundred-year-old market hall being saved from the wrecking ball. Its defender was a preservation society that was exactly the cardigan-wearing crew he’d expect ... apart from being led by a dragon.
The society’s president was a very big lizard. She had intelligent dark red eyes and could stand upright, topping off at perhaps nine feet. Gills allowed her to breathe underwater, and a pirate-treasure-type medallion hung on a heavy gold chain around her neck. Her wings were both alarming and attractive, with gleaming brown-gold scales and claw finials. As she complimented King Lobodon (Anso’s father, he gathered) on sparing the historic hall, her Irish accent was raspy. James wasn’t ready to attribute that to her breathing fire. Some things he had to resist believing on principal.
By joint astounded consent, he and Olivia replayed the segment of the dragon with the brogue half a dozen times. James knew more about special effects than Olivia, but if this creature had been created by CGI, he couldn’t pick out how.
Giving up on that for the moment, they clicked on Anso’s next selection.
This showed the perpetrator of a string of thefts at a shopping mall leading police on a high speed chase. Both the thief and many of the cops zoomed through the city in seal form, the drama recorded by a quick-thinking aquatic news camera. A graphic at the end of the piece claimed the chase had sixty thousand views on something called WooTube. When the criminal was finally apprehended, he was herded gently by both shapes of police into a secure-looking metal cage.
Seeing this, James decided the loose-lipped kitchen server’s tongue probably wasn’t going to be cut out.
More respect for justice was evidenced by news coverage of an elected legislature, which he supposed balanced out Oceana’s hereditary king. From what James could tell, its members were as big blowhards as any New York politician.
Though the attitude wasn’t democratic, he thought Anso seemed as fit to lead as them.
Most of all, Anso’s viewing selection made it increasingly difficult to doubt this place was for real. No one could fake all that footage. It would have cost millions. Nor was the talking dragon the last of the marvels in store for them. He and Olivia gasped like gunshots at their first sight of a faerie. Even in two dimensions, the sparkly-skinned man was breathtaking.
The fact that he was mending a giant rupture in a sea wall simply by chanting some foreign words was almost less of a shock than how beautiful he was.
“Wow,” Olivia said with a wonderment he seconded. “Where do you suppose his wings are?”
“Maybe he doesn’t have them.”
“Well, that would be disappointing. Maybe they’re folded up underneath his shirt. Like faerie-wing origami.”
James laughed, because Olivia’s logic sometimes took sidetrips into whimsy.
Her hand rubbed his thigh and he covered it.
“Click on the one called
Baby’s First Change
,” she said.
James had been avoiding that title, but she was correct about them needing to see it. Given who they’d been kidnapped by, he doubted this piece had to do with diapers.
Baby’s First Change
was also culled from WooTube. It opened with an ad for a pediatric clinic run by what else but pointy-eared elf doctors. Immediately after that, a home movie rolled. A boy about five years old was splashing around in an indoor pool that looked like it might have been filled with saltwater. James’s throat clenched, because the boy was all kinds of cute. Happy, healthy, with eyes so brightly green they could have been emeralds. He was acting the way kids do when they have their parents all to themselves.
Watch this, Mommy! I’m going to
touch the bottom. Look out, Daddy! I can splash you from here
.
He swam with the fearlessness of a kid who’d been in the water since infancy, which he probably had.
His parents, who seemed to be filming him, made the approving noises fond parents do. Then a strange expression came over the boy’s face, a startled look that quickly turned to excitement.
“Oh Mommy!” he exclaimed, his eyes as big as saucers. “Watch me do
this
!” A sparkly circle sprang into being on top of the boy’s head, like he was wearing a halo or magic crown. The sparks got bigger and brighter and then the ring rolled all the way down the boy’s body. As it did, everything it sparkled past turned into part of a seal. It didn’t take even thirty seconds for the boy to change fully.
As soon as he did, he started whizzing around the pool like an act at Sea World.
“Oh my
God
,” Olivia exclaimed, her hand pressed flat to her chest.
She seemed caught between delight and amazement, and James didn’t think those were the only emotions she was feeling. The kid had been cute as a little boy. In seal form ... holy smokes, he was adorable. It was all James could do not to coo like Olivia was. Those big liquid eyes, that sleek silver fur, the plump little body that swam about so excitedly. They didn’t have to anthropomorphize this baby seal. There was so obviously a little kid’s soul in there: smacking its flippers to get attention, wriggling and racing through the water so it could shoot out like a cannon ball. The camera shook as its parents laughed at its antics.
James’s stomach sank. He totally wouldn’t blame his wife if she wanted one of those. He kind of wanted one himself. He revised his estimate of Anso as a basically decent but over-entitled guy.
King Anso was a good deal more than over-entitled. He was quite possibly the cleverest, and maybe the most devious person-with-power James had ever met.
“I didn’t know,” he said, when he found his voice again.
“Know what?” Olivia asked, wiping tears of laughter and maybe more from her eyes.
“I didn’t know you still wanted another kid that much.”
“Oh.” She paused in the midst of taking the remote from him, probably so she could watch the kid change again. Her expression turned serious. “I’d like one, James, but not having one doesn’t make me miserable. And it might have been for the best. Violet loved having all our attention. You notice
she
never pleaded for a sibling.”