“He’s married,” he’d said. “Outsiders care about those things.”
“They don’t care on their TV shows,” Cam had retorted snippily.
And then Ty had spotted poor Priscilla Bowes near the dance floor. Per usual, she was horribly dressed and even more horribly forlorn. The Bowes, while aristocrats, had committed the unforgivable sin of losing nearly all their money in the stock market. They scraped invitations where they could, Anso being a reliable soft touch. Once Ty had established Priscilla wasn’t going to develop a crush on him, he’d made a point of talking to her when their paths crossed. The Otari knew a thing or two about social pariahdom, after all.
He’d never asked her to dance before, but tonight she’d been gazing at the waltzing with so much longing he’d thought:
oh why not
?
He hadn’t anticipated being given a sharp setdown.
“Don’t make it worse,” she’d hissed angrily. “I’m enough of a leper as it is.” He couldn’t remember flushing this intensely in public since the days when his drunk of a father still left the house. To pluck the pearl from the oyster, his ears were sufficiently sharp to catch Ellice’s comment too.
His hands fisted up in knots, stuck at his sides with no one to punch. They had people searching for the link between Ellice and the Meimeyos’ release from their roost, but thus far they’d come up empty. Ty was really looking forward to that no longer being true. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, fuming impotently, until a shoulder jostled his.
“I’d ask you to dance,” said the male who’d joined him, “but it doesn’t look like men do that here. Plus, you probably wouldn’t let me lead.” Ty’s cheeks blazed even hotter as he turned to James. The surge of blood wasn’t all embarrassment. Some was plain old relief at being joined by ... well, by a friend was what it felt like.
“Beer?” James asked, handing him an icy bottle. “I didn’t recognize the brand so hopefully it’s not foul. That ruffled-gown girl doesn’t know what she’s missing, by the way. You’re a better man than most I know.” He said this as Ellice had, just loud enough to carry over nearby conversations. James twisted the cap off his drink, clinked it against Ty’s, and took a swallow. He choked a little as it went down.
“Hm,” he said, eyeing the bottle suspiciously. “This is so not beer.”
“Cider,” Ty said, finding himself smiling. “Strictly nonalcoholic.”
“Then I guess I’ll be keeping my head tonight.”
Ty put his hand on James’s broad shoulder and squeezed it. Suddenly he felt all right, like no one’s opinion mattered as long as the people he respected thought well of him. The attraction that had refused to stir for his old partners flared to rich hot life. He wanted this man - and Anso and his wife, of course, but for the first time in his life, Ty’s blood and bone comprehended the concept of
enough
.
If those three wanted him, he’d be satisfied. If they loved him, his heart would know peace at last.
The idea felt extraordinary unfolding inside of him. Was he kidding himself?
Should he be frightened for the risk to his heart? He didn’t think he was. His soul seemed to tilt inside him, then settle into a new and steadier position.
This
was the meaning of being mated, this sense that you were becoming the real you.
“What?” James asked, because Ty was grinning goofily.
“Nothing. Suddenly this party is looking up.”
“Damn straight,” James said, then gasped like a gunshot. “Holy crap. Is that a unicorn?”
“Newscaster,” Ty replied. “She’s popular with the drylanders.” The equine journalist and her camera crew were setting up equipment near the dais, an extra clatter being provided by her hooves. Ty knew she’d pre-arranged to interview Anso and his queen.
“Olivia won’t be able to say a word,” James predicted. “Jeesh, I wish you guys had warned her.”
“You could join her,” Ty said. “Moral support and all.”
“Will you be all right back here? Why don’t you come with me?” Warmth expanded through Ty’s chest at his concern. “I’ll be all right. Olivia isn’t the only one who’d rather avoid reporters.” James touched his upper arm. To anyone watching it wouldn’t have seemed a romantic gesture, but to Ty it felt like one.
“See you in a bit,” James said.
Ty was pretty sure he meant it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OLIVIA’S
headache was getting worse. The interview with the talking unicorn hadn’t helped. Caught unprepared to be speaking to a horse, she’d been reduced to the sort of stammering that hadn’t plagued her since she’d met James.
The lady horse had been nice about it, focusing on Anso after her first two questions to Olivia bombed. Olivia hoped she hadn’t said something stupid or, worse, something insulting. The last thing Anso needed was for his queen to appear species insensitive.
A splinter of pain jabbed behind her left eye.
No
, she thought.
You’re not
Anso’s queen. You have to stop thinking of yourself like that
. She closed her eyes to try to get the jabbing to knock it off.
“Sweetie,” Anso murmured, pulling her hand into his under the tablecloth.
They were seated on one side of a table at the head of the banquet hall, as if they were ye olde royalty. All around the room, candles were being snuffed in preparation for a performance. The darkness should have eased her discomfort, but only Anso’s hand did that. Seated on her other side, James clasped her fingers too.
She returned both grips too tightly.
The candles were replaced by floor lights as traditional Hawaiian music, or something very like, started up on the balcony. A line of half naked women, each one prettier than the last, swished their hips in mesmerizing figure eights as they danced into the cleared area. They wore teeny-tiny sea grass skirts ... and not a whole lot else, though their long black hair covered their breasts somewhat. Their green eyes glowed, their hands drawing graceful hula-girl type patterns. Their fantastically shapely legs twinkled with what appeared to be sequins.
Oh my gosh
, Olivia thought, momentarily forgetting her headache.
I wonder if
they’re mermaids
.
She gasped as the dancers’ nimble fingertips began leaving light trails behind them. Their hands were literally drawing pictures in the air. Three blush roses appeared between them, with three bright green ribbons to twine their stems together. Olivia concluded this was meant to represent the bonds between her and Anso and James: three blooms for the three of them. She glanced down the table to Ty, who was on James’s other side. He leaned back in his chair, smiling faintly as he wagged one foot to the rhythm. Anso hadn’t broken the news of their quadruple bond, perhaps because he thought his people had enough to absorb.
Olivia wished he’d decided differently. Ty looked wry rather than unhappy, as if the omission neither surprised nor offended him.
She was offended for him. Perhaps she was being rash, but he had as much right to call himself her mate as the other two.
I have it in me to love them all
, she thought.
The pain that stabbed through her then stole her breath. Olivia had never experienced a headache like this. Every pin that held up her hair felt as if it were being nail-gunned into her skull. Her vision blurred, and her skin went icy. A whispering swirled in her ears that came from no one.
“Excuse me,” she said shakily to Anso. “I’m going to sneak out to the bathroom.”
He nodded, not wanting to interrupt the performers, and gestured for a nearby guard to accompany her. Olivia didn’t care as long as she got somewhere quiet fast. Fortunately, the ladies lounge was close by. The guard checked the room, found no one inside but a towel maid, and told her he’d wait outside for her.
Feeling slightly better already, Olivia splashed her clammy cheeks with water.
Her arms trembled as she braced them on the sink’s swirling onyx counter.
“Towel?” the uniformed maid offered.
Olivia buried her face in it, wanting to hide like this for the rest of the night. “I don’t suppose you have an aspirin,” she said into the soft cotton.
“I have something much better,” the attendant replied.
Olivia lowered the towel to look at her. Before you could say
Venus on the
half shell
her headache disappeared. “What do you have?” The towel maid pulled a key and holder from her frilly apron pocket.
“Convince your husband to leave the hall. The guard will probably come as well, but we’ll make sure he’s distracted. Continue along this corridor until you see the door marked ‘Deliveries.’ Go down the stairs to the two-man sub waiting at the dock. This key will start the engine. The vehicle is programmed to drive you safely through the Helike Tunnel. From there, you should be able to swim home.”
“You’re a friend of Lady Ellice,” Olivia exclaimed softly. “She wants us out of here.”
“I’m
your
friend,” the maid corrected. “Security here is laxer than in the palace. You and your husband will never have a better chance to escape than this.”
Olivia stared at the shiny key the woman was holding out. Part of her wanted to snatch it, wanted her and James to go back to their old life and forget this world existed.
“Take it,’ said the maid. “See your daughter again.” Those were the magic words. Olivia took the key.
* * *
Mermaids, it seemed, weren’t known for brevity. Unlike their audience, Olivia had never been so alert in her life. Every hair on her body seemed charged with energy. She was uncharacteristically certain she could pull off this subterfuge.
She put her hands on Anso’s shoulders from behind and leaned down to his ear.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “I’m not feeling any better. Do you think James and the guard could drive me back to the palace?” Anso craned around to her. “Would you like me to come as well? If you’re truly ill ...”
“No. You’ve got all these foreign dignitaries here, and it’s only a bad headache. Please offer your guests my apologies.”
“What’s wrong?” Ty leaned around James to whisper.
Shit
, Olivia thought, because she just knew what Anso was going to do.
“Olivia’s unwell,” he said. “Why don’t you and the guard take her and James to the palace? Make sure they arrive safely.”
“Sure,” Ty said, twisting out of his seat without rising all the way. “Come on, James. Let’s scoot out before the lights come up.” Olivia tried to look wan but grateful as Ty and James each took an elbow to escort her from the hall. She hoped to hell Lady Ellice’s co-conspirators were up for distracting Ty
and
the guard. She couldn’t even tell James what was happening so he could help manipulate events. The way he was patting her hand was really frustrating.
They were going the wrong way down the corridor, toward the grand lobby where they’d come in instead of past the bathrooms. Should Olivia pretend she needed to throw up? Didn’t people do that sometimes when they had migraines?
A lone woman ran down the carpet in a panic. She wasn’t the same woman from the ladies lounge, but she wore a maid’s uniform.
“Help,” she said, grabbing Ty and the guard’s arms. “Please, you two know first aid, don’t you?”
“We’re on duty,” Ty said, but not unsympathetically.
The woman clutched at her hair. “It’s the director of the mermaids’ dancing troupe. She’s gone into early labor back in the dressing room. She’s having her baby
this second
.”
Now
that
was a story, Olivia thought admiringly. It must have been believable. She noticed Ty and the guard had dropped their hands from their holsters.
“Go,” Olivia urged. “James and I will wait here.”
“Return to the banquet hall,” Ty said. “You can grab another guard at the door.”
“We will,” Olivia said, already moving in that direction.
They kept moving in that direction until Ty and the guard disappeared down a cross hall.
“Hurry,” Olivia said, dropping her halting manner to grab James’s wrist and pull him along faster.
“What the hell, Olivia?”
“Sh,” she said. “I’ll explain when we get there.
She hurried as fast as she could in a floor-length gown until they reached the
“Deliveries” door. A metal staircase with peeling paint led down behind it, the scent of briny water washing strongly up the steps. Olivia hiked her dress to her knees and ran down it.
“Is this it?” James whispered, clattering just as swiftly behind her. “Did you find a way out?”
“There.” She pointed to a watery loading dock where a single vehicle was moored at a concrete post. The dark blue sub was shaped like a lozenge instead of a gondola. Because it bobbed half in, half out of the water, she supposed it was filled with air. Smaller than the family van Ty had used to sneak them into the Q
Gardens, it had a similar working class feel to it. Olivia dug the key from her cleavage where she’d stashed it. “It has autopilot. We can take it almost all the way home.”
James stopped her before she depressed the button that unlocked the sub’s door. “Olivia, where did you get that key?”
“I didn’t steal it. The maid in the ladies lounge offered it to me.”
“A perfect stranger gave the new wereseal queen the keys to her vehicle.”
“Well, I’m sure she works for Lady Ellice, but honestly, James, who else is going to help us?”
“Lady Ellice! You know she has an ulterior motive for doing this.”
“Of course she does. She wants to be queen instead of me.”
“What if she wants to kill us? What if that sub is rigged to blow up?”
“We’ll check it for bombs before we get in. Come on, James. She didn’t kill the Meimeyo, and her plan would have come off better if she had. If she balked at that, why would she murder human beings?”
James’s face was flushed with anger, but - as ever - he was willing to hear out a reasonable argument.
“I guess she wouldn’t,” he conceded. “I just hate going along with anything that woman wants.”
“It’s not like Anso will marry her even with us gone.” Olivia assured herself he wouldn’t. The king wasn’t that stupid. “This is our chance, James. We might not get another. Not before we’re completely embroiled in Anso’s life.” James scowled at her.