Enchanted Ever After. Robin D. Owens

soaked for over twenty-four hours. His skin was drying and he also needed to breathe water and keep his bilungs damp. He’d accomplished his first goal of getting Kiri Palger to agree to the testing game, and evil had faded.

      A line had appeared between her brows as she studied him—perhaps too closely. He shook his head. “I came in to Denver just a few days ago and still have not acclimated.”

      Her expression cleared and she nodded. “Yes, people have trouble with the altitude.” She hesitated. “You aren’t living here on the block?”

      “No, I am near—” what was the name of the park with the lake he was living in? “—near City Park.” Higher-status mers had convinced the old naiader whose lake it was to let Lathyr have a small domicile there. On sufferance, as always.

      Kiri’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

      He raised a brow. “Oh?”

      “I just, uh, thought you’d live somewhere more sophisticated. Cherry Hills or something.”

      “Eight Corp arranged my lodging. It is...sufficient.”

      Now she appeared slightly offended. He tried a smile. “I am used to living near the beach.” Recently off the coast of Spain.

      Kiri laughed. “Not many beaches in Denver.”

      “No. I miss the ocean.” An admission he hadn’t meant to make, and not in public.

      “Only natural.”

      “Would you miss the mountains?” he asked.

      Her smile was quick. “I suppose so. I was born here and spent time with my grandmother, and moved here four years ago, but I’d miss Mystic Circle even more.”

      He nodded gravely. “It is a very special place.”

      Rafe Davail, a human with a magical heritage, crossed to them with a swordsman’s swagger. “And Eight Corp doesn’t own nearly as many of the houses of Mystic Circle as it used to. I think it’s better that the homes remain in private hands.”

      The man meant in human hands like his own, not owned by the Lightfolk royals of Eight Corp. “We still have the Castle,” Lathyr murmured.

      “And Eight Corp owns the other bungalow across from Kiri,” Amber Davail, Rafe’s wife, who was related to a great elf, said. “Number nine.”

      “Really?” Kiri said. “I didn’t know that.”

      Rafe smiled easily, but Lathyr was aware that the man was blowing spume at him for some reason. “Maybe Eight Corp will let you have number nine.”

      Jenni joined them again, shaking her head. “Nope, no pool.”

      Lathyr dipped his head. “Yes, a pool is necessary.”

      Kiri looked puzzled and Rafe laughed.

      “I am weary. I must go,” Lathyr said. “I am sorry that we didn’t speak more, Kiri.”

      “I’ll expect the car at 6:50 a.m. on Thursday morning,” she said.

      Lathyr smiled.

      Princess Jindesfarne’s husband came forward. “I’ll see you out,” Aric said. Lathyr sighed. The Treeman meant that he would take Lathyr home by way of tree. In this dry country it was faster than letting his molecules disperse into water droplets and finding a stream or cloud to take him where he needed to be. But Lathyr found traveling from tree to tree profoundly disturbing. Instead of moving as individual components, he felt solid and trees seemed to move through him. Stressful. “Thank you,” he said politely but with an underwash of resignation.

      Aric laughed, jerked his head toward the park, then glanced at Jenni. “Be right back.”

      She grinned. “Sure.”

      Lathyr decided everyone was enjoying themselves at his expense. He was the outsider. He rippled his fingers as a land man would shrug. Nothing new. That small bit of elven air magic in his being had always made him an outsider, ensured he had no permanent home. Most mers had their own space and were territorial. Ocean-living Merfolk preferred to live in communities—as structured as any other Lightfolk setting. He’d always been on the bottom level and so had become a reluctant drifter, always an outsider.

      Then Tamara Thunderock was there, and he realized that he was wrong about the residents of Mystic Circle. Everyone here believed they were outsiders but had melded together as a family, and thought he was the insider with the Lightfolk. Jenni was half-human; Aric was Earth Treefolk, not other-dimensional Lightfolk; Tamara was fully magic but half-Earth and half-Air and no doubt despised by both due to their opposite natures; Rafe and Amber were human.

      So he was the outsider of their Mystic Circle, but they believed him to be more accepted by the Lightfolk than any of the rest of them. Very discomfiting.

      Right then he decided to ask his superior for leave to live in the Castle of Mystic Circle while he tested Kiri. The Castle had a huge pool in addition to a natural spring and a well on the grounds. He, too, would become one of the Mystic Circle community—for a while.

      Always and only for a while, until he was more valued.

      Since all their gazes were on him, he ran a finger along the curve and the point of his ear, let it show for an instant along with the bluish tinge to his skin that was all mer.

      Demonstrating his own mixed heritage that would keep him from the highest ranks.

      Rafe stopped laughing and narrowed his eyes. The human must not have noticed Lathyr’s mingled water-air nature before.

      Tamara said, “Or I can see you out, Lathyr.”

      Again they were confusing Kiri, making too much of walking him to the front door. Tamara would no doubt take Lathyr through tunnel and rock. He suppressed a shudder, worse than tree being passed through him was rock. “Thank you for your offer.”

      “I’ll take care of him,” Aric assured the small dwarf-elf woman. “Tamara, why don’t you load up a plate or two for him.”

      She nodded and moved toward the tables, efficiently making a box of food that Lathyr would encase in a bubble to store underwater. He’d noticed they had salmon, a treat.

      He realized he’d underestimated the sun and the altitude and the dryness and had to draw on a bit of his air magic to keep the pressure around him and prop him up. His blood had to pump hard through his body.

      Kiri’s eyes were wide—beautiful, beautiful sea-foam-green eyes. He also admired her curvaceous body. He’d let the attraction to her, as well as this magically balanced place, keep him too long.

      His skin was beginning to tighten and flake. He needed to be in water now! Another foolish mistake that would cost him. The royals would hear of his errors, of course.

      Aric or Princess Jindesfarne or Rafe Davail would tell them. Then Lathyr would be sent away.

      And he didn’t want to leave this magical place. Here was community and safety.

      Outside was a begrudged sleeping spot, solitariness and the threat of a Dark one and his creatures.

      The threat of evil pained less than the certainty of loneliness. For the first time, ever, Lathyr considered living permanently on land, though a prized place here in this special location would not be given to the likes of him.

      Despite everything, all his mistakes, all his past experiences, the sun beating on him, he wanted to stay.

      “Let’s go,” Aric said, clamping a large hand that felt like wood around Lathyr’s biceps.

      He shrugged off the hand. After another half bow to Kiri, he followed the Treeman.

      He’d made more mistakes. The project wasn’t beginning well. He hoped that wasn’t an ill omen for the whole thing.

      He didn’t want Kiri Palger to die.