Time had a way of dissolving beneath the Shivering Sea.
Caedrion could not tell if it had been weeks, or months, or an eternity since Thalassaria had pulled him down into her abyssal palace.
The days bled together in teal light, in the weight of her coils, in the endless pressure of her gaze.
He knew one thing for certain: he was running out of excuses.
In the beginning, he had survived on shock alone.
Each advance she made, he could deflect with the dazed bewilderment of a man still trying to comprehend that mermaids were real...
Except they weren’t mermaids.
They were half-mad serpentine demigoddesses with delusions of eternal matrimony.
That excuse of "I don’t even understand what you are" had carried him far.
Too far, perhaps. Because now, two months later, he understood all too well.
He knew her name. Her title. Her palace of coral and obsidian.
He knew the laws of Submareth, knew the way the naga bowed before her and glared daggers at him, knew the library where she let him read the histories of civilizations he had never imagined existed.
And still, every night ended the same: her wrapping him close, whispering of the brood of eggs she longed to lay, and him inventing yet another reason to delay.
One evening, she coiled around him, eyes glowing with hunger, her tail tightening in what she clearly thought was seductive.
"My darling guppy... it has been two months. Surely you are ready now. Tonight we shall—"
Caedrion, without missing a beat, raised a finger. "The moon is wrong."
She blinked. "...The what?"
"The moon," he repeated, dead serious. "On the surface, we never... ehm... do such things when the moon wanes. Very unlucky."
For a moment she just stared. Then her jaw tightened, and her scales flared with light. "You think I, Queen of the Shivering Sea, am ruled by some orb in the sky?"
He spread his hands apologetically. "Cultural taboo. Very binding."
She groaned, tightened her coils, and muttered darkly, "One day I am going to drag that moon down and crush it in my coils."
Another week passed. She redecorated a chamber just for him, an entire grotto filled with perfumed corals, pearl-glow lanterns, and kelp bedding softer than any feather mattress.
She pressed close, lips brushing his ear, her voice dripping with anticipation.
Caedrion placed a hand to his stomach, wincing dramatically.
"Oh no. Bad fish. Stomachache. Terrible timing."
"You enjoyed the fish," she said flatly.
"Yes, and now I suffer for my greed," he said solemnly, lying back as though struck by mortal illness.
She glared for a long moment before whispering darkly in his ear, "You are the first man to wield indigestion as a weapon of war."
By the end of the second month, he grew desperate.
"You see," he explained one night, pacing like a philosopher before her throne,
"to ensure our... union... is truly blessed, I must meditate upon my destiny. At least three more weeks. Possibly four."
Her tail slammed against the coral floor, shattering a pillar.
"You meditate more than any priest I have ever drowned. How much destiny do you need?"
"An abundance," he replied without flinching.
Her patience was not infinite. The court began to whisper.
They had seen her crush rebellions, drown traitors, silence entire fleets, but never had they seen her patience tested like this.
Servants who dared to laugh at Caedrion’s newest excuse were drowned where they stood.
A general who muttered about the Queen’s "softness" had his lungs filled with salt until he clawed his own chest bloody.
And yet, she never turned that wrath on Caedrion.
Instead, she clung tighter. She whispered sweeter. She summoned pearls and jewels and dishes of rare fish no surface tongue had words for.
And still he resisted, inventing delay after delay, until even she began to twitch with exasperation.
One evening she slid close, her body shimmering, teal light bathing him in warmth.
"Tonight," she whispered, "you cannot resist me. I will hear no excuse."
Caedrion dipped a hand into the current drifting through the chamber.
Then he shivered theatrically. "The water’s too cold."
Her face went blank. "You... are in the ocean. It is always cold."
"Yes," he said gravely. "And that is exactly why."
For the first time, she buried her face in her hands and groaned loud enough to shake the walls. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs novelFɪre.net
Another night, when she cornered him in her library, Caedrion snatched a scroll at random.
"I must... study more of your people," he said quickly. "Before such an important act, I need to understand your history. Your... brood cycles. Rituals. Traditions."
Thalassaria blinked. Then slowly, her lips curved into a smile. "You are stalling."
"Yes," he admitted instantly.
She laughed. Actually laughed, the sound rolling through the water like bubbles rising from the deep.
Then she kissed him hard enough to make him choke on seawater, and said nothing more that night.
But the following week, when she pressed harder than ever, he went further. "I am cursed," he said dramatically, clutching his chest.
"Any woman who lies with me before the stars themselves approve... will die."
The silence that followed stretched for what felt like hours. Then, very softly, Thalassaria whispered: "...Then I will kill the stars."
Caedrion swallowed hard. "...That was not the answer I was hoping for."
By now the court had stopped even pretending not to gossip.
The Queen’s obsession was legend, and her consort’s endless evasions were becoming farce.
One whispered, "Why doesn’t he just give in?" Another muttered, "Perhaps he is... defective."
A third, younger and braver than most, suggested, "Should we not simply assist him in performing his duties?"
That naga was drowned before finishing the sentence.
Thalassaria wrapped Caedrion in her coils that night tighter than ever, whispering, "You are mine, guppy. Mine. They cannot touch you. None of them. Only me."
Caedrion, crushed half-senseless, whispered back, "Lucky me."
So passed the second month. Caedrion had perfected the art of delay. He had become a master of excuses.
And Thalassaria, Queen of Submareth, had become the most frustrated would-be bride in the history of her people.
Yet the absurd balance held. Each day he read her history, learned her tongue, studied her people. Each night he deflected, delayed, and survived.
He swore silently that he would find a way home.
He swore even more fiercely that if he failed, if he yielded, he might never want to return.
And every time Thalassaria whispered, "Soon, my darling guppy. Soon..." he smiled weakly, blushed on command, and prayed to every god he knew that tomorrow he would invent excuse number one hundred and nine.
Caedrion’s resolve began to fray.
Weeks of excuses had worn him thinner than any trench campaign.
In the mud and fire of Emberhold, he had held steady against exhaustion, against the madness of war.
But here, beneath the sea, it was not hunger or sleeplessness that broke him. It was kindness.
Thalassaria’s kindness was not the softness of mortals, but the terrible warmth of the abyss.
She was wrath to everyone else; her courtiers drowned for insolence; her rivals silenced with a glance.
And yet to him, always to him, she was gentle.
She stroked his hair when he slept, coiled protectively around him when he shivered, laughed with delight at the smallest words from his mouth.
As insane as it was, Caedrion could not deny the truth: her love was genuine. The madness in her eyes was not an act.
She did love him. Fiercely. Possessively. Inhumanly.
And in his weaker moments, when he remembered his old life, he cursed himself for it.
He had been a fantasy nerd once, back in the world before this one.
He had dreamed of elves, of monster girls, of strange and beautiful races that only existed in stories.
And now here he was, living in the heart of that dream, with a queen who embodied every page of it... power, beauty, and a devotion so unrelenting it terrified him.
His oath to Aelindria, to his unborn child, to the family waiting for him above, it held him like chains.
Yet with every night that Thalassaria gazed at him with hunger, with every moment she shielded him from the hatred of her people, he felt the links strain.
One evening, when the sea was quiet, and no courtiers dared disturb them, she drifted close.
Her coils brushed lightly against his ankles, her face pale and radiant in the glow of her leylines. But this time, she did not come with laughter or demands.
Her voice was low. Unsteady.
"I have never met a man," she whispered, "who did not fawn over me. Not once. Not in ten thousand years. And yet you—" her hands trembled on his shoulders.
"—you resist me. Am I not to your liking? I cannot see what reason you could have, to look at me and not burn with desire."
Caedrion’s heart hammered. He knew the truth would kill him, yet the lie felt worse. His voice cracked as he spoke.
"It’s not that... If I’m being completely honest you’re probably the most attractive woman I have ever seen in my life. But I am already married."
The silence stretched.
Thalassaria’s eyes widened, unreadable.
For the first time, she seemed truly still. Then, quietly, she whispered:
"I know."
And the abyss swallowed the words, leaving Caedrion’s world suspended on the edge of that silence.