“Don’t men have tails where you live?” His grin turns lopsided. “The ones between their legs, the ones they use to please females?”
“What are you…? Oh.” My gaze is inadvertently drawn back to the rod between his legs which seems to have grown in size. “You’re trying to shock me. I know what a cock is.”
A rumbling sound reaches me and it takes me a moment to realize he’s laughing.
At me.
Heat suffuses my face. “Look, that pendant is mine. Give it to me.”
“Is it? I found it in the brambles.”
“It’s mine.”
“Finders keepers,” he says. “And while it’s been nice talking to you, you should go.” Slowly he slides down the log into the water. “You should be afraid of me, little human.”
“And you shouldn’t be here,” I say, taking a step forward. “This isn’t your world. The gate is closed.”
“Think I hadn’t noticed?” He’s sinking into the water, inch by inch, holding on to the trunk with one strong hand.
“Go back. Back to your world.”
“The gate,” he says slowly, as if talking to a dim-witted child, “isclosed.”
“Then find another gate. There are plenty scattered across the land.”
“How? Am I to swim across dry land? If it hasn’t escaped your attention, I have no legs.”
I swallow hard. “Why are you half-fish? Can’t you shift back?”
He stops his downward slide, up to his waist in the water. He could pass for a human man like this, a gorgeous man, if not for the pointed tips of his ears and the color of his hair, that inhuman, perfect symmetry of his face and the shiny scales on his arms and shoulders.
“It’s a curse,” he says. “One only a human princess can break. So you see, nothing you can do.”
“I wasn’t offering,” I scoff, biting the inside of my cheek, trying to think how to grab my pendant before he swims away. “Though I just happen to be a princess.”
He goes very still. His eyes narrow. “That’s a lie. You humans lie a lot.”
“I don’t lie!”
“Women have passed through here and they promised… they promised things.” He turns so he faces me fully and we gaze at each other—him half-submerged in the water, me on the shore. “They lied about everything.”
“Well, I am princess Selina Elizabeth Thornton. I live at the palace of Kyrene.”
“Are you now?”
“Yes. I swear it. You doubt my word?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“So impertinent and rude. What proof do you want?”
“Nothing you can show me will convince me,” he says, sinking lower into the water.
“Give me my pendant back!”
“Unless you help me break the curse,” he says. “If it works, I’ll know you’re telling the truth.”
“So, if I help you, will you give me my pendant back?”