Dancing On Ice

Below the Surface

Kazimir stared at him for a long, long time after he heard the words he couldn't believe he heard.

The same scars?

That couldn't be right, humans didn't have these scars, they weren't scars anyway, they were marks that were disguised to fool humans.

He surely just had strange scars that Cole took to look the same as his, out of confusion.

Humans were stupid.

They were unobservant.

They didn't think.

Cole was wrong, he had to be...

"What's wrong with your eyes?"

Kazimir, dazed, looked up. "What?" he said, confused.

"Your eyes; they look...the colour looks different... were they always that shade of blue?"

Kazimir looked blankly at him, thrown by the question that was completely irrelevant in that moment.

Eyes? Who cared about his eyes?

Moving away, he drifted to one of the chairs, slowly taking a seat, looking out over the ocean.

He needed to see the scars for himself.

It was ridiculous to believe anything Cole said just because he said it.

He had no idea what he was looking at.

He had no idea what the markings meant.

He was making speculations about things he had no knowledge of.

He was making assumptions, trying to find connections where there weren't any.

Dalton didn't belong to the sea.

Simple as that.

He belonged at land. He had never shown any interest in the sea.

Aeralie would have reached for him in an instant if he'd shown any inclination but he hadn't. He was made for the earth.

"What do they mean?"

Kazimir looked up to see Cole stood by his chair, hand on the back rest, looking down at him.

"Those scars; what do they mean?"

"They're just scars," Kazimir said.

"What caused them?"

"I've always had them."

"You know, it's odd... it feels like I only just remembered this and yet I don't see how I could forget such a thing. You're not the first person I've seen with them – excluding Dalton."

Kazimir looked up at him in shock as Cole moved and took a seat opposite, looking out at the ocean.

Others.

Cole had met others?

Other merfolk who could transform and move on land. They would bare the same marks. But he shouldn't have remembered them. He didn't remember them.

Until just now.

The enchantment they would have cast across him had just worn off.

How?!

How could this person – this human – shake off years of enchantment?

How could he break through Kazimir's power so that he could resist the pull of desire? Even if Kazimir's pride wasn't hurt by it, it simply didn't happen!