Page 2 of Loched in Love

My gaze widens, and I blink up at her still hovering in the air. “Umm why?” I ask her, slowly removing my tail from the water behind me, hoping she doesn’t notice my error.

“Because you’d likely be cursed to the next body of water you touch. It’s what she does,” the witch queen states, like it’s common knowledge.

Embarrassment slams into me like a tidal wave, and I don’t need a mirror to know the green of my ear fins are turning red.

“Bleeding hell,” I curse, just as sharp pain registers at my rear end. I glance back, horror washing over me as I realize my tail is being pulled in the opposite direction —down into the murky water.

“Dammit Lachlan, tell me you didn’t just curse yourself to the moat,” Odette snaps, as if it’s her that’s been cursed.

“I forbid it! You can’t stay here,” Vlad intones, rage in his words.

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Odette states, floating away from me with a curious expression on her painted face.

“Well, it’s not as if I’d pick this dung heap as my home,” I announce, frowning at the vampire. I’d much rather be locked down to my own loch if given the choice, but with the way the lake enchantress’s magic continues to pull me, it’s apparent I have none.

My body forcibly submerges itself, pulled until my long snaking tail is in the waters and my hind legs follow. Whether I like it or not. The cool water is as comforting as it is horrifying while I uselessly battle sinking beneath the gloomy depths.

“What words did she use when she cast this magic?” the witch queen asks, hands on her hips.

“How the hell should I ken? I was in the middle of trying to escape her when I felt it strike me,” I tell her with a shrug of my shoulders.

There was far more to it than that, but I’ve no intention of explaining how the woman started yelling like a banshee once I told her she wasn’t my mate and how I narrowly escaped with my immortal life.

Odette starts cursing and I ignore her, allowing myself to be tugged down until the Lady of the Lake’s magic takes hold and, I assume, locks me magically to the moat. The cool water soothes my dried scales, and I let out a sigh of relief. I fully relax in the pool, and glance around realizing I’ve plenty of room to swim. And at least I won’t have to be fully submerged all the time if I’m stuck here, or so I tell myself.

I turn and flinch, Odette inches from my face, a scowl full of fury, her gaze swirling with magic. “Dammit woman, ye given me a fright,” I scold, backing away from her annoyed and baleful stare.

“If she used her most powerful magic, how did you escape?” she asks, her normal gray eyes a multitude of colors.

My brows scrunch at the question, my middle seizing at the reminder of what I’ve lost and an echoing pain in my sternum follows. My poor trident.

I conjure a bubble of water, encasing my broken trident inside of it and pull it slowly above the moat’s surface to show her, hoping she can fix it easier than she can turn my form back.

The large golden spear is missing one prong, its metal broken and twisted where it was whole just this morning. It’s no matter to me which of my forms I reside inside. I’m comfortable with myself. But without my trident I can’t return home. “Can ye fix it?” I ask gingerly.

She purses her lips, and her hands move in front of her as she magically grabs the floating water orb holding the broken trident.

I wring my clawed dragon hands in front of me as she twirls the water bubble every which way, a hard squint on her pixie-like face. But ultimately, she shakes her head. “No, you need Vivian’s magic to fix your trident, but I can at least twist her magic and should be able to stop the moat’s curse from being permanent.”

“Do it.”

Anything.

There has to be something that can keep me from being stuck here for eternity. As a sea dragon with more than a millennium behind me, eternity is a long time. I prepare myself to be touched by her spell, an icy chill spreading across my scaled skin when it does. The force of it penetrates deeply I can tell, but is ephemeral, the touch light and not altogether abhorrent.

Odette’s magic is almost pleasant in contrast to her cousin’s, and much more powerful than my own.

“Here,” she says, and waves her hands at my trident.

With a flash of multicolored magic, the spear fashions itself into a small bronze key, but even it is broken. Half of the key bit is missing on one side, and it lacks the luster and shine it once had.

“So how the bloody hell do we get him out of my moat?” Vlad queries, peering down from the bridge railing, his lip curled in disgust as Connor stares at my tail curiously.

“A true mate bond will break the spell. It’s the only thing that can be done, and with the strength of whatever curse she barbed you with, I’ve no doubt Vivian thought to keep you in her lake forever,” Odette states, stealing my attention and giving my key back.

I tuck the broken key away to hopefully get it repaired later.

The idea that the enchantress tried to ensnare me doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I’d been trying to work up to telling her I needed to get back to my loch, and when the Lady of the Lake brought up the idea of spawning together, it was all the incentive I needed to leave.