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For an instant, Merletta remained frozen, her arms locked in place as her blood thundered in her ears.
A dragon.
Was this it? Was she about to die? Merletta’s paralysis suddenly lifted, her arms jerking uncontrollably as she scrambled to move. But she forgot how far she’d inched up the rocks in her eagerness to connect with the human—Heath—and discover all the answers he could provide. She wasn’t used to being so far out of the water, and her fear made her clumsy. Instead of pushing back into the water, she somehow managed to flip her tail up onto the rocks with the rest of her.
A horrible pain seized her, and she felt her whole body spasm. Her agonized gaze passed from the dragon to her own form, and she realized with a jolt of horror that only the very tip of one fin was still in the water. Panic seized her, and her hands scrabbled frantically at the rocks in a frenzied attempt to pull herself back into the ocean. She was breathing too fast, unable to properly take in air, as a hot, dry sensation rushed over her body, starting from her fins and moving up her tail.
She reached the water at last, throwing herself in with a splash that was anything but graceful. She could hear Heath shouting to her from above the surface, but she kept her head under for a long moment, taking in deep steadying mouthfuls of water as the painful prickling feeling subsided. She twisted in the water, running a hand down her tail to reassure herself that she was in one piece.
So that was what drying out felt like.
It was just as painful as she’d imagined. Merletta shuddered. That had been far too close. She’d had some narrow escapes in her adventures outside the barrier, but she’d never been that close to death before. And it was self-inflicted, the result of a mere moment of distraction. She’d had a good reason, perhaps, but even the fear of the dragon paled in comparison to the terror that had just passed through her entire being.
The dragon.
Merletta’s eyes darted upward. She could see the beast—it was now close behind Heath, its huge form skulking over him. Her instincts told her to flee deeper into the water, but from all she’d been told, that would be useless. Dragons were much too fast, below water as well as above it, for her to be able to outswim an attack.
Of course, it was possible that what she’d been told wasn’t true. But then, she’d thought that the tales of land always being infested by dragons must be an exaggeration. Apparently some of the warnings were real.
And yet…the beast had made no move to attack her, even when she was so distracted that she would have been embarrassingly easy to pick off.
Merletta waited until her heart rate had slowed slightly, then re-emerged above the surface. Heath was at the lagoon’s edge now, on his hands and knees as he watched her below the water. Merletta had assumed that the plants surrounding this body of water would make it hard to see in from above, but his gaze was latched on her as she rose, in a way that told her he’d been watching her the whole time.
“Are you all right?” he asked the moment her head cleared the surface. His concern was evident in every line of his face. “What happened? You looked like you were having a seizure or something.”
Merletta tore her eyes from the dragon with difficulty, meeting Heath’s gaze. “I almost dried out,” she said, a shudder passing over her. “I can’t believe I was so incredibly careless.”
Her eyes darted back to the dragon, who was watching them silently, his head cocked to one side as he listened to their conversation. The whole situation was beyond bizarre. Was she really chatting casually with a human, ignoring the fact that a deadly dragon hovered nearby? Perhaps it was all an unusually vivid dream.
“Dried out?” Heath repeated, his brows drawing together in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I forgot you don’t know anything about mermaids,” Merletta said distractedly. “We can’t get all the way out of the water.” Heath still looked confused, so she clarified. “Or we die.”
His eyes grew wide, the concern turning to open alarm. “Are you safe now?” His gaze passed over her, bobbing in the water with her chest above the surface. “Do you need to go deeper?” He stood up, splashing into the shallows. “Don’t come closer—I can come to you instead.”
“It’s all right,” Merletta said, her face stretching in a smile that wasn’t quite natural, thanks to the adrenaline still coursing through her body. “This is safe. Besides, you need to be careful. Don’t you have the same risk, but you know, opposite?”
Heath shook his head. “I can fully submerge myself without dying. I just have to come up for air very frequently.”
“Huh.” Merletta couldn’t help but feel a little disgruntled. “Seems unfair.”
She caught a spark of humor in Heath’s eyes, but her attention passed to the beast behind him.
“Ah, yes,” said Heath, following her gaze. “Is that what frightened you in the first place? Sorry about that. Reka, this is Merletta. She’s a…a mermaid.” He stumbled slightly over the word. “And this is Rekavidur. He’s a dragon.”
“I know what it is,” said Merletta warily. The dragon so far had remained silent. “And I’m not interested in its name so much as I’m interested in knowing whether it’s going to eat me.”
“Eat you?” repeated Heath, startled. “Of course not!”
“Dragons don’t eat humans,” said the dragon placidly. His voice was gravelly but deep, like the muffled scrape of stone grinding on stone at the bottom of the ocean.
“Well, I’m not human,” Merletta reasoned, trying to keep her gaze on the dragon’s face. Her eyes kept being drawn back to its enormous talons, resting on a rock just at the water’s edge.
“Aren’t you?” the dragon asked, its tone thoughtful. “You seem like a human to me.”
“Seems like a—? Reka,” cut in Heath, exasperated. “She has a tail.”
“Yes, except for that part, of course,” conceded the dragon, as calmly as ever.
