She lay on her back, staring at the dark canopy above her bed, and heard nothing but his voice.
Azureus.
The way he'd said it. That hoarse, dry whisper. Like the word itself hurt coming out. Like he was giving her something he'd never given anyone. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and saw the way his lips had moved—the slow shape of the syllables, the way his throat worked around the sound.
She couldn't sleep. Couldn't even pretend.
The pillow was too hot. The sheets too rough. Her skin too tight over everything she was feeling.
He'd looked at her like she was something precious. Like she was the treasure, not him. Those enormous blue eyes, the way they'd searched her face while he pressed her hand to the cold, silent beat of his heart. She'd felt it. Felt the proof that he was real, that he trusted her, that he'd given her his name like a key.
She rolled onto her stomach. Buried her face in the pillow.
A sound came out of her—not a word, not quite a scream. Something raw and frustrated and so full of wanting it scraped her throat raw.
"Azureus," she whispered into the linen. Tried to shape it like he had. Found her tongue doing something different, something flat and wrong. "Azureus. Azureus. Azureus."
None of them sounded like him.
She sat up, grabbed the pillow, and screamed into it properly. Long and muffled and utterly pathetic. Then she threw it across the room and watched it hit the stone wall and fall in a sad heap.
"What is wrong with me."
Not a question. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. The name kept looping in her skull, a song she couldn't stop humming. Azureus. It sounded ancient. Royal. Like something from a poem she'd half-remembered, a language the world had forgotten. Latin. Had to be. The us at the end, the way it rolled off his tongue like water over stone.
She lay back down. Stared at the ceiling. The moonlight carved a silver rectangle across the floor, and she watched the dust motes drift through it and tried to calm her breathing.
It didn't work.
She imagined him saying her name. Elise. With that voice. That gentle, aching rasp. The way his lips would shape the first sound, the way he'd hold the last one like it mattered.
She imagined him saying other things. Things she couldn't put words to. His voice low and close to her ear, his breath warm against her skin—except he was cold, he'd always be cold, and she couldn't stop thinking about whether that mattered, whether she could warm him, whether he'd ever let her try.
Her hand moved without permission. Settled on her stomach. The linen of her shift was thin, and she could feel her own heat through it, the flutter of her pulse low and insistent.
She pressed down. Just a little.
A breath caught in her throat.
Her other hand found her breast—cupped it through the fabric, felt the shape of herself, the soft weight of it. She imagined his hand there. Those webbed fingers, delicate and pale. The jewels that caught the light along his knuckles. The way he'd touched her cheek that first night—so tentative, so full of wonder—and what it would feel like if he touched her like that. With purpose. With wanting.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
She didn't care. She couldn't care. The need was too big, too hot, too him.
Her hand slid lower. Over her stomach, past her hipbone, between her thighs. She found the heat of herself through the linen and pressed her palm there, a solid pressure, something to push against.
The image of him came unbidden. His hair fanned out on the water like spun gold. His eyes catching the moonlight, full of that innocent, endless blue. The way he'd tilted his head when she'd touched him. How he'd leaned into her hand like a starving thing finally fed.
He's so beautiful.
She didn't deserve to touch him. That was the thought that surfaced, unbidden, while her fingers pressed harder. Gemstones in his hair. Gemstones on his skin. Jewels that would make kings weep, and she was just a knight with callused hands and a scar on her forearm and nothing royal about her except her oath.
He was a prince. He had to be. The way he carried himself, the way his name sounded—Azureus, like something out of a legend—he was royalty from a world she'd never seen, a kingdom beneath the waves that probably thought the surface was a fairy tale.
And she was the only one who knew he existed.
Her fingers found the edge of her shift. Lifted it. The air hit her skin, cool and sharp, and she shivered.
She touched herself properly then. Slick and warm and desperate. Her back arched off the bed, and she pressed her other hand over her mouth to muffle the sound she knew was coming.
"Ah—"
She didn't stop. Couldn't. Her hand moved in rhythm with the fantasy—him touching her, him looking at her, him saying her name in that voice, that perfect voice, hoarse and gentle and romantic in a way that made her chest ache.
"Ngh—"
Her hips rocked against her hand. She was soaked, trembling, so close it hurt, but she slowed down, dragged it out, didn't want it to end because the only thing better than this was him, and she couldn't have him, couldn't touch him, couldn't even tell anyone he was real.
She whispered his name into the dark.
"Azureus."
Her hand moved faster. She bit her lip. Tasted copper.
"Azureus."
The sound of it on her tongue, even wrong, even flat and clumsy compared to his—it was enough. It was almost enough.
She imagined his hands on her. Those delicate, webbed fingers tracing her hip, her stomach, the curve of her breast. His mouth at her throat, cold lips against her burning skin, tasting her like she'd tasted the salt of strawberries from his tongue. His tail coiled around her leg, scales cool and smooth and so different from anything she'd ever known.
Her body tightened. Her toes curled. The pleasure crested, broke, flooded through her in a wave that made her gasp—loud enough that she had to clamp her hand over her mouth, bite down on her own palm to keep from waking the whole castle.
"Mm—Azureus—"
The name spilled out of her, broken and soft, and she rode the aftershocks with her eyes squeezed shut and his face behind her lids.
She lay there afterward, breathing hard. Her hand still between her thighs. The sweat cooling on her skin.
And she started laughing. Soft, disbelieving, hysterical little huffs of air.
She'd never touched herself like that before. Not over a man. Not over a boy. Not over a creature that half the kingdom would call a monster and the other half would call a myth.
She'd touched herself over a merman.
His name sat in her chest like a second heart.
She pulled her shift down, rolled onto her side, and stared at the wall. The moonlight had shifted, crawling across the floor toward her bed. Outside, the castle was silent. Somewhere far below, the lagoon was dark and cold and holding a creature made of jewels and shyness and a voice that had rewired something in her brain.
She still had to see him tomorrow.
She still had to look him in those eyes and pretend she hadn't spent the night whispering his name into her pillow, her hand between her thighs, undone by the memory of a single word.
She pressed her forehead into the mattress and groaned.
"I'm so fucked."
But she was smiling. Couldn't help it. Couldn't stop.
His name repeated in her skull like a prayer.
Azureus. Azureus. Azureus.
She closed her eyes and let it carry her down into sleep, his voice the last thing she heard, his face the last thing she saw, and the hours until dawn stretched out like an ocean she couldn't wait to cross.