It was a day made for rejoicing. John had spent some hours during the night communing with the clouds, and as a result the morning dawned bright and clear. The brilliant summer sunlight made the old, pale buildings of Brighton gleam like fresh-polished shells. Seagulls wheeled across the azure sky in exuberant flight, their raucous voices filled with joy.

The sky, the wind, even the small minds of the birds; all things connected to the sea knew at some level that this was a historic day. For today, for the first time, the Empress-in-Waiting was coming home.

Even ordinary humans seemed to have picked up on the mood. It might just have been the unusually fine weather, but a sense of giddy delight permeated the entire city. Children jumped and skipped with just a little more energy than usual, shrieking as happily as the seagulls overhead. Lovers walked just a little closer to each other, laughing in the sun. Everyone was smiling.

Everyone, that is, except the Empress-in-Waiting herself.

As they made their way toward the seafront, John couldn’t shake the feeling that he was escorting a prisoner to her execution.

Neridia had been withdrawn and quiet ever since the previous evening. She hadn’t touched her breakfast, despite the fact that even his culinary skills couldn’t render dry cereal inedible. Their mate bond was pale and subdued, her thoughts drawn back like a snail into a shell.

Alone in the happy crowd thronging Brighton’s main street, she walked with head bowed and shoulders hunched, as if the bright sunshine were a howling gale. Though the broad road ran downhill, she was going slower and slower. John kept having to check his own stride to avoid outpacing her.

This isn’t right, John’s inner human fretted. This isn’t right at all. This should be one of the happiest days of her life. We have to do something.

For once John was in full agreement with his inner human, but he was at a loss as to what to do. Though his poetry could move sea and rain, he had no idea what words might lift Neridia’s mood. So far, he could not exactly claim a string of victories when it came to talking to his mate.

His inner human rolled its eyes in exasperation. So don’t talk.

John clenched his jaw. It would be so natural, so right, to reach out to her, to stroke away the tension in her shoulders and kiss smooth the lines of worry furrowing her brow…but his vow of chastity kept his arms at his sides. His honor bound him like a net of gossamer threads—easy to break, but irreparable once broken.

He wished that he had thought to offer Neridia some of the surviving treasures from his hoard before they’d left his house. The pearls had been scorched by the fire, but he’d been able to rescue his gold and silver at least. He had nothing that would truly befit her status as Empress-in-Waiting, of course, but perhaps she might have taken some small comfort in being at least somewhat adorned.

He eyed a jeweler's window as they passed, wondering whether any of the diamonds on display might lift Neridia’s spirits. But although he had only the haziest grasp on the peculiar human concept of money—Griff had always managed his finances for him—he suspected that only the cheapest pieces were within his means. He could hardly insult his mate by offering her such paltry gems.

Then his gaze snagged on the neighboring shop.

But perhaps there is something I could offer her…

“John?” Neridia queried, as he took her elbow. “What are you doing?”

“I,” he said, steering her firmly inside the small shop, “am buying you an ice cream.”

“What?” Neridia stared at him as they took their place at the end of the line of waiting customers. “Why?”

“Because you have not eaten anything today, and this will provide you with much-needed energy. Because you spoke so passionately about flavor combinations last night that I think you would enjoy this experience. Because the sun is shining, and I am told it is traditional to celebrate a beautiful day with the ritual consumption of a…” John had to pause to read the menu chalked above the counter, in order to remind him of the human word. “Ah yes, a ‘cone.’ And finally, because I experience an intense desire to eat sweet things when my inner human is agitated.”

Neridia’s lips had been slowly curving upward throughout this speech, but at his final words she blinked. “Your inner human? What do you mean?”

John noticed that the group of human boys ahead of them had half-turned, casting the two of them rather odd looks. He glared, and the youths quickly discovered a pressing need to examine the menu instead.

Nonetheless, he lowered his voice. “Many shifters experience a, an internal duality, shall we say. Shifters who are born as humans tend to have a separate animal-self contained within their soul. My sword-brother Dai, for example, would speak of his inner dragon. I am the reverse. I am a dragon, therefore my other-self is human.”

“Like having a split personality?” Neridia sounded dubious.

“No, nothing so malign. It is just that the instincts of our other form always occupy a corner of our minds. They speak to us, in our own thoughts. That is how I am able to understand human perspective.”

Sometimes, his inner human commented dryly.

Neridia fell silent for a moment, as the line shuffled forward. “So…would I have an inner dragon? Like Dai?”

This possibility had not occurred to him. “Perhaps. You are human-born, after all.”

“Sometimes I feel—I hear—like a little voice, urging me to do things I normally wouldn’t dare.” Neridia bit her lip. “Does that sound crazy?”

“It sounds like you are a shifter,” he said, smiling down at her. “What are these things that your inner voice encourages you to do?”

She peeked sidelong at him, her cheeks darkening a little. “Never you mind. What sort of things does your, um, inner human tell you to do? Apart from eat chocolate?”

John was saved from having to answer that one by the group in front of them dispersing, leaving them at the head of the line. The girl behind the counter did a double-take as she looked up at the two of them, but her professionally cheerful smile never wavered.

“What can I get for you today, folks?” she asked, brandishing her scoop invitingly at the spread of various flavors.

Neridia only needed to examine the tubs for a heartbeat before pointing at one. “Honey and ginger for me, please. What are you having, John?”

His inner human brightened hopefully, but John shook his head. “Your pleasure is enough for me. Although my inner—ah, that is, although I occasionally experience a craving for such foodstuffs, I do not indulge in them.”

Neridia’s forehead wrinkled. “Wait. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve never eaten ice cream? Do your vows forbid you or something?”

“No. It is simply a good test of discipline to deny myself such-“

Neridia turned back to the server. “He’ll have triple chocolate. With fudge sauce. And marshmallows.”

Which was how John found himself holding a brittle cone filled with mud-colored frozen cow excretions, topped with a tar-like ooze and sprinkled with what appeared to be tiny fragments of peculiarly solid white foam.

“You were right.” Neridia’s eyes closed in bliss as she licked her own, much less alarmingly brown confection. “This was a good idea.”

John was no longer so sure of that. The slowly liquefying concoction was quite the most unappetizing thing he had ever had the misfortune to behold. It did not smell like fish at all.

Neridia giggled, obviously sensing his dismay. “Just try it, okay? For me?”

For the sake of putting a smile on his mate’s face, he could endure any hardship. Steeling his nerve, John took a tentative taste.

I told you so, his inner human said with infinite smugness, into the stunned silence of his mind.

Neridia burst out laughing. “Your face. Now do you see what you’ve been missing out on?”

“Griff and Chase—kept trying to convince me—“ John said indistinctly. He swallowed, clearing his mouth. “My brothers-in-arms on Alpha Team have attempted to persuade me to eat such things, many times, telling me that I could not imagine the delights that I was denying myself. I always thought they were merely teasing me. I believe I owe them a substantial apology.”

“I’ll say.” Neridia’s delight radiated down the mate bond like sunbeams through clear water. “Oh, I am going to have to take you to so many restaurants. I bet you’ve never eaten—um, John, you might want to slow down there.”

He couldn’t answer, having gone back to inhaling the incredible concoction like a starving shark. A second later, he found out the reason for the warning. A numbing pain rushed up from his mouth, as if his skull had been filled with ice.

Neridia winced, though she was still grinning. “And there’s another first for you. Your first ice cream headache. I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”

“It fights back?” John eyed the remaining inch of cone with increased respect. “Truly this food is fit for a warrior.”

She was still laughing, wonderfully, as they rounded the last corner…and at last, came in sight of the sea.

The simple merriment in Neridia’s face transmuted into something into something deeper, richer. Her own ice cream fell forgotten to the ground as she walked forward, her eyes fixed on the line where sea met the sky. John had to drag her back before she stepped straight out into traffic.

He could feel the way every part of her body yearned forward, pulled by the call of the ocean. The salt-song resounded in his own soul too, but he at least had enough presence of mind to guide her safely across the road and down to the beach.

Gulls swirled in a tight spiral high over Neridia’s head, crying out in recognition, but she paid them no heed. Nor, for once, did she flinch from the wide-eyed stares of the humans they passed. All of her attention was focused entirely on the glittering water.

The waves rose higher as she approached, throwing up ecstatic plumes of white spray like handfuls of confetti. The tide dragged sea-smoothed pebbles back and forth across the beach in vast, rattling applause.

When the sea first kissed her feet in fealty, the whole ocean roared in such jubilation that John was nearly knocked flat. He could scarcely believe that even humans could fail to be deafened by the triumphant song, yet no one else on the beach reacted in the slightest.

Look! John felt like shouting, or singing. Look! A wonder is unfurling, a moment to hoard forever in your minds, a memory to be polished and treasured all the rest of your days! Can you not see? Look!

Yet the humans continued to walk, or sit, or lie in the sun, with only the occasional curious glance at the unusually tall woman standing so still in the ocean.

It might have been minutes, or hours, or years, before Neridia turned back to him. Her face was luminous, soft with wonder. There was a new depth in her blue eyes now. Forevermore, he knew, they would reflect the sea.

“Thank you,” she said, so softly her voice was nearly lost in the murmur of the waves. “Even if—whatever else happens, thank you. For this.”

“It is my honor and my privilege.” He went to one knee in the surf, bowing his head. “My Empress.”

Something flashed in her sea-struck eyes, too quickly for him to follow. She looked out at the horizon again, but her expression was guarded, no longer lost in awe.

“I still don’t think I can shift.” She hugged herself, her shoulders tensing. “The sea is, well, more than I could have possibly imagined, but…I’m still just me.”

His inner human swore. If she can’t do it even now…oh, we are so screwed.

“John, what if I can’t ever do it?” Neridia said, unwittingly echoing his human. “If I can’t shift, if I can’t go to Atlantis, what will we do?“

“You will shift,” he said firmly, forcing down the disappointment swelling in his own heart. He cast around for some glimmer of hope to offer her. “Perhaps…perhaps you are just too self-conscious at the moment. There are many humans present, after all.”

Neridia blinked, looking around the crowded beach as if only just noticing the people all around them. “Um. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t shift.”

“We mythic shifters cannot be seen by mundane eyes unless we will it. But I know that you do not enjoy attracting attention. Perhaps your subconscious fears that humans will see your true majesty.” John rose to his feet again. “We should return later, after dark, when the beach is empty.”

Neridia looked happier, strangely, as though this was a stay of execution rather than an aggravating delay. “Okay. So what do you want to do until then?”

He spread his hands. “I have no preference. What would you like to do?”

“Well, actually there is something.” Neridia splashed out of the sea, the waves chasing her up the beach as though entreating her to stay. “I didn’t tell you this before, but my mom came from around here. She used to live in Brighton before she met my dad.”

He lifted his eyebrows, another minor mystery becoming clear. “That would explain why this was the last place the Emperor was seen before he went missing.”

“Yes, they only moved to Scotland after they married. My mom always said that she’d had enough of the ocean, but now I think they must have been trying to get as far away as possible in case anyone came searching for my dad.” Neridia let out an amused huff of breath. “And Loch Ness is the last place anyone would genuinely expect to find a real sea dragon. Anyway, if you don’t have other plans, I’d really like to go see where my mom used to work.”

“Of course, if you wish.” Personally, John would much rather have stayed by the ocean, but if traipsing round some human building would make his mate happy…

Neridia looked rather slyly at him, as though she’d sensed his lack of enthusiasm. “Oh, I think you’ll find it interesting too.”