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Another ship sinks.
Bellamy sees the tension in the town square building, hears the murmurs all around him growing louder as people gather to call for the death of the sea witch. Octavia frowns next to him, glancing around the crowd. He knows she’s looking for her knight. It had taken Bellamy by surprise when Lincoln came to dinner that first time; he’d assumed a man of such high standing wouldn’t pay any attention to such a poor family but, much to Bellamy’s chagrin, he seemed to be smitten with Octavia regardless of her status.
Governor Jaha wants to send out an expedition. Bellamy thinks it’s a bad idea.
The sea witch casted a spell years ago that allows her to breathe underwater, but it’s said that she splits her time between a small island a few miles off shore and the deep sea that surrounds it. Nobody knows why she’s been sinking ships and murdering sailors for the last six months, but almost a hundred men have died. They’ve never found any of the bodies.
She’s dangerous and Bellamy has a feeling that any knights that go to the island aren’t gonna come back. Octavia would be devastated if Lincoln lost his life, no matter how noble the cause.
He makes the decision quickly, pressing a kiss to Octavia’s temple and promising her he’ll be home soon before he leaves. She asks him where he’s going, but he pretends not to hear her as he shoves his way through the angry crowd.
Nobody knows about what he can do. He doesn’t know if something happened to him when he was an infant - maybe a witch cursed him - or if he was simply born with the ability to change forms. As far as he’s aware, nobody else in his family can do it. His father never mentioned it before his premature death and his mother hasn’t uttered a word of it. Octavia hasn’t shown any of the signs. It feels too late to bring it up now.
He glances over his shoulder as he makes his way to the shore, pulling off his clothes and hiding them behind some rocks. He’s thankful, not for the first time, that he keeps a pocket knife in his trousers. Stepping into the ocean until the water laps at his waist, he closes his eyes and shifts. It happens almost instantly now. When he was younger, it had been far more violent - painful, even. His body wasn’t used to changing so drastically; he could feel his bones breaking, could feel his skin tearing and mending itself around an entirely new frame. He’s thankful those days have passed.
The knife stays clutched in his fist during the transformation and, when it’s complete, he’s taken the form of a mer-man. He dives under a particularly large wave and somehow gets accustomed to the feeling of breathing underwater. Scouts saw the ship sink mere hours ago; she’s probably still finding solace in her kingdom under the sea.
He heads in the general direction of her island. Nobody knows exactly where the sea witch lives, but he’s determined to find her before the knights do.
It takes him a couple hours, but he manages to stumble upon her.
She’s nothing like what he expected.
Nobody’s ever seen the sea witch in person and survived to tell the tale; nobody knows quite what she looks like. People have guessed, though. Most of the time, she’s described as a hag: scraggly, tangled gray hair; hooked nose; crooked, yellowing teeth; and a short, hunched frame.
If the woman in front of him wasn’t a seemingly normal human currently breathing underwater, he’d doubt whether she was actually the sea witch at all. Her long, blonde hair drifts upward around her. Her frame is long and lithe, pale and entirely bare. She turns and her gaze finds him. His eyes are so transfixed by hers - an icy blue that pierces him to the core - that he doesn’t even glance down at her breasts or the soft, blonde curls between her legs. His breath quickens, his grip on the knife slackens.
The corners of her lips quirk upward and she snaps her fingers, sending him flying at least a mile back in an instant. When he regains his composure, he’s lost her.
The knife isn’t in his hand anymore, but all thoughts of killing her have disappeared.
She’s like the sirens he read about when he could actually afford to attend school: beautiful and dangerous, deadly and intriguing. He wants to go back, wants to ask her her name - if she even has a name; he’s never known a witch before - why she’s sinking all those ships, why she spends her time alone at the bottom of the ocean when a woman as beautiful as her could have a hundred different suitors.
He knows, though, that she could kill him in an instant, that she’s killed many men before him and will continue to kill many men after him.
For some reason, she spared him. He wants to know why. But he thinks of Octavia, knows that risking his life in the first place was reckless, so he swims back to shore. Best not to test his luck.
When he finds his way home, hair wet and curling at the edges, he learns that Lincoln wasn’t sent on the expedition. He’d proposed to Octavia just before they’d chosen the knights who would be going and, thus, was exempt. Lincoln apologizes profusely for not asking for Bellamy’s blessing first, but Bellamy just holds up a hand to silence him and welcomes him to the family, thinks of the sea witch showing him mercy and decides to offer Lincoln the same.