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Pomegranate-scented oil did little to improve Mydei’s mood.
He dismissed all the maids, leaving behind only one instruction: none of them were to knock before noon. Then he returned to his chambers, changed into a soft, close-fitting silk nightdress, and bent to tie a little bell around his ankle, one that had once belonged to a cat’s collar.
When he was done, he pushed open the floor-to-ceiling doors on the side facing the sea.
The wind came in salted with brine. On any other night, it might not have seemed especially pleasant, but tonight, on the tip of his nose, it felt like rain turned to honey. Mydei followed the stone steps the craftsmen had built with such care all the way down and sat on the very last one, lowering his feet slowly into the sea. Wave after wave came lapping in, teasing the bell at his ankle into soft little chimes, like a lover calling to him from very far away.
A bright full moon hung in the sky. From time to time, seabirds cut across the horizon, and somewhere in the dark beyond sight, it seemed as though tireless sirens were still singing.
Mydei had no heart to admire any of it. His chambers commanded the finest sea view in the entire palace, and if he wished, he could slip into the water and swim whenever he pleased. But tonight he only sat there in silence and waited.
It was not long before the once-still surface of the water began to tremble with fine ripples.
Strings of bubbles rose and burst without a sound. At last, the faintest smile touched Mydei’s lips. Then a golden tentacle wound soundlessly around his ankle, neatly pinning down the ribbon tied to the bell.
The muscles in Mydei’s leg still tensed on instinct, trying to draw back. But the tentacle only tightened a little, and that was enough to lock his ankle in place. Even the strongest princess, the one who could defeat the arena’s champion guard, could not budge it in the slightest. If the one in the sea wished it, he could drag Mydei straight into the black water the next instant.
Mydei lowered his head to look at the golden tentacle coiled around his ankle.
“Stop toying with me, Khaslana. Come out.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than strands of pale gold hair, so light they were nearly transparent, floated up from beneath the surface. Khaslana let half his face surface first, blinking up at him, and only then rose high enough for his shoulders to emerge. Moonlight silvered the line of them.
He bowed his head in greeting, the way anyone granted an audience with the princess would, and only when Mydei said, “Raise your head. Let me see your face,” did he look up and offer his beauty to the light.
“Good evening, Princess. Your splendor is as blinding as ever—enough to shame the night itself and send even the tide retreating.”
The tentacle around Mydei’s ankle gave a soft tug. His toes pointed of their own accord, and he allowed a light, damp kiss to be pressed to the top of his foot. The touch was cool, yet somehow carried its own heat. He curled his leg back on instinct, and Khaslana followed the motion, drawn in until he was nearly against the princess’s knee.
“I kept feeling you might need me tonight,” Khaslana said, his gaze never leaving Mydei for even a moment, golden eyes brimming with him. “So this time, I brought something a little different.”
As he spoke, he rose higher from the water until his upper body was level with Mydei where he sat on the steps. Golden-grey markings surfaced along his chest and arms. Seawater streamed down the lines of his collarbones and shoulders, making even the slightest shift of muscle with each breath stand out with aching clarity.
He reached out and fastened a necklace strung with tiny shells around Mydei’s throat.
The seawater inevitably dampened the silk over Mydei’s chest, but he paid it no mind. He only lifted a hand to pluck a strand of seaweed and a small piece of coral from Khaslana’s hair.
“The last time I wandered along the sea floor, I found this pearl by accident. The moment I saw it, I thought it would suit you.”
At the end of the necklace hung a single large pearl, round and luminous, as though it shone with its own light. It did not need the moon to make it beautiful. Anyone who saw it would have had to admit that it was a rare treasure.
And yet Mydei’s face did not soften the way Khaslana had expected.
This should have delighted him easily. In the past, even if Khaslana brought him nothing more than a few strangely colored stones or an ownerless shell picked up from the sea floor, that alone would have been enough to keep Mydei cupping them in his hands and admiring them for ages.
Sensing something was wrong, Khaslana lifted a hand and cupped Mydei’s face.
“What is it, my princess?”
At the same time, the tentacle that had been wrapped around Mydei’s ankle began to climb higher, gliding along the wet hem of his gown, all the way up to his waist, drawing the two of them closer. Mydei could feel that scent of the deep sea on him, slowly, steadily, filling his lungs.
“You stayed away for too long,” Mydei said at last, lowering his eyes, the tail end of his voice carrying the faintest trace of hurt. “I thought… you’d forgotten me.”
As he spoke, his hair slid down across his cheek, only for another golden tentacle to catch it in time and tuck it gently behind his ear.
Khaslana looked at him for a moment in silence before letting out a quiet sigh. “Your father doesn’t like me, dear Mydei. The fact that we can still meet like this at all already feels like stolen luck. For all I know, even the gulls on the cliffs are freer than we are.”
“Don’t speak of him tonight.”
Khaslana did not answer at once. His fingertips slid beneath Mydei’s chin and lifted, gently insisting that he raise his face and meet his eyes. But Mydei caught his hand first and turned his head, pressing his cheek into Khaslana’s palm and rubbing there once, lightly, of his own accord. His skin was a little cooler than a human’s; Khaslana’s palm was soft and cold.
“Then tell me, Princess…” Khaslana murmured. “Are you still afraid of the sea?”
The question tugged Mydei’s thoughts gently back to many years before.
He could only have been around ten at the time, and he had kept a pale Maine Coon with a strange temper. It cared for no one, ignored everyone, and yet clung stubbornly to him alone. One day, the cat was startled and, in its panic, went straight over the windowsill and into the sea. Mydei ignored the servants shouting after him and jumped in without a second thought.
He fought with everything he had, managing to shove the cat back up onto the windowsill. But his own clothes had already soaked through and grown heavy. His body sank lower and lower until at last he could no longer lift his head above the surface.
Somewhere in the chaos, the bell around the cat’s neck came loose. Mydei clutched the ribbon tied to it in a death grip. He opened his mouth, trying to breathe, and all that rushed in was more seawater, colder every time. The world dimmed by degrees, and his consciousness sank with him into the deep.
Jingle, jingle. Jingle—
Just as his eyes were about to close, he felt someone yank him hard from the water.
“Hey, come on,” said a voice, still a little childish with youth even through the confusion. “Don’t you dare die here.”
In that moment, Mydei almost thought the Messenger of Strife had finally come for him. After all, on holy days he put on a show of prayer, reciting the gods’ names with his lips while his heart never held the slightest shred of true devotion. In his delirium he even thought that if he survived this, he would start behaving himself properly from then on.
Unfortunately for him, Nikador clearly had no intention of seeing him so soon.
The next instant, the terrible weight crushing his chest disappeared, followed by a violent slap. Then a strong force came down on his sternum, and all the water in his lungs rushed out in a single flood. Mydei broke into coughing and, just like that, was dragged back into the world of the living.
“Wake up. Come on, wake up.”
He forced his eyes open and saw a child about his own age.
White hair. Blue eyes. Bare from the waist up, dripping wet as he hovered over him. Only when he saw that Mydei was breathing did the child’s tightly drawn brows relax a little.
“Thank Titan.” His shoulders sagged with unmistakable relief. “When I saw you, you were already starting to sink. You really scared me.”
“…You saved me?”
The moment Mydei spoke, his throat felt flayed raw.
The boy nodded.
“I did. But since you’re all right now, I have to go. Sorry. I can’t let other people see me.”
“Wait.” Mydei struggled upright on the sand. “At least tell me your name.”
The boy had already turned back toward the sea, but at that he glanced over his shoulder and shouted over the rise and fall of the waves:
“My name is Phainon—though when I’m older, you can call me Khaslana.”
White surf rolled ashore in layers, like skirts in constant motion. The white-haired child moved quickly and vanished into the sea in the blink of an eye. But Mydei’s eyesight had always been excellent, and he still saw it clearly—
Below the waist, the boy had eight blue tentacles, not yet fully grown.
Later, Eurypon offered a lavish reward for a full half-year in hopes of finding the one who had saved his beloved child’s life, but he found nothing in the end. That was hardly surprising. Creatures who lived in the sea could not read notices posted on land, nor hear the orders carried by human messengers.
And though Mydei had understood early on that Phainon was not human, his own swimming could only ever take him so far. A few minutes underwater at most. To find a half-human, half-octopus being in a sea that vast and boundless would likely have taken half a lifetime.
Would they truly never meet again?
He sat there, lost in the thought, fingers absently toying with the bell he had removed from the cat’s collar. A moment later, a faint sound came from the window, light and sudden as a fish leaping from the water.
The one the king had failed to find in half a year came to Mydei with absurd ease.
“So it’s you again.”
Phainon clung to the windowsill, shook the water from his hair, and smiled at him.
Like a puppy, Mydei thought.
Later, just as in every fairy tale, they became friends.
Only, Phainon was no merman. He had no splendid, elegant tail, nor did he live in any magnificent palace beneath the sea. He was only one of the octopus-folk, utterly ordinary, and had nothing at all to do with the sort of prince who appeared in fairy tales.
Eurypon did not care.
He even brought craftsmen himself and had a slide built along the outer wall of Mydei’s chambers that led straight down into the sea. After that, meeting became much easier. No matter where Phainon was, if he heard the bell, he always found a way to come. Even the sea itself seemed willing to part for him.
Those days had been bright and pure.
For a while after nearly drowning, Mydei had indeed been afraid of the sea. He would ring the bell to summon Phainon, only to curl up at the very top of the slide, eyes shut, speaking to the young octopus-folk boy from there.
Later, Phainon began bringing him treasures found throughout the ocean, coaxing and wheedling him, little by little, back toward the shore. In the end, they even turned it into a competition: which would happen first, Mydei overcoming his fear, or Phainon learning to walk on land by making his tentacles do the work of legs.
The final result was a draw. Phainon came to Mydei’s side and took his hand, and that day the princess found his courage again and lowered his legs back into the sea.
“Princess, you did so well.”
Without anyone ever teaching him, Phainon learned how to cradle Mydei’s feet with his tentacles and press solemn kisses to the tops of them. It was the first time Mydei ever felt his heart race so hard he forgot to be embarrassed.
Even now, whenever they looked back on those days, both of them still wanted to laugh.
And now Phainon had long since reached adulthood. From his hair to his tentacles, everything about him had turned a dazzling gold, like a sun that lived beneath the sea. In keeping with the customs of the octopus-folk, he had formally taken the name Khaslana after his coming-of-age rite.
What had not changed was Khaslana’s fascination with Mydei’s legs. To him, they were the part of Mydei most unlike himself, and therefore the part that stirred his curiosity most deeply. Mydei had inherited Eurypon’s grandeur and Gorgo’s softness in equal measure. The muscles of his back were strong enough to snap a man’s neck, while his legs possessed both explosive strength and long, taut elegance. Khaslana loved to wind his tentacles around Mydei’s ankles, while the others curled beneath him into a nest, as though Mydei were some pampered cat in his lap.
It was only then that Mydei realized that, at some point, Khaslana had already drawn him fully into his arms.
Now entirely out of the water, Khaslana sat on the steps supported by his tentacles, Mydei enclosed in the circle of his embrace. He spoke softly of the past while one of his tentacles slid slowly upward along Mydei’s calf. The bell at the princess’s ankle chimed faintly with the movement.
“I miss those days,” Khaslana murmured beside his ear. “Back then this wasn’t a staircase. It was a slide. We could lie there together and watch the stars all night.”
Mydei’s lashes quivered.
Because both of them knew exactly why those good days had ended.
Ever since Eurypon had happened to catch Khaslana with his face buried between the princess’s legs, everything had changed completely. The slide had been torn down. The title Eurypon had once bestowed on Phainon had been stripped from him. Even the waters near the shore had been blocked off with barbed fishing nets, because Eurypon had done everything he could to keep him out.
And Mydei, in secret, had sent maids out of the palace carrying gold coins, bribing nearby fishermen to cut the ropes under cover of night and open a narrow path through the nets, just enough for Khaslana to reach the sea outside his chambers.
For years, this was how they had continued to meet. In secret. At risk.
Yet Mydei clearly wanted no part in dwelling on that subject. He suddenly turned his head aside and yawned on purpose, his tone acquiring a careless edge of provocation.
“If all you mean to do tonight is hold me and reminisce, then I may as well go back to my room and sleep.”
At once, Khaslana’s arms tightened around him.
He lowered his head and pressed a kiss beside the red diamond-shaped birthmark on Mydei’s face, the place that, according to legend, had been kissed most in a past life. His lips lingered there for a moment.
“Then let me carry you back, Princess.”
He said it lightly, but Mydei knew the task was anything but easy for him.
Khaslana had no legs. For a human, returning to the bedchamber would have meant no more than a few steps. In the sea, his eight tentacles moved like works of art. On land, deprived of the support of bone and forced to contend with gravity, they became the heaviest of shackles. Khaslana struggled to lift Mydei into his arms, his powerful limbs inching their way over the stone one painful movement at a time. With every “step,” his brows drew tighter. To keep from losing his grip, his fingers dug deep through the silk of Mydei’s nightdress into the flesh of his thigh and the line of his ribs, hard enough to leave marks behind.
Of course, the princess was not so easily crushed.
And so his man, spending what felt like half a lifetime’s strength, dragged himself across those hellish few meters until at last he could place Mydei safely on the bed.
Khaslana’s chest rose and fell faintly. Wet golden hair hung down and clung to his temples. If creatures of the sea could sweat, then his brow would surely have been covered in it by now. Bracing himself upright against the bed, Mydei reached up to wipe the last traces of seawater from his face and shifted aside, leaving him enough space to lie down.
“If you’d only said so, I could have walked on my own.”
“No, Princess. I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time.” Khaslana bent down and rested his forehead against Mydei’s knee. “In all those books you read me, the prince always carries the princess like this.”
He drew a breath, then said softly, “I want to be your prince, Mydei. Please… let me be that for you. Even if your father doesn’t like me.”
“You idiot. Which matters more to you—me, or my father? Besides…”
He had told him not to bring his father up tonight, yet Khaslana still crossed the line. Mydei nudged his knee lightly against Khaslana’s temple, the force no stronger than a cat batting in annoyance, though the warning in it was anything but mild.
“Besides, you could have far more than you’ve ever let yourself imagine.”
A hoarse laugh escaped Khaslana’s throat. “Of course. In your presence, not even the sea is vast enough to hold what I want. You spoil me so much I’m starting to forget what I am.”
As he spoke, he lifted Mydei’s calf and untied the bell from around his ankle. It had only ever served one purpose: to summon him. Any further chiming now would only draw suspicion from outside. A pity, really. The bell always sounded sweetest when Mydei was struggling for pleasure.
Then Mydei said, softly, “Use those clever tentacles of yours somewhere else, then. Perhaps it’ll help restore your memory a little.”
Mydei pressed his foot against the base of the tentacles, lifting the hem of his nightgown with both hands—not for the sake of any ladylike curtsy. He did not even need to say it a second time—Khaslana’s throat tightened, his mouth as dry as if it were cracking, desperate for a bit of moisture to douse the fire, and Mydei happened to have exactly what he needed most.
Two golden tentacles slid into the entrance he had granted, probing toward the place they both had long desired.
Aside from smooth skin and heat, there was no obstacle at all. Usually, humans would leave a bit of thin cloth at the root of the thighs, but Khaslana’s nerve endings, as sensitive as fingertips, met no edges. The smile at the corner of Mydei’s mouth grew richer.
"My princess..." Khaslana’s voice dropped, "Did you take it off in secret, or—have you not been wearing anything from the start?"
"You can spend the whole night thinking about that question. Or just take ten seconds to undo my nightgown and find the answer yourself."
Since a moment ago, Mydei had been radiating a sort of provocation, faint and lingering, like an undercurrent pushing one toward the depths. Whether it was intentional or merely mischievous, Khaslana could not possibly let him truly hold the reins of the situation. The princess had seen plenty of submissive people, and Khaslana was never the type to be obedient.
"No need. I can taste you completely clean through touch alone."
The tip of a tentacle brushed gently against the pubic bone; both sighed almost simultaneously. Mydei closed his eyes, his lips parting unconsciously, feeling that patch of cool, damp, slippery soft flesh rubbing back and forth, patiently prying open the shell of restraint.
"You..." Khaslana’s breath suddenly grew heavy. "You’ve shaved the hair all bare."
He would not stop there, of course. The tips of two tentacles deftly parted the central folds, and more slick fluid surged out. He tasted a hint of salt—but to Khaslana, it was no different from the sweetest nectar in the world.
"And—by the Titans, you’re already soaked for me."
"Since you already know, then... then do something."
A flush crept up Mydei’s cheeks. He turned his head away, his fingers tightening, rumpling the bedsheets. He would never admit what he truly wanted; he simply opened his legs silently, pressing the core of his desire tight against the tentacles, his waist stealthily moving up and down to steal a fraction of sweetness.
The more Mydei hurried, the more Khaslana kept his composure. He wanted to see how far the princess would sink for him. Two tentacles opportunely wound around the base of the thighs, cutting off those little movements of self-pleasuring. Mydei tried to press his legs together in dissatisfaction, but he was no match for an octopus’s extraordinary, inhuman strength.
"Shh... shh, don't rush, don't rush. We have plenty of time."
He grasped Mydei’s knees on either side, prying them open slowly but irresistibly. The hem of the nightgown had been pushed bit by bit above the waist in the struggle; now, he could finally take in this spring scenery in its entirety. The princess’s private parts were already muddy with desire, contracting slightly under his gaze. If Khaslana wished, he could lean down to taste it at any moment, or more bluntly, let the thick hectocotylus drive straight in—either way would be enough to force Mydei to scream out.
"You bastard... I’m going to kick you off the bed and never let you back up."
"How terrifying." Khaslana licked his lips; he was clearly no better off, especially in the face of Mydei looking like this. He spoke in a tone that was nearly pious and nearly sacrilegious: "I have overstepped. Not only have I climbed into the princess’s bed, but I even dare to dream of conquering all of him."
"You—"
Mydei wanted to say something more but suddenly froze. A completely different tentacle pushed into the nightgown with an undeniable force. It passed over his lower abdomen, lingering near the ribs, dragging a wet trail wherever it went, leaving a sticky, shivering sensation on the skin.
It finally stopped in front of his chest.
"Mydei, tell me—you didn't specifically put on underwear."
"Hmph. I told you. You’re welcome to see for yourself."
The flash of desperation on Khaslana’s face almost made Mydei want to laugh in triumph. The princess pursued the victory, slowly undoing the buttons of his nightgown from the collar all the way down. The tattoos were exposed to view as he pulled the fabric open with both hands; the full mounds of breast meat immediately popped out, almost wanting to flow outward, only to be barely held by the gossamer-thin pink underwear. That underwear was nothing more than two pieces of cloth and string that barely covered the nipples, looking as if they would break with a single tug.
Khaslana swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rolling with hunger. The tentacle wrapped around the base of the thigh tightened another degree.
"Do you like what you see?"
More than like. Khaslana felt as if all the moisture in his body was surging outward. If he truly died tonight from excessive dehydration, then Mydei would be the sole culprit of this perfect crime.
"You have no idea what you're doing, Mydeimos..."
The original brightness in his eyes was bit by bit eroded by a deeper darkness; the golden tentacles beneath him sprouted vein-like patterns, glowing faintly. He could no longer maintain that lofty, playful posture. Because before Mydei summoned him, he had already paved the way for them: to turn each other into monsters who only knew how to chase.
The rounded tentacle grew even more swollen, passing directly through the thin string crossing Mydei’s chest, continuously rubbing the skin between the twin peaks.
"Squeeze your tits," Khaslana almost commanded, "Now—for me."
Mydei was the most beloved son of Eurypon and Gorgo, a presence before whom everyone in the palace bowed their heads, a noble symbol of the nation second only to the king. Yet at this very moment, the noble princess impatiently cupped the flesh of his breasts with both hands, all for the sake of a beast who had climbed into his bed, a man from the ocean—squeezing with force like a harlot, just to please the hectocotylus enjoying his cleavage. As the blunt, rounded tip moved in and out, Khaslana leaned down deeply, hands braced on either side of Mydei, his fingertips already sinking deep into the bedsheets.
"Mydei... Mydei..."
Those calls, soaked in longing, beat against his eardrums intermittently. Mydei bit his lip, letting the fluid overflowing from the tentacle coat his chest, flowing in a mess down his skin. He squeezed so hard it even hurt a little, but the way the other was immersed in his body made his scalp tingle, as if he were Khaslana’s only and final grave.
One day, he would offer all his desires to Mydei and then die upon him.
Thinking of this, Mydei couldn't help but lower his head and take the tip of that insatiable tentacle into his mouth. Khaslana let out a low growl, a sound that was not like his usual crisp voice but closer to primal instinct. He kept letting out low roars, without even the strength left to praise Mydei’s body, unable to even say "you're doing so well"—but Mydei truly felt it, because that thing, thicker than a human sex organ, had already begun to invade his mouth, pushing his cheeks out.
Perhaps there was this specific advantage to making love with an octopus: their sexual organs were, in themselves, one of their tentacles—long enough and flexible enough that one did not have to make a single-choice selection between a tit-job and a blow-job. It was certainly convenient. It was just that once Khaslana completely entered the zone, he was prone to going too far because of his total immersion.
That thing kept pushing toward his throat, the salty-fishy taste coating the inner mucous membranes. Yet Mydei disregarded everything, opening his jaw to its widest, longing to accept all of him. Watching Khaslana addicted to him, even as tears rolled down uncontrollably, a sweetness inevitably surged in Mydei’s heart—and so he voluntarily tightened his throat.
Khaslana threw back his head as if losing control again, and at the same time, gave Mydei a devastating sense of suffocation.
...and it made him recall that one time, the experience of nearly perishing in the sea.
——
Khaslana disappeared.
He left behind neither a word nor a letter. He simply withdrew from Mydei’s life as though all the years he had spent beside him had been nothing more than Mydei’s own delusion.
At first, Mydei refused to believe it. He went to the shore as always, sat on the lowest step, and called the octopus-folk man’s name again and again. There was no answer but the sea wind and the crashing waves. He tied the bell around his ankle too, but the water remained calm. No one rose from the sea anymore, swam toward him, and said, Hello, Princess.
And still, Mydei did not believe it.
He kept thinking Khaslana could never truly bear to leave him behind alone. Perhaps something had delayed him. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after, or the next night, he would rise from the water again and come back to him just as before.
So Mydei waited every day.
He waited through daylight and through the night. He waited until the moon climbed high above, until the seawater soaked his legs pale and swollen. Wrapped in a blanket, he sat on the steps and still refused to go back inside.
Sometimes, against his will, he remembered the night they had last seen one another.
Khaslana had held him close and whispered that he wanted to be his prince.
The truth was, Mydei had acknowledged it in his own heart long ago. Princess and prince were only titles, only roles. No one but Khaslana could ever have stood in that place. But Mydei had always been stubborn with words, always convinced there would be time later. There was no need to say it in a hurry, he had thought. And yet the one who had sworn he would stay at his side was the one who vanished first, without a trace.
Eventually, even thinking became too much.
His throat had never fully healed to begin with, and after so many nights spent in the sea wind, it did not take long for the princess to fall gravely ill. He burned with fever day after day, drifting in and out of consciousness, unable even to keep his eyes open for long. The finest physicians in the palace came in turns. Prescription after prescription was changed, yet the fever refused to break. All the attendants could do was wring out cool cloths again and again, wiping his forehead and the back of his neck in the hope that the faint chill might ease him, however little.
But each trace of coolness was swallowed up again almost at once by the heat pouring off his body.
No matter how strong Mydei usually was, no one could endure such relentless fever forever. Half a month passed. Eurypon and Gorgo grew frantic enough to feel as though their hair might catch fire. Every medicine in the palace was tried, and when that failed, they began searching beyond the palace walls. Once the physicians in the city had been exhausted, they sent people farther afield. If there was said to be a famed doctor somewhere, or some strange healer of unusual skill, they would fetch them at any cost.
And still Mydei lay there, half waking and half asleep.
Until one day, in a fleeting moment of lucidity, he suddenly said that he wanted to see his father.
Eurypon came at once, too hurried even to fasten his outer robe properly. He went straight to the bedside and grasped Mydei’s burning hand.
Mydei’s mind was clouded. His lashes trembled. It took him some effort to recognize the man before him. At last, in a voice made hazy with fever, he murmured,
“Please forgive Khaslana… I want to see him.”
As soon as he said it, his eyes slipped shut again.
At the head of the bed, the bell lay tangled together with the shell necklace and pearl Khaslana had once given him.
Eurypon very nearly fainted on the spot; fortunately, Gorgo arrived in time to pinch him brutally back into the world.
But none of the palace’s chaos reached Mydei. He had already fallen into a long, long dream.
In the dream, he had a beautiful red fishtail. With the lightest flick, he could streak through the water for an impossibly long distance, like fireworks shooting into the sky. Khaslana held his hand and led him through a bright and boundless world beneath the sea. Schools of fish swept over their heads. Layers of wavering light made everything around them glow with soft, shifting color.
Together, they went to many places.
Khaslana took him to meet his family and taught him how to distinguish the different sounds of the deep. They wandered through magnificent, broken ruins beneath the sea, passing stone pillars and statues that had stood for a thousand years. They saw a green dragon lying in stillness upon a lotus pedestal while a grey sunfish circled it again and again. They chased schools of sardines and danced in the eye of a whirlpool. They helped a clumsy hermit crab choose the right shell.
So long as he kept swimming forward beside Khaslana, there was always something new and wondrous waiting for him.
Those days were beautiful. They were happy. And yet, for reasons he could not explain, Mydei could never quite sink into them completely.
Again and again, the strange feeling rose in him that none of it truly belonged to him: not the world around him, not even his own happiness, nor Khaslana’s fervent kisses, nor the future they had imagined together.
Little by little, Khaslana’s golden hair faded back toward white. The color of his tentacles shifted too, turning blue once more. They kept swimming, and the world around them began to sway and run backward. The vivid, lively realm beneath the sea dissolved before his eyes into broken, blurred light.
At last they arrived at the shore where they had first met.
Mydei was himself again, sprawled there in a miserable heap on the sand. The tide crept over him again and again, soaking the hem of his clothes. He raised his head and saw the white-haired child who had once saved his life standing not far away, watching him in silence.
Suddenly, with unbearable urgency, Mydei wanted to ask him what his name really was.
Before he could speak, the boy did so first.
“Forget me.”
The white-haired boy turned and walked back into the sea.
“And don’t try to find me. I can’t bring you happiness.”
A sharp, piercing pain forced Mydei’s eyes open.
As his vision slowly cleared, the first thing he noticed was coolness. Relief. The raging fever that had consumed him before he blacked out seemed to have vanished completely. His forehead was no longer burning, his chest no longer felt tight and aching, and even breathing came easily now.
“You’re awake.”
A familiar voice, rough with grief, sounded by his ear. Mydei turned his head and found Khaslana beside him, golden eyes rimmed red. Fresh tears were still spilling from them. Mydei wanted to lift a hand and wipe them away, but his whole body was wound fast in tentacles and he could not move.
“…I don’t know you.”
The resentment in his chest had not faded. Whether he lived or died, there had only ever been one person in his heart, and that person was here now. But that did not mean the princess could so easily forgive someone who might once have tried to leave him behind.
“Then… you may call me Khaslana,” he answered softly. “Or by the name I once had: Phainon.”
Mydei said nothing, and neither did he.
Several days later, Mydei had recovered enough that he could get out of bed and walk around again.
By then the maids had already pieced together most of what had happened. Seeing some color at last return to his face, they could not help whispering it to him in secret. Apparently, while he had lain unconscious, Eurypon had somehow truly managed to bring Khaslana back. To make it easier for him to come and go, His Majesty had not only ordered the old slide rebuilt, but had even gone so far as to have a pool constructed outside the chambers so Khaslana could enter Mydei’s rooms directly from there.
“Your Highness, you don’t know the half of it,” one maid whispered, eyes bright. “Ever since he came back, he hasn’t left your side for even a moment. He stayed through the day, through the night, and barely even closed his eyes. And the strangest thing is, it was only after he returned that your illness finally began to ease…”
She told it so vividly that she seemed to convince herself it must have been some kind of miracle. Mydei, seated on the edge of the bed, pretended not to care. He only turned his head and looked out the window.
Khaslana was quiet in the newly built pool, his gaze fixed on everything inside the room.
He did not come any closer.
Ever since the day Mydei woke and coldly told him not to come near him anymore, Khaslana had truly stopped there. He had not taken a single step forward.
But neither had he left.
Of course, Mydei knew the matter was not entirely Khaslana’s fault.
That night, he had already quarreled bitterly with Eurypon and been beside himself with frustration. He had wanted to test Khaslana, to see just how far he could drive him, to see what he looked like when he lost control. He had only meant to provoke him. He had never expected to push things so far that he would nearly destroy himself in the process.
In Mydei’s eyes, however, it had only been an accident. A brief loss of consciousness. A throat that hurt for a few days afterward. Hardly the sort of thing that meant the sky was falling.
Khaslana clearly did not see it that way.
In the span of time when Mydei had gone limp from lack of air, Khaslana had been truly terrified. To Mydei, it might have been no more than a single blank instant. To Khaslana, it had felt like a nightmare from which he would never wake. It was the result of the beast in him slipping beyond his control. At last he had been forced to admit that staying beside Mydei might bring him nothing but disaster.
Khaslana was not afraid that Mydei would leave him.
He was afraid that Mydei would be hurt because of him.
More than that, he was afraid Mydei would die because of him.
And so matters remained deadlocked. Mydei was not yet fully recovered, which meant Khaslana did not dare leave. At the same time, Mydei could not stop worrying that the moment he regained his full strength, Khaslana would vanish into the depths of the sea again and never come back.
Neither of them knew how to begin talking about it.
That night, Khaslana heard the bell again.
Candlelight still glowed in Mydei’s room, so his first thought was that the princess must need him for something. He left the pool, came up along the slide, and made his way to Mydei.
Mydei had just finished bathing. His long hair was still damp, and he sat before the mirror combing it slowly. His night robe hung loose over his shoulders, collar half open. The room must have felt stifling, because he had pushed the window open a little. When the night breeze stirred, the bell set nearby swayed lightly and chimed.
Their eyes met in the space between them, and Khaslana looked away first. Once he had confirmed that Mydei was safe and unharmed, there was no reason to remain, nor any point in asking whether the bell had rung by accident or by design.
One hand braced against the doorframe, he offered him a quiet good night.
“Stop.”
Mydei set the comb down, hands still occupied with braiding his hair. Khaslana stood in silence, waiting for the princess’s next words.
“I want to go back to bed and rest,” Mydei said, lifting his eyes. In the candlelight, his lashes cast long shadows. “But I can’t walk.”
“Then let me carry you.”
Even then, Khaslana did not move. One golden tentacle crept quietly over the back of Mydei’s hand and touched him once, tentatively. Mydei turned his hand and caught it, and only then did it seem to relax, winding itself around his wrist. Another curled around the other wrist too. From several feet away, Khaslana gently drew both of Mydei’s hands upward, but the princess did not budge. He sat there stubbornly until, slowly, the octopus-folk man came to him. Only then did Mydei loop his arms around Khaslana’s neck and rise with the motion.
“My princess, it seems you can stand after all.”
A long-absent smile appeared on Khaslana’s face. He possessed none of a siren’s enchantment, and yet the sight of it still made Mydei’s heart lurch.
“You’ve enough breath to talk,” Mydei muttered. “Better use it to catch me.”
“As you command, Your Highness.”
Khaslana gathered him up in strong arms and carried him toward the somewhat rumpled bed nearby. Mydei said nothing, only buried his face in the hollow of Khaslana’s neck, breathing in that cool, sea-damp scent he had missed so much. Khaslana had only just climbed out of the water; his whole body was wet and slick. Mydei did not care. Even once his spine had sunk into the mattress, he still clung tightly to Khaslana’s neck and refused to let go.
“Princess, your body hasn’t fully recovered. You need to rest.”
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to sleep.”
His voice was muffled against Khaslana’s ear.
Only in front of the one he loved most would Mydei lay his feelings bare so honestly, like a cat rolling over onto the ground. To Khaslana, he looked exactly like a spoiled cat asking to be indulged.
“What do you want?”
“A goodnight kiss.”
But Mydei was holding him too tightly. Khaslana could not kiss him like this.
“Princess, you’ll have to let me go first. Otherwise I can’t give you what you want.”
“If I let go of you… you’ll leave again without a word.”
Oh.
The words struck like a blade to the chest. An octopus had three hearts, so perhaps a blow like that would not kill him. But it still hurt, because Mydei was hurting. It made him want to weep, because tears had already slipped from Mydei’s eyes and fallen on his tentacles, cold and salty. Droplets gathered along Mydei’s lower lashes like pearls. Khaslana brushed them away with his fingertips and brought them to his tongue.
“I won’t.”
He had made some kind of decision. Without allowing any argument, he caught the princess by the chin and tipped his face up so those wet eyes could no longer hide.
“I won’t do that to you again.”
He pressed a light kiss to Mydei’s forehead.
“Liar…”
A simple kiss like that could never satisfy his princess. Khaslana’s thumb brushed over Mydei’s lips as he said, with solemn care, “Until you truly believe me, I won’t stop proving it.”
He could not hold himself back any longer, not when Mydei closed his eyes and parted his lips just a little. They had both waited too long for this closeness. Khaslana slid his tongue into Mydei’s mouth at once and caught his tongue with his own. One hand cradled the back of the princess’s head, the other wrapped around his shoulder, while all eight tentacles climbed onto the bed and wound around them both, forming a golden cocoon.
When they kissed, Mydei liked to pinch his earlobe. Then his hands would stray over Khaslana’s back, fingers spread wide as they traced the line of his shoulder blades and the sharp ridges of his spine again and again. He accepted every invasion of Khaslana’s presence with burning eagerness, and when Khaslana began to draw back, suddenly afraid once more that the princess might be struggling to breathe, Mydei chased after the kiss instead. At some point, he had become just as greedy. The people and things he wanted were not allowed to escape him.
Their mouths remained tangled, unwilling to part. In the end, it took two tentacles catching Mydei by the wrists and pinning them to the bed to force even the slightest restraint back into him. His chest rose and fell sharply. His lips were swollen and flushed from the intensity of the kissing, yet he still did not know the meaning of enough. Mydei glared up at Khaslana, unable to understand why he had separated them like this.
“Last time, you were the one in control. You worked so hard to serve me. It’s my turn to repay all of it.”
“That was only—ugh.”
Mydei’s all rebuttals turned to ash as a sturdy, powerful tentacle pressed hard between his legs. Today, he had obediently worn pajama pants under his robe, yet touch does not lie; through the stroke of the tentacle, Khaslana clearly felt the petals of the flesh-cave. Teasing with a swirling motion of the tip, a small patch of fabric was immediately soaked.
"You..."
Khaslana’s remaining linguistic system was destroyed. He simply stopped pretending; a tentacle probed in from the edge of the waistband, going straight to that jungle that could make Mydei’s eyes roll back.
Without even needing more touch, Mydei was already soaked just from the kissing. Khaslana manipulated the tentacle to wrap around the center of constant longing, letting the suckers settle on the shivering clitoris, pressing down hard to squeeze out the surrounding air.
"Ah—Phai, Khaslana!"
In his panic, Mydei nearly called out the name Khaslana had before reaching maturity. His body, which had not followed pleasure for a long time, struggled violently. Khaslana bit his lip, using all his strength to tether the beast screaming to break its cage in his heart, sparing two tentacles to fix Mydei’s thighs and calves in a folded posture, so he could only spread his legs but not kick. Mydei’s chin was tilted high, his whimpering unstoppable; he could not stand this kind of stimulation at all, his waist unable to stop twisting, trying to escape the dangerous pleasure.
"Let go of me, let go... this won't do, it's too much, it's too far—Khaslas—"
However, the tentacle pressed even closer against the soft flesh of the opening. Meanwhile, the tentacle serving Mydei was no longer satisfied with shallow, tentative testing; it dug deep into the muddy petals and began to rub up and down. Several suckers acted like mouths and tongues, yet far more flexible, constantly sucking the nerve clusters around the clitoris.
Soon, Mydei was slumped weakly on the bed, unable to make any sound except for a sob-like gasping. Even if he wanted to say something, it was nothing more than some incoherent moans. Khaslana could still distinguish his own name from those ethereal syllables; he was satisfied with the princess’s love and loyalty, and thus resolved to give Mydei the reward he deserved.
Two more tentacles crawled into the sleeping robe.
"You... you wretched stray..."
"A pity I am an octopus, dear Mydei. Are you already losing your mind from the pleasure?"
The corners of Khaslana’s mouth curled deeply. Those two tentacles drove straight in, reaching Mydei’s chest, licking and rubbing the already erect nipples like tongues.
"So submissive, so sensitive, all because of me..."
The circular flesh-rings on the tentacles did not hurry to latch onto the tips; instead, with the extremely fine muscular folds at their edges, they contracted and rubbed bit by bit along the contour of the areola. That feeling was less like sucking and more like some toothless, warm gnawing, each strike precisely crushing Mydei’s most sensitive nerve endings. Suckers opened and closed, capturing sweat and hormones on the skin; every taste was transmitted precisely to Khaslana’s brain through the tentacles.
However, his own tongue was devoid of flavor. This could not help but make Khaslana feel a hint of loneliness. His tentacles were doing their best to be intimate with Mydei, but he could only watch. Thinking of this, he reached out and unbuttoned the sleeping robe. Mydei was powerless to stop any of this; he could only bury half his face in his arm to escape Khaslana’s further desecration.
Khaslana bent over, taking away one of the tentacles clinging to the chest. The sucker left reluctantly with a "pop." The slime-coated skin hit the air, bringing a slight chill, which was immediately covered by a warm mouth. Khaslana’s tongue was tougher than a human’s, with a coarse texture. It circled repeatedly on Mydei’s swollen areola, every sweep across the tip bringing waves of electric-like shivering.
"...Bastard..." Mydei’s eyes were vacant, tears sliding from the corners into the hair at his temples, "You're going to... suck me dry..."
"I won't leave you again, Mydei. So—”
A tentacle wound around Mydei’s waist, pulling him back to his original position.
“So, don't waste your effort thinking of running away."
With that, Khaslana moved all the way down, leaving a kiss on his lower abdomen.
Mydei thought in a daze that if they—mated too many times, could they leave something behind here? It seemed his brain had burned out some nerve in that long-lasting high fever.
"We can try," Khaslana chuckled, not refuting Mydei’s absurd obsession, as he spread Mydei’s tense thighs even wider. No one knew by what means he had read Mydei’s thoughts. "But before that, just let me see how much more this place can hold."
The tentacle that had previously wrapped around the private parts moved away, and an extreme soreness and swelling rushed straight from between the legs to the skull. Khaslana flexibly parted the wet, soft folds of flesh, his tongue-tip drilling into the deepest part of the crevice, greedily collecting the passion belonging to the princess. He found the pearl within the clam shell, teasing the clitoris with the tip of his tongue, sucking it. Mydei’s self-respect was stirred into a mess. The ceiling before his eyes turned into a golden chaos, swallowing him.
Before he could catch his breath, he felt something blunt, massive, and slippery press against the opening of his cave.
Strong tentacles like this—Khaslana had eight in total. They each had different functions: two used to fix the wrists, two to part the thighs, two to tease the nipples, one to wrap around the waist. The last one was used to pleasure his princess.
Mydei let himself fall from the cliff of orgasm. At some point, Khaslana had released his hands, and the princess was able to open his arms, embracing the man who was leading him into the abyss of desire.
He cried.
He could never be satisfied.
He hated it to the extreme, yet he loved this man to death.