A Bride for the Water God (Divine Dragons 1)

Everyone knew that creatures and mythical beings existed in the world. They didn’t hide themselves from humans, but man and the mystical didn’t always mesh well. Nature spirits, fae, monsters, and all sorts of beasts in between wandered over the land outside of human establishments.

My village was small, a drop of rain in the greater scheme of the ocean. Massive cities and kingdoms sprawled, growing ever larger around the world. As people grew and expanded their territories, the names of the gods faded from memory.

I didn’t know the Water God had a name when my boat was pushed into his waters. I didn’t know the King of the Seas would want a wife. I didn’t know Calder would fuck like the god he was.

Just the other day I’d climbed into a boat thinking I was going to drown at sea in the hopes it would please the Water God enough to grace my people with rain. I would have died if I hadn’t fought the rusalka—something I did for my family.

A family I didn’t think I’d ever see again.

After a midday meal of roasted chicken, fresh bread, sharp cheeses, and the sweetest, ripest fruits I’d ever tasted, Calder and I went down to explore the impressive expanse of shore in the shadow of his palace.

I wore a white dress of thin, diaphanous material with tiny strings of pearls cascading over my shoulders. My hair was braided into a crown on my head, adorned with pearl pins. Warm, coarse sand kissed my bare feet as I walked along the shore with my dragon husband.

The sky had never looked as beautiful as it did with him. I wondered if he had something to do with it since the air smelled like distant rain. Everything I knew about growing up on a farm told me that it should have been dark and cloudy based on the wind and scent of nature. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a drop of rain to be seen.

Calder sent the clouds elsewhere, I guessed.

He was a being made from the rain and storms and seas. He was a monster of a creature, a dragon larger than life. But he made the sky bright and sunny for me that day. The sun had never shone so brightly, and the glittering waves on the sea had never sparkled so vividly before.

“Where I’m from the sea is never this pretty,” I admitted.

“No. You live in a place where the surf is always wild. The waves are dangerous. It’s because of the location and the winds and the moon.” Calder shrugged, following me along as I picked shells from the lapping waves. “There are many waters all over the world and so many factors contributing to the way they are.”

“Could you change that?” I popped upright with a pink and white whelk in my hands, rubbing wet sand off the tip of the shell.

“Hm, I could. But there’s more to it than a temporary change. I might be the God of water, the seas, the tides, and the moon, but those things are in harmony with other facets of the world. If I made serious changes, they could affect my brothers.”

I noticed his face scrunch up briefly. Then it was gone.

“Do you work together with your brothers?” I paused, watching his reaction.

His lips thinned. A second passed, and he lifted his shoulder, but his tail was twitching at the end. Maybe bothered by memories. “We do now. Our powers have found a flow over the ages. It wasn’t always that way.”

“What happened?” I bit my lip. “Wait, you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”

Calder casually threw an arm over my shoulder. He was so much larger than me; I felt engulfed and embraced under his arm. I wasn’t short by any means, but he made me feel tiny. More so when I felt the presence of his wing behind us, protecting me from the powerful sunlight.

“It’s alright, rabbit. We’re past it now. Mostly.” I kept my eyes on the textured pattern on the shell as he spoke. “My brothers and I are as old as creation. When the world was new, so were we. We came into existence with our natures. In the beginning, our powers clashed. So did we. Some of the scars remain, and they always will, but we’re at peace now.”

“So, it was finally time to settle down?” I ventured.

“I suppose when the right person came along, it was. And you came along,” he laughed, tugging me tighter against his side.

My face burned.

I can’t believe he said that. I was just a human, a blip compared to all his centuries ruling over the seas.

“The right person?” I blew out a breath, eyes rounding. “How can you say that already?”

He hummed, mulling it over for a moment. “I just know, little rabbit. There is a power in my chest that sings for you. My soul, it quakes and pulses, leaning toward you. I think even if you hadn’t fought off the rusalka on your own, I would have come for you.”

“Because I was a sacrifice?” I tried to deny the emotion of his words.

“Many sacrifices have been sent to me through the ages, Marilla. None of them have ever made it through the seas or the monsters. I never wanted any of them to before now.” Calder stopped, withdrawing from me. He turned to face me, and I had to arch my head back to meet his eyes—his too serious stare. “False deities are worshiped in sacrifices and trinkets. Humans hurl prayers at us for trivial things they can handle on their own. Real gods, such as I, don’t need those things, nor did I want them. My power comes from the seas and the rivers and those are everlasting.”

I got hung up on one portion of that statement. It hooked into my brain, and I couldn’t focus on the rest. Holding the shell close to my chest, I gnawed on my bottom lip, wrestling with what I wanted to ask.

I needed to get it out.

“You say humans hurl prayers at you for things they can handle, then what about my village?” My lips trembled as the words broke free. “The rain just… it just stopped, Calder. My people were starving—dying. Why?”

Calder subtly flinched, then cocked his head. My heart palpitated under the observant striking glint in his eyes. He always looked at me as if he could open my ribs and scour my insides and dig out everything about me. But it was a genuine gaze with profound power in their depths.

“I don’t control every drop, Marilla. I can, of course.” He turned that acute stare to the sea, watching the near flat surface lap at the sand. “I’ve spent thousands of years forming the flow of the water. A thousand years before that, I fought brutal battles with my brothers. Working every facet of the water after the aggression eased was too exhausting. Now the water manages itself in a magical flow of nature.”

“So—” I tried to bite back my question, but it wriggled free “—you weren’t withholding the rain because you were angry with us?”

The Water God’s oversized hands landed on my shoulders, smoothing over my skin. “No, fuck no, Marilla. That just happens sometimes. It’s unfortunate, but not anything I did maliciously. And it’s not something you’ll ever have to worry about again.”

“Thank you for telling me. I feel better knowing that,” I said.

“Would you have hated me if that were the case?” he intoned, catching my chin with his hand. He tipped my head back, brushing the soft pad of his thumb over my mouth as if tracing the shape and committing it to memory.

My lips parted, and something bright twirled through my stomach.

“No. I know you aren’t a man. Your reasoning goes beyond human understanding.”

A bark of laughter burst from him. “No, rabbit, it’s not as complicated as that. I’ve lived a very long time, and I don’t want my life to boil down to something so convoluted. Pettiness against humans for some believed slight? It’s beneath me, and it’s tiresome.”

“Oh, I understand.” And I did.

Calder wanted to rest. After eons of managing the waters of the world, battling his brothers, and settling into the flow of time—he needed peace. I wanted to be that for him.

“Your people are well now. Do you trust that?” His question brought me back to the surface of the thoughts I’d been swimming in.

“I do,” I replied. Though I still wanted to see it for myself. Without seeing the storm clouds over my village, flowering water pouring through our crops, and health and life returning to their eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were happy.

“Now, I have someplace I’d like you to see.” Calder took my hand, tugging me toward the waves.

“I thought we were exploring the beach today. I’ve been collecting all these shells.” My hands were full of them.

“Leave the shells. You’ll love this,” he promised.

I followed along after the towering Water God. Eyes wide and a smile pulling my lips.

He was a massive beast formed from darkness and the ocean. His wings were pulled tight against his back, and I wondered what they looked like in use. Did he only use them in the water, or could he claim the skies as well?

Our feet sunk into the pale sand, and then our legs crashed through the still surface of the ocean. The water was so clear I saw fish and other creatures swimming under the surface nearby. All those little fish swam away the instant the god’s body made contact with the water.

Then he was taking me far out until the warm, lapping water was up to my shoulders. A moment of panic grabbed me by the back of the neck as my toes lifted off the sand. Before I got a chance to suck in a breath, I was dragged beneath the waves.