“The selkies outnumber us by miles. They refused to fight against the dragons’ monster, so he spared them from his plague. They decided a few months ago that they deserve half the throne now. We’re still trying to figure out why, but they’ve been trying to persuade us ever since. Things have gotten progressively more tense.”

“Assholes.”

“Indeed.” The king combed my hair away from my ear, and I took in the earrings that had appeared in my skin. They scaled the length of my ear.

I’d been afraid of piercings since one of my lobes got crazy infected when I was a teenager, so I hadn’t worn any earrings since.

The new ones were on the side opposite from my magical tattoo. While Triton’s were small hoops, mine looked like tiny studs.

“The crown won’t be yours entirely until our bond is sealed,” he said.

“That’s definitely not a crown.”

He ran his finger down the studs along the side of my ear, and I shuddered as the tiniest zap of electric magic rolled through me, warming my body.

A white crown appeared on my head. It was short and small, with a few loops, and looked like it had been made out of bone or shell or something similar. It was the same material as the earrings, though.

The crown lingered when Triton let my hair fall back into place and lifted his hand to his own ear. His own appeared the same way mine had, but it was clearly the larger, more elegant version.

“The earrings hide the crown?” I asked.

“They hold the crown. Creatures of the sea swim too much for something like this to stay in place.” He gestured toward his crown, then brushed a hand over his ear again. The crown vanished, though my gaze lingered where it had been.

“We can’t be married,” I finally said.

“We already are, Sweetheart.”

“You need to stop calling me that. You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“Well, I don’t.”

He ran his finger over my ear, and another small zap of his magic made me flush.

“You’ve got to stop doing that, too.”

“What?”

“The zapping thing. Your electricity makes me feel weird.”

“It’s your body responding to my magic. When we seal the bond, the effects will be far stronger.”

My forehead creased. “Why?”

“Mates are meant to pleasure each other. Our magic simplifies that.”

He lowered his hand from my ear to my shoulder, and his thumb trailed lightly over the back of my neck. It took everything I had not to shiver.

“I don’t have magic,” I said.

“You do. You just haven’t learned how to access it.”

“And it will affect you the same way yours affects me?”

“More, probably.”