After Transmigrating, My Husband Is an Octopus novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Deep Water

Lorcan was waiting on the walkway when I came in, a lantern at his feet.

"What did he say to you?" he asked.

"Bowing," I said. "He said a lot about bowing."

His skin stayed an even, neutral grey.

He wasn't hiding anything, and neither of us said what I had left out.

The next morning he put a folded towel in my hands and said, "Come with me."

"Where?"

"You'll need to swim."

"Why?"

"Because if the examination goes badly, I want you to be able to reach a boat." His shoulders rose. "I'm sorry. I'd rather be wrong about that. Come anyway."

The cove was a half mile along the shore, below a cliff of black rock.

The water was green and clear.

I had been on a swim team for one year in middle school, and I was more scared than I had been at the fair.

"Take my hand," Lorcan said.

I took it.

He walked me down the sand until the water reached my knees, then my waist, and every muscle I owned tensed.

"I'm not going to let go," he said.

"I'm going to hold you from underneath, and you can kick." His voice was low and even. "Lie back. Look at the sky. Don't look at me, I'm not interesting."

I laughed, and I leaned back.

His hand was flat between my shoulder blades, and then there was another beneath my knees.

For a quarter of an hour I floated in a cove with the pale prince of Saltmere, and nobody sold me and nobody spat.

"You're good at this," I said.

"I've been in the water longer than I've been on land."

"Octopuses don't mind."

"Octopuses," he said gravely, "have a great many opinions about being compared to octopuses."

I was laughing again when the voice came from the rocks.

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