Page 239 of The Chosen One Universe: Volume One

“I will check it for danger.”

Ward stripped off his tattered clothes and walked into the water. Henry about swallowed his tongue. Then he almost choked on it when he realized Ward had shifted back into the horse they’d seen earlier. Except… he had a tail. Like, a fish tail. A merman tail? Except he had the head of a horse. That’s what a hippocamp was. Holy crap.

Henry remembered reading about them in one of the books he and Sawyer had studied but they’d been so obscure and rare that neither of them had considered a hippocamp as an option. Legend had it that they were Atlantean in origin, and they were the god Poseidon’s guards. They pulled his chariot a lot in old Greek statues of the god, but Henry knew from living with a couple creatures of myth and legend that a lot of those old statues were based on fantasy and not reality.

Ward shot through the water like a torpedo, aiming straight for the boat. Henry couldn’t take his eyes off his form. It was weird and stunningly beautiful at the same time. Kinda like Eduard with his eagle head and lion body.

It shouldn’t fit, but it somehow did. Henry felt the little bubble of anger and fear that had been inside him since the moment they arrived burst. He giggled and slapped his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.

“What is it?” Eduard asked, suddenly appearing by Henry’s side.

“He’s a merma-horse.”

Eduard arched his brow then gazed out at the approaching ship. His eyes changed, becoming the solid black orbs of his eagle and Henry knew he was scanning the boat and making sure it was one of theirs. Then he turned his head slightly, taking in the silver flash that was Ward heading back their way. Eduard frowned a bit.

“He’s actually a merma-horse,” Eduard said.

Henry snickered, unable to help himself.

They could barely make out the horse head above the water. But then Ward shimmered and dove down and when he next appeared it was about twenty feet from the beach. He was back in his human form except…

“Holy shit. He’s a merman now.”

Ward scowled. “I am not a merman.”

He seemed pretty offended by the term. “Sorry,” Henry said. “I’m kinda new to all this. But… you look like a merman to me.”

The look intensified. “Can a merman do this?”

Ward shimmered again, and he returned to full horse form, prancing his way out of the water before shaking his body and splattering Henry and Eduard with cold droplets before he danced away from them with his head held high.

“Hey!”

“I blame you,” Eduard groused. “You offended our new guardian.”

“Ugh,” Henry said. “But come on!”

“He’s as much royalty as I am. It would be like calling me a mere lion. I am much more than a lion. It is an insult to imply otherwise.”

“So I bruised his ego?”

“Clearly.”

“Okay. I’ll fix it. So I take it the boat’s safe? Cause neither of you are freaking out.”

“No, I recognize several familiar piscines on the boat.”

“Pie whats now?”

“Henry, you really need to study more.”

“Oh, you went there. I’m totally telling Cecil.”

Eduard smirked and glanced back toward the approaching ship. “The piscines are closely connected with the water. Several of their schools work on the island with us and have for centuries.”

“Piscine, like pisces? The sign? It means fish, right?”

“Precisely.”