"Now who's the one playing games?" she asked with narrowed eyes as she watched him as he teased her. She had to fight the knee jerk reaction to Clay's touching her, she wasn't use to such contact by anyone in any matter. At least not since her mother passed away, she never really saw her dad after her mother died, it wasn't what she was use to.  "Can you blame me? You did take me out of my room in the middle of the night then choke me until I pass out, did you expect me to enjoy it?" she asked watching him as he laughed at her and her reaction to everything he said and did to her.  "Call it self preservation, not many know this secret you can thank the king for that. I've kept it as quiet as I could because I value my freedom, I don't want to be chained to someones elses whim." she said before looking away from him and out the window at the sea. Wishing she could jump into the ocean and just swim away from all the problems that faced her, but she knew that Clay would come after her if she followed through on that wish.<br/><br/>"Something that once made my mother desirable to the king" she said keeping her words vegue while still looking out at the water for a while longer before lowering her eyes to the bed and taking a deep breath then met his gaze with her own.  She saw the warmth in his eyes, surprising her to find herself thinking the feeling made him feel approachable in ways he never shown since taking her.  Keeping her eyes on him, Phoenix started to feel like she could relax and almost trust him with her secret. The story he shared about his childhood shocked her as much as the open look in his eyes, she blinked a little as he hesitated on naming what had actually killed his father.  She understood the hesitation, not many would believe in the creatures of the deep, they hid themselves well until they fell in love. "When I was younger I would disappear for hours, not coming back until my mother came for me.  When I returned I had some new story to share with anyone who'd listen to me. At first the palace guards and servants thought I was being an overactive imaginative child embellishing on her dreams, until one day when my mother was too sick to come find me, my father refused to join a search for me as he sat by my mother's death bed I'd been gone for three days. No matter what Mother would say the doctors and Father refused to let her out of their sight because she was to frail. When I did eventually come back, I brought...I didn't come alone and that's when it so happened around the same time my mother passed..." she said remembering the wailing of the beast that helped her find her way home  as it cried out in pain and slammed at the landmass that held her father's castle.  "I don't remember how exactly but after that the people became scared of me, whispering behind my back that I was  some sort of evil creature that that my mother bargained for" she told him taking her own turn to share a story about her life and why she was unwanted. "She went to a dark sea god, and thus I was the byproduct of that...union" she turned her gaze from him and looked out to the water once more, shaking her head when she realized she was rambling about something she was sure he didn't care about. So she went for something a little simpler.<br/><br/>"The ocean, it calls to me in away that I am powerless to ignore and most of the time I don't want to. It's why I wear the style of dress I do, my legs feel suffocated and clumsy when I wear full skirts like a proper princess should. I don't feel like I have the freedom in a full dress as I do with a slit up the side or with the skirts short. It was so suffocating that I would start to strip out of my clothes in public because fabric around me...around my legs feels so foreign, luckily everyone already thought I'd gone crazy ..." She told him answering his question from earlier after helping her dress that morning.  She laughed without humor at the memory of her actions when she . "After one too many of the men propositioned my father for me well...you get the picture" Phoenix said rambling once more, she closed her eyes and shook her head laying back against the bed.  "I just want my freedom. I don't want to look at people and see them shaking from fear at what I could do" she finished