Chapter 4
Seeing Marina sitting at the table with my council was like watching vultures circle a dying sea dragon. All but Hesperus, who never showed any kind of emotion, looked wary, and Arctos and Eos looked ready to pick the flesh from her bones. Only the presence of Zephyr and Astraios, each flanking Marina as if ready to defend her, kept the mating bond from taking over completely and sending me into a killing frenzy.
“It will calm down after the claiming,” Zephyr told me without a hint of embarrassment when I quickly pulled her aside before the meeting. “But until you make it official, you’re likely to be a bit”—she paused and gave me a pitying frown—“volatile.”
“You weren’t like this with Ana,” I hissed, feeling like my insides were crawling out of my skin. It hadn’t been this bad on the island or in the first few days of the bond being awoken, but each day seemed to increasingly fray on my nerves and willpower, begging me to take Marina hard and fast against every surface of every room.
Granted, she’d likely welcome it. But I refused to do it until she understood, and she’d been too inebriated last night for me to trust my own judgment, let alone hers.
Zephyr laughed. “Oh I was. But we made it official quickly. And I’m a female.”
“What does that have to do with it?” I grumbled, feeling like I needed to tear something apart with my bare hands to work off the energy of the bond.
“Females are vastly more sensible than males,” she replied with a shrug, as if this were a well known fact. “We’re naturally better at everything.”
I’d been forced to do no more than roll my eyes at this as Zephyr swept back into the council chamber where Astraios was keeping Marina entertained with stories of—likely false—heroics as we waited for the council.
They appeared shortly after and took their seats without so much as a nod to Marina, although all bowed to me. Mesembria shot me a tight-lipped smile, while Eos stared me down like a vengeful goddess.
I was glad Ana wasn’t allowed in these meetings to see her mother in action. Where Ana was soft and lively, Eos was rough and serious. She had been only a child when the exile occurred, but half a millennia of living displaced from her home had hardened her.
“What is the purpose of this meeting, My King?” Eos asked, her ancient voice failing to hide her irritation. “Did we not make our feelings clear at the last one?”
My hand clenched on the hilt of my sword, and Zephyr coughed pointedly as if to say, “Don’t be an idiot.”
“You did,” I replied with a nod to the Lady of the East Winds. “But today’s meeting is to discuss our strategy for ending the war.”
“I thought she was your strategy?” Arctos said, gesturing to Marina with his chin. “Why is she here if not to win us the war?”
It took all of my effort not to strangle him where he sat.
“Marina,” I replied, emphasizing her name, “is part of the plan. A vital one. But I’m not foolish enough to think that our being mated will be enough to convince her father of our good intentions.”
“Thank the skies for small mercies,” Eos mumbled.
I chose to ignore her, gesturing to Zephyr to hand me the maps she had brought. I spread them out across the table between us, and Marina leaned over interestedly as I pointed to the stretch of sea between us and the selkies.
“When Marina and I go to negotiate with her father, it would be wise to pick a neutral, defensible territory,” I said, pointing to the smaller islands in the archipelago. “One of these, perhaps.”
“Too easy for him to overwhelm you,” Marina murmured, frowning at where I pointed. “He’ll bring warriors.”
“As will we,” Astraios pointed out, moving around the table to examine the map more closely. “We’d hold the high ground. Twenty sirens would be enough to keep the selkies at bay, and that’s without our song.”
“If we sing, we will lose,” I snapped, frowning at my second mate for the oversight. “We need the Selkie King to trust us. Singing him into oblivion would have the opposite effect.”
“They’re skilled archers,” Marina said, causing the table to turn to her. “My father’s warriors, I mean. Even if you held the island, they could ground you with a single well-placed arrow.”
The tiny wrinkle between her brows was adorable, and I wondered if she was recalling our time grounded on the small island in the southern portion of the archipelago.
She met my gaze, and the pink in her cheeks confirmed that she was.
“What about Nordhavn?” Zephyr suggested, raising a brow at me. “It’s neutral ground, and there are too many witnesses for any underhandedness.”
“Casualties, you mean,” Arctos spat, scowling at Zephyr. “You meet the Selkie King there, and you’re just asking for innocent deaths.”
Marina bristled, and I could feel her fury through the bond when she replied, “My father would not endanger innocents.”
I tried to hide my doubt, remembering how violent he and his guards had been with me when I was captured. If they hadn’t wanted to make a spectacle of me, they certainly would have killed me, innocent or not.
Nordhavn certainly had its advantages. Perhaps another visit to Theia was in order.
“It could help, actually, to meet him there,” Marina continued, eyes ablaze with the light of hope. “It would give him a chance to see the selkies and sirens living together. That might do more to convince him than anything I could say.”
Marina met my gaze again, and I knew she was thinking back to her discovery that the world was not what she believed. Skies, if it wouldn’t upset her, I would wring her lying father’s neck. But I didn’t want to contradict her by suggesting that her father knew perfectly well what Nordhavn was like.
“A sword would convince them just as easily,” Arctos spat.
“Arctos,” Hesperus admonished, looking stonily at the elderly male. “It's not your place.”
Arctos lifted his hands in surrender, a wicked gleam in his ancient eyes. “Apologies, Highness,” he said, deliberately using the wrong title to irritate me. Arctos had been a staunch supporter of my father. He was a traditionalist, and his way of thinking was rigid and outdated. He and my father and many of the older generations had become embittered after so long in exile, believing it better to rid the world of the selkies rather than try to live peacefully with them once more. He had not been happy to bend the knee to me when my father fell, and only did so now because the alternative was death. “Forgive an old male. I know how you handle those who disagree with you.”
The silence went taut for a moment, and a phantom pain lanced the scar over my breast.
Zephyr cut in with a nonchalant wave of her hand. Bless my first mate for always coming to my rescue. “How many sirens should we bring to such a meeting?”
The rest of the meeting passed—thank the great skies—uneventfully, making plans for how many sirens and ships we’d need for such a rendezvous and drafting a letter to Marina’s father.
Marina was impressive during this part of the meeting, dictating and correcting slight errors in wording that we would never have known might give offense.
She wrote two additional letters: one an appeal to her father, promising to be at the rendezvous if he would agree to come, and imploring him not to bring the full force of his guard, lest the meeting devolve into violence. The other was a letter to her friend Sereia, begging for her help in convincing her father.
“Give this to Sereia,” she commanded. “Fourth floor, second window from the left. She’ll help you, I think.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Astraios asked skeptically as I signed and sealed the letters then stamped them with my sigil.
“Then she’ll likely call the guard on you and we’ll have to rescue you from the dungeons,” she replied with a shrug. “You’d better convince her to believe you.”
Astraios grinned appreciatively at the joke, and I told the feral beast inside me to calm down.
“No one but you delivers this,” I added, handing Astraios the folded parchment. “Take a ship and your most trusted sailors. Don’t leave the Isles without a reply. You have two weeks at most.”
“As you will it, My King. My Queen,” Astraios replied in rare solemnity. I knew he only used my title as a formality in front of the council, but I appreciated the optics of his loyalty and respect. The fact that he also gave that respect to Marina made me feel inclined to grant him a long vacation when all of this was done. And perhaps not tear him limb from limb for flirting with my mate.
“Why only two weeks?” Marina asked after the council members had finally left, whispering amongst themselves in a way that had my hackles rising.
“Because it will take us another week to get to Nordhavn and establish a meeting point.” I explained, taking her hand as we wound our way out of the council chambers and to a cliff exit. “And you’ve been here for nearly a week already. That will bring us to the end of the month.”
“Oh,” she replied, brow furrowed as I scooped her up and leapt into the sky. “I see.”
I felt something cold slinking through my veins mixed with the usual exhilaration Marina felt while flying. Dread. Dread over having to decide whether or not to leave me, perhaps. Astraios’ mission gave me only two weeks to convince her to stay and fight for us.
Fight for me.
“You’re thinking hard,” Marina teased, running a finger over the line that had formed between my brows. “Is it about the meeting?”
“Actually, that went better than I expected,” I said, alighting on one of the ledges to the upper levels and pushing aside the mossy curtain that disguised the entrance. “You were perfect.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” she replied with a grin that had my heart skipping a beat. She must have felt it because her smile faltered. “Caspian—”
“Training first,” I insisted, interrupting her with a quick kiss. I knew she was about to ask me about my parents or why I had yet to bed her, but I wasn’t prepared for any of those conversations— not with the memory of Arctos’ words still ringing in my head.
I know how you handle those who disagree with you.
“Cas,” Marina insisted, lifting a hand to cup my cheek as if she sensed the dark turn of my thoughts. “You’re a good male. A good king. A better one than my father. Whatever you did to make Arctos say what he did, I know you did it for the right reasons.”
My brow softened, and I wondered if the mating bond had told her where my anxieties lay without her even realizing it.
I also sensed a similar struggle in her—to love the father who had lied to her, despite the fact that he had hurt her mate. I understood it more than she could know—to reconcile my love for my father with the male who was slowly killing my people. In the end, my people had won out.
“Thank you, Urchin. But I’m not above resorting to violence, as you know.” She looked up at me, and I sighed. “And I don’t think your father is a bad male or a bad king. I think he’s…”
“A tyrant?” she suggested bitterly.
“Misguided,” I corrected. “If anyone can make him see reason, Urchin, it’s you. He clearly loves you. In that, he and I have something in common.”
I could still sense her lingering questions as I kissed her, so I forced a smile. “Training now. Then you have an appointment with Ana at the library,” I reminded her.
She sighed, rolling her eyes as she began to braid her hair back from her face. “Yes, yes. I didn’t realize coming here would be quite so much work.”
I laughed, catching her chin and bringing her mouth to mine in one more quick kiss while we lingered in the relative privacy of the little entry alcove.
“Work now, Urchin,” I purred, sending my desire for her through the bond in a way I hoped had her toes curling. “Play later.”