Chapter 20
Our walk back to the ship was quiet, both of us engrossed in our own thoughts and worries about the meeting with Theia.
I kept turning over her cryptic predictions with the new knowledge that, somehow, the spirit of Melusine lived inside me.
It made sense, somehow. The sea had always felt like more of a friend to me than any selkie, even Sereia, and I had never heard any others speak of her the way I did. Even Sereia would give me funny looks when I spoke of her like a person, although she never explained them.
And if the sea and sky had blessed me with the spirit of their child and power over both domains, it made sense that something must be paid in the process. My lungs, it seemed, had been their price.
But if Caspian and I were somehow meant to unite the people of the Silent Isles, I had no idea how to do it other than by hoping our mating would bridge the gap. What force had been the one to tear it asunder in the first place? Why were the sea dragons and the kelpies so invested in our fates? And what did it mean that the isles were withering?
“You look like you’re ready to storm the ship and take no prisoners,” Caspian joked, catching me by the arm and pulling me from my thoughts just as we hit the dock. “Are you alright?”
“Just thinking,” I sighed, smiling reassuringly and adjusting the sea dragon scale on his pauldron. “What do you think Theia meant by what she said to me as we left? She wants to come back to the Isles?”
“I have no fucking idea.” Caspian kissed my knuckles, frowning down at me. “Half of what Theia says comes to nothing. But I’m sorry, Urchin. I should have told you my theory about Melusine sooner.”
“I’m not upset,” I assured him. “More confused than anything. And I actually understand why you didn’t.”
“You do?” He raised a brow in disbelief, and I reached up to smooth his frown away with my thumbs.
“It was outlandish enough that I wouldn’t have believed it. Plus,” I confessed, feeling unreasonably proud of myself, “I’d mostly figured it out by myself.”
“Of course you did.” He grinned and bent to kiss me on the cheek before continuing to guide me back to the ship. “Any other revelations you should tell me about?”
“None. You?”
“I think we’re all caught up with each other now, Urchin,” he said, squeezing my shoulders affectionately. “Now we just need to figure out our next move.”
“Oh, I already know our next move,” I said dismissively as we strode up the gangplank to the deck of the ship.
“Of course you do,” Caspian sighed. “Care to share?”
“We go see the Stormcrow.”
Caspian halted as we reached the deck, tugging me around to face him. “No.”
“It’s the only way, Cas.” I tried to keep my voice sweet and convincing as I laid out my reasons. “Theia was no help, and as you said, we can’t win a war on two fronts. We need to eliminate the threat before we see my father.”
“And if it is your father?” he pushed. “The most obvious answer is that your father hired him to help get you back. Who better than someone who knows the cliffs?”
“And if it was someone else? Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”
“I’m not willing to risk you, Urchin. He already tried to take you from me once. I’m not packaging you up and delivering you to him myself.”
“Need I remind you that you taught me to defend myself? I’m not helpless, and I’m not afraid of him.”
“I am afraid of him, Urchin.” Caspian clasped my shoulders, pulling me closer. “I’m fucking terrified of losing you, and I’m not too proud to admit it.”
Before I could reply to this touching sentiment, Zephyr coughed loudly from the main deck. “Any chance your lover’s quarrel can wait? We have guests.”
“What guests?” Caspian asked, still holding me as he looked to the main deck.
“Oh, no one special,” came a voice I had not heard in over a week.
“Astraios!” I smiled up at the male as he flew down from the rigging and alighted beside Zephyr. He looked tired and more scruffy than normal, his beard extra scraggly and unkempt, and his speckled wings drooping with exhaustion. But he was smiling as I made my way up to the main deck and threw my arms around him. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Tired of your mate so soon?” he teased, earning a laugh from Caspian as the two males clasped hands.
“I promise you, Marina is perfectly satiated,” Caspian said, making me blush as Astraios grinned down at me.
“I suppose I can’t blame you for not waiting for me to make an honest male of him,” Astraios sighed dramatically.
“But I’m furious,” came a female voice from behind me, one so familiar and unexpected I half thought I had gone mad.
“Sereia?” I asked, turning to find my silver-haired friend standing looking very uncertain and awkward in her usual seal-skin wrap. I threw my arms around her, tears unexpectedly springing to my eyes. “Why are you here? How are you here?”
“It’s a very long story,” she replied, hugging me back tightly before pulling away to examine me. “You’re well? You’re not ensorcelled? Astraios was telling the truth?”
“I am and he was,” I confirmed, taking her hands in mine and squeezing them. I frowned, taking in the deep bags under her eyes and her skin abnormally pale except for a purpling bruise across her cheek. “You’re not though. What happened?”
“Your father is what happened,” Astraios cut in, looking more murderous than I had ever seen him. “We just flew in. Let’s get some food and drink into your friend, and we’ll tell you the whole sordid tale.”
“First things first,” Caspian interrupted. “Do you have the Selkie King’s reply?”
“I do,” Astraios sighed, passing Caspian a folded letter. It was sealed with my father’s insignia, and Caspian broke the wax, holding the paper so both of us could read it. I kept hold of Sereia with one hand as Caspian read aloud:
There will be no peace between us. You have kidnapped my daughter and turned her against me with your magic. You will pay in blood.
His Majesty King Nereus, Master and Protector of the Silent Isles
“I told him I wasn’t ensorcelled,” I argued, rereading the letter twice more and looking to Sereia. She sighed, her lips downturned. My stomach sank as I realized that not only had he not believed me nor Sereia, but he didn’t actually want to make peace. “He’s not coming?”
“It would seem not,” Caspian agreed. “I’m not wholly surprised, Urchin, although I am disappointed.” He squeezed my shoulder in comfort as he folded the letter. “Come, we’ll sit in the galley. Zephyr, you too. I think we’ll all need to hear this story. Lady Sereia,” he added, bowing low to my friend in a gesture that surprised us both. “It is an honor to have you aboard.”
Sereia remained close to Astraios as we made our way to the galley, and I wondered how exactly the two of them had met.
“Right,” said Caspian as the five of us settled around the table in the galley with stew and bread and ale. Reuben tactfully excused himself as Sereia took in the tiny kitchen, marveling at every aspect of the ship just as I once had. It warmed my heart to have my friend here, even if the circumstances had been less than pleasant for her. “Better start at the beginning.”
“Well, I did what you asked and sailed to the Isles,” Astraios began as he ripped off a chunk of bread and dipped it in his stew. “We dropped anchor about five miles out where we were less likely to be spotted, and I flew your letters to the keep as promised. I had to knock out a few guards with song to make sure I got in without being shot down.”
“You’re lucky I didn't shoot you when you came crashing through my window that night,” Sereia cut in, frowning slightly at Astraios.
“I didn’t crash. I was extremely stealthy,” Astraios corrected, puffing his speckled feathers up indignantly. “And I didn’t realize you were sending me into a dragon’s den, Marina, or I would have protested more. Nearly took my eye out with a poker, this one.”
“You deserved it,” Sereia replied serenely.
I blinked, looking between the two of them. I had never once in my life seen Sereia be anything less than proper and appropriate, but was that…sarcasm?
“I’m sorry,” I said, wincing at Sereia. “It was my idea to send him to you. I thought if I could convince you of the truth, you might be willing to help him.”
“And so she was, after a great deal of convincing,” Astraios agreed with a wicked grin at Sereia. I could swear her cheeks darkened a fraction, and I felt like my known universe was collapsing. I’d never seen Sereia blush, either.
“I read your letter,” Sereia said, turning to me and pointedly ignoring Astraios’ grin. “Seas, we were all so terrified when you disappeared, and then when Vitulus returned and said you refused to return with him…well we all believed the worst.”
“Which was?” Zephyr asked, looking so relaxed it was as if she were watching a live drama unfold.
“That you had been ensorcelled. Brainwashed,” Sereia said, as if this were obvious. I had to stifle the urge to roll my eyes as she continued, “It took Astraios a while to convince me you hadn’t been, despite your letter.”
“How did he convince you?” I asked, glancing between the pair who were now refusing to make eye contact.
“He came back to my window every night after the first to tell me stories,” she replied. She looked flustered at this admission, like she was ashamed of having entertained the enemy. “About you and…and Caspian,” she glanced at my mate who smiled warmly back at her. “About the shipwreck and the sirens and the cliffs.”
“Why didn’t you call for the guards?” I asked, surprised that my proper and extremely cautious friend wouldn’t have run to Vitulus after Astraios’ first visit.
“I thought about it,” she admitted. “But I…I don’t even really know why I didn’t, honestly.” She blushed a little deeper as she glanced at Astraios, then away again. “I just trusted him.”
Oh seas. Was it possible…but no. That was something to worry about later.
“So Astraios convinced you I was no longer being held against my will,” I summarized, pushing the intrusive thought away for later. “Then what?”
“Well, we agreed that I should deliver your letters to the King,” Sereia explained. “Since it wouldn’t be safe for Astraios to announce himself or walk the halls at night.”
“I left them beneath his door,” she went on. “Your father was furious the next day, Marina, I thought he might bring the whole keep down with his rage. He spent several hours in his council room with his advisors before disappearing from the keep altogether.”
“Where did he go?” I asked.
“No one was sure,” Sereia replied. “At least no one I felt safe asking. There have been terrible storms and earthquakes since you disappeared, Marina, and the King has spent a great deal of time handling repairs and trying to secure food. The sea dragons have been out far more than usual for this time of year, and they’ve made fishing very difficult.”
“Storms and earthquakes?” I looked to Caspian, who raised a brow in interest. Storms weren’t uncommon, but earthquakes were. Was this what Theia meant about the Isles withering?
“And sea dragons,” Caspian added pointedly, glancing at his shoulder where the scale sat gleaming on his pauldron. “What happened next?”
“Someone saw me,” Astraios said darkly. “As I was leaving Sereia’s room with your father’s reply. I was a damned fool.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Sereia murmured quietly.
“What wasn’t?” Caspian demanded. “For skies-fucking-sakes, this story is taking forever.”
I frowned at my mate, but Astraios laughed weakly as Sereia answered. “Vitulus confronted me and threw me in the dungeons for conspiring with the enemy.”
“He what?” I asked, horrified at the thought of sweet, gentle Sereia in the dungeons.
“I told your father everything,” Sereia confessed. Her head was down as she carefully studied her stew, as if too ashamed to look up. “I tried to convince him of what you had said in your letter. That the sirens wanted peace. He wouldn’t listen, Marina. He said he was planning to send ships south to get you back himself. That he would kill every last siren until you were returned.”
My stomach turned, not just at the threat of violence or my father’s treatment of my friend, but because he spoke of me like lost property he wanted restored, rather than a daughter with a will of her own.
“I got her out before that, obviously,” Astraios said. His hand twitched as if he longed to reach out and cover Sereia’s, and I felt a warm glow of appreciation for the male. “That was three days ago now. I sent the ship back to the cliffs to warn everyone and flew straight here with Sereia.”
“You flew for three days?” Zephyr asked, sounding both impressed and surprised.
“Two and a half,” Astraios shrugged. “I didn’t want to stop for too long in case we were followed.”
“We have to go back,” I declared, standing with such haste that I nearly knocked over the pitcher of ale with my elbow. Caspian pulled me back down, fingers twining soothingly with mine. “My father has probably already left for the cliffs.”
“It will take him weeks to find us,” Caspian reminded me, thumb stroking circles on the back of my hand. “He doesn’t know where they are, Urchin.”
“He does,” Sereia said gravely, making us all turn toward her. “I heard him talking to Vitulus after he…after he questioned me.”
I tightened my grip on Caspian’s hand. Based on Sereia’s bruised face and my memory of Caspian’s ruined wings, I could guess what that questioning had been like.
“How?” Zephyr demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sereia said, shrinking back from the fierceness of Zephyr’s single eye and shaking her head. “I just heard him tell Vitulus to prepare his soldiers to sail south toward the cliffs.”
“Fuck,” Caspian swore, turning to his first mate. “How long do you think we have?”
“At least a week, but likely no more,” she replied darkly. “If we leave tonight and use the wind to our advantage. If Astraios’ crew make it back before us, that will give our people time to prepare their defenses.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It would take my father’s ships time to get to the cliffs, especially without the wind to guide them. Most of our sailing was done on smaller ships with oars, transporting goods from one island to another. Crossing the open sea would take far longer.
“Then we leave tonight,” Caspian announced. He stood and pulled me from the table with him and looked at Zephyr. “Ready the ship. We’ll set sail as soon as Marina and I have spoken to the Stormcrow.”
“What?” I exclaimed, Zephyr and Astraios raising their voices in confusion alongside mine. “I thought you said we weren’t going?”
“I did.” Caspian sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve come around. We go armed, in a group, and in public. And if he so much as tries to touch you, I’ll kill him and damn the consequences.”
Astraios groaned, glancing at Sereia as if she were the one the Stormcrow was truly after. “This is a terrible idea, Cas.”
Caspian smirked, looking entirely the over-confident soldier-king. “Luckily, terrible ideas are my specialty.”