Chapter 29
“Urchin.”
I looked up from where I’d been sipping my tea, my cough having returned in full force.
“Cas,” I croaked, my voice hoarse from coughing and shouting and generally not getting any rest. I scrambled to put the teacup down, my hands shaking as I took his in mine. “How do you feel?”
“How do I look?” he countered, his eyes barely cracking open.
“Like you’ve been shit out of a sea dragon.”
Caspian’s laugh was weak and thready, and he winced in pain. “Well, that’s how I feel.”
He tried to move his wings, and I stopped him with a hand. “I helped the healers splint them,” I explained, running a gentle finger over one of the heavy sticks we’d used to brace his wings. “But I want Mira to examine them when she arrives. You also have twenty-seven stitches, internal bleeding, and nearly died.”
My voice was shaky as I spoke, fighting the tears I’d held in for two days as he lay unconscious.
“I’m fine, Urchin,” Caspian rasped, patting my hand tentatively, as if any movement pained him. “Just a scratch.”
“You’d be dead if you didn’t have magic in your blood,” I snapped.
“Luckily, I do.” He groaned, trying to force his eyes open to look at me. “You’re angry with me.”
“You nearly died,” I snapped again, an errant tear escaping my tight leash of control. “I’m fucking furious.”
Another tear escaped, and Caspian reached over to wipe it away. “I’m sorry, Urchin.”
I couldn’t stop the anxiety and pain and panic I’d been holding back for two days from bubbling over, relief making it impossible to hold my tears back any longer.
I sobbed, dropping my head to Caspian’s bedside as he awkwardly patted my hair.
“Come here, Urchin.” I looked up, and he patted the bed next to him.
“You’re injured.” I sniffed and gave him a reproachful look. “I’ll hurt you.”
“The bed is huge.” He grabbed my hand and tugged gently. Already the color had flooded back into his face, and his voice was stronger each second. “Come here.”
I acquiesced, folding myself as gently as I could next to him under his wing and arm. I sobbed into his side, my tears leaving wet patches on his bandages. He held me close for several long, silent moments.
“I love you,” he murmured, still stroking my hair as my sobs finally eased to sniffles. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“You saved my father’s life.” I said, twisting so I could see his face better from my little cocoon under his wing. His amber eyes were still hooded with exhaustion. “You remember that?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Caspian gave me one of his half-smiles. “Because I couldn’t let you lose your parents. Because it was the only way to convince your father to trust me. Because it was the only way to save you. And—and you must never tell him this, Urchin—because Ran suggested it.”
“You took the advice of your most avowed nemesis?” I laughed, feigning shock.
Caspian grumbled something unintelligible into the pillow before answering. “It was mostly the first three things.”
I kissed his cheek, stroking a finger down the strong line of his nose. I’d come so very close to losing him, feeling the bond between us grow taut with agony, both when he’d been stabbed and when my father’s guards had lifted him from the sand.
“You’re going to have to change my nickname, you know,” I mused, unable to stop myself from touching him. “I’m going to be a barnacle from now on.”
Caspian laughed, then winced as the movement pulled his stitches. While we healed faster than humans, it would still be several days until he was completely healed.
I felt the pinch too, but it was far better than it had been.
Caspian glanced around, seeing the room for the first time. “Is this your bedroom, Urchin?”
“No.” I laughed. “It’s my parents’. Their bed was the only one big enough for your wings.”
“We should definitely defile it then.”
I snorted a laugh. “You could not pay me enough money to do so. And you’re in no shape to defile anything.”
Caspian groaned theatrically as I poked him gently in the ribs. “Very well, you fiend. Actually, maybe I’ll start calling you a hell-beast. Ilya said it to Zephyr, and I quite like the sound of it.”
The mention of the Stormcrow sobered me.
“Are you disappointed that it wasn’t you who killed him?”
“Does commanding sea dragons to eat him not count as killing him?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“No,” Caspian said, hand stilling on my hair. “He was always the better swordsman, and I had no chance against him while injured. I would have died if not for their intervention.”
“Do you regret not killing him back in Nordhavn?”
Caspian shrugged, then winced in pain.
“Make smaller movements.”
“I can’t help it,” he groused. “I’m an expressive male.”
“Answer the question” I pushed, brushing a fond kiss over his lips. He tried to lengthen it, but I was serious about my decree against defiling.
For now, at least.
Caspian sighed, pressing his face into the pillows.
“A little. But I’m also relieved. It occurred to me that I don’t want to be the kind of king—the kind of male—who kills indiscriminately. The Stormcrow committed crimes, certainly, but perhaps the sea dragons were divine justice in their own way.”
A knock at the door interrupted us, and I tried to rise. Caspian stopped me, holding me firm at his side as two familiar figures entered the room.
Zephyr beamed at us as Mira frowned.
“All of you look terrible.” The healer dropped a heavy bag on the end of the bed and scanned us from head to toe. She scowled at Caspian. “You especially.”
Caspian winced as I pulled myself from his arms so that Mira could inspect him properly. “Astraios told me you might need this,” she said, handing me a vial. “For your lungs.”
“Thank you,” I replied, clutching the precious vial to my chest. “Where is he?”
“He’s helping with the ships,” she replied absently as she began poking and prodding at my mate. Caspian grimaced and mouthed, “Help me!”
“The ships?” I looked at Zephyr, who grinned. “Go see. I’ll stay. Mira wants to inspect my wings, anyway.”
With a last glance at Caspian, who was looking extremely pained to have his stitches examined by his best healer, I ran to the highest floor of the keep I could get to without leaving the tower.
My lungs ached and burned by the time I got there, and I reminded myself to take a dose of Mira’s medicine as soon as I returned to Caspian.
One window overlooked the old stone jetty, where several ships, each with a winged selkie on its masthead, were docked and waiting to be unloaded one by one. The weather was unseasonably warm, the sky a pale blue with fluffy white clouds, and the sun shining brightly above.
Not a single storm or quake had racked the island since Caspian and I had declared our love before my father, and I didn’t think it was a coincidence. The sea tugged playfully at me, inciting me to come play. Not right now, I told her. Caspian needs me.
Astraios was below, a speck of brown hair and feathers, shouting and sweating as boxes and crates were unloaded. Sirens, old and young, were looking at the island with a combination of hope and fear.
“He assured me that they are medical supplies and historical records,” a voice said behind me.
I turned to find my father, looking somehow much older as he leaned against the door to the stairs I’d just run up.
He smiled a little sadly. “Your mate lives.”
“He does,” I replied, unsure whether I should step closer or farther away. I gestured to the window. “You allowed this?”
“On the condition that no weapons were brought ashore, yes.” He nodded, his black beard shot through with more silver than I remembered. “Your mate’s second claimed that these records will verify your story. Someone named Ana is supposed to meet with your mother and me later this afternoon.”
I smiled broadly. Zephyr and Astraios deserved far more pay than whatever Caspian was giving them for their hard work these last few days.
Then again, the work was for all of us.
“Do you want me there?” I asked, surprising myself with the question. “At the meeting?”
My father hesitated. “If you can leave your mate, then yes. I assume my advisors will wish to be present as well as your mate’s first and second.”
“They all have names, Father,” I chided gently. “Caspian. Zephyr. Astraios. They are my friends. My family.”
My father’s jaw tightened. “And what of your mother and I? Are we no longer your family?”
“I will always love you and Mother,” I said, knowing in my soul it was the truth. “But I will not choose you over the family I have found. There is room in my heart for all of you. For both of our people, if you are willing to try.”
“The priestesses are convinced,” he said casually, down to study his hands. “Your display on the beach, the end of the storms; they are ready to worship you as a deity. Our people, as well.”
“Seas, I hope they don’t,” I scoffed. “I’m barely able to comprehend being a queen, let alone a goddess.”
“I am not sure what to make of what happened on the beach, Marina.” Father shook his head, looking lost in thought. “Is it true that you can speak to the ancient fae creatures? The dragons and the horses? That you speak to the sea and the sky?”
I nodded. I could show him again, but if my display on the beach—my wings of water, Caspian’s sacrifice, the blue skies above us—hadn’t convinced him, then there was nothing I could show my father that would lend any more credence to my story.
The fact that he was no longer trying to kill my mate seemed a vast improvement.
“It will be difficult,” he mused, moving to join me at a window as we gazed across the sea, “to reunite a people so long divided. To build trust where none has been for centuries.”
“It’s already begun,” I said, nodding at the Nordhavn selkies and sirens, who were chatting and laughing with those from the cliffs as they helped unload crates and boxes.
My father’s arm brushed mine, and I wondered if we had ever spoken like this before. Frankly. Honestly. As equals, rather than father and daughter. Ruler and heir.
“I suppose if anyone can manage it, it is a queen who is also a goddess,” he said, lifting the crown of silver twisted coral from his head and placing it on the window sill. It was so strange to see him without it that I blinked. “It will need to be reshaped, I think. Your head is smaller than mine.”
I looked down at the crown, the one he’d worn all of my life as king of these islands, then back up at him.
“What are you doing?”
My father sighed. “It has become clear to me in the last few days that my time ruling these isles is at an end,” he said gently, placing his warm, brown hands on my shoulders. “If the events on the beach weren’t enough to show me that the world is changing, then my people demanding your ascension as Queen would.”
I blinked in surprise. “Right now?”
“They have been gathered on the streets for two days clamoring to see you,” he said, sounding exhausted, but smiling faintly.
It wasn’t what I meant, but he went on before I could clarify. “I may not know what to think of your powers, Marina. Whatever gift you were given at birth, be it the divine power of Undine or just the wonderful stubbornness of your mother, I may never know for sure.” His eyes were lined with silver at his next words. “What I do know is that I saw a male willing to die to spare your people from more war. To spare you. I could wish nothing more for you. And that devotion and love is what our people—all of our people—need now. Someone born to dream. To believe. To trust. To love. You, Marina. You and the male who loves you beyond life itself.”
He cupped my face, wiping the tears that had slipped past my defenses away with the pads of his thumbs. “I thought I had lost you, my dearest. But it is now clear to me that I had lost only myself. I am sorry, Marina. For the hurt I caused you and your mate.” I frowned, and he sighed. “Caspian. For my debt to him, I pledge my crown to you.”
He kissed my brow, leaving me too speechless to reply as he left me alone in the hall, the silver crown still glinting in the sun on the sill.