The Rake OR The Orca Who Met His Match in a Selkie Desiring Revenge (Shades of Sanctuary #3)

1. Elspeth

Chapter one

Elspeth

IN WHICH A SELKIE IS CAPTURED, IN THE USUAL FASHION

T he morning Elspeth O’Farriage's previous life died dawned like any other. It was deceptively, decidedly normal. As every morning, she woke before dawn with her mother and brother Feann and prepared them breakfast before they headed out for the day. After tucking both of their pelts tightly around their shoulders, she kissed them each on the cheek and trailed her fingers over her father’s where it’s still hung on his peg by the door. 1

She cleaned up from breakfast, settling their three plates atop the other on their shelf, nestling their three forks alongside her father’s. She checked that everything else in the house was in its place, mentally reviewing her daily checklist.

Once done, she banked the coals of their little fire and grabbed her own pelt, clutching it around her shoulders against the chill northern winds. Wearing thick socks and sturdy boots, her long ash brown hair tucked into a hat, she tromped across the moors toward the village to begin her rounds.

Situated thirty miles off the coast of the continent of Caihalaith, farther north than any other settlement, lay the remote island of Hillskerry. It was a harsh place, with rime frost covering the stark cliffs and huddled houses that disappeared among the rolling moors. The colonies of seals that crowded the island's beaches were, perhaps, the first clue one might get as to the nature of the local population.

On the coldest days, most of the island’s villagers would shut up their homes, don their pelts, and join their brethren beneath the waves.

Elspeth had never intended to spend her life caring for the elderly, but after losing her father, she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone going uncared for. She’d often had nightmares of him, trapped on a sliver of rock alone, unable to swim home, starving. He’d been blown so wildly off course after the wreck of his boat, that it took them weeks before they’d been able to find his body, despite her mother’s directions.

If only…

If only she hadn’t had his pelt that day for cleaning, if only she’d been on the boat with him. If only she’d gone with him to check the rudder.

If only.

That day served as a testament to the sorts of accidents that could result from a lack of organization—of control. Her work with the elderly was just one of the many ways she mitigated such dangers.

Never leave your pelt behind.

Travel only exactly where you mean to be.

Never go out on the ocean alone.

Though she’d never wanted her task, it was the least she could do. It was an atonement, of sorts, but also a failsafe. This way, no one on Hillskerry would be alone, and those who needed it would have someone to organize their days. She’d gained a fair bit of medical knowledge from assorted texts she’d collected and the instructions left with her patients by the healer they saw on the mainland, which had proven useful time and again. 2

After arriving in the village proper, Elspeth began her rounds, lancing Mrs. Callahan’s leg sores, cleaning and reapplying her bandages. With a plea for her patient to shift, or at least wade into the sea, she instead dabbed the sores with sea water. Elspeth carried a bottle of it with her wherever she went, but that didn’t replicate the healing one got from bathing in the sea.

The first inkling that something might be strange came upon the wind as she left Mrs. Callahan’s house. Her eyebrow whiskers twitched in the chill morning breeze, and she squinted at the horizon, floppy ears wiggling. In the distance, she could almost make out the darting of boats on the horizon, but she dismissed them as nothing more than a gathering of fishermen.

Years later, she’d wonder if things might have been different, had she been able to give warning, had she been able to prepare.

But some things you just couldn’t plan for.

Instead, she mounted the steps of the Pathian temple, as she did every morning. It was meant to be called a Waypoint, but everyone in the village always referred to it as the Pathian temple. The words gave a distance to it, serving as a consistent reminder that this was not their place—that the Pathian God was not theirs .

After lighting the lanterns and the many tapers littered about, she decided to let Hamish sleep a bit while she swept, she was ahead of schedule and had the time. She tidied and hummed to herself, wondering if she’d manage to stay ahead and have enough time to sketch before her mother and brother returned that evening.

A commotion outside drew her attention, and she cracked the door to see what might be happening. 3

Eyes sweeping down the street, she immediately found the source. A group of Sentinels, the usual mix of elven officers and orcish infantry, marched up the high street, a snooty-looking high elf breaking off to mount the steps of the temple.

Taller than any selkie, the elf towered over her as he slammed his hand on the door. Elspeth jumped back, clutching the broom to her chest. It didn’t seem to be the same elf she’d dealt with in the past, when they’d established the temple, but it remained to be seen if this one would be similarly demanding.

With stiff pointed ears and a nose to match, everything about the elf seemed… crisp. The high collar of his uniform seemed as if the corners were sharp enough to poke his chin, and he even walked in jerky movements. The bars on his chest indicated that he was a Navigator, a reasonably high rank in the Empire’s navy, if she understood correctly. Snapping his heels together, he stopped inside the door and ran proprietary eyes over the building’s interior.

“This Waypoint is the sorriest excuse for a temple I have ever seen, Traveler...” The Pathian soldier ran his finger along the top of the Guide’s lectern and trailed off, apparently waiting for Elspeth to supply her name.

With a jump, Elspeth nodded and whispered her name. Eyes darting to the Guide’s chambers, she raised her voice. “You came on cleaning day! We maintain the Waypoint every day of course, but we—erm—had to move a great deal of furniture around yesterday and it got dust everywhere.”

There was no way her voice sounded confident or convincing, but hopefully it was loud enough to wake Hamish. She wasn’t about to tell a high elf the truth. “Well, we hate this place, and your religion, so no one ever comes here. Why bother cleaning it for no one?” Most days, she unlocked the door, woke Hamish, and scurried out of the Waypoint and on to the rest of her life. Everything else, she kept fastidiously neat, but leaving the layer of dust had always been the one small rebellion against her people’s rulers she could do.

Elspeth couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually cleaned the place and was confident that it likely had been the result of Hamish spilling something. He was a dear old man, but he was unsteady on his feet on the best days. Truthfully, when they’d needed a new Guide, the council had voted to install Hamish since he had no family to speak of. This way, he had a home, an income, and Elspeth to check on him each day.

Please Hamish, please get your ass up and dressed before we have to open the door.

If she was lucky, he’d saunter out of his room momentarily—but she hadn’t been lucky a day in her life. No matter, she’d always believed that you make your own luck, so she proceeded to have a faux coughing fit.

“Oh, I’m so, so sorry!” she gasped between fake hacks. “I must have inhaled too much dust yesterday when we moved everything!”

“It’s a wonder any of you survive at all. Truly it must be a trial to be so frail,” the elf said, leaning down to squint at her. “Where is it then?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked. “Where is what?”

“The ‘ everything’ you moved yesterday. Surely you had a reason for removing furniture from His Divine Majesty’s temple, though I can’t fathom why that might be. Nor, for that matter, why you would have let said furniture get dusty in the first place. Show it to me.”

Her fake coughs cut off abruptly, her whole body going cold.

“Where. Is. The. Furniture?” the officer hissed, spittle flying from his lips.

“I … I... I don’t know,” she tried to stall, mentally pleading with Hamish to leave his room and interrupt. The elf’s sharp claws dug into her arms in a flash, drawing pinpricks of blood.

“Phloy'd! Get in here! We have a matter that needs investigation.” Another elf, similarly tall and imperious, burst through the door. “Take this filthy seal out of my sight. She’s a liar who I fear has strayed from the Path. Take her away until I can decide what to do with her.”

The new elf chuckled and seized Elspeth, taking special care to draw a taunting finger across her pelt where it hung from her shoulders.

Elspeth froze. The people of Hillskerry had taken special care to hide their connection to their pelt from the Empire. If the Pathians knew of a selkie’s need for their pelt, they were all in a great deal of trouble.

The elf’s fingers dug into her arm, pulling her from the relative safety of the temple and into the stark, cold daylight. Around her, she saw faces she knew and loved contorted in rage, their mouths shouting words that she couldn’t hear over the pounding of her own heart. It was remarkably like being underwater. She was aware of what was happening, but she was removed from it.

Her arm hurt and it was loud, but in her mind, she floated beneath the waves, serene and detached. The soldier tugged her along, muttering disgusting words, his fingers on her pelt a violation of her very being.

“Ellie!” Her brother’s voice cut through the terror, streaking across the square to assault her ears.

What was he doing at home? He should have been out on their boat, fishing with their mother.

She could survive whatever the soldiers would do to her, she was strong, she knew. But Feann was hers to protect, hers to care for. She would walk to the ends of Timonde if it kept him safe.

In another world, another life, perhaps he could have protected her, but in this one, she protected him. As much as the sound of his voice broke her heart, she loved him for it.

“Mind your business!” she yelled to him, conscious to keep his name from her mouth.

The Navigator stepped in to intercept him and snatched Feann’s pelt from his shoulders. Feann stopped short from his sprint to her, gasping and falling to the ground once he was farther than five strides from where the elf held it captive. On the ground, Feann crawled, fighting every instinct he had, every magical tie to get to her.

The fresh sting of tears jolted her and she realized that the wetness on her face wasn’t due to the misty morning rain. The shorter soldier hauled Feann up by his collar. Kicking and screaming, Feann refused to give up the fight, even as the soldier sliced his hand and smeared his blood across Feann’s pelt.

How could the Pathians possibly know so much of them?

Her people had been so careful .

At the sides of the street, huge orcs barred any more of her people from interfering, their faces impassive. They were huge, and intimidating—even on remote Hillskerry she’d heard of their efficient ruthlessness and unmatched prowess. 4

Once the blood was on his pelt, Feann curled up on himself. His stomach would be twisting, his insides screaming at the wrongness of someone touching his pelt without permission, and Elspeth couldn’t imagine how horrid it would be with their blood on it.

It was a sick distortion of their mating ritual. A desecration of the old ways they bound themselves to their chosen partners. A blood bond was permanent and binding, but it was meant to be beautiful. A pledge two people made to one another. A lifetime intrinsically tied, sworn and bound to obey one another. In the context of a mating, it was a glorious pledge of mutual fealty and a commitment to living one’s life to please their partner. It was an expression of trust so deep, granting someone permanent control, that few rarely initiated until they’d been mated many years.

But without the abiding love it took to give so much of oneself away? It was an abomination. An exploitation of the deepest vow that existed among her people.

Behind the wall of orcs, parents shielded their children’s eyes, and others gasped in horror.

But no one moved to help. It was too late. They all knew it. The second the blood touched his pelt, Feann was lost to them. He’d be unable to disobey an order from the soldier for as long as the soldier lived, and no one here stood a chance against the wall of orcs that protected him. The elf would leave with her brother and she’d never see him again.

The elf holding her tugged ruthlessly on her arm, making her stumble as he pulled her toward the docks. In his other hand, he held her pelt firmly in his grip, his thumb running over it in a caress that made her want to vomit.

Eventually, the elf grew frustrated enough with her fighting and threw her over his shoulder, smacking her ass and yelling at her in his harsh accent to quiet down.

Absurdly, her mind protested that this hadn’t been on her schedule for today. It rebelled at the idea of something so counter to her expectations that it didn’t seem real.

The resounding thump of his heavy boots on wood filled her ears, reminding her that it was. She kicked and flailed, terror clogging her throat. The familiar slap of seal flippers on the docks chased them up the gangplank to his ship, their barks echoing in her ears as their local colony sensed her distress, switching to yelps as he pulled it up and dropped her friends into the water.

The elf immediately took her below-decks, cutting her off from the wind and sea spray, shuttering her in a dark room. He threw her roughly onto a bunk, locking her pelt in a footlocker at the end of the bed.

T he next days or weeks passed in a blur of pain and degradation, disgust, and dissociation. The soldier’s vile hands defiled her body and her pelt. He seemed to enjoy torturing her with the feeling of them, stroking his fingers alternately over her pelt and her person, and seeing which bothered her the most. She ate little and slept as much as she possibly could. When he was present, she slept on the floor like a dog, though she relished stealing his space when he was gone. The whole cabin, and her whole body stank of him, what did it matter if she slept where it smelled of him so strongly?

They travelled far, she knew, the temperature gradually warmed, and then cooled again, storms raged and she stayed trapped in that one, small room. She often heard sailors mention Pentweagh, the capital of the Empire.

“ Y ou stink,” he said one day, scrunching his nose. “You’ve gotten your beautiful pelt filthy. It’s disgusting.”

Did she? She hadn’t any idea. Just like she had no idea where they were, how long she’d been there, or what the future held. Her life had narrowed to each and every moment, plunging into sleep the second she was able and fleeing into her mind moments when she was not.

“The Navigator will be visiting tomorrow and you’ll embarrass me like this. I’ll send a maid to clean you both. She’ll mete out punishment for any trouble you give her on your flesh in triplicate. She’s the Navigator’s favorite, so you’d better be on your best behavior or I’ll bleed all over your pelt.”

He made this threat a lot.

“Eat your food, or I’ll bleed on your pelt.”

“Keep quiet or I’ll bleed on your pelt.”

“You’re so beautiful, don’t spoil it by crying.”

“One more whimper and I’m smearing my blood on your pelt.”

“Your pelt is going to look so beautiful with my blood on it if you don’t watch it.”

It was stale, this threat. She’d heard it on repeat any time she’d done something to displease him. With as often as she’d displeased him, one would think he’d have done it or dispatched her by then. No, instead she heard it so often that it haunted her dreams.

Because it didn’t matter how often he said it, it never ceased to be terrifying.

It should have, after the twentieth repetition, the fiftieth? No, each time it chilled her to her core, tore her from the place where her mind fled and intimidated her to compliance.

She’d tried to find refuge in sleep, but it wasn’t truly the refuge she hoped it’d be. Her nightmares were filled with hazy memories of the day she was taken—of her brother writhing in pain and screaming for her. She spent her nights running to him, trying to push her way through crowds, through lines of orcs and elves, but he was always gone when she arrived.

She nodded her head. She wouldn’t give him any trouble, because every day she remained captive but unbound, she had the possibility of escape or rescue. The possibility to control her own life once more.

T he woman that walked in a short time later was like no one she’d ever seen. Elspeth knew that there were other peoples in the world, but she’d only ever seen elves, orcs, and selkies. The woman had green skin, similar to an orc but bright pink hair, filled with delicate looking flowers. As she turned her head, a few fell, disintegrating on their way to the floor.

Of course Elspeth had heard of magic before, but nothing like this. She’d always thought of the other peoples of the world as being dangerous, a notion reinforced by the Empire, but there was something so painfully sad about her, a kinship that Elspeth felt echo through her body.

“I’m meant to tidy you up for my master,” she whispered. Her voice was barely audible, the rustling of leaves in the forest. “And you’re meant to behave.”

Her brows rose as she said the word, setting a bucket of water on the floor and crossing to the window. “It’s so stuffy in here.” She wrinkled her nose, giving her the distinct impression that stuffy could have easily been exchanged with another, more pungent, word.

Elspeth hated the whole situation. Hated it. She knew nothing of this woman, but she abhorred seeming unclean in front of her. Selkies were fastidious, and Elspeth even more so. As a people, they spent so much time in the water that being away from it, for any length of time, was extremely uncomfortable.

“Why am I going to meet your master?” Elspeth asked. She’d never even heard of him, but he sounded important .

The beautiful woman paused at the window, delicate fingers hanging on the latch. “He likes—playthings. He only has me on the ship, so I think he’s ready for some variety. He’ll be disappointed, I’m sure, but I’m used to it.”

Disappointed? In me? A shudder ran down Elspeth’s spine, the woman’s words draining any sense of warmth she’d brought. A plaything was not something she was interested in being, for anyone, and perhaps being a disappointment would mean an end to all of this.

The woman, the dryad— Elspeth pulled the word from the recesses of stories she’d heard as a child—pushed the window open and pulled a small key from her apron pocket. Her clothing was such a stark contrast to her own vibrancy it was shocking. She was swathed in browns and beiges, looking as if she were wilting before Elspeth’s eyes.

Heart thumping in her chest, Elspeth watched as the dryad knelt before the foot locker. The click of the key in the lock made her flinch. Elspeth heard that sound in her nightmares. The unlocking signaled that it was time for torture, and the locking solidified her captivity. The familiar creak as it opened sent shivers through her. She wasn’t prepared for the feeling of additional fingers on her pelt, but the dryad’s hands were gentle and gliding when she picked it up. She rose, holding it gently between her fingers.

“It’s fascinating. How easily we’re kept, isn’t it? The Navigator has my plant, so I am his. The Seeker has your pelt, and he as good as owns you. For this brief moment, as I hold it, you’re mine. It’s fascinating… and fragile. A bump, a jostle, and I’d drop it, and you could be free.” She raised her eyes to Elspeth, a tear running down her cheek.

For a moment, everything slowed as Elspeth followed that tear. It tracked down to her chin and held, quivering, before falling and landing with the lightest pat onto Elspeth’s pelt. She felt it fall, and in that instant, they were connected. She knew the dryad, she felt her pain, and knew what she wanted. Her eyes shifted rapidly, almost straining at their containment. Her entire body was poised, but on the pelt, Elspeth could feel that spot of wetness and how gingerly she grasped it.

Tears stung behind Elspeth’s eyes. The dryad knew nothing about her, and yet, she cared for Elspeth. She cared what happened to her. Studying her, Elspeth could see lines on her skin that looked like where a plant had been damaged.

Scars .

She was stunning, and yet, there were deep circles under her eyes, and her flowers withered before they fell from her hair. Whatever she’d endured, it was terrible.

Looking into her eyes, Elspeth knew. She’d endure worse if she let Elspeth escape. Yet there she stood, begging her with everything but words to do just that.

Pressing her lips together, Elspeth blinked back her own tears and nodded. In one swift motion, she crossed the distance, bumping the beautiful dryad just enough that the pelt fell from her hands and onto the floor. Elspeth swiped it up, the smooth feeling of the fur calming her frayed nerves.

“Thank you,” she mouthed, not wanting to give either of them away.

The dryad nodded and shifted her eyes to the open window.

Elspeth wanted to hug her, to squeeze her hand in thanks, but something told her that neither of them would welcome physical contact at the moment. Instead, she slipped one hand into her pelt, crossed to the window, pulled it on, and plunged herself into the ocean.

S he had no idea how long she spent in the ocean after that. Elspeth had tried to do the math, corroborating her stories with others, but it never quite lined up. Perhaps because everyone’s memories are suspect. 5

What she did know is that she retreated into herself. She lived only as a seal, never shedding her pelt for even a moment, unable to stand the thought of being without it. She even hated being around other seals. They weren’t hers.

Her time on the boat meant she was an unknown distance from Hillskerry with no chance of locating it on her own. She ventured out, and swam. Ate and swam, when she found a bit of shoreline, she slept.

For days, weeks, months, she wandered the ocean unaware of the passing of time. Her days were fluid and hazy, flowing and mixing with dreams to blur together into a jumbled mess. Her life was tinged blue, the depths of the ocean and the glint of the sun through the water framing it.

Except of course, when she slept, or tried to. In those, the moon hung overhead in the sky, eternally full in her recollections .

Regardless, the details of that time are limited and amorphous. Emotionally, Elspeth pushed away any human experience and embraced her seal. For a time, she lived without care or worry.

Until, of course, the orca.

1. During our interviews, Elspeth spent a fair bit of time wondering if her father would have lived had he brought his pelt that day. I can’t help but wonder if this played into her own anxieties about her pelt.

2. While Hillskerry does have a small island library, Elspeth reports that she spent a good deal of her spare income sourcing these books when she found she needed them.

3. The soldier-priests of the Empire claimed that windows might distract pilgrims from focusing on the Path.

4. Elspeth would like to note that this statement reflects her beliefs, at the time, about orcs—not her current beliefs, though it is an objective fact that they stood in the way of assistance, should anyone have tried.

5. Our best estimates are that she spent around two months lost in the ocean.