Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Jackie
I’m going to swim in the ocean with a kraken.
No. I’m going to swim in the ocean with my kraken mate.
The cove is not on any map I've seen. Orvik finds it easily, guiding the skiff through a narrow channel between two rock faces that I would have sworn was a dead end until the walls opened up and dropped us into a bowl of still, glassy water.
Cliffs on three sides, a strip of pale sand at the far end, and no sign of Saltford Bay or anyone in it.
Just us, the water, and the sound of the ocean breathing on the other side of the rocks.
A cold wind rummages through my hair and I pull the sides of my coat tighter around my wet suit. I lean over to the side and splashes come up to my hand, frigid and pure. That water is below fifty degrees, I know for sure. To think Orvik can brave it without any protection is mind-boggling.
But not more mind-boggling than the idea that I’m going with him.
“This is amazing.” I turn around on my seat, trying to take in the surreal beauty of the place.
"I found it the first winter I came to Saltford Bay," he says, cutting the motor. "I needed somewhere I could be alone. I’ve never seen anyone else in here."
I look around at the cliffs, the stillness, the way the morning light hits the water and turns it every shade between green and blue.
"And now you're sharing it with me."
He gives me that look. The one he's been giving me since yesterday morning, like he still can't quite believe I'm here and is quietly checking to make sure. "Yes."
He drops anchor and stands.
His shirt comes off first, the bioluminescent patterns shining softly in the sea air, spreading bright across his chest and down his arms. Then his boots, his trousers, his underwear, until he's standing in the skiff in nothing but the low light and the patterns, and even after last night I have to remind myself to breathe.
He’s magnificent and as he extends his hand to me, I have to pinch my thigh to assure myself that I’m not dreaming.
"Just watch," he says.
Then he steps off the side of the boat and into the water.
What happens next is enough to melt my brain into a puddle.
The moment he's fully submerged, the change begins.
His skin shifts, deepens, the blue-green patterns blazing brilliant and total.
The gills along his ribs flare open, dark and luminous at the edges, moving with the current.
Webbing spreads between his fingers, along the inner edge of his forearms, down the lines of his calves.
His tentacle hair fans out around his head like a crown, longer in the water than it ever seems on land, each strand tipped with pale light.
He's been holding all of this back, I realize. Every time on land, every patrol and feeding and first aid session and gala planning meeting, he has been a compressed version of what I'm looking at now.
This is what he actually is.
He surfaces beside the boat and looks up at me, water streaming from his hair, the gills pulsing softly at his ribs. "Ready?"
I lean over the side and dip my hand in the water. It’s cold, so cold it hurts.
I look at Orvik again and swallow, fear suddenly closing my throat. A human would die in a minute in water so cold. I’m perfectly aware of it.
“You can trust me, I got you.” Orvik says, his handsome face split into a heartbreaking, eager smile.
I go over the side.
The water is cold enough to knock the breath out of me. Its embrace feels like hundreds of tiny knives, stabbing into my skin from all angles at once. I open my mouth to cry out in pain, but I can’t. The breath just won’t come.
Then his arm comes around my waist and he pulls me close.
The warmth from his body bleeds through the chill immediately, his gills fluttering around us, creating a bubble of warmth around us.
I'm in a wet suit, theoretically insulated, but the warmth of him presses through the neoprene like it's nothing.
I grab his shoulder and he moves us both away from the skiff in a single unhurried kick.
He moves like the water moves, inevitable, frictionless, completely at home.
"Look," he says, and I look down.
The marks on his skin are blazing.
They were already bright on land, shining with intensity whenever we touch, but in the water they're simply stunning.
They run up his muscular arms and chest, curling around his neck to frame his face.
I reach for his cheek where the tentacle beard greets me with tiny sucking kisses and run my fingertips where they swirl in slow, pulsing light.
"This is even more amazing in the water," I say. “You’re even more amazing in the water.”
"No." He's quiet for a moment. "You’re the amazing one here, Jackie."
I chuckle, but I don’t waste time arguing. There’s no arguing with this man anyway. He’s as stubborn as he is grumpy. And sexy. And a good kisser. An excellent kisser.
We swim. He lets me go once he's sure I have my bearings, staying close but giving me space to move on my own.
I watch him underwater where he's most himself.
His gills flutter around his ribs and the webbing on his hands and feet extend to give his movement power and grace.
He does something with his tentacle hair that fans the current toward me and I spin slowly in the water like I'm weightless.
"Show-off," I say as a small laugh tears through me.
He does it again.
We are so far gone, I think. Both of us.
The seals find us about twenty minutes in.
I see them first as shapes on the outcrop of rocks at the north end of the cove—gray and fat and utterly boneless in the way of harbor seals that have found the ideal sun position and have no intention of relinquishing it.
I swim closer, slowly, expecting them to watch us with that calculating wariness wildlife reserves for humans intruding on their territory.
The closest one lifts its head, blinks lazily as he looks directly at us, and puts it back down.
"They're not moving," I say. “We’re so close, they should be scampering away.”
"They’re not scared of us." Orvik whispers in my ear as he comes up just behind me. “They don't see me as a threat. I am a sea creature to them." He pauses. "And now so are you."
I tread water and stare at a harbor seal sleeping twelve feet away from me who could not be less interested in my presence.
"Is it the patterns?" I ask, completely amazed at the idea that I now possess the ability to approach marine creatures as one of their own.
"Among other things, yes." He looks at my neck, the marks running bright in the water, reaching up to run around my cheeks. "You carry the ocean now."
Like he wants to prove Orvik’s point, the seal grumbles and readjusts its blubbery, round belly, then exhales a long, deep breath. I have to press my face against Orvik's shoulder so he doesn't see me get emotional about a seal.
He sees me anyway. Of course he does.
"Jackie."
"I'm fine," I say into his shoulder. "It's just really good for a Tuesday."
He makes the sound I've come to understand as his version of laughing.
I twist around in his arms and run my arms behind his neck.
His entire body envelops me, gills and all as I play with a tentacle hair wrapping around my hand.
The kiss starts slow, the water cold around us and his warmth the center of everything, and for a minute there's nothing but this cove and this man and the sleeping seals who have entirely accepted me as a fellow ocean dweller.
His hands tighten at my waist. I push my hips against him and I’m not surprised to feel his erection pressing back against my wet suit.
I know where this is going. And I’m all for it.
And then Orvik goes still. He breaks the kiss and his head lifts. His gills flare wide. His eyes move across the water past me with a focus that has nothing to do with me anymore, scanning toward the open gap in the cliffs where the cove meets the sea.
"Orvik."
"It’s another kraken." His voice is flat, his face focused. "We need to go back in the boat."
I don't argue.
On the boat, as I wrap a blanket around my shoulder and squeeze water out of my hair, I remember a visitor to my house.
“Speaking of another kraken,” I begin, “one came to my house the other day. He was looking for you.”
Orvik goes completely still, the rope from the anchor still in his hand as he looks at me.
“Tell me everything,” he says slowly, his face an unreadable mask. “And I mean everything.”
So I do. I tell him about Kael, the way he looked at my arm, the question about the necklace.
I watch Orvik's face as I talk. His expression doesn't change much.
He absorbs the information without giving anything away, but I've learned to read the small tells: the tentacle hair going tight at the nape, the jaw setting, the slight flare of his gills as I speak.
When I finish, he is quiet for a long moment.
"His name is Kael Kelpwise," he says. "We grew up on the same vessel. My father's ship, the Nautilus. We trained together, patrolled together. I thought—" A pause that costs him something. "I thought he was my sworn brother. The closest thing to family outside my blood."
"What happened?"
The short version is brutal in its simplicity. Orvik tells me Kael lost his way somewhere along the teenage years, starting a life of thievery and smuggling in the shadows.
He went from a brother to a stranger in the span of a few years, but Orvik always remembered the oath they took, to look out for each other. He also tells me about the blood debt, about the way Kael saved him from a shark attack when they were mere boys.
And he tells me about Kael harvesting black pearls from the Maw. Selling them to collectors on land who didn't know or didn't care what they were. When Orvik’s father found out about the blasphemous trade, Kael’s fate was sealed.
So Orvik took the blame. He repaid his debt to his friend and made him promise to leave his criminal ways behind.
“Kael lied.” Orvik shakes his head, his tentacle hair tight around his head. “I don’t know why he’s back and I don’t care. All I want is for you to keep your distance from him.”
I am quiet for a moment after he finishes.
"Why did you take the fall for him?" I ask.
"Because I believed him when he said he would make it right," he says in a level voice. "I was wrong."
It breaks my heart, all of it. The exile. The years here. All of it because he trusted someone who used that trust as a tool.
"Have you ever thought about going back?" I ask. "Explaining to your father what actually happened?"
He shakes his head. "It wouldn't matter."
"How do you know?"
"Because I still lied." He looks at me steadily. "I stood before the Nautilus council and spoke a false account. Whatever Kael's crimes were, that one was mine. Krakens don't forgive, Jackie. It's not how we're built." He looks out at the water. "This isn't something my father would bend on."
I think about that. I think about my father in his hospital bed in the final months, how his face changed when I walked in a room. How whatever was happening to his body, there was never any ambiguity about the shape of what we were to each other.
He loved me and I loved him. Not everyone gets that. Not everyone has a father who puts them first.
"Then it's his loss," I say.
Orvik looks at me. I reach over and take his hand, the patterns on both of us waking at the contact.
"You are a good and honorable man. The most honorable person I know."
Something moves across his face and his lips lift with the faintest trace of a smile, but his eyes remain sad.
"I'm proud to be your mate," I tell him. "I want you to know that."
He looks at me for a long moment, then brings our joined hands to his mouth and presses his lips to my knuckles.