Chapter 31 - Dove
thirty-one
Dove
I’m sitting with a kraken.
A KRAKEN.
It seems more unbelievable than Saff—maybe because water was never a big part of my life. Swimming was never high on my parents’ priority list when I was young. And once I entered the one Goddess’s temple, I never had the opportunity.
Goddess, I wish Saff were here. She would know what to do. Saff has the sort of presence about her that makes me feel like she would have all the answers. It’s probably because she’s immortal. I think it’s also because she’s a mother.
My mother was never much of a caregiver type. She tried. Now that the cavern of my heart is no longer protected like it once was, images of a blonde-haired woman swim before my vision. She was beautiful, with her curls of gold and bright blue eyes. Me and my sister look nothing like her.
Thankfully, for her—my father would’ve beaten her into a pulp if we came out looking like anyone other than him.
The only parts of my mother I inherited were her petite stature, heart-shaped face and nose.
The rest is all him. It’s why I stopped looking in mirrors, not that they kept many of those in the temple.
Wren looked like him, too.
I push at the erratic beating between my breasts. We were identical in every way except that she ended up growing taller than me, taking on more of his frame. She hated it. She would often throw herself in front of Mother and me because of it.
A tear moves down my cheek.
I can’t break down here.
Standing in the dark, I try my best to adjust my vision to the surroundings. It’s no use. My eyes aren’t any better than before. “How am I supposed to see anything?”
At those words, light fills the small island rock we inhabit. Turning, I find the azure kraken is alight.
“You are glowing,” I exclaim.
“Now I’ve seen everything,” Moyrie’s voice comes from behind me, finally awake.
“I have the ability to light our way in the darkness,” the kraken adds nonchalantly.
“Don’t get any closer,” Moyrie’s slippery, snake-like voice says behind me, gripping my waist. “I think he has taken us as pets or food. We have to find a way out.”
I laugh because she hasn’t been privy to the conversation I’ve been having with Ken the kraken.
After his unnerving gushing about me being his Goddess, I asked if he had a name.
He was adamant that I should call him whatever I wanted to call him, that any name he used would be an insult to a name bestowed by a Goddess.
My sigh was audible, and my connection to Fury was not fully stitched back together to ask what the deal with the kraken was, so I named him Ken. Something about naming him Ken the kraken helped me diffuse the alarming sense of danger in my brain around this situation.
He is Ken the kraken. Ken the kraken wouldn’t hurt a wisp. I can trust Ken the kraken, even though he is possibly larger than Saff, with eight blue-sucking tentacles and two large, all-seeing eyes with black irises.
All lit up like the suns in an underground cave surrounded by water above and below, this creature seems even less threatening.
He is also our only way out.
“His name is Ken, and he is going to help us. He’s one of Fury’s beasts,” I say, plucking Moyrie’s hand from my waist and spinning around to face her wide eyes.
“How do you know he’s not just tricking you so he can eat us later?” She pauses for a moment, slitted pupils eyeing off the glowing creature on our stony island surrounded by more hard rock walls. “How are you communicating with him?”
I raise my shoulders up and down. “He just says things in my head, like when Rivern or Fury or Saff talk to me.”
A hairless eyebrows raises and a “what in the Gods’ names” are you talking about expression crosses Moyrie’s face. I exhale a long breath.
“It’s Seraph stuff,” I add, so she can maybe understand what I’m saying without the need to explain further.
I assume Saff never talked in her head. She was aware of the bonded chatter; Fury’s beasts talking to me is a new revelation.
Gods, I can’t even keep track of everything in my head sometimes.
“Ken, do you think you can show us a way out of this place without needing to go through the water?” My fingers are crossed, hoping there’s some secret door we can’t see.
“No, the only way in or out is through the water.”
Pointing at the pools surrounding us, I ask, “Which way is it back to where you found us?”
Moyrie starts walking around the rocky island.
There’s a perfectly smooth, stony circle in the middle, puddling with a small amount of water, making me realise this must be a nest of sorts for the kraken.
There’s also a lot of scattered shards of small bones.
Fish bones, hopefully. Since none of them are human-shaped, I try not to let it rankle me too much.
“It is below and up.” I scratch my head at that. How can something be below and up?
“Can you take us there?”
“No.”
Okay, not the answer I was expecting since he told me movements before that he would help us out of here and back to Fury. Trailing a toe over the even rock below, my body trembles internally, my lips no doubt blue in shade. The cold has never agreed with me. Give me the suns and heat any day.
A true sunshine child. It makes sense that I was bonded to a fae prince who reminds me of such weather.
“I can take you to the mers.”
My head whips up. “You can?”
“Yes, they are up and down.” I shake my head at Ken’s strange sense of direction. How are we meant to go up?
“Dove?” Moyrie walks around a large boulder on the side of the island, where she disappeared movements ago, dragging something that looks heavy in her grasp.
“What is that?” I run to help her, the light of Ken’s glow not making it fully over to this side of the rock.
“Get that side,” she grunts as I clasp onto something colder than the rock under my feet.
The heavy object slips through my hands, feeling rough in parts. But, with Moyries’ strength, we move it beyond the massive rock.
“What is this?” My voice is quiet, not wanting Ken to hear.
I think we both know what it is in the light without either of us having to spell it out.
A long, thick chain with circular loops connected to more circular loops, similar in metal to the iron cage we were housed in. This one has a shackle at the end—big enough to fit the size of one Ken-shaped tentacle.
My eyes go to Ken, who I’ve noticed has gone unnaturally still.
Moyrie must also feel the sudden change in atmosphere within our space as she looks over at Ken.
“Mers are not my friends.” The words are deadly, and even though we need them, I finally breathe deep, knowing we have a way out.
“He’s just going to drag us through the water to where the mers are?
” Moyrie’s voice is sceptical. I don’t blame her; neither of us can swim.
We both almost drowned, so this isn’t exactly what either of us wants to do.
However, Ken informed us there is no other way out—it is through the water or die down here.
I tried to ask him how long we would need to hold our breaths underwater. It was a fruitless question. How do you ask a fish how long it can live underwater? He didn’t understand.
So, we are hoping for the best.
The tether between Fury and me is still fried. Rivern and I have exchanged a few words. He told me he and Gideon were on their way. I responded that we were on our way to him, too. Since none of us knows where anyone is in this underground grotto, I told him to meet us where the mers are.
He was not happy about it, so we are keeping the line of communication open, just not telling each other what is really happening to stanch any extra worry.
I can feel his desperation to find me. It is written right there on his heart. It only rivals my need to see him.
I try my hardest to keep my head in the game, focusing on escaping this underwater jail.
“Ready?” I ask Moyrie, her tail splashing nervously along the surface behind us.
Together, we sit in the water, our legs crossed at the ankles, waiting.
“Ready,” I tell Ken, who is bobbing in the water aglow in blue light.
One suckered tentacle comes to wrap around my joined feet, the sensation creepy but comforting, due to the fact that I know it’s just Ken the kraken.
Before I’m pulled under, I take one deep breath, urging Moyrie to do the same. I told Ken before we started this that he had to go fast.
The cold numbs my limbs in the water, and I barely feel Ken holding my ankles. With his body alight in colour before us, I see him.
Upside down, it’s hard to sense direction.
So, it’s a surprise when it suddenly dawns on me what Ken meant by up then down.
I want to scream down the bond at Fury for putting us in this impossible situation, fear lancing me through as Ken bursts out of the water, heading for the suspended pool of water shimmering above us.
He pulls us along, our bodies exiting the water at the same rhythm as we are pulled into the ceiling lake. What else do you call water that is hanging above you like the sky?
Realising this is probably my last chance for air, I release my breath and suck another one in tight before we are pulled back into another pool, zooming towards our destination. He’s following my instructions, our bodies moving rapidly.
Everything is a blur of bubbled water, my lungs growing desperate for another breath, which I ignore.
Lightning fast, Ken makes a sudden turn in the water, diving back down.
This must be the down part. A nausea comes over my midsection, the burn in my lungs itching to gulp.
Until a blast of air rushes over my face.
This time, I don’t have my bearings enough to open my mouth for another breath before I splash down into another pool. The burn is desperate to take me down, my body tired and hungry.
I can’t do another day of this.
My eyes drift open, finding a deep cerulean, tentacled, glowing blob floating before me. Once again, I’m jerked along, but this time, I’m upside down and out of the water, gasping widely for breath, Moyrie doing the same next to me.
“Osear,” Moyrie splutters beside me. “We are alive.”
That is no ride either of us wants to experience again.
Slowly, we are placed on a sandy shore. I rub at my eyes, trying to dispel the sting of the salt water so I can see more than a foot in front of me.
When my breathing stabilises, I look up, my vision slightly blurred, witnessing another cave surrounding us. However, it’s not the cave I’m concerned about. This time, it’s my waterlogged ears, a thudding working its way past my eardrums.
I turn my head, trying to shake the water out of my ear.
“MATE.” It’s a growl in my head.
My heart stops.
All rhythm ceases to exist except for that voice. A voice that I know and have taken comfort in.
“Mate.”
Sitting straighter this time, I look around, a growl echoing off the walls. What is happening right now?
It can’t be him. He doesn’t speak in my head. His wolf form has only ever given me strange looks and grunts.
I feel him, eyes on my sodden body where I now kneel on the ground, next to Moyrie. Turning, I see her trembling form, looking at the beast before us.
Standing, I face another of Fury’s creations. No, that’s not right. He doesn’t belong to Fury anymore. Ever since that night in the dungeon under the manor, he became my beast. We both knew it all along, yet neither of us could admit it.
Standing on two thick-corded wolf legs, Gideon takes a step towards me, glossy black fur covering every part of him.
Looking into his eyes, I almost expect to see black, but instead, I see his familiar golden amber irises.
The world drifts away in this moment. I take in every part of his wolf form, rugged and achingly exquisite. He could ruin me, and I would gladly let him.
Gradually, we move closer to each other, neither of us speaking a word. Barely a foot apart, I come up to his lower chest, taking him in. Gideon in wolf form is gigantic, enigmatic—a sight to behold.
He looks down at me. I reach a hand up to touch the place on his chest where his heart lies. The organ is a thundering echo to my own, making my hand sink deep into his fur, desperate to feel his warmth.
“I missed you,” I murmur, looking up at him, unable to tear my gaze away.
“Mate,” he grunts in my head, setting me to shiver all over.
Noticing the chill that has set deep in my bones, Gideon wraps two broad paws around my body, sweeping me gently into his chest.
I sigh at the feeling of his heat working its way through my body just from his touch.
Gripping onto his fur, making sure I’m not dreaming, I turn my face to the side to find Rivern. Violet eyes latch onto the strange display before him. He lifts one side of his lip, a dimple pressing into his left cheek. I smile. “You’re okay?”
He runs a hand through his thoroughly mussed golden hair, his braids tangled. It’s probably the most unkempt I’ve ever seen him. “I’m okay now that I have my eyes on you, love.”
I feel it—he wants to come closer, but something has happened to Gideon that is keeping him away for now.
“Soon,” he answers with a swift nod, taking in the sight of us.