Chapter 8 - Kellin
KELLIN
She’s coming.
The wind from the north whipped over the sharp, salt-encrusted rock where I lay in my seal form, and whispered the same words it had for days now in a voice filled with warning and possibility, even in late summer.
She’s coming.
Not that I needed the wind to tell me my mate was on her way. I’d felt her distance for years, and her approach now had my blood surging. I’d been waiting for this day for eleven years. A chance to redeem myself.
Would I be able to talk to her this time? I couldn’t possibly make a worse impression than I originally had. Maybe, if I told her what I’d done since I’d met her, she would give me another chance to earn her affection, or at least to speak to her.
A gull cried out overhead, laughing at me, as I remembered that first meeting.
“You’re a quiet one,” Ratter muttered, staring at me like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to show me the secret tunnels she’d discovered under the castle at Drakonspear or stab me and leave me to die in the hallway.
My brother Lachlan had dragged Goran into one already, winking at me before they left me alone.
I knew he was trying to give me a moment with her. He’d watched me stare at her for the past hour like she was the first woman I’d ever seen. Even our mother had scowled at me and asked if I’d left my manners in a tidepool.
The girl was the ward of the Empress Wren, who I’d brought Mother to meet, but she dressed in trousers and an assassin’s cloak, and her vocabulary was nothing like any royal I’d encountered.
Lachlan and I were both princes of the Eastern Seas, though he was a youthful forty-six, and I was six years older.
Goran and Lachlan looked about the same age, and had decided within minute of meeting that they would be friends.
It made sense. They were alike in a lot of ways, gregarious and charming.
“How old’s that in human years?” the silver-eyed girl had asked during dinner.
Lachlan had answered with what may have been intended as a sensual smile. “Old enough to know better. Young enough not to care.”
She hadn’t laughed, just glared. For some reason, her not falling for his lines made me need to examine her more closely.
She was covered with weapons, from the sharp jeweled brooch on her gray cloak, to the knives slid into her clever boots, not to mention the wicked obsidian-jeweled dagger she wore at her waist. I was almost certain there were more weapons on her.
She had called herself a spy in training, and an “assassin by temperament.” Wren had introduced her as an apprentice herbalist, but over dinner, it became clear the only herbs she cultivated were poisons.
Ratter, they’d called her. Ratter, like the vermin that scurried off the ships that crossed the ocean and infested every land they touched. Not a name for the ward of the Empress, and definitely not for an Omega.
And I was standing in a hallway with her now, mute. Possibly under some spell, or a curse.
She was my mate. My true mate. I could sense it in my soul, but I couldn’t say a damned word.
Leaning against the wall, she plucked three small throwing knives out of somewhere in her cloak and began to juggle them. She stared at me, not the flashing blades, and teased, “Rat got your tongue?”
I sucked in a breath, trying to answer, then choked on my own saliva. It felt like I’d sucked in an entire lungful of spit.
“Don’t choke,” she ordered, the knives disappearing and a flask of something appearing in her hand. “Have a drink.”
I coughed helplessly, wondering what the self-described assassin was giving me. But I took it, uncorking the top and sipping. If this was how I died, at her hands, then so be it.
Whiskey burned down my throat, and I began coughing for another reason entirely.
“You think Goran and your brother are gettin’ lost down in the tunnels?”
I still couldn’t speak, but mouthed the word. Lost?
She shrugged, her eyes sliding over me in a way that felt intimate. “Nah, we’ve mapped this place out. You like maps? I heard your ma sayin’ you liked to draw.”
I nodded and took another desperate sip of the whiskey. I’d taken drawing lessons when I was younger.
“Wish I could draw. You heard I’m goin’ all around the world, right? My old boss Vilkurn planned it all out. If I could draw, I’d make a map of every last bit of it. A pretty one with a diamond on the compass rose, and plenty of sea monsters.”
I still couldn’t speak, and when she reached for her flask, I could tell she didn’t understand.
“You don’t like me?”
She couldn’t think that! I shook my head, making a face, mouthing the word no.
“No?”
The lump in my throat swelling even larger, I shook my head more violently, hoping she’d understand.
That wasn’t it at all. I liked her too much. I liked her so much, I’d lost my composure entirely.
A sharp waft of burned mint scented the air between us as she shuttered her eyes, and put the knives away. “Got it. Well, no need to say it out loud then. I’m not everyone’s cup of poison. See ya around.”
I reached for her, but she stepped away before I could touch her, and was gone long before I could explain what I’d meant.
I followed her down the hall, but by the time I rounded the corner, she was already gone.
I searched, trying every handle, pulling at the wood panels, looking for hidden entrances to her tunnels.
Not five minutes later, Lachlan stood in front of me, panting, sweat rolling down the sides of his face, his eyes panicked, and an oddly herbal sweetness filling the hall. “We have to go, Kellin,” he whispered. “Get me out of here.”
We’d left Drakonspear that hour, and only returned to Starlak five years later. Now Rada was coming here, and I might have another chance. But instead of joy, I felt that familiar panic. My tongue grew thick as a sea slug in my mouth. I hadn’t grown more suave with time. Only older.
My mother’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Son, come into the house.”
I barked a reply, and she barked back impatiently.
“Your brother’s already dressed. It’s been six months since you took legs.
The warlord’s coming home, along with some of his friends, and you will greet them standing beside us, or I will have your skin in a chest for the next year, Kellin of the Eastern Trench.
” By the end, she was shouting louder than the wind and waves combined.
In fact, the wind seemed to have died down, subdued. I slid into the water and approached the beach, focusing on the change she’d demanded, ignoring her as much as possible. A feat which became harder when I struggled to pull the power from my core that I needed to shuck my sealskin.
My vision blurred as I struggled, the skin half off—one arm and one leg human, the rest seal form—and my lungs not functioning at all.
“Mind of a moon jelly,” my mother gritted out, wading into the shallow water and taking hold of my human ear.
She grabbed it hard and began shaking it, moving my whole body with each powerful jerk of her wizened, human-shaped arm.
“We. Are. Not. Amused.” She punctuated each word with another sharp, painful tug.
“Oh, you know you’ve eaten the last scallop if Mother’s using the royal third person,” my brother yelled from somewhere behind her. “By the depths, are you really stuck mid-form?” His laughter gave me the strength I needed to finish my shift, but when I did, Mother held my sealskin in her hand.
I stared up into her wrinkled face and disappointed brown eyes.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Kellin.
I’m not sure you know what’s wrong, either.
But I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to explore the topic over the winter.
” She stalked out of the waves as I sucked in breath after breath, the wind and salt whipping on my fragile human skin.
“Here, brother,” Lachlan murmured, carrying a large rectangle of cloth to me when I managed to stagger onto dry rocks. “Dry off. I have some extra trousers in my room.”
“Fuck trousers,” I grunted.
He scratched his chin. “You know, I wonder if that’s a thing? Fuck trousers. Trousers for fucking, with some sort of flap or hole? For the females, I mean. I know the males have a piss flap. I’ll ask Goran.”
Lachlan had become the very best of friends with the Warlord of All Starlak over the past few years, even doing the ritual to become vasyls, selkie brothers in blood.
The two of them had a tradition of drinking themselves stupid on the summer solstice on the beach, telling all the stories they could think of.
Goran mostly told stories of her, when he got drunk enough. I tried not to drink as much ale as they did. I was afraid my own loosened inhibitions would have me telling him what an idiot I thought he was.
He’d had Rada and let her go, and his slurred, tearful explanations made no sense to me.
What honor could there be in allowing an Omega to wander alone all over the continent and beyond, in more danger with every step as she traveled unprotected through the hordes of men?
What reason could any man have to let go of a goddess on earth, once she’d found him worthy?
I’d been planning my apology to her for nearly eleven years now, inking my apology onto parchment and leather, not knowing if or when I might see her again to try and rectify my own flubbed beginning with her.
But if I’d had the courage to speak to her when we met, and she’d found me worthy of any scrap of affection, I would’ve handed her my skin and clung to her like a barnacle—
“Kellin, get your ass into the house. They’ll be here before the tide changes, and I need help making up the rooms!” Mother’s shout had me running.
And falling on my face.
“Ouch,” Lachlan said, hauling me off the rocks. I tasted blood where I’d bitten my tongue. “Forgot how to use legs, huh? Let me help.”
“Has he said anything about Rada recently?” I found myself asking.
Lachlan grunted as he helped me walk. “No, and I’m glad. Selfish little thief.”
I pushed away from him, preferring to stumble on my own than hear my brother insult my true mate. Normally, he kept his less charitable thoughts to himself. Though I’d never told him who she was to me, he must have suspected something.
Selkies had stories of destined mates, though very few ever found theirs.
Our kind took chosen mates instead, ones we called moon mates.
The bond was temporary for the first month and was usually broken painlessly at the end of the moon without hard feelings.
Nothing about what I’d felt for Rada since I first glimpsed her was temporary… or painless.
An hour later, I’d made up the rooms, dressed, and was being inspected by my mother. “You clean up well.” She took my chin in her hands and frowned as she patted my cheek. “Too thin, though. You look haggard.”
“You look beautiful, as usual. I’m sorry I stayed away so long.
” Mother was the oldest selkie alive, and her age was obvious from her wrinkles and sea-foam silver hair.
But I’d always thought she was beautiful in a timeless way, like the sea itself.
She was every bit as strong, too. She’d never shown a hint of weakness, not even when the rest of our pod had been killed by an undersea volcano when Lachlan and I were pups.
“Don’t do it again. I miss our evenings in the library. Lachlan’s terrible at chess and comes close to pouting when I beat him,” she murmured, smoothing my brow with her hand. “Did you finish exploring the coastline of the Svellvollr?”
She knew I was making a detailed map of the Northern Sea. She just didn’t know why. “Yes, Mother.”
“Good. I know you’ll want to finish your map while it’s fresh in your mind, but if you have time to look over the household accounts, I’d appreciate it. Did you put clean linens in Goran’s room?”
“I did, and some bouquets in all the bedrooms. Lavender and rosemary, along with some fresh mint. I’ll do the books in the morning and make sure the butcher’s not robbing Lorana at the market.”
“Well, that works as an apology very nicely. One more thing: a few of the riders came in early and said we’ll need another room. Yours.” Her lips twitched for some reason.
“What?”
“Change your bed linens and add as many blankets and pillows as you can find. Strip them from any room you need… ah, except perhaps Lachlan’s. Then put an extra pallet in Lachlan’s room for yourself.”
Lachlan let out a soft exclamation behind me. “Why?” The scent of salt and rosemary in the room grew sharper. “Aren’t his warriors camping down the road as usual?”
I was curious as well. Goran slept in the house with us when he was around, but he’d never brought his warriors inside, or even his generals. Not with Lachlan here.
There sure as hells wasn’t room inside for a contingent of Starlakians.
My hands twitched for a weapon at the scent of Lachlan’s distress, though I knew it would be an offense to greet the warriors armed.
My pelt, though, afforded me the strength of both my forms at once when I wore it, even just tied around my waist. Selkies like me might not be as large as Starlakian warriors, but with our pelts, even in human form we were at least as strong as five men.
“I need my pelt, Mother. If unknown Alphas are coming into the cottage—” I had to be strong to protect him.
She sniffed. “He’ll be fine. The advance riders are setting up the tents in their usual place, and Lorana is sending part of the feast there. But we’ll have three guests inside the house this time. Goran, a Beta priest from the Southern Reaches named Alexios, and a woman.”
“A woman,” Lachlan repeated. “Who?”
Her dark eyes reminded me of a sudden riptide as she glanced my way. “His Warqueen.”
“Rada,” I whispered before my tongue froze to the top of my mouth, and I couldn’t say anything more.