Chapter 12 Rada #2
“Don’t let Leviathan hear you say that,” I warned as I stood.
“It seems a bit off, if you ask me, for creatures of limitless power to drop trou around a regular human woman. I wonder how easy it would’ve been for one of those women to say no, when an actual divine being wanted their body. I wonder if they were even asked.”
“Rada,” Alexios murmured, his expression one of pity. I hated pity more than I’d hated being burned alive.
“I’m going for a walk.” When Kellin stood, I speared him with a glance. “Alone.” No one protested, though I was almost certain Alexios would follow, out of sight. He took his oaths very seriously.
I went out the back door to the gravel path that led to the beach, my bare feet making a soft shushing sound that vanished under the roar of the waves within seconds.
I didn’t mind being barefoot, and the cold felt wonderful on the still-tender burns on my ankles and calves.
But the cold wind from the North Sea nearly sliced through me. I’d forgotten my cloak.
Hells, I was a mess. I never forgot that. I’d had it since I was a child, and it had kept me alive more times than I could count.
But the soft pelt around my neck wasn’t a bad substitute, if all I needed was warmth.
I wrapped it around my shoulders as I stared out at the water.
There was no moon, but the stars formed a blanket of light over a sky that was every shade of purple.
In the distance to the northeast, there was a glow on the surface of the water, and what looked like an enormous wave heading toward the beach.
Growing larger, and larger, like the horizon itself was buckling.
“Shit!” I shouted as I ran back to the house, my toes stubbing along every single sharp stone in existence, and the stupid long gown almost tripping me three times. “I should’ve known better than to wear a damned dress.”
I hadn’t even made it to the back gate when Alexios appeared with my cloak in one hand and my weapons in the other. “Mistress, what is it?’ He faced the water, seeing what I had. “A tidal wave?”
I grabbed my dagger, quickly sliding my cloak on. “No, it’s not long enough. That’s something in the water, swimming this way.”
“A kraken? Could it be your friend Leviathan?”
Friend was a stretch, but I nodded. “Could be. Maybe Wren’s gone into labor early?” Kraken gestation was ten years, more or less. Maybe hers had turned out to be less than normal.
“Maybe he’s coming for Stellina.” We both stared out at the water as the light grew brighter and brighter, before it was too glaring to focus on.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head to the rocky beach, worried.
Should I go get the others? I wasn’t so proud as to think I could take on every potential threat alone, especially now that the Goddess had backed off.
I swallowed. Could this be Her, somehow? I’d been bitching only minutes before about Her taking me over without permission.
Right before I was about to run back up to the house, the light flickered out. “Is it… Is it Her?” I wondered aloud.
“No,” Alexios said instantly, placing a hand on my arm. He spoke in his language, the words no louder than a breath. “Something is washing ashore. Something small.”
“What is it?”
“I think…” The quiver in his voice had me looking toward the water, and I saw what he meant. The light out at sea was gone, though my night vision was still ruined by red flashes behind my eyelids. But I could make out a dark shape washing up onto the rocks.
I knew what it was. I was wearing a matching one on my fucking neck.
We both stared out into the water for a few long minutes, aware this could be a trap. But then lightning played on the water’s surface a mile out, and a minute later, hit even farther away.
“Could it have been a storm?” Alexios wondered aloud. “I can’t feel any sort of presence.”
I couldn’t either. But the pelt in the water was being pushed back out to sea, and I knew it was Lachlan’s.
“Watch my back,” I whispered and darted forward on the rocks to grab it, tripping over the dress again.
The pelt washed back out, like the current was taunting me.
“Shit.” I stripped down to nothing but Kellin’s pelt, handed the dress as well as my cloak and dagger back to Alexios, then waded out to gather Lachlan’s sealskin up.
The water was beyond bracing, with small chunks of ice floating in it.
Whatever kind of storm it had been, it was an odd one.
Maybe Lachlan had swum out in it and been struck by lightning?
My hand closed on the sealskin while I was chest deep in water, and I grabbed it tightly, just as a huge wave hit.
My feet lost contact with the rocks, and I sputtered as the rip current pulled me out, like a child yanking on a pull toy’s string. I was an idiot. An idiot who needed her hands to swim parallel to the land until I could swim ashore.
“Rip has me,” I called out over the waves.
“Swimming west!” I wasn’t sure if Alexios could hear me, but something similar had happened off the coast of his island after we met.
I hoped he’d figure it out. I wrapped Kellin’s pelt more tightly around my neck, and it seemed firmly attached somehow.
But the waves kept snatching at the one in my arms, like a dog playing tug of war with me.
Shit. I was going to drown if I didn’t get this thing secured.
“A little help, here?” I grumbled, before cold saltwater filled my mouth and I shut up.
Somehow, I managed to wrap the fur around the chain on my neck and start swimming.
It was odd how firmly the pendant and chain seemed to hold the sealskin, once I’d fixed it there.
But selkies were magical creatures, and I assumed their pelts were made of the stuff.
Krakens like Levi were even more magical.
As if the thought of the kraken had summoned one, a voice that was far too loud boomed next to me, and a shadow rose up out of the water. “Omega.”
My muscles locked up instantly. No. The water locked around me, freezing me in place. At least my head was above the water.
The presence was back, but I couldn’t see anything but a large, dark shape, until the distant lightning flickered, and a flash of giant wings and an enormous head with spiked snout was imprinted on the back of my retinas.
Fuck me. A dragon? There were meant to be only seven of them left in the world, and I’d made it a point to know exactly where those huge, aggressive fuckers called home.
With my luck this year, this one would be the one I’d stolen from. Baltor.
I winced. I’d worn my best hair pins to the dinner, the wickedly long steel ones I’d been given years before, which I’d decorated with the two biggest green diamonds from the hoard I’d robbed.
Now it made sense. I’d heard dragons could smell their hoards. But all the way across the Straits?
“Baltor,” I yelled, not sure how the dragon had found me. “Free my hands, and I’ll give you back your gems.”
Silence. My hands stayed frozen.
“I have the rest of them in my bags on the shore. I was bringing them back,” I said, only half-lying.
I’d used a couple to buy buildings in cities across the continent to serve as safe houses for Omegas.
But I was going to give the rest back eventually.
Unless I needed them to save some more Omegas.
More silence. Shit. I’d heard dragons could be real assholes about their hoards. Maybe he wanted an apology.
“Oh, great dragon, I apologize most humbly for taking your hoard. When I laid eyes on it, I was overcome by its beauty. The mere sight of your exquisite collection swept away all my common sense and decency. I beg your forgiveness for my disrespect and for removing that which was yours. It was wrong of me, and I will never trespass in your hoard again, nor lay a hand on anything that is yours, if you but allow me this chance to repent, return your hoard to you, and go my way without harm.”
If anything, the sea got colder. Something odd, like a moth wing brushing on the inside of my skull made me sneeze a half-dozen times in a row.
When I stopped sneezing, a deep voice broke the silence. “You stole from a dragon’s hoard?” It spoke in a formal dialect of Starlakian I’d never heard before, though the words made sense.
A snout came into view, the tip of it stopping only a few inches from my own nose. This wasn’t Baltor. This wasn’t even a dragon, from my experience, although it had the same sort of shape to it. Snout, wings, claws. Claws holding the dead body of Lachlan in them.
Ah, hells.