Chapter 18 Rada
RADA
“What’s your favorite color?” Kellin sat across the chessboard, not paying much attention to our game.
The storm outside had subsided enough for Stellina and Lorana to take a carriage to Lorana’s cousin who lived on the edge of the Mirlake Forest. It had only taken one night of Kellin’s selkie stamina to make it clear that the house wasn’t nearly as soundproof as it needed to be for us to make it all twenty-eight.
“Red, like blood,” I lied, and moved my bishop. “Check.”
His lips curled into a smile as he countered my move. “It’s not, though. No woman who says pink primroses are her favorite flower—”
“Under duress!” I cried out loud enough for Alexios to poke his head inside the room, before he slid soundlessly away. “You were tickling me, Kellin. In many cultures, that’s a form of torture.”
“As if torture would frighten you,” he scoffed. Three moves later, he had me in checkmate.
“Cards,” I insisted when he offered a rematch. “I can beat you every time at cards.” I could cheat with cards.
Normally, I could beat most people in chess fairly, but not Kellin.
He had a sharp mind, a keen eye for strategy, and a quick tongue…
Damnit, now I was thinking about his tongue again.
My parts were still recovering from last night’s twenty-eight “shores of bliss.” I needed a few more hours before it started again.
“Tell me your favorite songs,” I demanded, ignoring the scent of mint and rain that was coming from the cushion beneath me, and not the half-open window.
“I’ll even sing them for you,” he promised, dropping a kiss on my wrist before he taught me that music could be as seductive as a striptease.
All the shyness he’d shown before had dissipated a little more each night, as he worshiped my body, and each day as we slowly became friends.
Alexios liked him, too, and I caught them sharing recipes and stories of their own childhoods as well.
The next few days were much the same. Every morning, Kellin got up and made me breakfast, carrying it to me in bed.
We ate a midday meal of soup and bread with Dustin and Alexios, then retired to the library for games, music, stories, and sometimes tickling.
Every night, he filled the bath with a slightly different, appealing assortment of herbs.
He wrote the combinations down in a journal, along with notes of which baths I’d seemed to like most and which ones mixed with my own Omega perfume the best.
He gave me massages and washed my hair, singing to me while for the first time in my life, I did nothing but be pampered. And then he counted off the shores of bliss.
After he gave me my nightly bouquet of orgasms, he would escort me to the enormous nest he’d constructed for me in his room. He never once complained that Alexios had moved his own pallet inside the room, to guard me while I slept alone.
It was a perfect few days, except for the pain that clawed at my insides from time to time, and the rising desire that wrapped around me every night like a heavy blanket, lulling me.
I came dangerously close to begging Kellin to mark me. He was everything I hadn’t known a potential mate could be: quiet and careful with his words and my feelings. He paid attention to every small thing I said, and cared for me in a way I’d never experienced before. He made me feel like… an Omega.
Kellin was dangerous, a rip current I didn’t want to escape, pulling me to him. Which was why I had to poison him.
One of the best things about my valet was that he knew once I’d made my mind up, there was no need for discussion. When I slipped out of the bathing room that night and into the bedroom, he’d already prepared all my things and left a note to meet him outside.
I packaged up a canvas bag filled with the herbal mixtures I’d prepared for Wren and wrote a letter and an apology to Stellina, though I didn’t seal it.
I told her I had an errand to run back in Mirren, some debts I had to collect, but that she should travel to Drakonspear and I would try to meet her there.
It was even true. I would try, but I already knew I’d fail. Pict was a long journey from here, and it would take months to get there and back, if I survived.
I left my room without looking back. In the hall, I checked the bags Alexios had packed, filled with food for traveling and fishing hooks. We’d need those, traveling along the coast. I made sure I had all my poisons and herbs, and met him at the back door toward the beach.
“Are you well?” he whispered once we were under the trees.
He was staring at the place on my abdomen I’d been rubbing fiercely.
Guilt washed over me as I pulled my cloak closer.
I’d been pretending my ribs were what pained me, though it was the invisible hooks.
I hadn’t been able to hide it entirely; he’d seen the blood I’d coughed that morning when I scrubbed my teeth with soda.
“Of course,” I lied. The pain had been growing in my gut, no matter what herbs I took, or how I tried to ignore it, only the evenings with Kellin stopping it. The fire god was demanding I fulfill the promise I’d made in the flames, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Alexios let it go. “Kellin?”
“A small dose of limbane leaf in the tea after…” I blushed, even though it was Alexios, for crying out loud.
“His heroics?” he finished, not cracking a smile.
I snorted. “Yes. Lachlan?”
“He walked into the sea an hour ago and took his skin. I watched him swim past the horizon.”
I nodded once. I didn’t care if he ever came back. “Dustin?”
“Still outside the front door. I told him not to follow, but to tell anyone who asked that you had to go on a secret mission back in Mirren. Then I dosed him with a sedative.”
I let out a shaky breath. I didn’t know what to think of that. The kid had vowed himself to me, and I knew Starlakians with a vow to fulfill were like tickweed to shake loose, but I had a feeling the journey I was taking now would do the trick.
“And before you ask, the Warlord is in his camp, asleep. And he’ll stay that way for a very long while.” That raised my curiosity, but it was too dark to see his face. “Mistress, tell me the truth. Are you well enough to ride?”
I made a rude gesture, though it may have been too dark to see it.
“Stellina’s gonna be so pissed,” I murmured as the ocean came into sight.
She’d gone to so much trouble to make me feel at home.
Kellin had done even more. In that soft part of me, the corner that had always wanted to be spoiled with soft things and pretty words, I already missed my selkie more than I thought possible.
But leaving Starlak was a good idea for another reason. I needed the distance from the weakness Kellin had revealed… and from Lachlan.
The way he’d intruded on my emotions, practically reading my mind, still made me itch to stab something.
He had no right, even if I had inadvertently claimed him using some ancient selkie ritual.
If I didn’t know better—if I couldn’t feel the emptiness inside—I would’ve thought the Goddess was messing with me.
I stopped short. Gods were out there, too. “You said Lachlan came ashore and told Goran the beast was gone, right?”
Alexios nodded. “Yes. Dustin’s friend heard the conversation the night after the storm passed.
Lachlan followed the thing all the way to the Svellvollr.
” We both knew the only way to Pict was by boat, and the sea didn’t feel nearly as safe as it once had.
“I found horses. We need to stay close to the water’s edge, though, or risk the warlord’s scouts noting our passage.
” I rolled my eyes. As if we couldn’t hide from a bunch of young Starlakians.
“Where did you find horses?” Stellina and Lorana had taken the only two from their stables, other than a vastly pregnant mare.
No others lived anywhere close; like most of Starlak, the area north of the Forest was a swath of uninhabited land dotted sparsely with castles and small towns.
We were headed to the biggest town that lay a hundred miles to the east.
“The herdsmen had taken the horses a few miles away for fresh pasture. I checked on them earlier this evening. Two of them may have wandered through an open gate.”
I smiled at the pride in his tone. “Alexios, are you telling me you stole two horses for us?”
“Never. I merely opened their paddock, untied a few knots, and when the thunder and lightning spooked them, I allowed two of the smaller mares to follow me and a handful of green apples a few miles down the coast, to an abandoned shed.”
“Nice work, Lex.” I blew him a kiss.
For some reason, his nostrils flared, though I was certain the rain had taken care of my annoying scent. “My pleasure, mistress.”
We reached the shed a half hour later, and after a short break where I pondered if it was wise to sit on a horse with nether regions as sensitive as mine were, we set off on the road in the dark.
According to Alexios, the villagers had experienced a bountiful harvest that summer, and some of the males who had been fishermen had decided to try their hand at grain and sell their boat.
The thought of getting into a boat, though… I hated the fear that came with remembering the darker moments I’d lived through. But I had to go, unless I wanted to cough more than a few specks of blood into my handkerchief for the next few days.
“Alexios, have you ever heard of the kind of creature I described?”
“You mean a dragon?”
“No. It was dragon-shaped, more or less… the parts of it I could see. Have you ever seen a kraken?”
“I’ve seen sketches of all seven of the Emperors, except the Emperor of Emperors, of course.”
“Lusca,” I murmured.
“Who?”
How bizarre. How could I have forgotten Lusca? “The Emperor of Emperors. I met him. Goran met him, too. Or saw him, at least.” He’d been blue. His eyes had…
Something raced out of the brush, crossing in front of my horse. It shied, stepping into the brush, and by the time I had it under control, I’d forgotten what we were speaking about.
“Mistress, you say you met him?” He waited a moment, then went on. “The Emperor. The kraken.”
I rubbed my head, for some reason feeling a headache coming on. “Yeah, Leviathan. Wren’s tentacled mate. Nice guy, a little stingy with his things. Not as bad as dragons, though. I was just thinking of how big he was.”
“No, you were speaking of another kraken, mistress. You called him Lusca.”
“Ow, fuck!” I rubbed my head. “That hurt. Hand me… the indicha essence, please.” Each word was like a spike in my head.
Alexios slowed, pulling his saddlebag up and rummaging around.
Still riding, he leaned over and handed me a tincture I hadn’t used in a long time, along with his water flask.
I took a few drops, the water mixed with the slightly salty mixture helping after only a few minutes.
After we’d ridden another hour, the headache was gone like it had never happened.
“Mistress. We were speaking about the creature you met out at sea. The not-dragon?” Alexios’s tone was weird, but I ignored it.
“Right. Dragons are big, but krakens are real monsters. Easily ten times the size of a dragon.” I tried to remember all I’d glimpsed through the icy fog while I was being frozen.
“But the creature that had Lachlan was much bigger. Like a dragon and a glacier had a baby. He almost appeared to be made of ice. His snout had spikes, like a dragon, but I could see through them a bit. His eyes were as huge as the rest of him.” I sighed.
“I wish I’d had my weapons on me. I’m going to miss that jeweled hairpin. ”
“Did it harm the creature? Was it large enough to really hurt it?”
I thought for a moment. “Not really. It probably felt like when you get a speck of sawdust in your eyes. It stings, right? I think the poke shocked it into letting us go.”
I rubbed absently at my abdomen. The pain had been less severe since we started moving east, but for a moment it moved, like lava encasing my innards, burning everything inside. “I’m coming, you fuck,” I whispered.
“Mistress?”
“Nothing,” I said, my hand moving to my pendant. I rubbed the flattened shell as we rode on, my headache gone now, but the hooks that had sunk into me back in Mirren more insistent than ever.