Chapter Seven
I returned at dawn.
The sky was the color of slate, clouds hanging low over the mountains.
Everything felt colder, more remote, as if the loch had retreated from me just as áedán had.
I'd barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him walking into the water, disappearing as if he'd never existed at all.
And I knew that would be his fate if I didn't help him. He'd disappear as if he'd never been.
I sat on the same flat rock where I'd stood the night before.
It was quickly becoming my rock. I felt like a lighthouse placed upon it, watching the water.
Not to save ships, but what lay beneath.
I wasn't going to leave until I spoke to áedán.
If it took all day, so be it. If I had to wait all night, fine.
Determined, I sat there and tried not to think about the fact that I'd ruined everything before it had even begun.
The water was dark, almost black in the early light.
It moved in those strange patterns I'd noticed before—ripples spreading from invisible sources.
I watched them for a long time, trying to see into the water beneath them.
Was it áedán swimming there, watching me?
Or was it just a large fish? Every ripple couldn't be him.
That was akin to hearing hoofbeats and expecting zebras. Or kelpies, in this case.
An hour passed, then two. The sun rose behind the mountains but didn't break through the clouds. It turned the light gray instead of gold. A few birds called from the trees behind me. Otherwise, it was silent.
I was about to pull a sandwich from my pack when the water changed. Not exactly a ripple or a wave. Just a shift in the way the surface caught the light. Like something massive had moved underneath, displacing the water without breaking through.
I stood up, my heart racing. The water near the shore began to glow. Not bright. Just a faint silver luminescence, like moonlight trapped beneath the surface. It spread outward in patterns that looked almost deliberate, like veins of light branching through darkness. It formed a shape.
Then he rose. Not the man I'd met, with dark hair and dangerous eyes, but a horse.
Black as the water itself, massive and impossibly beautiful. His wet coat gleamed, catching what little light there was and reflecting it wrong. Not like an animal. Like water given shape. As if the loch itself had decided to take form and walk.
His mane flowed like river currents. Silver and white and translucent, moving even though there was no wind.
It looked like reflections off water, light caught in rapids, something that shouldn't be solid but was.
The mane fell past his neck, trailing into the water behind him, and I couldn't tell where the horse ended and the loch began.
He came to the shallows, his chest emerging from the water, and looked at me with deep green eyes. Cocking his head, the light caught in his eye, flashing emerald. There was intelligence there. Recognition.
I couldn't move, couldn't breathe properly. He was beautiful. Not in the way horses are beautiful. Not in any way I had words for. He was beautiful the way storms are beautiful. The way the ocean is beautiful. Dangerous, wild, and utterly beyond human understanding.
He stepped forward. The water parted around him without a sound. His hooves touched the shore, and I heard the scrape of them on stone. He was real. Solid. Not a dream or a trick of light. This was áedán's original form.
He stopped about ten feet away. Close enough that I could see a patch of silvery-gray on his forehead, shaped like a diamond.
Water dripped from his mane, running down his neck in rivulets that caught the light.
It destroyed the illusion that he was formed of water and showed me the truth.
It was camouflage. When he was underwater, he'd vanish.
I might have been staring at him the entire time without realizing it.
We looked at each other for a long moment.
I didn't know what to say. Didn't know if I should say anything.
I should have been afraid. But standing there, looking at this creature that shouldn't exist, I felt something else entirely.
Awe. Wonder. Gratitude. The same feelings I'd had the first time I saw the ocean as a child, standing on the shore and realizing how small I was, how vast the world was, how much existed beyond my understanding, and how grateful I was to be a part of it.
Then the horse began to change. It wasn't sudden. Not a flash of light or a dramatic transformation. It was slow. Deliberate. Like watching water freeze or ice melt, a gradual shift from one state to another.
The horse's form began to dissolve. Not disappearing, but reshaping.
His massive body contracted, legs lengthening and narrowing, and neck shortening.
The pale mane pulled back, darkening, and became human hair.
His green eyes remained the same for a moment, then shifted to human, the oval slit pupils shrinking to circles.
Their color remained the same, and so did the look in those eyes.
The transformation took about thirty seconds.
Long enough for me to watch every stage.
Long enough for my brain to process what was happening and understand that this wasn't magic in the fairy tale sense.
This magic was primal, like the magic of the world spinning on its axis through space.
The magic of a caterpillar liquefying only to emerge from the sludge with wings. Real magic.
When it finished, áedán stood where the horse had been.
Naked. Water ran down his skin in streams that caught the light.
His wet hair was plastered to his neck and shoulders, darker than it had been the night before.
His body was lean and muscular. Sleek. Scars crossed his chest and arms—thin white lines that were so old, they'd lost their texture, leaving only ghosts of themselves.
I stared. It was impossible not to. My mind had stopped working in any useful capacity. I had never seen such a beautiful man in person, much less naked. It was an unprecedented occurrence, and as such, I had no previous experience to fall back on. In short, I stood there like a daft sod.
áedán's expression changed as he looked at me.
Something cold moved across his face. Something bitter.
“There. That's what you came to see, right? The monster. The creature. The thing that drowns children and eats travelers.” He took a step forward, and I saw the tension in his shoulders, the way he clenched his hands at his sides.
“Go ahead. Document it. Write it down. Tell your Velasca friends you saw the last kelpie in his true form.
Tell them he's exactly as monstrous as the stories say.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. My throat was tight.
“What's wrong?” áedán's smile was sharp. “Cannae find the words? Too frightened to speak? That's what usually happens. Humans see what I really am, and they run. Or they try to kill me. Or they—” He stopped and looked away. “They always prefer the monster to the truth.”
The silence stretched between us. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of the loch. áedán stood there, naked, furious, and heartbreakingly vulnerable, waiting for me to confirm what he already believed about himself.
I found my voice. It came out quieter than I'd intended. “I think you're beautiful.”
áedán's head snapped back toward me. His eyes were wide. “What?”
“I think you're beautiful,” I said it again, steadier this time. “In both forms. The horse and the man. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. That's why I couldn't speak.”
He stared at me. His mouth opened slightly, as if he were going to say something, then it closed. The anger in his expression faltered, and confusion replaced it. Then came something raw and uncertain. “You're lying.”
“I'm not.”
“You have to be. Humans dinnae—” He stopped and shook his head. “You saw what I am. You saw the creature. The monster from your pamphlets and your nightmares. You cannae think that's beautiful.”
“But I do.”
The words hung in the air between us. áedán looked at me as if I'd said something in a language he didn't understand.
I took a step closer. Not too close. Just enough that the distance between us felt less vast. “I never said you were a monster. I said you were a guardian, remember? And, áedán, I believe those stories. Not whatever garbage they're selling in Luss.”
áedán's hands unclenched slowly. He was still staring at me, but the anger had drained out of his expression entirely.
What remained was something more complicated.
He looked at me for a long moment. The wind moved through his hair, and water dripped from his skin onto the rocks.
He looked impossibly alone standing there. And tired.
“Why did you come back?” he asked finally.
“Because I couldn't leave things the way they were last night.”
“You shoulda.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “You shoulda gone back to your Velasca and told them I was impossible to save. That I was too dangerous. Too hostile. Too—”
“You aren't any of those things, and I don't want to leave.”
áedán's eyes met mine. “You're going to get hurt. Everyone who gets close to me does. I'm fading, Ethan. Every day I lose a little more. Soon I wullnae be able to hold this form. Soon I wullnae remember my own name. And you'll have to watch that happen.”
“Maybe.” My chest felt tight. “Or maybe I can help you survive.”
“You cannae save me.”
“That's what the Velasca does.” I took another step closer. “Help me save you. Tell me who you are and help me preserve that. We can root out the lies you've heard and fight them.”
áedán's expression cracked. Just for a second. Long enough for me to see the fear underneath. The loneliness. The desperate hope that he was trying so hard to hide.
“I dinnae ken how to do this.” His voice was barely audible. “I dinnae ken how to let someone see me. The real me. Not the stories. Not the monster. Just—” He gestured helplessly at himself. “This.”
“Then we'll figure it out together.”
He laughed. It was a broken sound. “You're either very brave or very stupid.”
“Probably both, but that may be exactly what you need.”
That won me a real smile. Small, but genuine. It was the first one I'd seen from him that didn't have an edge of bitterness or danger to it.
“You're still staring,” he said.
I was. I looked away, felt heat in my face. “Sorry. I just—” I shrugged. “You're handsome and naked. Asking me not to stare is asking too much.”
áedán burst out laughing. When it settled into a smile, he said, “Well, I wouldnae dare ask too much of you.”
“That's a relief.” I chuckled. “I'm sorry, but do you have some pants stashed around here or something?”
He stepped closer. “Havenae you ever seen another man's cock?”
“Whoa!” I held up a hand. “That was aggressive.”
“Aggressive am I?” He grinned. “You're supposed to be documenting me. Maybe you should take a picture for your files?”
“I'm not going to do that.” Heat flashed up into my face at the thought of other people looking at áedán naked. He wasn't an object to be inspected. Then I went still as I realized that it was already happening—I cared about áedán.
“But isnae that why you're here?” He took a step closer.
“To take naked pictures of you? No.”
He laughed again, and the sound shivered over my skin. “I didnae mean that, and you ken it.” He moved closer, stopping six inches away from me. “Why did you come back today, Ethan? Was it only to save me?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Then what else?”
I didn't have an answer, didn't know how to explain what I was feeling.
How did I tell him that somewhere between the previous night and that morning, between anger and vulnerability, between the horse form and the man, something had shifted?
That I was standing on the shore of a Scottish loch looking at a creature that shouldn't exist, and all I could think was that I didn't want him to stop existing.
Finally, I gave the only answer I had. “I don't know yet.”
áedán looked me up and down as if I were the naked one. “You're right. I'm not gone yet, and I cannae let my clan down by giving up.”
“Then you'll work with me?”
Something in his expression softened. “Aye, come back tomorrow, and we can begin.” He turned toward the water, then paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Ethan?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for not running away.” Then he walked into the loch.
The water accepted him the way it had the night before, closing over his head without a sound. But this time, I saw the transformation in reverse. The man dissolved back into the horse, the horse faded into water, and the water settled as if he'd never been separate from it.
I stood there for a long time after he disappeared.
The sun rose higher, breaking through the clouds in places and turning the water silver where the light hit.
The mountains were the same dark shapes against the sky.
Birds called from the trees as they had before.
The world continued around me as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
But it had. I'd seen the last kelpie in his true form. I'd called him beautiful. And he'd believed me.