Chapter 30
The selkie runs her tongue over a fang, the point honed to a tip. “Kressa, the king tells me you have my tail.” She stalks closer, hips swaying with each silent step. Her head tilts. “Don’t you know it’s not nice to take from others?”
Ignoring the throbbing at my temple, I push to my feet. Fresh cuts burn my hands, raw from sliding against the knotted tree root. Kressa retreats a step from the advancing selkie.
While I don’t recognize her, I know the one in front of me. She helped raise me, taught me how to navigate with the stars. One of my mother’s oldest friends.
Tertia.
I sheathe my dagger and raise my hands, risking a step forward.
Kressa’s eyes widen. “What are you doing?”
“The king is lying.” I focus my attention on Tertia and cross the mental threshold. If it worked with the kraken, it might work with the selkies too. But I slam into a wall and flinch back. She’s too frantic to let me in.
“He said you would say that,” the other selkie hisses, her hungry eyes trained on Kressa.
“We’re telling the truth,” Kressa says.
The creatures blink in unison and pad closer.
“They smell delicious,” Tertia croons. She closes her eyes and inhales a deep breath, the gills along the sides of her neck straining as if searching for saltwater. Her delicate nostrils flare, and her eyes fly open.
“You smell different, Harriet.” She tilts her head. “Familiar. Have we met before?”
My heart leaps, and I ease my way across the mental gap again. If she senses me, maybe she’ll pause long enough to let me in.
“She’s a pirate,” the other snarls, satin voice tipped with poison. “Of course you’ve met her kind before. They’re notorious for stealing our tails.” Her lip curls at me. “Aren’t you?”
Tertia shakes her head. “She smells like the sea. No”—she blinks—“the sea smells like her.”
Kressa furrows her brow. “What is she talking about?”
The selkie before her releases a blood chilling screech. I flinch back, but hold my ground and keep my dagger safely secured at my thigh.
Her lips widen, eyes turning a soulless black. Unnaturally quick, she lunges at Kressa and sweeps her talons at her face. Kressa dodges, but the selkie’s nails slice long lines down her forearms, drawing blood.
It streams to the sand, and Tertia watches it drip into a small puddle, her eyes lolling in their sockets. They glaze over with bloodlust and jerk to me. She growls, low and fierce as the whites of her eyes disappear.
“Please,” I whisper, palming the hilt of my dagger. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
A hideous laugh escapes her throat, and she bares her teeth. “Where is it?”
“We don’t have them. I swear.”
“Filthy, lying pirate.”
She releases a shriek that rings in my ears.
In one fluid motion, she leaps, fangs aimed at my throat.
I whip out my dagger and duck, but she tackles me to the ground.
Her nails tear through my shirt, and I scream as they shred my skin.
My blade flies out of my grip and lands behind my head as she pins my arms down, mixing blood into the sand.
I flail and try to buck her off, but she only chuckles, low and guttural. Hot, salty breath skates across my cheek, and out of the corner of my eye, Kressa lands a blow to the selkie’s jaw.
Tertia hovers her face over mine. “Give me my tail, and I’ll let you live.”
A lie. Even if I returned it, she’d kill me out of vengeance. Her nails dig into me, puncturing skin and drawing blood.
“It’s me, Tertia. Taste my blood,” I say, nodding toward the crimson leaking from my arm. “You said I smell different. Taste it and you’ll know.”
A harrowing screech comes from beside us, but I don’t dare look.
Tertia narrows her eyes and drags a nail down my cheek, splitting skin.
She dips her finger into my blood and brings it to her lips.
Those black eyes clear, and the whites return.
Her throat bobs, jaw slackens, and the claws digging into my arms retract.
“Briar?” She blinks. “Your Highness?”
I nod, and tears spring to my eyes. I haven’t been called that in a decade. “We don’t have your tails. None of us do. Tell them—tell your sisters they’re hunting the wrong people. It’s the king who has your tails.”
Her eyes glaze over, the slitted pupils darting back and forth. They clear and her porcelain skin pales. “He lied. He said if we retrieved our tails from you, he’d set us free. But they must still be in his quarters.”
I pause. “They’re in his room?”
Her chin dips. “They took us to an open-air prison facing the sea and chained us to the walls, torturing us one by one until we shifted into our human form. They collected our tails and the guard who was in charge ordered them to be taken to the king’s quarters.”
To add to his collection. My nails dig into the soft sand, but it gives far too easily to quench my rage. “After the trial, I’ll find the tails. Tell the others to meet me at the most northern dock at midnight.”
Her eyes gloss over, then clear with a blink. A faint tap echoes against my mind, and I open it up for her.
Princess, why are you with her? She tilts her head in Kressa’s direction, and her upper lip curls. I thought you—
Her body jerks, and blood sputters from her parted lips, cutting off her words. She rolls to the ground, and her eyes slide to me, hand reaching in my direction. Black blood gushes from a wound at her side. Your mother, she—
Kressa sinks my dagger into her chest, and I scream, the noise reverberating through the forest and across the ocean. It ripples through my very being.
“No, no, no.”
I flip over and scramble to her, tears streaming from my eyes. Her chest shudders on an inhale, then freezes. Nearby, the other selkie lies in the sand, motionless, in a pool of inky blood.
“You killed her,” I whisper. Fire coursing through my veins, I jerk my gaze to Kressa and scream, “You killed them!”
Her lip pulls back, and she drops my bloodied dagger into the sand. “Of course I did. She was about to kill you! Briar cares too much about you for me to let you die.”
I jump to my feet and slam my fist into her cheekbone. I pluck my dagger from the sand and ready it to plunge into her chest, but freeze. The world spins around me, tilts on its axis. Kressa’s shouts hollow out, muffled by the roaring in my ears.
It’s not Harriet’s hand I’m staring at.
It’s mine.