Chapter 37
Ro
My gaze fastens on Keri as I lean forward on the other side of the table separating us. She has something called a hot plate between us and several glass containers. Magic swirls within the essence captured in each of them, brightening in response with her as Keri lifts and examines them one by one. She gives me a focused look over the top of the container and hands it to me.
“So, I take it that the phone call with your mom went well?” Adiele asks as she watches us, her elbows propped on the end of the table and her chin resting between her hands.
Keri’s lips twitch faintly, and she shrugs, making me bristle with irritation that anyone would dare harm my mate’s tender emotions.
“About as well as can be expected given how tense everything has been. And she didn’t really enjoy me calling her out on how unhelpful her last divination was. There was some frustrated weeping and denial, but she eventually came around after about an hour or so and strong armed my dad into looking into the matter. Mom is better at foresight, but Dad is where the money is if you need to solve immediate problems. Let’s just say he needed the most convincing since he was pretty determined to hold out hope and resist me, uh, throwing my gifts away to pursue this.”
I scowl in response. Due to her family living much further inland from the coast than her aunt Katherine, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to meet them and reassure them that I do not seek to steal their daughter away. It is just one more reason that I need for this to work. I do not wish to cause a rift between my mate and her family or her coven any more than she wishes to cause me the anguish of being forcibly parted from the sea. We both need these things that make up who we are.
“And your sire—he was helpful?” I posit hopefully.
A real smile curls her lips, and she nods. “That he was! We brought in Katherine on a three-way conference call and hammered out the details. I have everything I need except where to start. And that’s where you come in. I need to know which of these—or which combination—feels like the energy of the sea.”
I look at the glass container in my hand and the others lined up across the table in front of us and suddenly feel very uneasy. What if I select wrong? I know nothing about this sort of magic.
“I do not know if I am the best one to make this decision, Keri,” I murmur. “I know nothing about this.”
Adiele sighs as she looks over the sample. “I still don’t understand why can’t we just grab any old saltwater and make a potion from it. You have the core, after all, so shouldn’t any of these do?”
Keri shakes her head. “The mineral composition of the sea is incredible, and its balance supports the lifeforms within it, but it doesn’t necessarily compose the magical elements of the sea. That involves a combination of the plants that grow within it, the influence of the lunar tides, its relationship with the shores and the rivers that empty sediment into it. The water carries an imprint of all these things and that makes up its magical nature.”
“Fuck,” Adiele breathes, and I can’t agree more with the sentiment.
My mate’s expression softens, and she reaches over to place her hand on mine. “Just relax, Ro. You can do this. This should feel as natural to you as breathing. All you need to do is tell me what feels like home to you.”
I look at her skeptically. “Keri, you are home to me. Wherever you are, it is my home.”
Her smile grows at my words, warmth filling her eyes as she squeezes my hand. “Okay. We’ll be each other’s home from here on out. But you’ve spent all your life in the sea, Ro. You can do this. Just reach out and feel the magic like you felt mine.”
I huff softly and shake my head. “That was merely my lure responding to a compatible mate. I can taste and feel the magic of these, but it is all foreign to me. They don’t taste of the sea.”
She gives me a wry look and nods. “Exactly. And that is what we need to remedy. Water holds the memory of everything, and the sea above all is the most complex. I have everything I could think of, and everything my father and aunt could think of that could hold traces of elements connected to the sea. We don’t need to get it perfect, just to emulate it enough to trick your magic.”
I sigh and twirl the contents in the container in my hand as I observe its soft glow spinning within it. It’s not right. I catch the glimmer of something in the corner of my eye, and my gaze drifts to another glass farther down the table. I set the container in my hand down and reach for it. It brightens in response to my touch, and my fins flare with excitement.
“This.” I hand her the container.
Turning it in her hand so that she can read the characters printed on the label, she looks at it and nods before setting it back down and turning to a large cabinet lining the wall to her right. She pulls out a container filled with familiar plant material. Keri removes several dry ribbons of kelp as I turn and grab another jar with a familiar glow. Another container soon joins it, and then another. Familiar traces weave through my mind as I pluck them from the tables. With each one I give her, I mumble to my mate all the while just how strong that element needs to be as she measures the portions into a bowl for Adiele to grind. To this, a pure alcohol is added, as well as a small amount of the core of the sea, and sealed, and then we move onto the next sample. We work together through the day, creating many small batches, each with different amounts until I feel the sun begin to make its final descent and I am forced to leave. I have never hated the condition of my kind more than this moment.
Within my mate’s home are numerous seeds of what could be our salvation. What she calls samples to begin to alchemical mercury are there, and I patiently wait as the days bleed together. I am forced to endure another full moon which tears me away from her and back to the ocean, but now that we are finished with our studies for the society, there is the small comfort that when I return our time together will be completely ours alone.
Waiting in the depths of the sea is the hardest part. It eats at me, and I console myself by spending every available moment with my mate once I’m able to climb back out again. I cannot join her when she must complete her duties, but I am there waiting for her and passing every minute with her that she allows me until the sun, moon, and sea steal me away again. By the time the moon begins to wane, I am relieved that it is finally time to begin the next process: the calcination. It is for this purpose that I find myself sitting in front of her flat burner once again as my mate carefully strains the mixture that I selected amongst all of those that we started. This is the right one—I know it.
“Adiele, open the window please,” she instructs.
Adiele gets up and pauses. “Which one?”
Keri’s nose wrinkles thoughtfully as she deposits the strained material in the mortar and pestle. “All of them. Trust me, igniting the dead earth portion is not going to be pleasant.”
I nearly gag on the fumes, my eyes watering despite the ventilation, but when it’s done, we have the salt by way of the ash and mercury in the tincture, and then it is all shaken together—and still we must wait. Every day as we shake it, we sing to it the notes of the sea. Keri is not perfect at capturing the right tones, but she understands the movement of magic within the breath and voice and so picks up on it quickly. We sing songs of magic and life as the mixture coagulates, and we inscribe certain sigils upon it and incorporate her human chanting and intonations that differ from day to day.
And on the final day, just minutes before sunset, Keri lifts the container in which our elixir has grown. The magic within it swirls with life and power, and my fins naturally flutter in response to it. I look from it to my mate. Adiele watches us with a hopeful light in her eyes, but it is my mate’s cautious excitement that makes my heart leap as I watch her take a filter and a clean bottle to carefully strain it.
The magic of the elixir brightens and dances as its purest form is revealed, and my breath catches. Yes. This is it.
Keri siphons a small amount into a vial and hands it to me. “This is it. Moment of truth.”
I nod and spare a glance to the setting sun outside the window. My eyes eagerly return to my mate, though, as I lift the vial to my lips; she is the only vision that I want to have or need to have at this moment. She is the entirety of my purpose now—Keri and the life that we will live together.
I am about to tip it back but startle when I feel her hand clasp over mine, halting me.
“You don’t have to do this.”
I do not understand and peer down at her in confusion. “Yes, I do. This represents the future I want and need, but also a future for everyone out there who rises from the sea.”
She bites her lip, a worried look crossing her face. “If something goes wrong...”
“Then I have risked nothing. I would rather take this risk than slowly die alone in the seas at the end of your days,” I assure her.
“But I don’t want to take the risk,” she chokes, and a tear slips down her cheek. “I would rather live at the very edge of the sea and kiss you goodbye every night and have you for the rest of my life than potentially risk your life.”
She looks up with pools of tears in her eyes, and I marvel at the wonders of humanity. An Aquana cannot cry and to me it is a sacred substance, and so I bend down and gently trail the tip of my tongue over the tracks from her tears, drawing them into me.
“I love you, Ro,” she whispers.
Those four words are like a hunter’s spear in my chest, and I close my eyes as joy blooms and overwhelms me. When I open my eyes again and look down at my mate, I see my future laid out for me within her eyes—and it is glorious.
“But I want the days and the nights with you,” I whisper as I lean down to press a loving kiss to her lips. “I cannot stop the moon from stealing me, but the moon, sun, and sea will only have me for one day. I am yours, and only yours, for all the others for the rest of my life. I promise you this on the River Styx that dwells deep below the seas.” I press another kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Do not cry for me. This is it—I know it is. Trust me. And if it is not perfect then we will try again, but I can’t wait any longer. Already the sea calls. But I swear to you, we will have our happy beginning.”
“Don’t you mean happy ending?” she jokes, her voice tremulous with tears.
I smile down at her and shake my head. “No. Because this is our beginning, and once I have claimed you, which I shall do once we have succeeded and I can fulfill my promise to you, we shall truly begin our long life together.”
She gives another watery laugh and pulls out of my arms. “I have so many questions about that, but okay, Ro, I trust you in this.”
I grin, and the contents of the bottle swirl in brilliant bursts of blue and green with flecks of gold as I bring it to my lips and swallow it just as the sun sinks below the horizon. It fills my belly with the brimming current of its wash, and suddenly I am free.
With a shout of glee, I scoop my mate into my arms and kiss her. Her laughter fills my ears as she clings to me, our love overspilling through both of us along our bond as the current between my lure and her magic ripples ecstatically. The joyous press of her lips against mine is like the breath of life exchanged once again between us, but even more profoundly as it echoes through our days and lifetime together yet to come.
It is our time—finally!