Chapter 15
MOIRA
Rafe kisses me one more time before he goes to the meeting, his hand lingering on my face. "I'll be back soon as I can. The wards—"
"I'll handle them." I cover his hand with mine. "Go. Get the brotherhood ready."
He hesitates, torn between the meeting with Declan and leaving me here. Protection wars with tactics across his features.
"I'm just doing magical prep work," I remind him. "Salt circles and protection spells. Nothing dangerous."
"Everything feels dangerous right now." But he steps back, lets his hand fall. "Be careful. Stay alert. And if anything feels wrong—"
"I'll run right upstairs and interrupt your meeting." I push him gently toward the door. "Now go before Declan sends a search party."
He leaves reluctantly, glancing back twice before the shadows swallow him.
The door closes, and the silence in his quarters presses against my skin like deep water.
No time for fear. No time to second-guess. Old Tom is suffering somewhere in Catalina's grip, and every moment counts.
Gran's grimoire lies open on the table, the old leather warm under my fingertips. The protection wards I need are here, written in her precise hand. Salt circles. Water bindings. Barriers that can hold back death magic if the witch casting them is strong enough.
The question is whether I'm strong enough.
Doubt tries to surface, but I push it down. Shove it deep. Rafe needs me focused, not spiraling. This island needs me to be what Gran trained me to be, not the girl who's been hiding for a decade.
Salt water from the harbor sits in ceramic bowls arranged around the room. The magic in it hums against my senses, waiting. Catalina's taint runs through Stormhaven's currents now, a dark thread woven into water that should be clean. The wrongness makes my teeth ache.
Time to push back. Time to free the real Moira.
I dip my fingers in the nearest bowl and begin.
The incantation comes easier than it should after years of barely using my power. Gran's words, Gran's rhythm, but the magic that answers is mine. Salt water rises from the bowl in a thin stream, responding to my will, weaving patterns in the air that glow faintly blue.
Protection. Barrier. Shield.
The magic flows through me and into the space around us, marking Rafe's quarters as defended ground. The wards settle into the stone walls, invisible but present. Anything carrying death magic will feel them. Will struggle to cross the threshold.
The warehouse above needs the same protection.
I work quickly, anchoring wards to the building itself, sinking magic deep into wood and stone.
The entire structure thrums with protective energy.
The work fills a hollow space inside my chest—a space that's been empty since Gran died, since I stopped practicing, since I decided being normal was safer than being powerful.
Normal never saved anyone.
I leave a note for Rafe in his quarters and head back home. Flynn's Inn glows warm when I arrive, familiar and beloved against the darkness. The place Gran built. The place where I've been serving breakfast and pretending I'm nothing special for too long.
The wards here need to be strongest. This is where we'll gather before the fight. Where Catalina might strike if she decides to hit us first.
The ocean stretches beyond the inn's back windows, dark and restless. Calling.
The inn has good bones, old protections layered into its foundation from Gran's time.
I wake them with salt water from the kitchen, the incantation going deeper this time.
The magic rises not just from the bowls but from the ocean itself, drawn through the connection all sea witches share with water.
The inn's wards flare to life, burning bright in my second sight.
Strong. Solid.
One more location. The hardest one.
Stormhaven Sound's deepest point sits two miles north, where the harbor opens into darker water. The place where Catalina will perform her ritual. Where she'll try to complete whatever dark work she's been building with bound spirits and stolen lives.
The beach access is rocky and treacherous in the dark. Waves crash against stone outcroppings, spray turning the air thick with salt. The magic here feels different. Deeper. Older. This is where the island's power meets the ocean's endless dark, where anything could rise from below.
Where Catalina will feel strongest.
The marking I place here isn't protective. It's a beacon. A magical signature that will let me find this exact spot when the time comes, even in darkness or storm. The ritual site glows faintly in my second sight, marked and mapped.
Back at the inn, the magic under my skin hums with purpose. Some essential piece of myself has finally clicked into place.
The common room is quiet when I return. Empty bottles wait to be washed. Tables sit ready for breakfast that might not happen if we fail.
The knock on the door comes soft but certain.
Eliza stands on the threshold, wrapped in a thick sweater despite the mild night. She must have known I'd be here.
"Heard you're planning to fight a sea monster," she says. Not quite a question.
"Close enough." I step aside, let her enter. "Declan told you?"
"Declan tells me everything." She settles into one of the common room chairs, studies me with eyes that see too much. "You look different."
"Different how?"
"More alive." She tilts her head. "Scared, but alive. Like you've been sleepwalking for years and finally woke up."
The accuracy stings. "Is that why you're here? To tell me I look awake?"
"I'm here because you're about to do something terrifying, and friends show up for that." Her voice softens. "Also because Declan said Rafe looked like a man walking to his execution. Figured you might need someone to talk to who isn't drowning in their own guilt."
Rafe's face when he left surfaces in my memory. Determined. Haunted. Carrying the weight of every choice that led to this moment.
"He blames himself." The words come quiet. "For all of it. Catalina. Elspeth. What's happening now."
"Men are good at that." Eliza leans forward. "But that's not what's eating at you. What are you actually afraid of?"
Everything. Losing Rafe. Failing Elspeth again. Watching Old Tom die because we're too slow or too weak or too late.
"What if I become like her?" The confession tears free before I can stop it.
"Catalina. She was human once. Shifter, but close enough.
She drowned herself and merged with darkness and became wrong.
Lost everything that made her who she was.
" My hands clench in my lap. "What if using my full power does that to me?
What if the ocean takes more than I'm willing to give? "
Eliza watches me for several heartbeats. Then she leans back in her chair. "Catalina drowned herself in rage and revenge. You're choosing power because people will die without it. Those aren't the same thing."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're sitting here worried about it.
" She shakes her head. "Catalina didn't care who she hurt.
You care about everyone. See the difference?
" She reaches across the table. "Look. Using your full power should scare you.
But hiding from it because you're afraid means people die anyway.
And you'd have to live with knowing you might have stopped it. "
The weight of that truth settles in my chest.
"Also." Eliza's expression softens. "Rafe looks at you like you're the only thing keeping him standing. Whatever happens, you're not facing it alone."
"Thank you."
She stands, pulls me into a brief, fierce hug. "Now I'm going back to my mate before he worries himself into shifting. But Moira? Don't let fear make your decisions. You're stronger than you think."
She leaves as quietly as she came, the door closing soft behind her.
The common room feels larger in her absence. But the fear that was eating at me has dulled to worry I can carry without it crushing me.
Gran's grimoire sits where I left it when I brought it with me, pages marked with decades of use. The leather is soft from her hands, from mine, from every sea witch in our line who studied these spells.
The passage about sea-walkers is near the back, written in Gran's smallest, most careful script. Warning, not instruction.
I read it three times before the full meaning sinks in.
Sea-walkers must be killed in deep water where their power is strongest. Anywhere else and they'll simply flee into the depths and heal.
The spirits they've bound can be freed, but only with sea-witch magic cast at the moment of the sea-walker's death. The window is brief. Miss it, and the spirits remain trapped forever.
Sea-witch magic at the moment of death.
This is how we save Elspeth. How we free the others Catalina has bound. But it means being there when she dies. Being close enough to use my power at exactly the right moment. In deep water where Catalina is strongest and I'm most vulnerable.
It means risking everything on timing and precision and hope.
The door opens behind me. Rafe's scent reaches me before his voice does, shadow and night-blooming jasmine.
"You're came." I close the grimoire, turn to face him.
"The brotherhood will help." Exhaustion lines his face, but determination burns underneath. "Every shifter who can fight will be there. Declan, Finn, Grayson, Jax. The wolves, the tigers, the bears. We end this soon."
Soon. Hours at most before everything changes.
"I found a way to save Elspeth and the others. But it's complicated."
"Tell me."
So I do. Explain about the sea-walker's vulnerability in deep water. About the narrow window to free the bound spirits. About how I'll need to be there at the moment of Catalina's death, using magic while everything is chaos and violence around me.
His expression darkens with every word. "That's too dangerous."
"It's the only way."
"Then we find another way."