Chapter 1
Reva
Do not stick our head inside that thing, I warn Noush as she dives dangerously close to a shipwreck.
There’s a circular pipe jutting out toward us that's likely filled with all kinds of fascinating things like anemones and rusty nails just waiting to prick us. I know that if she reaches it, she’s going to try to shove our nose inside, despite not knowing what might be inside.
As usual, my second soul, light of my life, and sister of my heart completely disregards me.
My body, my domain. Her voice fills our shared consciousness. Stop trying to steal all my fun.
She wiggles our tail, diving deeper toward the wreck. Sheer joy fills her as she inspects every single hole, looking for treasures while I sit back reluctantly, letting her do her thing.
It’s been forever since we found anything interesting.
A couple of days at most, but she has a tendency toward the dramatic. We flap our fins until we’re gliding along, strong and fast before popping our head up above the water’s surface. There aren’t many seals in these parts, and the last thing we want is to attract attention.
Then we dive back under the water. She gives a little yip of excitement in my head, doing a 360-degree vertical loop before realigning our thick seal's body until we’re heading in the right direction.
Sometimes, being underwater feels just like you’re flying. There’s a weightlessness to it, like being in a whole other world.
We keep our head down, lower body undulating as our fins flap and glide along. Every so often, Noush shakes our head in an involuntary motion trying to dislodge the bag tied around her neck.
Just stop, I tell her. We need it. It’s not like we have pockets in this form.
I can practically feel her rolling her eyes at me as my warning falls on deaf ears.
She just tosses our head impatiently. Seals don’t care much about pockets, or the clothing I have to wear when I slip out of her skin and regain my usual two-legged form. In fact, she’s not interested in most of the stuff that goes through my brain at any given time.
But she does love to swim.
We dive deeper through the murky water of the Corvin Sea, and I feel a surge of raw excitement and glee that doesn’t belong to me.
Look.
Noush has spotted a weird-looking fish and follows behind it, wiggling our tail.
Look how weird it is. She follows for a couple of seconds before we reach a huge patch of bleached coral, and she gets distracted by a pretty shell.
Noush, I send her a warning, and she tosses her head back before beaming me an image of just how shiny the shell is. Perfect for our collection. She then dives deeper, scooping into our mouth and I feel another surge of pure giddiness.
We rise to the surface again to take another breath and then swoop back down. Heading deeper and deeper, spiralling in perfect loops.
I love pretty things just as much as she does. But we don’t have time for messing around today. We have things to do, places to be. A job to do.
My thoughts earn me another mental eye roll, and we swim on at a rapid pace, surfacing every so often for fresh air before diving once again.
We’ve been going for a couple of hours when the water becomes thicker and harder to swim through.
I can taste the salt growing thicker as we head closer to the still waters of the underwater graveyard.
It’s quiet down here. Eerie. The water is filled with nothing but fish ghosts and rusting structures that were abandoned after the decade-long war between the human King Wildrake and the Witch Queen from the neighbouring north.
They might have ended the war before I was born, but they certainly didn’t do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.
Over three decades since the war ended and the water’s still thick as soup with pollution.
Nothing and no one comes here.
Which means it’s perfect for my purposes. A sentence that’s so close to being a sea life pun, but I can’t quite stretch it that far.
And then I spot the abandoned structure I’ve been using as a hidey-hole for the past year. It’s not one I return to frequently since it takes so long to get to, but it’s served me well so far.
Sorry, Noush, but we need hands for this next bit.
She only grumbles slightly as we resurface in the middle of the churning sea, with no land in sight.
I take a deep breath of air that smells like salt and metal before tugging off my skin and transforming to my human form.
Noush’s voice instantly goes silent as I’m separated from her, securing my sealskin around my shoulders to keep it in place.
I can’t help but grimace as I pluck the shiny shell from my mouth and shove it into the bag around my neck before diving beneath the surface.
In this form, I’m not such a quick swimmer and my mass of hair fills the air like a dandelion seed head as I kick my legs, propelling myself down, down deeper into the water before coming to a halt.
For a second, my vision fills with my blondish-brown cloud of hair. Neither one thing nor the other.
Just like the rest of me.
I continue descending down to a rusted structure that’s degraded after decades of exposure to the salt and water.
I have no idea what it once was—some kind of ship maybe—although it could well have been a type of weapon I’ve never seen before.
I’m careful not to make contact with it as who knows what kind of magic might still be infused into the metal.
This time, I don’t avoid the enticing hole that’s formed in the structure after years of corrosion and decay.
My stash is right where I left it. Six glittering golden statues of King Wildrake himself that were obtained from some slightly dodgy sources a few months ago.
I’ve got a buyer interested in them, so I cram all six into the bag.
They’re all shiny enough to send a flicker of glee through me, but I can’t say I’ll be sad to see the back of them.
Securing the fasteners on the cloth bag, I readjust it around my neck as my lungs begin to burn in earnest.
Kicking my legs hard, the water fills with little bubbles as I return to the surface before slipping on my sealskin once again. Noush then surges forward again, diving beneath the water with a happy flick of our tail.
Time to head back to land.
There’s the briefest moment where I can tell she wants to turn and head northwards. She always does. There’s always a faint yearning where her instinct pushes her to travel back to where we were born.
But that’s not home anymore; it hasn’t been in a long time.
Funny how we always have a sense in our internal compass that points to the place where we first grew up. Not the place we moved to as soon as we were old enough to swim long distances, or the dozens of places we’ve been in the twenty-plus years since.
Instead, we turn east, back toward Ambleby. It’s a long swim back to shore, but we plough on through the water with the statues burning a hole in our non-pockets.
We’re at the tail-end of winter, which means there’s freezing drizzle in the air when I finally slip off my skin and resurface. It immediately batters me in the face but is thankfully keeping people inside out of the elements so I don’t have to worry about being spotted.
Unlike most other beast-borne shifters, I don’t lose my clothing when I transform into my seal, so I’m still dressed in my soaking wet clothes as I climb up the steps cut into the rock, surrounded by tufted grass and brown, faded heather. The air is freezing cold, but at least I’m not naked.
That’s selkies for you. We’re unique.
One of a kind.
Much good it does us. Our removable, magical skin is one of the reasons we’ve been hunted by both human-born sorcerers, and people born with magic inside of them, for centuries.
I stifle a shudder. My skin is not only my most prized possession. It’s also part of me, my only connection to Noush. And I don’t know what I’d do without it. Without her.
Tucking my skin under my arm so that it’s out of sight, I continue to clamber up the steps toward the village. There are few streetlights and a whole lot of darkness, so I’m lucky that my eyesight is much better than a human’s, even when I’m in this form.
I pass the ruins of the ruined castle wall and the handful of houses scattered around at this end of the village.
There’s a faint glow in the window of one, but all the rest are in darkness.
I slip through the well-oiled gate of the single lit cottage, passing up the front path and letting myself in with the key hanging around my neck.
Stepping inside, I’m hit with a wave of warmth that’s like a soothing hug, heating my chilled bones and making my shoulders instantly drop. My fellow lodger Frannie’s even left out a cup of tea that’s perfectly steeped and still steaming, despite not knowing when I might be home.
I kick off my boots and pad through to my bedroom, sipping tea as I go.
I then slide my skin into the warded box under the bed, which should make it impossible for anyone to get inside.
Once it’s safely tucked away, even more tension melts from my spine, and I crack my neck before pulling on some dry clothes.
Now all I need to do is drop my haul for today, which means a trip to the shittiest pub on the east coast of the kingdom.