11. His Mate
His Mate
Sigurd & Valerie
The air in the Saltweather fishmarket reeks of crushed ice, blood, and raw brine.
I step around the discarded gills of a gutted cod resting on the wet cobblestones.
My shoes squelch in the muck with every footfall.
My tailored wool suit makes me a glaring target among the shouting vendors and soaked rubber aprons.
People give me wary looks as they pass. They know who I am, and that my company is the reason their town was threatened. But I’m still an ancient kraken, and even furious people hesitate before throwing accusations in my face.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing they say can make me more aware of my failure than I already am. I dragged Valerie into the abyss and ruined her life on the surface. Her friends deserve an explanation I can’t truly give them. I’m going to try anyway.
I resume my trudge through the market, scanning the rows of hanging nets and scales. Finally, I locate the battered, hand-painted sign for Ferreira’s Catch near the edge of the pier.
Behind an ice-packed counter, a harpy is hacking the head off a salmon with a rusted cleaver.
I recognize her from the photographs Valerie brought to my office—Marta Ferreira.
Her feathers are plastered flat against her arms from the driving rain.
Beside her, Hattie Nunn stands huddled in a damp yellow raincoat, clutching a paper cup of coffee.
Valerie’s human friend stares blankly at the crushed ice, her shoulders tight against the coastal wind.
I stop in front of the stall. “You are freezing, Miss Nunn,” I state. “You need a thicker coat.”
Hattie jumps. Her coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup, splashing onto the crushed ice. She tips her head back to stare up at me in stunned silence. Next to her, Marta drops the bloody cleaver onto the cutting board.
The terror in Hattie’s eyes tightens a sharp knot of guilt in my gut. I despise what I have reduced them to. They look like they are bracing for a ransom demand or casualty report, and I know this conversation is unlikely to go well.
“Mr. Eiriksson,” Hattie whispers. “Why are you here? Where is she?”
“I came to deliver a message from Valerie,” I reply. “I’ve finalized arrangements to protect Saltweather. But Valerie will stay with me for a while, until everything is in order.”
Hattie blinks through the rain dripping from her hood, struggling to make sense of what I just said. Marta doesn’t hesitate.
Her soaked feathers bristle into a jagged ridge along her arms. She plants a scarred hand on the frozen counter and vaults over it, landing on the slick cobblestones directly in front of me. Then she lunges and drives a feathered talon into the center of my chest.
I don’t flinch or step back. The point of her claw digs through my jacket. I keep my feet anchored in the grime and let her rage spend itself against something that can take it.
“What have you done?” Marta screeches, her voice ringing out across the rain-slicked pier. “If you touched one hair on her head, you oversized squid, I’ll gut you myself!”
The market around us remains a frenzy of haggling voices and grinding cart wheels. I hold my ground and keep my gaze on the furious harpy.
I’m a CEO. I employ private security forces and undead attorneys to keep confrontations like this far away from me.
Yet standing here in the rain while a fishmonger threatens to gut me brings a strange sense of peace.
Valerie fought me in my own office because she believed she was alone.
Seeing Marta willing to draw blood to protect her proves she isn’t.
“Your loyalty is commendable, Mrs. Ferreira,” I state. “But threats are unnecessary. She is safe, and you have my word that no harm will come to her.”
Marta glares at me. She searches my face, perhaps waiting for an arrogant smirk or some sign that I intend to retaliate. I offer her neither.
Behind the counter, some of the color returns to Hattie’s face.
“Marta, let him go,” Hattie mutters, reaching across the gap to grip the harpy’s forearm. “He isn’t fighting back.”
Marta hesitates. Her eyes dart from my hands to my face before she finally lowers her arm. The talon drags against my jacket as she steps back. She’s keeping her guard up even while she retreats.
Hattie takes her place at the edge of the stall and abandons her coffee. She grabs a damp notepad from the cutting board, then presses the tip of a pen against the paper.
The ink barely marks the wet surface. Hattie bears down harder, the metal tip scratching across the fragile paper.
When she finishes, she rips the note from the wire binding, folds it, and holds the small square out to me.
“If she’s staying with you, can you give this to her? ” she says. “So she knows we’re okay?”
I look down at it. Human things have always seemed fragile in my hands. One clumsy twitch of my fingers could crush the paper into pulp or smear the ink into illegibility. I tore Valerie away from her life. Right now this small, damp square is the only piece of home I can carry back to her.
“I’ll deliver it personally, Miss Nunn,” I reply, accepting the note with care.
I slide it into the slim waterproof transit canister I keep in my breast pocket for surface documents. Then I leave the chaotic aisles of the fishmarket and walk toward the edge of town. Behind me, the din of the market disappears beneath the roar of the surf.
The coastal wind whips freezing spray against my jaw, but I barely register it.
“Finally,” I mutter to the churning gray water.
I take a slow breath of the frigid air. I need a few minutes of silence before I descend again and face Lotan’s court alone.
My phone vibrates harshly against my thigh before I get them. I pull the device from my pocket. Rakan’s name flashes across the screen beneath the raindrops blurring the glass.
I press the phone to my ear. “You have terrible timing, Rakan.”
“How is Valerie?” Rakan asks. Static crackles over the roar of the wind. “Iris has been worrying since you sprinted out of the hall.”
“She’s recovering,” I reply, pacing a slow line across the wet concrete. “Ysra is caring for her. She is safe in the fortress.”
“And you?”
The question catches me off guard. I tighten my grip on the phone until the casing groans softly beneath my thumb.
“I manage the logistics,” I answer, keeping my tone flat. “How is the basin?”
Rakan lets out a long, distorted exhale. “It will take time. A djinn cannot simply boil the ocean, Sigurd. You know that. Heating the basin puts a massive strain on the environment, and I have to draw the latent magic carefully. I have my work cut out for me.”
It’s not the answer I wanted, but it’s the one I expected.
We are running out of time. If Lotan loses patience before Rakan finishes his task with the basin, the leviathan will move to claim Saltweather.
I’ll have to step in personally, and the truce will fall apart.
Every human ship on those routes could become collateral damage.
“I understand,” I reply over the crashing surf. “I didn’t expect it to be easy. I’ll stall Lotan. Thank you, Rakan.”
“No need. Just…” Rakan pauses. “Take care of yourself, Sigurd. Be careful with the leviathan.”
“I’m always careful.”
Rakan scoffs. “That is demonstrably untrue. But this time, I’ll take it as a promise. You have Valerie now.”
He hangs up before I can correct him. She is not mine, and perhaps she never will be.
But my conflicted feelings don’t matter. I slide the phone back into my pocket and reach for the buttons of my damp suit. The sea churns below the breakwater, dark and familiar. Lotan is waiting somewhere beneath it. It’s time for us to meet.
I sit at a stone reading table in the center of the grand Abyssal Library.
Towering stacks of ancient, spell-sealed tomes create a barricade in front of me.
I trace my fingertips over the pale vellum of an open ledger while Solveig Haraldsdóttir paces behind my chair.
Her obsidian cane strikes the stone floor with a sharp, rhythmic clack.
I thought being trapped at the bottom of the ocean was terrifying enough. But sitting in a room alone with Sigurd’s mother is arguably worse. The cold that follows her through the archive makes the place feel less like a library and more like an interrogation chamber.
If she wants to play a power game, she picked the wrong battlefield. Books are my territory. If I keep my head down and rely on my training, I can survive this until I can go home.
“Are the archives organized by chronology or by clan?” I ask, focusing on the bindings.
Solveig stops pacing. “By obligation.”
The answer is so thoroughly kraken that I almost sigh.
She steps closer behind me. “As you can imagine, Valerie, I brought you here for a reason. A librarian such as yourself will no doubt understand the value of these tomes.”
I shut the massive ledger. The cover hits the stone table with a solid smack, and I press my palms against the binding before looking up at her.
“It is a beautiful collection, Madam. The preservation spells on these bindings are remarkable.”
Solveig resumes pacing around the reading table. Her expression makes it clear that compliments about archival maintenance are not the reaction she expected.
“The books hold the history of our house.” Her gaze pins me to the chair. “A history you are now, unfortunately, a part of.”
I keep my hands on the closed cover, bracing myself for whatever archaic legal trap she is about to spring on me.
The steady click of her cane ceases when Solveig steps directly into my line of sight. She leans forward, resting her weight against the smooth stone across from me.
“I can’t say I agree with my son’s choice, but it’s no longer something we can change.”
The contract I signed in Sigurd’s office was a simple, transactional guarantee.
I agreed to act as his date at Rakan and Iris’s wedding, and in exchange, Sigurd swore to protect Saltweather.
There were rules about what we had to do together, and very clear boundaries about what we didn’t.
Things had gone wrong, but after my conversation with Sigurd, I’d believed we had cleared things up somewhat.
Clearly, Solveig didn’t agree.
“The ritual on the mountain was an accident, Madam,” I say. “It doesn’t have to carry any weight.”
“That accident injected abyssal venom into your veins,” Solveig counters. “Intent is irrelevant to the biology. No matter my personal opinions on humans, the ritual was initiated. As far as the laws of this house are concerned, you are married to my son. You are his mate.”
The word lands harder than I expect.
Married. His mate.
For several seconds, I have to bite back the frantic urge to defend myself. I want to tell her about the fraudulent arrangement, the eviction, Cassian’s glowing gold ink, and every clause I read twice before putting my name on the page.
Saltweather is my home, the only true foundation I possess in the world. I won’t forfeit my independence because of a biological technicality in an underwater court.
But shouting any of that at Solveig will accomplish nothing.
Human paperwork means very little to a creature who commanded the tides before the invention of the printing press.
If I start screaming about contracts now, I won’t sound defiant.
I’ll sound like exactly the helpless surface-dweller she already thinks I am.
I loosen my grip on the book and force my expression back into something calm. “I see.”
“As a result, you must now learn how to be a proper kraken mate,” Solveig commands. “I will not have my son tied to a liability.”
She watches me closely, waiting for the panic to set in. She expects me to cry, beg, or break down at the thought of being trapped here. Instead, I fold my hands in my lap and reach for the same calm, professional voice I use on aggressive patrons back in Saltweather.
“Thank you, Madam. I appreciate you taking the time to instruct me.”
For the first time since I entered the library, Solveig looks genuinely taken aback.
“I assumed you would weep,” she says. “Or demand to see my son.”
“Tears won’t change the biology, Madam, just like intent doesn’t.” I sit straighter against the stone chair. “And Sigurd has a maritime empire to run. I doubt he has the time to hold my hand while I read a book.”
Solveig tilts her head. Some of the tension leaves her shoulders as she studies me.
I don’t need to learn how to be a proper kraken mate. I’m going back to the surface the second this magic clears my system. But arguing with this creature is useless, and if she wants to treat me like an ignorant surface-dweller, I can play her game on my territory.
I’ll read every word she puts in front of me, and I’ll master it just to wipe that look off her face.
Solveig turns away, her black gown sweeping over the floor. She crosses to a pile of heavy ledgers on a nearby pedestal and lifts an ancient volume with effortless kraken strength before carrying it back to the reading table.
The tome lands with a deep thud that reverberates through the cavernous space. A cloud of dry dust rises with the scent of old leather. The blue hide covering the book is almost the same color as Sigurd’s skin.
“You are remarkably calm for a surface-dweller,” Solveig comments.
I hook my fingers over the top edge of the cover and pull the massive volume toward me. It barely moves. I brace my arms against the table and try again, dragging the book across the stone until I finally get it into place. The precise alignment settles something in my chest.
“Like you said, Frawjō, I am a librarian.” I trace my thumb over the embossed title on the leather cover. “I am very good at research. Where should we begin?”
Solveig watches my hands, her open aggression settling into the strict, commanding demeanor of a headmistress. She points the tip of her cane at the center of the book.
“Chapter one,” Solveig commands. “The hierarchy of the clans and the obligations of the matriarch. Pay attention.”
I flip open the heavy cover and settle my hands on the first page. Whatever else the abyss expects from me, this part I know how to do.