“Could it have been a storm?” Alexios wondered aloud. “I can’t feel any sort of presence.”
I couldn’t either. But the pelt in the water was being pushed back out to sea, and I knew it was Lachlan’s. “Watch my back,” I whispered and darted forward on the rocks to grab it, tripping over the dress again. The pelt washed back out, like the current was taunting me. “Shit.” I stripped down to nothing but Kellin’s pelt, handed the dress as well as my cloak and dagger back to Alexios, then waded out to gather Lachlan’s sealskin up.
The water was beyond bracing, with small chunks of ice floating in it. Whatever kind of storm it had been, it was an odd one. Maybe Lachlan had swum out in it and been struck by lightning? My hand closed on the sealskin while I was chest deep in water, and I grabbed it tightly, just as a huge wave hit.
My feet lost contact with the rocks, and I sputtered as the rip current pulled me out, like a child yanking on a pull toy’s string. I was an idiot. An idiot who needed her hands to swim parallel to the land until I could swim ashore.
“Rip has me,” I called out over the waves. “Swimming west!” I wasn’t sure if Alexios could hear me, but something similar had happened off the coast of his island after we met. I hoped he’d figure it out. I wrapped Kellin’s pelt more tightly around my neck, and it seemed firmly attached somehow. But the waves kept snatching at the one in my arms, like a dog playing tug of war with me.
Shit.I was going to drown if I didn’t get this thing secured.
“A little help, here?” I grumbled, before cold saltwater filled my mouth and I shut up.
Somehow, I managed to wrap the fur around the chain on my neck and start swimming. It was odd how firmly the pendant and chain seemed to hold the sealskin, once I’d fixed it there. But selkies were magical creatures, and I assumed their pelts were made of the stuff. Krakens like Levi were even more magical.
As if the thought of the kraken had summoned one, a voice that was far too loud boomed next to me, and a shadow rose up out of the water. “Omega.”
My muscles locked up instantly.No.The water locked around me, freezing me in place. At least my head was above the water.
The presence was back, but I couldn’t see anything but a large, dark shape, until the distant lightning flickered, and a flash of giant wings and an enormous head with spiked snout was imprinted on the back of my retinas.
Fuck me.A dragon? There were meant to be only seven of them left in the world, and I’d made it a point to know exactly where those huge, aggressive fuckers called home.
With my luck this year, this one would be the one I’d stolen from. Baltor.
I winced. I’d worn my best hair pins to the dinner, the wickedly long steel ones I’d been given years before, which I’d decorated with the two biggest green diamonds from the hoard I’d robbed.
Now it made sense. I’d heard dragons could smell their hoards. But all the way across the Straits?
“Baltor,” I yelled, not sure how the dragon had found me. “Free my hands, and I’ll give you back your gems.”
Silence. My hands stayed frozen.
“I have the rest of them in my bags on the shore. I was bringing them back,” I said, only half-lying. I’d used a couple to buy buildings in cities across the continent to serve as safe houses for Omegas. But I was going to give the rest back eventually. Unless I needed them to save some more Omegas.
More silence.Shit.I’d heard dragons could be real assholes about their hoards. Maybe he wanted an apology.
“Oh, great dragon, I apologize most humbly for taking your hoard. When I laid eyes on it, I was overcome by its beauty.The mere sight of your exquisite collection swept away all my common sense and decency. I beg your forgiveness for my disrespect and for removing that which was yours. It was wrong of me, and I will never trespass in your hoard again, nor lay a hand on anything that is yours, if you but allow me this chance to repent, return your hoard to you, and go my way without harm.”
If anything, the sea got colder. Something odd, like a moth wing brushing on the inside of my skull made me sneeze a half-dozen times in a row.
When I stopped sneezing, a deep voice broke the silence. “You stole from a dragon’s hoard?” It spoke in a formal dialect of Starlakian I’d never heard before, though the words made sense.
A snout came into view, the tip of it stopping only a few inches from my own nose. This wasn’t Baltor. This wasn’t even a dragon, from my experience, although it had the same sort of shape to it. Snout, wings, claws. Claws holding the dead body of Lachlan in them.
Ah, hells.
RADA
My blood had been frozen, but now it was on fire. “What did you do to him?” I ignored his question about stealing and yelled at the ice monster, “What did you do to Lachlan?” I squeezed my fist, and some of the ice cracked away from it. I squeezed again, and more ice fell into the sea. My arm was close to free, though the icy gust of frost that came out of the thing’s nostrils did nothing to help. “You’d better not have hurt him!”
“You stink of my old enemy,” the voice hissed, squeezing me to silence. Or the ice was squeezing me; I didn’t know. It didn’t matter to my ribs what was crushing them. “And of something else.”
Fuck it all.My luck really had run out. Why couldn’t I run into some all-powerful, horrifically large monster who fell in love with me, or something? No, I had to get picked up by a murdering ice beast who thought I smelled like the thing he most wanted to kill.
I called out for the Goddess in my mind, but when there was no answer, I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. She’d given up on me, like I’d wanted. She wouldn’t step in, not until the ten years were up.
Or never,the insidious whisper suggested.Maybe She’s gone for good.
