ISLA
Moira's words echo through the boathouse like waves breaking against ancient stone, and I feel the foundation of everything I thought I knew crumble beneath my feet.
A selkie. My grandmother was a selkie.
The stories she told me as a child were never fairy tales. They were memories. Confessions disguised as folklore, passed down to a granddaughter who was too young to understand what she was really hearing. The longing in her voice when she spoke of the sea-folk, the grief that shadowed her features when she watched the waves, the way she gripped my hands at the end and whispered about gifts I'd one day understand. All of it makes terrible, beautiful sense now.
The silver at my throat flares hot, and when I look down I can see faint light pulsing beneath my jacket. Not reflected lamplight from the boathouse. Something coming from within the metal itself, responding to the truth that's finally been spoken aloud.
"Isla." Eliza's hand touches my elbow, grounding me when everything else feels like it's spinning apart. "Do you need to sit down?"
I shake my head, though I'm not certain the movement is entirely honest. My legs feel like they belong to someone else, and the air in the boathouse has grown thick and difficult to breathe. The brotherhood watches me with varying degrees of wariness and curiosity, and Grayson stands apart from the others, his massive frame absolutely still but his attention fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
"There's a lot Isla needs to understand about what this means for her." Moira's voice is gentle but carries an undertone of command. "She doesn't need all of you watching while we have that conversation. This is personal."
Declan nods once, the gesture carrying the weight of authority. "Take her to the inn. We'll continue our planning here and brief you both in the morning."
The walk from the boathouse to Moira's inn passes in a blur of cold wind and churning thoughts. Eliza walks on one side of me, Moira on the other, their presence a barrier between me and the darkness that presses in from all sides. The path follows the clifftop, and below us the sea crashes against rocks with a rhythm that feels impossibly familiar, like a heartbeat I've been hearing my entire life without recognizing it for what it was.
Moira leads us through the quiet common room and up the narrow stairs to her private quarters. Inside, warmth envelops me immediately, and the scent of dried herbs fills my lungs with each breath. The space is cluttered but not chaotic, every surface covered with books and bottles and objects whose purposes I can't begin to guess.
"Sit." Moira guides me toward a chair near the fire, and I sink into it without resistance. "Eliza, would you make tea? The blend in the blue jar, the one that settles anxious minds."
Eliza moves to comply, navigating the crowded kitchen with the confidence of someone who's spent considerable time here.Moira settles into the chair across from me and studies my face with an expression that holds both compassion and assessment.
"You have questions," she says. "Ask them."
The permission breaks something loose. "How is this possible? My grandmother lived a normal human life. She married my grandfather, raised children, grew old in Edinburgh. She never transformed into anything. She never spoke about being anything other than human."
"Because she chose that life." Moira's voice is soft and carries no trace of judgment. "Selkies are creatures of choice in ways that other shifters aren't. They can set aside their seal skins and walk among humans indefinitely, living ordinary lives, growing old, dying in beds instead of waves. But the choice comes with a price. The sea never stops calling. And the longing never truly fades."
I think of my grandmother in her final years, the way she would stand at windows that faced the water even though Edinburgh harbor was too far away to see from her flat. The way she sometimes spoke to the rain as if it carried messages from somewhere distant. The way she clutched my hands and apologized for things I didn't understand.
"She left her skin behind." The words come out rough, scraped raw by the truth they contain. "When she left Skara, she buried it here. She told me once that she left something precious on the island, something she could never go back for. I thought she meant memories. A sweetheart, maybe. Something sentimental."
"Her skin was more than sentimental." Moira leans forward, firelight casting dancing shadows across her weathered features. "A selkie's skin is their connection to the sea, to their true nature, to the powers that flow through waters older than human memory. Without it, they can still sense the ocean calling, butthey can't answer. They're trapped on land, in human form, forever separated from the element that made them."
Eliza returns with a steaming cup and presses it into my hands. The warmth seeps into my chilled fingers, and the scent that rises from the liquid is complex and soothing, herbs I can't identify mingling with something deeper that reminds me of the sea.
"Why would she do that?" My voice cracks on the question. "Why would she choose to give up everything she was?"
Moira exchanges a glance with Eliza, and something passes between them that I can't interpret. "The records I found are incomplete. But from what I've pieced together, your grandmother fell in love with a human man who visited the island in the summer of 1953. A mainlander, someone passing through on business. When he left, she followed. But a selkie can't simply leave the sea. The pull is too strong, the bond too deep. The only way to break it is to hide the skin somewhere it can't be retrieved."
"She buried her own nature so she could be with him." The realization lands in my chest like a stone. "She gave up everything for love."
"For love, yes. And for fear." Moira's expression darkens slightly. "Those were dangerous times for our kind on Skara. The old families were dying out or fleeing to the mainland, and there were hunters who knew what the seal-folk were worth. Selkie skins fetch astronomical prices on the supernatural black market. Your grandmother may have believed that leaving was the only way to survive."
The tea grows cold in my hands, forgotten as I try to absorb everything Moira's telling me. My grandmother was a magical creature from legend, a seal-woman who walked on land in human form. She gave up her true self for a man she loved and spent the rest of her life mourning what she'd lost. And now,generations later, her blood runs through my veins, awakening powers I never knew existed.
"The pendant." I touch the silver disc through my jacket, feeling its warmth pulse against my palm. "What is it, really?"
"Selkie magic." Moira rises and crosses to me, her hand hovering over the pendant without quite touching it. "I recognized the symbols the moment I saw them. They're an old form of binding, a way of anchoring selkie power to a physical object. Your grandmother may not have been able to keep her skin, but she found a way to preserve a piece of what she was. That pendant carries echoes of her true nature."
"And now it responds to me."
"Because your blood's always known, even when you didn't. That's how the old magic works—it doesn't ask permission." Moira returns to her chair, and her gaze holds mine with fierce intensity. "Selkie heritage can lie dormant for generations, passed from mother to daughter without ever fully manifesting. But it never disappears entirely. And when circumstances align, when the carrier's ready or when events force the issue, it awakens."
My hands shake around the teacup. "The dreams. I've had them since I was a child. Swimming through depths that should have crushed me, breathing water like it was sweeter than air." My voice cracks. "I thought something was wrong with me. That I was broken somehow."
