“Because she does not belong here,” he said finally. “This is Vultor territory. Humans are not welcome.”
“But she’s not like other humans.” Lilani had that stubborn set to her jaw that she’d inherited from him. “She can glow. She’s special.”
Special.Yes. That was one word for it. But dangerous was another.
“Humans are dangerous.” He heard the bitterness in his own voice and didn’t bother to hide it. “They take. They use. They destroy everything they touch and?—”
He stopped. His daughter was staring at him with those big golden eyes—his eyes, the only thing about her that was purely Vultor—and he realized he was frightening her.
Excellent work,his beast sneered.Terrify your own child with your hatred. That will surely help your case.
“I’m sorry.” He set the ruined net aside and opened his arms. “Come here.”
She came readily, climbing into his lap and pressing her small body against his chest. She was warm. She was always warm, burning with the fire that came from his blood. He wrapped his arms around her and breathed in the familiar scent of his daughter, trying to let it wash away the lingering traces of cold sea and warm honey.
It didn’t work.
“The Star Lady saved me,” she said into his chest. “She didn’t have to. She could have swam away and let me drown. But she came when I was scared and she held me and she sang to me and?—”
“She sang to you?”
“In the water. When everything was dark and loud and I couldn’t breathe. I heard her voice. Not like normal hearing. Like… like hearing inside my bones. And she found me and she held me and then we were going up, up, up, and then there was air.”
His arms tightened around his daughter. Ariella had saved his child. She’d heard his daughter’s scream and come without hesitation, without bargaining, without asking what she would get in return.
That’s what people do,she’d said. Like it was simple. Like there was no calculation involved, no weighing of costs and benefits, no consideration of the danger. Just a child in trouble and a woman who dove into the chaos to pull her out.
When was the last time anyone had done something for him without expecting payment? When was the last time kindness hadn’t come with strings attached?
Never,his beast whispered.But she is different. You felt it. You smelled it on her. She is?—
Shut up.
The beast snarled but retreated, and he turned his attention to his daughter.
“Time for bed, little one.”
“But I want to wait with you.”
“Lilani.”
His daughter gave him the look—the one that said she knew exactly what he was doing and found it deeply unfair—but she slid off the furs and padded back towards her sleeping alcove. At the entrance, she paused.
“I hope she comes back, Papa. I want to show her my shell collection.”
Then she was gone, swallowed by the shadows of the curtains. He bowed his head, his beast clawing at the inside of his chest.
She’s not coming back,he told himself again.
And yet as soon as Lilani’s breathing deepened into slumber, he found himself at the entrance of the cave once more, watching the water and waiting for a shimmer of bioluminescence that might never appear.
CHAPTER 6
Ariella appeared at sunrise.
One moment the water was empty—dark waves rolling towards the shore in their endless rhythm—and the next there was movement. A sleek shape cutting through the surf with the kind of grace that made Valrek’s chest tighten. Then a head broke the surface, dark hair flowing around her shoulders as her pale skin caught the growing light.
She came back.
