His heart felt heavy. Lures worked. And this one could easily work on him. He knew that. He was capricious, changeable—he always found a way out. Some way to avoid the boring and get on with the fun stuff.
He wasn’t the right person to hold the kraken.
Maybe that was why it had chosen him.
He clenched his fists. The kraken was still silent—but that could be part of the trick. It was harder to fight an enemy who just fucking disappeared on you. His octopus could have told him that.
Except his octopus was gone. Everything he had was gone. Grief pooled inside him. Everything was gone—and soon he would lose Carol, too.
Something moved in the depths of his soul. The barest ripple, indicative of huge upheavals elsewhere. He frowned, searching towards it, when Maggie shrieked.
“It’s okay!” Carol’s voice was sharp enough for him not to believe her. “Maggie—it’s fine, I’m fine. See? The water isn’t going to—”
A storm surge exploded in Moss’s mind. A memory so intense it sent him reeling. Darkness sent knives of rain lancing through his scales, and there was no way out because the only thing all around was more darkness and more icy rain. Then, worse than the rain, water so cold and so everywhere he couldn’t breathe in it. He clung to the only thing that was warm and solid in the whole world, and she flung one safe-keeping arm around him. There was one moment of enough air to breathe and then the water pulled them both down, so deep, so cold, so tumbling wings-over-tail. He wanted to be somewhere else, but there was nowhere else, and what if he couldn’t find Carol again?
Somewhere else and very close, Maggie shrieked.
He hauled himself out of the memory. Maggie was scampering back and forth on the very edge of the waves, distress shooting from her mind like telepathic needles. Fuck. Of course the memory was hers. Of course she’d be terrified at the thought of any of them going back in the water.
There was a splash, and Carol yelped as she fell into the water. Only waist-deep, and she surfaced at once, but Maggie let out a keening wail that stripped everything else from Moss’s mind.
“Maggie—” Carol blurted, then switched to telepathy. *I’m fine, I’m coming back now, I—*
She lost her footing again as Maggie’s barrage of concern intensified. Moss strode into the water and picked her up. Seawater poured in sheets down her hair and shoulders, and he—
Felt it.
Tastedit.
His senses swam through every droplet that surrounded her, coursing down her skin, dripping from her hair and limbs and the tip of her chin. The ocean sang to him, and it sang abouther.
Another shriek ripped through the air. Maggie was singing, too, and her song was far more insistent.
He took Carol back to shore, pushing the ocean’s song away. It clung to the edges of his mind, even once they were out of the water.
He put her down above the high tide mark. Maggie scampered over, leaping into Carol’s lap and checking her over with the same air of worried ownership as when she’d inspected the dragon eggs the night before. Hell. Had it only been last night?
Carol bent over the little dragon, running her hands down her flanks and cupping her head in her hands. Maggie’s golden eyes peered up at her, wide and anxious.
The storm in Moss’s head retreated, Maggie’s lightning-strike terror easing to a background static.
“I know,” Carol said gently, smoothing the spines that ran from the top of Maggie’s skull down to her tail. “Thank you for looking out for me, Maggie. But you know, I’m a shark. I’m meant to be in the water.”
Moss braced himself for the terror of Maggie’s memory flooding into his mind again, but it was gentler this time, with the curl of a question.
Carol sighed. “Well, yes, but—there’s a difference between storm seas and a day like this, and my shark can breathe underwater, so…”
Another slap of memory. Moss blinked. The image was gone faster than he could see it, but Carol’s face went tight and pinched.
“I know,” she said quietly. “That wasn’t a good time either, huh?”
“Eee!”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Eeeeee!”
“All right—no swimming. I promise.”
