“How did I get back here?” he asked in an undertone. Already knowing the answer.
Carol looked unsettled. “Your inner… your animal brought you back.” She hesitated. “Not the octopus. Because you’re not an octopus shifter.”
“I was. I used to be.” The words came out raw and hurting. Carol’s eyes widened. She darted towards him, her hand automatically finding his.
“Youlostyour—no. That doesn’t happen.” She searched his eyes. “That’s why you acted the way you did when you talked about it.”
“How did I act?”
“Like you were trying to pretend someone hadn’t died.” She tucked her hand into his, interlacing their fingers. “I’m so sorry. My shark and I aren’t exactly besties, but if I lost it… I can’t imagine that. I didn’t even know it was possible.”
“It isn’t. Not normally. Our inner animals might back off, if something happens they don’t like, or they might get too close—” He nodded at Carol, whose eye twitched. “But the only way we lose them completely is if they’re taken from us. And there are two ways that can happen. One. The mythic enemy of all shifters, who hasn’t been seen in a thousand years, steals part of your soul right out of you.”
Carol wet her lips. “And two?”
“Two. Your ancestor made an ancient vow to protect the world from that enemy. They begged a blessing from the Weaver of Souls, who wove a new pattern for them and their descendants. A monster who could protect the world by sea, the same way the shadow dragons would protect the land and sky.”
He looked down at their joined hands, Carol’s so small, his own big and scarred. “The enemy, the Soul-Eater, needs to touch us to take our inner animals. So my ancestor and the Weaver created a creature who can tear someone apart without touching them. A monster with tentacles of pure magic, to destroy without being destroyed itself.”
“Or catch someone as they fall.”
“I thought it wanted to kill you.” His voice was ragged. “I thought it had taken me there in the storm to kill whoever it found—and it found you.”
“And now it’s brought you back to me.”
“This isn’t how it’s meant to work. It shouldn’t have brought me back. It shouldn’t have found you at all. The kraken never—” He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see her face when he told her they should never have met. “That’s the deal my ancestor made. They took the monster into their own soul, and vowed that when they died, their descendants would take up the mantle after them. A soul-beast that reincarnates, the same as the Weaver of Souls, the same as the Soul-Eater. It’s our sworn duty. Whenever the last kraken shifter dies, it finds a new host.”
“What about their fated mate? Your ancestor’s—allof your ancestors?”
“The kraken doesn’t have a mate.”
“But we’re—” She pressed her hand against his back, and he felt it, the faint pulse of magic between them. The thread like a breath of starlight. “Weare. I’m not imagining this.”
“The kraken neverfindstheir mate. As soon as we become the new kraken shifter, we’re meant to head south. Take up our post beneath the ice.”
“For how long?”
“Until we’re called. Or if you were asking how long this has been going on…” He shrugged. “A thousand years?”
“Athousand years?A thousand years of—of what? Waiting for this enemy to escape? Has that ever happened?”
“You’d have heard if he did.”
“So he’s still there. And it was all forgotten—the Weaver, the Soul-Eater. You. Generations of your family have sacrificed yourself to this! Is that what your ancestor signed you up for?”
“Maybe he didn’t think it would take this long for the asshole to break out,” Moss tried to joke.
Carol was pale, her face gray beneath the blazing sun. “What could be worth cursing your descendants for a thousand years?”
“The end of a war that burned through shifterkind like a plague.” He was on solid ground now, reciting the stories he’d grown up on. “The war against the Soul-Eater had been going on since shifters first existed. He’s our first and oldest enemy. Without the Weaver, he would be the end of all shifters.”
“He steals shifter souls. Our inner animals.”
“And the Weaver gifts them to us. But the Weaver can’t heal those whose souls were have been torn apart, stealing her gift. And he hates her for what she gives to us. Classic, right? Two great powers, enemy gods, at each other’s divine throats.”
“This is the lost shifter mythology you were talking about? One figure who gives us these powers, and the other who takes them away, killing each other?” Carol’s voice was hollow.
“They fought each other over and over in a thousand different bodies, him killing her, her raising armies against him. Over and over, across continents, across centuries.” He shook his head. “The kraken was a new weapon in a war that had almost destroyed shifterkind countless times. The shadow dragons forged a prison to trap the Soul-Eater, and my ancestor guarded it. Maybe they didn’t even expect it to work. Nothing had before. But this did. So long as the Soul-Eater remains trapped and not killed, he never reincarnates. Nor does the Weaver. They only ever came back once both of them were dead.”
