“A fair share of men have died for underestimating us both.” He swings again, and the trunk of a tree catches it, its dry bark bursting into smaller chunks of kindling. “I won’t make that mistake, Nisse,” he says as he ripsit free.
I take the half-moment of hesitation and whip my bola around his wrist, but instead of faltering when I pull, he just lifts his arm into the air, dragging me before I have the sense to let go. Angry tears blur my vision as I jump away from another attack. I’ve spent my entire life fighting in one way or another. I operated mostly in shadow, but the man before me ensured I could out fight every disposable body that made it onto our ship.
But I could never beat him.
Something about his size, or the disappointment so often in his voice, caused my fear to override the frozen calm that shepherded me through these moments. He always seemed to know my next move before I did. Even now, I’m left dodging and ducking behind trees, feeling the underbrush claw at my pants, hearing wood rend and scatter. If I can just get him tired enough, I might stand a chance. But I’m too slow, trapped on the other side of his impossibly long reach. He isn’t even trying.
When I pop up to face him after my next roll, my eyes catch beyond him to one side—to Rune, Elio, and a freed Killian exchanging ringing blows with three of the Vipers’ best. There’s a splash of red over Rune’s bare chest, but I can’t tell if he’s wounded. Killian’s wrists are mottled with bruises, but he moves with lethal precision. They’re all half shifted, ears finned, talons sharp, arms glittering with scales from wrist to elbow.
The image gives me an idea, but it disappears as my father steps in the way, blotting everything else out of my vision. Taking it like he’s taken everything else.
The rage starts, then, and I know it’s his. I am his legacy. His right hand. My father’s daughter, through and through. There isn’t a life here I wouldn’t take to make sure we live through the mess I’ve made. I thought I wanted to be alone. At ease. To find the kind of peace I thought was only found in isolation.
What I really wanted was rest. A break from the fear. Peace at last. And maybe, deep down, a father who would protect me from monsters, instead of turning me into one. Instead of tossing me into the deep with the call to sink or swim.
“How could you do it?” I ask, breath heaving as I skip back, trying to angle us back towards where he’d left my bola on the ground. “How could you gut your own daughter and call her a weapon?”
He spins as I circle him, then drops his broadsword to block as I swipe the dagger at his stomach. “I gave you a purpose.”
“I was a child.” I roll again, adding more to the leaves already clinging to my hair.
He points the tip of his sword at me like a finger. “You were too soft for this world. You needed to learn.”
“I needed my father!” He hesitates, so briefly I wonder if I imagined it. “Instead I got a butcher.” I back away, gripping the hilt of my blade so hard it hurts as he lets the space between us grow. “You stunted me. Taught me to cage my shift. Hacked away at me and then forced me to hate the only part of mother you couldn’t take away.”
Something itches under my skin as I say the words, spurred by my anger as the chaos goes on around us.There are groups fighting on all sides, cries of fear and pain. Those from the beach had rallied and thrown themselves into the fight.
Then a beast screams, and the world slows as a kelpie crashes through the brush and into a group of Vipers in a storm of hooves and flesh-ripping teeth.
“Eithne!”
I’m not sure who shouted, but I try my best to call a warning as it angles towards Rune and Killian. They just watch with bright eyes until the beast flies past them and Killian launches onto its back, his sword in one taloned hand. Together, they run Garreth down, Killain wounding the man as he shifts too slow, and the kelpie rearing to trample the bird under its hooves.
“Odi!” Rune catches my eye. A thin streak of crimson runs down his neck and over the muscles of his chest. I can see him warring with the urge to go after Ivor, but I shake my head. I can’t let my father near him, and the others need him more. Leaves rustle and fall between us in a slow drift, and I glance up at the familiar movement in the trees, suddenly feeling the need to hide a proud grin.
“Odi . . .?” Ivor twitches as he looks between me and Rune. He says my name like he can’t place it. Like he’s pushed my mother so far out of his mind the nickname was lost to him.
My attention flies to the odd expression on his face. Something so close to pain. Every time he looks at me—really looks at me—it’s the same. I think it’s why he made me wear the cowl, to hide me. Not to conceal Nisse’s face, but to bury the reminder that she’s gone.
He’d rather forget. If it were his choice, I’d forget her too. But it’s not, and I refuse. She’s all that stops me from being him. The memory of her love and light and joy convinced me that life wasn’t all survival and fear. Because of her, I knew somethingelseexisted—if she left the land for the sea, then I could return, and carry her memory back to where she belonged.
I’m his daughter. But I’m hers too.
Ivor watches me, his eyes widening as something stirs under my skin again. The sounds of the battle grow louder, the smell of blood and forest and burst shot grows stronger. Then his face pales, like he’s seen a ghost.
“Wildflower,” he breathes, stepping forward as the tip of his sword rests on the ground by his feet.
I feel the way confusion twists my face as he blinks out of whatever memory has finally broken through—and in the same moment realize the change in my body.
Spotted fur runs from my wrists and all the way over my shoulders and chest. My shirt is gone. A weight settles on my head as my antlers finish forming. My ears, now long and turned down, flick in reaction to the amplified sounds. The forest sharpens. Scent nearly overwhelms me and I can feel the way my face has pulled into a slight deer-nosed snout.
I blink at the realisation—the half shift.
Ivor pulls his gaze away, like he can’t bare to look at the animal he refused to know.
Me. She is me.
“Put that beast away, Nisse,” he growls, as the tip of his giant broadsword sword leavesthe ground.
