“My other form.”
His voice turns peculiar. “So . . . you?”
“No.” I shake my head, ignoring the pain that rocks back and forth in my skull. For some reason it’s easier to speak into the inky haze. Like everything else is gone. “She’s not me. I can’t even keep control of her now. We’re . . . two different beasts.”
“And . . . you never wanted to learn?” He says it like the war in me is unnatural.
Ivor’s voice rings through my head as clearly as if he were here.You keep that animal off my ship. Can you blame a starving man for his hunger? And now he’s dead. We are predators, Nisse. That creature cannot be who you are. Not anymore.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper into the darkness.
His clothes jostle beside me. He’s standing, I think. “Well,” he sighs, “if you decide you’d like to actually be helpful, you know what to do.” His steps are quiet as he moves away, his voice turning more playful as the distance grows. “It would probably be a better idea to leave you here, honestly, since I may very well have to carry you if we continue like this.”
I stand, following him blindly as his steps fade into nothing. “Rune.” My heart hasn’t even had time to recover from the stress of our near fall. It thunks tiredly in my chest, failing to summon enough panic to rile me. I cross my arms as I walk, testing each step before trusting it. “Rune!”
I hit a wall and feel my way along. He’s still here. I know it. He wouldn't leave me. The weight of his predator’s attention is too heavy to mistake for anything else—he’s watching, trying to bait me into shifting. The wall opens, and my stomach leaps into my throat as it disappears. The ground feels solid, though. Another tunnel.
“Straight shot from here,” he purrs into my ear, sending breath down my neck and my heart leaps at last, adrenaline spearing to every sensitive part of me. “Are you shifting, or am I going to have to hold your hand?”
I ignore the shiver that courses through me, instead squaring my shoulders to continue past him, ignoring how impossible it feels when I can’t see my ownfeet. The darkness eats everything. One wrong step and another hole in the ground may swallow me whole. Already, part of me fights for the shift, desperate to be able to see what lies waiting in the dark.
“Savage seas,Odi”Rune says from my other side, spooking me again. “Just shift already.”
“Fine,” I spit, frustration uncaging the panicked animal. The moment it’s free, I lose every shred of control. The strange feeling of unmaking passes through me in a blink, drawing me closer to the ground, lengthening my arms and snout, and then the fear has me and I’m sprinting, seeing the tunnel in abstract shades of grey—but Icansee. Rune curses and sprints after me, the sound and overwhelming salty ocean scent of him spurring me to flee faster, whirling around the tunnel’s curve, shying and kicking out as the moving trickle of water on one side tricks me into ever more surprised fear.
“Odelia!”
The shout crashes around my sensitive ears like clamping jaws. I can’t stop. I can’t ever stop. There’s too much behind me, things I’ll never escape. Not least of all the towering male with razor claws and flesh-ripping teeth, whose voice echoes through my body in ways that it shouldn’t.
There’s a wall far ahead. I swing my head from side to side, looking for where the tunnel must split off. Something beneath me slips, a rock depressing beneath my hoof, but I’m past it in a blur, then the plunk of bolts hitting the rock walls clatters behind me, the air hissing as one barely misses my rump. Then the dead end ahead begins to slowly slide open.Too slowly. I’m going to break my neck crashing into it. My hooves slip on the stone, tangling as I try to pull back.
“Odi!”
The hunter’s voice sounds far away, nearly drowned out by the bolts that continue to shoot from the walls at my back.
I miss the door by a breath before finally tumbling to a stop, unable to catalogue all the aches that flare as my mind finally quiets. I stand and shake, mybarreled chest heaving. I feel the strange twitch of my snout as it adjusts to the sudden scent of dust-choked stone.
This room is different—and well lit. Glowing crystals are set in the centre of each wall, bookended by rectangular holes carved high up in between. The cave feels natural, but it’s unmistakable how it’s been smoothed and shaped. An altar sits in the centre, bearing the same symbol on the map. It’s raised, like a golden pyramid of steps, and crowned by a small box.
I startle as the stone door begins to slide closed again. Thundering footsteps pound beyond it, and Rune slides in as gracefully as I did, surprising me into throwing my head up and prancing away. He groans, laying still for long enough that I put my head down, turning one eye on him. The blue of his scales is vibrant, alternating in shades I’d never noticed before, colours that may not even have names.
“I had to wait for the arrows to stop,” he explains between breaths. “You’re fast.” From the ground, he turns his head towards me and pokes out his bottom lip. “Andsocute,” he says, drawing out the words, as if he were Otto speaking tohis quail.
I flick my ears, tempted to sink a hoof into his chest, but the wicked sharp of his claws keeps me away.
“That it?” he asks, nodding to the altar as he stands.
I swing my head up, bringing the golden steps into focus. The symbol is carved into the tier below the box, which waits for us. The next piece of the key. The thought allows me enough focus to return to my human form. Between one blink and the next, I shift, settling into my body like I’ve moved from the buoyancy of water to the gravity of land.
“Don’t you dare,” I say, taking a few quick, wobbling steps before catching myself on the raised platform. My legs feel like jelly, but I don’t know if it was the sprint or the shift. The lid on the box lifts easily, and I reach in, scooping out another circular piece and stashing it in the wrap of my breasts. “I think I’ll be holding on to this one.”
Rune’s eyes sparkle with challenge. “And you’re so certain I wouldn’t risk fetching it later?”
With the thrill of victory coursing through my veins, it’s easy to croon, “You could try.”
“I may not be able to resis—”
The top of the altar sinks into itself with a foreboding thunk and our attention shoots that way.
