“Except you?” Riordan couldn’t help but ask before diving overboard. Wade’s embarrassed squawk became muted by the water that closed over Riordan’s head, muffling the world.
The water was cold, the brief shock of it a welcome sensation. Riordan somersaulted forward, sealskin clinging to his body and flowing down his limbs. His legs fused together, fingers too, body expanding into the massive sleek shape of a seal. He used his flippers to propel himself to the surface, head breaking the waves. He unclenched his nose, breathing in a lungful of air, and stared up at the human faces peering over the side of the yacht.
“You fit better in the bay than the bathtub,” Wade told him. Riordan barked at him and slapped the surface with one fin. Wade laughed at him. “Go swim. We’ll follow.”
Riordan dived back underwater, the sounds of ships in the bay distant, muffled vibrations against his body and in his ears. Everything sounded so different in his seal form like this. He could distinguish individual noises and place their location better than with his fae ears on land. While selkies didn’t have any echolocation abilities built into their bodies, his magic more than made up for it.
The sea was where selkies thrived; being bound to someone on land against their will meant they would never fully be able to access their magic again. It was tied to their skin, to the vast world they swam through. Their magic would always lead them home, and the cruelest path back would be to follow that ever-present tug and stand on the shore of the place you couldn’t visit anymore.
Riordan shook off those thoughts and swam faster, as if he could outswim the problems menacing his clan. The waterways of the harbor were busy today, but he knew best how to steer clear of the various ships traversing the waves. He came up out of a deeper dive and broke the surface, drawing in another lungful of air. Spectacle Island was closer now, the rocky shore fading into greenery that hadn’t yet turned brown from summer’s heat. Riordan slid back underwater again, swimming through its depths. The push and pull of the tides ebbed against his body as he swam, instinct guiding him around the underwater borders of the island.
Part of this kind of border patrol was to hunt out any water-based threats or encroachment on all the clans’ territory. Selkies couldn’t scent mark like werecreatures could, but they still marked their territory by embedding bits of their magic in the seabed. The marked points were centuries old at this point, so rich with magic that they shone like lighthouse beacons to his underwater sight. Riordan swam around one particularly large rock protruding from the seabed, nosing around the markings someone had clawed into the stone so long ago. In the murky darkness, the sigils glowed a soft violet in his sight, and he added a bit of his own to what was already there. The pull of it stretched away from the point of contact, disappearing into the depths.
Long gone were the days when the clans could lay active spells to guard their territory. The explosiveness of those spells drew too much attention, and no clan wanted to be responsible for causing the human government to target them. That way lay too many problems. Their kind thrived best when no one knew they walked or swam among mortals. To that end, the border magic was passive, a kind of magical warning system scattered throughout the bay. Selkies could touch that magic and get feedback on any broken area that needed looking into.
Like now.
The dull, discordant vibration that tickled down Riordan’s spine made him spin in a tight circle around the sigil stone, the thread of damage tugging his awareness eastward. It wrapped around the southern tip of the small island, passing through other sigils, following the hint of damage to an area closer to the open ocean than the shore—coming from the same direction that unnerving sound had stemmed from the other day.
Riordan swam another circle around the sigil, getting his bearings, before swimming back to the surface and breaking it, getting another breath and to check where theNeptunewas in the water. He got a flash of it in his peripheral vision, Ailín keeping up with long practice and the familiarity of how they all swam the borders. He dove back under, picking up speed and swimming beneath the waves. Water flowed past him, the murkiness navigable with the help of magic. He swam beneath a handful of sailboats out enjoying the summer day and ignored the distant noise of a cargo ship’s engine vibrating through the water.
He followed the ping of broken magic to the southern tip of Spectacle Island, his trajectory through the water curving east. He worried about what could have damaged a sigil stone in the net and when it might have happened. None of the other clans had indicated the warning system had been hit, which meant it must have been recent, possibly even today, and he couldn’t ignore the possibility it was Niall’s doing.
All of his worry, all of his planning, fled his thoughts as the flow of water changed and something rose up from the seabed floor to slam into him and careen them both through the water.
All the air exploded out of his lungs, bubbles fizzing past his eyes as the water twisted into the shape of a nightmare around him. Riordan clamped his nostrils down tight, but there was no air left in his lungs as a fuath wrapped its arms around his body. Claws raked over his skin, clouding the water with his blood.Riordan twisted, jerking his head to the side, trying to bite at its throat. The fuath jerked, its arms loosening a fraction, but it was enough for Riordan to get free with a punch of magic that created a whirlpool at the end of his rear flippers to propel him to the surface. He broke through with a thick gasp, sucking in air, managing a few warning barks that carried through the air with another burst of magic before he hit the water again and went under.
This time, he was prepared.
Nostrils closed tight, air locked in his lungs, Riordan swam after the fuath, following the eddies in its wake as it dived deep. What might have passed as bioluminescence in anything else outlined its body in pale, pale blue, giving breadth to long limbs with spines running down the length and webbed fingers, eyes that took up half its face and a gaping mouth that took up the rest. As it twisted and came hurtling back toward him, Riordan could just make out the stream of kelp that passed as hair beneath the bubbles that sloughed off it.
Riordan met its underwater charge with his own, slamming his body into its scaly one. Fuath were water spirits, a kind of fae that haunted any body of water, be it fresh or salt, large or small, hunting for prey. It clearly seemed to think Riordan was in that category, and he went about disabusing it of that notion by tearing a chunk out of its side with his very sharp teeth.
Bitter blood filled his mouth and the water around them, darkening the area like squid ink. The fuath screamed in a way that was more vibrations than anything else, a dull sound that pressed all along his body. Riordan spat out the chunk of flesh resting on his tongue and kicked all four flippers, swimming out of reach of the claws that sought revenge. He sped for the surface, needing more air in his lungs, and had almost reached it when another fuath hurtled through the water from the north. Riordan somersaulted out of the way in a tight spin, reorientinghimself in a matter of seconds. He made it to the surface, broke through the waves, and managed to bark another warning and suck in one lungful of air before something slimy wrapped around one of his rear flippers andyanked.
He went under.
The speed at which the fuath dragged him to the bottom of the bay to drown him left Riordan’s entire body spinning. He broke the motion by diving down instead of trying to kick free, aiming for the threat with sharp teeth and a blast of water magic that rippled away from him. It hit the fuath like a wave slamming against the rock, forcing the water spirit’s tentacle to let go of his flipper. Riordan kicked free, swimming after the fuath with the intent to kill it, but had to pull up with a hard twist as the other fuath attempted to attack from behind.
Claws raked his side as he spun away, lips pulled back over sharp teeth as he bared them in warning at the fuath. The pair of water spirits regrouped, the faintly glowing outlines of their bodies brightening the bottom waters of the bay. With an open-mouthed echoing scream, the fuath attacked, trying to somehow box him in. Riordan reacted with a snarl and twist of his body, biting at anything that came within reach even as he used the smaller claws at the ends of his flippers to keep the fuath at bay.
Another slimy tentacle wrapped around his middle in the melee, squeezing with the intent to force all the air out of his lungs. Riordan kept his throat locked tight, nostrils clenched closed, and furiously bit at the second fuath that was trying to disembowel him.
Then the tide changed, pulling back like a riptide. Riordan braced himself as the tide came back, a wall of water slamming into all three of them, guided by Ailín’s sonorous shout. The tentacles holding Riordan in place ripped away, the force of water magic tearing into the fuath. Riordan flapped a flipper athis clanmate as Ailín appeared in the depths, magic caught in his teeth.
Riordan somersaulted to reorient himself, both of them facing the faint glow of where the fuath were regrouping. Ailín rolled close, headbutting Riordan in the side. Riordan nudged at him with a flipper before twisting in a tight roll to indicate what he wanted. There was no speaking deep beneath the surface. Communication happened through body language, and selkies had long since learned how to hold conversations beneath the waves without a word being said.
Ailín dipped a flipper in agreement, breaking to swim to the right, while Riordan swam left. They didn’t attack the fuath, not directly, choosing instead to swim in circles around the water spirits at a speed aided by magic. It pushed them faster and faster, spilling from their teeth and away from their flippers to catch the water in a whirlpool that spun tighter and tighter with the fuath at the center.
Riordan spun out the magic, letting it flow from him into the water and the roaring whirlpool they created. The pull of the tightly spinning water forced Riordan and Ailín to alter their swimming trajectory, getting clear of the powerful whirlpool. They kept swimming, kept spinning the whirlpool tighter with their water magic until the glowing fuath were torn apart, bright bits of them getting scattered through the whirlpool.
Riordan somersaulted and let the magic fade. Ailín followed his lead, and they both swam for the surface, leaving the dead to sink to the bottom of the bay. Riordan broke the surface some distance away from theNeptune, opening up his nose and throat, hauling in a desperate gasp of air that filled his lungs until it hurt. He bobbed there for half a minute, just breathing, as Ailín swam a nervous circle around him. Eventually, Riordan rolled to his side and smacked a flipper against the small waves and started to swim for the yacht.
Ailín swam alongside him, both of them diving in and out of the water. As they approached, Riordan could see Wade practically hanging over the side of the yacht in an unsafe manner. Riordan barked at him, but Wade didn’t know what the warning meant. Diving back underwater, Riordan twisted out of his sealskin, snagging the fur and tying it around his waist before kicking back to the surface. He treaded water near the yacht, aiming a small splash of water at where Wade hung over the railing, hands braced against the hull of the yacht.
“Get back on the boat!” Riordan yelled.
Wade had the temerity to flip him off. “Don’t tell me what to do! What was that? I saw you get pulled under, and then there was a whirlpool in the water.”
