“This is me leading,deartháir beag.”
“Riordan,” Donal said softly.
He shook his head, fighting back the surge of fear and grief working its way up his throat. “Let’s just—get some sleep. We’ll go for a swim in the morning. Do a patrol. Spend the day together.”
Figure out how to say goodbye, even if he didn’t say it. His siblings heard the unspoken words anyway. Saoirse squeezed him tight enough to nearly crack his ribs for a few seconds more before letting him go. They all went upstairs and disappeared into their bedrooms, getting into sleeping clothes, but ended up sprawled across Riordan’s bed in the way they always had when the world got hard. They’d huddled in piles as seal pups when they were young, and that need for closeness and skin contact hadn’t ever faded.
If Riordan didn’t sleep at all that night, well, he was the only one who knew.
No alarm was set, but they all woke well before dawn. The melancholy quiet of the morning seemed to infiltrate everyone’s mood, leaving conversation by the wayside. They got dressed, and Saoirse made coffee, pouring it all into one big tumbler that they all sipped out of on the slow walk to the beach. Saoirse sniffled after every sip she took, causing Riordan to wrap an arm around her and pull her close, matching his stride to hers.
“This is my fault,” she said quietly.
Riordan worked his jaw, hating the fact that she even thought to blame herself when she was the victim. “No, it’s not. It never will be.”
In the shadows between streetlights, he caught Donal looking back at him, his older brother giving a curt nod to Riordan’s unspoken question about their sister. He knew Donal would do his damnedest to keep the guilt from eating Saoirse up inside, but he also knew it would be difficult on both of them after he’d gone.
They made it to the beach, all three of them pulling off their shoes and walking barefoot onto cold sand, feet staying dry until they reached the tidal line. In the early morning darkness, Donal and Riordan undressed and shook their jackets out into sealskin, draping the furry warmth over their shoulders. Saoirse bundled up their clothes and settled down cross-legged on the sand, clutching the tumbler of coffee in both hands. “I’ll wait for you here.”
The only reason Riordan hadn’t called on someone else from the clan to keep her company was because she still had Gwen’s artifact hanging from her throat. He and Donal left Saoirse on the sand, wading out into the cold waters of the bay, waves lapping against their bodies. Riordan slipped his sealskin off his shoulder as the water reached his chest, plunging it beneath thesurface. Before he could sink under as well, Donal caught his arm.
“I don’t want to be chief,” Donal said in a low, wrecked voice. “The clan was always yours to lead.”
“You’ll be good at it,” Riordan replied, reaching up to grip his brother’s hand. “Saoirse will help.”
“There has to be another way. Ella could help. There’s Wade?—”
“Niall cut the time. I don’t know when he’ll come to collect, but it’s today, and I won’t let him keep Saoirse,” Riordan cut in.
“I don’t want that bastard to keep either of you.”
Riordan smiled tightly and shook his head. “Let’s swim, yeah? One last time.”
He needed to feel the ocean against his skin, to swim through the vastness of it and know what home felt like one last time. He was under no illusions that he’d ever step foot in the ocean again. No one whose skin was stolen ever experienced the waves once they were land-bound. Oh, they might see the ocean from a distance, might hear its siren song in their dreams and nightmares, but they’d never swim in it again, not as they were.
So Riordan held his breath and sank beneath the surface, twisting his skin around himself and tumbling into a shift, coming out of the roll in his seal form. Donal was right beside him in the water, just as quick, following where Riordan swam into the deep, dark waters of the sea. He missed having Saoirse with them, but she’d get back in the water soon enough.
They didn’t do an official patrol, staying within sight of the shore as they played in the waves. It was bittersweet, knowing what he was losing, but it was worth who he was saving. By the time the sun was up and the water less murky near the surface, Riordan reluctantly called an end to the swim. He got Donal’s attention with a nose nudge against his older brother’s side, and they swam to the surface. Right before they broke it, a strange,chilling, sonorous echo flowed through the water, coming from the deep waters farther out in the bay, in the open ocean.
It made Riordan want to get back to shorefast, and Donal seemed to feel the same. They swam quickly through the water until they reached the beach. Riordan twisted in the shallow waves, riding them in as a human and coming up out of the water with his sealskin wrapped around his waist.
“What wasthat?” Donal asked, swiping a hand over his wet hair.
“A threat Lady Caith warned us about,” Riordan said grimly. “You’ll need to be careful. Make sure the clans are aware there’s something out there in the water that means us harm.”
Donal opened his mouth to argue but then paused, eyes narrowing as he looked past Riordan. “Huh. He looks mad.”
“Who?” Riordan faced the shore and realized Wade was standing beside Saoirse, arms crossed over his chest and scowling. It was still early enough that no one else was on the beach in their general vicinity. The sun had barely cleared the horizon, sending everyone’s shadows stretching out to the west along the sand. “Wade.”
“I called him,” Saoirse said, a stubborn look on her face. “I told him what you were planning to do.”
“Which isdumb,” Wade said fiercely. “You aren’t giving up your skin today. I told you I’d help you stop Niall, but this isn’t what I was talking about.”
“Wade—”
Wade held up a finger. “Nope. I don’t want to hear it. At least, not until I’ve had a chance to investigate Niall’s territory.”
“You can’t go back there.”
