“We’re all lucky that Radane decided to retire,” Kiela said.
“Indeed,” he agreed.
At the end of the jetty, Larran pulled off his shirt. He then jumped into the water and whistled—four short and one long—and one of the merhorses broke from the herd with a neigh. She was a pale blue mare whose scales looked like the midday sky.
“This is Marri,” Larran said. “She’s four years old, exactly when she should be having her first foal. She’s in ideal health but has showed no signs of quickening.” He cooed to the merhorse and patted her mane. She nuzzled against his neck. “There, girl. There, there.”
Kiela climbed down the rocks and into the water beside Larran to stand beside the merhorse. Curious, Marri whickered at Kiela’s hair.
“No treats right now,” Larran said. “Later. If you behave.” He clicked his tongue, and the horse-fish rolled in the waves. “I train them to do this so that Ivor can treat them for any injuries or illnesses.”
Opening the pouch, Kiela handed the spell to Ivor, who had stayed up out of the waves. “Can you hold this up for me?” She’d memorized it, of course, but it was better to be safe than cocky. She unsealed the paste and smeared it onto the merhorse’s stomach.
Marri shivered beneath her touch but stayed calm. She was floating on her back, with her equine forelegs in the air, and her fish tail swaying back and forth, resisting the pull of the tide and keeping her close to Kiela and Larran.
Taking a breath, Kiela chanted the words, syllable by syllable, her eyes on the paper that Ivor held out of reach of the ocean spray. She kept her hands on the merhorse, moving them in circles in the paste, covering every inch of her stomach scales. She pushed the paste into each crevice as she spoke.
Off shore, the merhorses bobbed in the waves, and Kiela felt as if they were watching her too. She tried to block it all out and speak each syllable carefully and confidently. Waves crashed against her, and she ignored them. Gulls called overhead, and she didn’t hear. For the space of those minutes, it was only her, the merhorse, and the words.
And then she finished.
She stepped back. “You can release her.”
Larran clucked his tongue, and Marri rolled over in the water. “Is it done?” he asked.
She looked up at Ivor. “Did it work?”
Ivor lowered his head, bowing his antlers forward, and murmured a few words—Kiela wouldn’t have known them for the First Language if she hadn’t been listening for the particular lilt. He was good at hiding what he did. She made a mental note to practice that kind of spellcasting with the Pine Cone Coven. As he finished, he flung a handful of what looked like sand at the merhorse.
Kiela held her breath.
The sand glowed gold.
“It worked,” Ivor said confidently.
Larran put his face in his hands. His shoulders began to shake. Kneeling, Ivor laid a hand on his shoulder as Larran cried, while Kiela climbed out of the waves onto the stone jetty.
After a gulp, Larran swallowed back his tears to smile at his merhorse. “Good girl,” he told her. He patted her neck. “Go on.”
With a neigh, Marri raced back to her herd, who clustered around her in the deeper water, and Larran pulled himself out of the water onto the jetty.
“Congratulations,” Ivor told him. He then turned to Kiela. “Call on me when you choose to repeat this. Tomorrow, I presume?”
Kiela nodded. Now that she knew it worked . . .It worked!
Her knees felt like jelly—or, more accurately, not-quite-set jam. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. She began to shake. “Yes, as soon as I’ve prepared more ingredients.”
With a nod to both of them, Ivor stretched his wings out and launched into the air. Kiela and Larran watched him fly back to the cliff and up toward the waterfall. Once the antlered healer was above the roses, Larran turned to Kiela. “You did the miraculous. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Kiela looked down at her wet patchwork dress. Once again, she hadn’t considered her clothes before she’d jumped in the water with the horse-fish, though she supposed if she’d considered the logistics beyond simply the syllables and the ingredients, she would have anticipated this. “You can start by loaning me more of your clothes.”
Larran wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close. Spray flew around him as he kissed her, and she kissed him back. She felt as if she were melting. The sun warmed her sea-wet skin as he kissed her lips, her neck, her ear, her chin, and then her lips again.
He asked, breathless, “Would you like to . . .”
“Yes,” she said.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” Larran said. “I could have suggested a swim. Or a merhorse ride.”
