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I didn’t respond. Instead, I picked up the fallen dagger, though I had nowhere to carry it. I remembered once seeing Rada tie her hair up with a long, sharp needle, so I fashioned my hair into a knot on the top of my head and slid the knife through to hold it in place. It worked, although a handful of strands were cut and fell on the ice.

Then I reached down, helping him stand. “Betray me or her, and I will pin you to the depths beside a thermal vent.” He grunted once. I lifted him onto my back, wishing he’d chosen a smaller form. He was half again taller than I was in my human shape, and heavier by far. I staggered in the direction that pulled at my blood, the closest seawater.

“You must go south,” he rasped a few steps later. “The ice to the north will be difficult to traverse. Unless you have the strength to melt it?”

As my beloved would say, fuck. I was as close to death as I’d ever been, and didn’t know if I could make it even half the way to the closest bay. Only the shuddering breathing of the ice god on my back kept me from collapsing. I would not let him see me fail. I turned around and began to shuffle over the ice, my body screaming in pain.

A few miles later, though, I was glad beyond measure he’d directed me that way. “I can’t believe it,” I gasped. The nautilus pendant I had imbued with my own immortality for Rada, the one Skadi had taken from her, lay on the ice.

I set the god down as carefully as I could, worried when I realized he’d stopped breathing. Possibly, his kind didn’t need to breathe, but he was also feeling warm, which was a very bad sign.

The nautilus throbbed in my hand as a hint of my own power trickled into me. I felt my ribs healing and stood straighter, but stopped well short of draining the pendant.

If I drank the power back down, I wouldn’t have the nautilus to give to her, to protect her, while she was disconnected from the Goddess. She had almost six more months of her “bargain” to survive; six moons until the Goddess would be free to intervene on Rada’s behalf. Though she had feared the Goddess might not return to her, I had no such doubts. Rada had mates flocking to her, and gods fighting over her. She might underestimate her own value, but I never would.

And I would protect her, no matter the cost. I needed to return the nautilus to her, but I was so far from my source of strength, the sea, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to her side without consuming it.

Perhaps I could make her another one, though it would most likely shave thousands of years from my life span, and there was no time.

The wind made a mourning sound as it whistled around my ears, and I considered the motionless, melting ice god. He was even closer to death than I, and in greater need.

Should I give him some of the strength I’d harvested for Rada? The thought rankled.

I could let him die. But if I appeared at Pict, even with the sea all around me, and fell to the god Edan, she would be lost to all her mates and to the Goddess Herself. Skadi’s words echoed in my thoughts. He might be the only one who stood a chance at successfully defeating his brother.

Before I’d finished pondering my choices, the wind tugged at the pendant, as if begging silently. “I hope not to regret this,” I muttered and kneeled at his side, draping the chain around his neck. The pendant landed right over the wound on his throat.

“Ahhh!” he roared, arching his back. I stepped away, uncertain what he would do. He writhed on the frozen ground, his skin growing scales and then losing them, his teeth lengthening and diminishing, small packets of poisons I recognized as belonging to my beloved falling onto the ice around him, while the wind whipped around us both. When he quieted, he made a deep, groaning sound and went still.

“That hurt, kraken,” he said at last, opening his eyes. “What did you do to me?”

“The shell held a sliver of my power,” I replied, not certain I wanted to tell him just how much of it had gone into the making of it. I’d overspent at the time, and taken years to recover fully, though I’d never regretted it. If Skadi thought what he wore only held a small part of my strength, then perhaps he would hesitate to attack me again in future.

“Why can I feel the sea?” he demanded, his head swiveling. “All the seas. I feel… changed.”

“Changed in what way?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

His eyes landed on me, and he scowled. “Changed as if some being secretly inserted an invisible tail into me.” When I didn’t respond, he went on. “Our little spy may need to teach you the meaning of consent, kraken.” He scrabbled at the packets around him that had fallen, tucking them back under his skin.

“I had no intention of entering you in any way whatsoever,” I hissed as he stood. I was still not strong enough to withstand another blow, let alone a renewed battle. But for some reason, I felt like his agitation was not anger at me, but confusion. “I did create that pendant with my voice, however, and I may have inadvertently…” I swallowed as he stretched his neck up and laid a hand on the shell.

He was right. I could almost feel his hand on me somehow.

Ah, hells. “I am sorry, Skadi. I did not know this would happen… again.”

“You’ve done this before? This accidental insertion?” He stroked it, and I tried not to react, feeling a cold tendril unfurling at the base of my own spine. “You say this is merely the tip of your power? You are a worthy adversary. I no longer feel as ashamed to have fallen before you. Though it was only my brother’s cursed dagger that allowed you to gain the advantage.”

“Of course.” I peered at him as he straightened, towering over me. The nautilus had left a mark, a spiral of blue, that seemed to circle the entrance wound on his neck. The world spun around me as the wind died, taking with it the hint of salt air that had kept me on my feet. I swallowed hard as my stomach churned.

“You are turning an odd shade of green, kraken,” Skadi announced, his voice ringing in my ears as I fell to my knees. “Are you seasick?”

“Of course not,” I protested, though the bile that rose in my throat made me wonder if this was something like what Goran had felt as he puked over the side of the boat. “Sick for the sea, perhaps.” My vision blurred, and an odd trembling began in my legs. By the waves, I was going to fall! “Ah, how strong do you feel?”

“Strong enough to carry you,” were the words I heard before the world turned as dark as the deepest trench in my domain, and I fell.

SKADI

The kraken was heavy in my arms, but the power he’d given was enough for me to bear him as he lay unconscious. That gift was heavy indeed. The seas of the world swirled inside me, distracting me from the insidious heat of the wound from Edan’s knife. The pounding of every surf on every beach, the creaking of the ships that rode over the waves, and the calls of all the great beasts of the oceans almost deafened me.