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The words knock the remaining wind out of me. The tension finally leaves my shoulders. He kept his word. Despite everything that just happened, he held up his end of the bargain.

Saltweather is safe. The eviction crew is gone. Marta’s fish stand and the library are secure.

“Thank you,” I say, all the anger gone from my voice. “That’s… that’s all I wanted.”

Sigurd nods once. The exhaustion in his expression deepens, casting shadows across his cheekbones.

“I will return soon,” he says. “Please, rest.”

He turns and walks away before I can decide whether I want him to stay. I watch his broad shoulders disappear into the corridor. The click of his shoes gradually fades into the ambient hum of the fortress.

I turn back toward the glass. The abyssal water beyond the fortress is no longer still, and a shuddering groan vibrates through the pane beneath my hand. Thick clouds of gray silt billow upward, swallowing the faint lights of the distant merfolk patrols.

A vast shadow moves inside the cloud and draws closer until the darkness itself seems to shift. Then a bioluminescent blue iris emerges from the silt, filling so much of the glass that I instinctively step back.

I recognize the eye immediately. Solveig has abandoned the humanoid form she wore on Mt. Qaf, and nothing disguises her true scale out here in the trench.

She doesn’t attack or even move toward the fortress. The kraken matriarch simply hangs in the black water beyond the glass, watching me with an ancient, unblinking eye.

I stand on the other side of the barrier and hold her gaze. I have no idea why she is here or what she wants from me, but one thing is unmistakable.

Solveig came to see me. Somehow, I doubt I’ll enjoy her visit.

11

His Mate

Sigurd & Valerie

The air in the Saltweather fishmarket reeks of crushed ice, blood, and raw brine. I step around the discarded gills of a gutted cod resting on the wet cobblestones. My shoes squelch in the muck with every footfall. My tailored wool suit makes me a glaring target among the shouting vendors and soaked rubber aprons.

People give me wary looks as they pass. They know who I am, and that my company is the reason their town was threatened. But I’m still an ancient kraken, and even furious people hesitate before throwing accusations in my face.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing they say can make me more aware of my failure than I already am. I dragged Valerie into the abyss and ruined her life on the surface. Her friends deserve an explanation I can’t truly give them. I’m going to try anyway.

I resume my trudge through the market, scanning the rows of hanging nets and scales. Finally, I locate the battered, hand-painted sign for Ferreira’s Catch near the edge of the pier.

Behind an ice-packed counter, a harpy is hacking the head off a salmon with a rusted cleaver. I recognize her from the photographs Valerie brought to my office—Marta Ferreira. Her feathers are plastered flat against her arms from the driving rain. Beside her, Hattie Nunn stands huddled in a damp yellow raincoat, clutching a paper cup of coffee. Valerie’s human friend stares blankly at the crushed ice, her shoulders tight against the coastal wind. I stop in front of the stall. “You are freezing, Miss Nunn,” I state. “You need a thicker coat.”

Hattie jumps. Her coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup, splashing onto the crushed ice. She tips her head back to stare up at me in stunned silence. Next to her, Marta drops the bloody cleaver onto the cutting board.

The terror in Hattie’s eyes tightens a sharp knot of guilt in my gut. I despise what I have reduced them to. They look like they are bracing for a ransom demand or casualty report, and I know this conversation is unlikely to go well.

“Mr. Eiriksson,” Hattie whispers. “Why are you here? Where is she?”

“I came to deliver a message from Valerie,” I reply. “I’ve finalized arrangements to protect Saltweather. But Valerie will stay with me for a while, until everything is in order.”

Hattie blinks through the rain dripping from her hood, struggling to make sense of what I just said. Marta doesn’t hesitate.

Her soaked feathers bristle into a jagged ridge along her arms. She plants a scarred hand on the frozen counter and vaults over it, landing on the slick cobblestones directly in front of me. Then she lunges and drives a feathered talon into the center of my chest.

I don’t flinch or step back. The point of her claw digs through my jacket. I keep my feet anchored in the grime and let her rage spend itself against something that can take it.

“What have you done?” Marta screeches, her voice ringing out across the rain-slicked pier. “If you touched one hair on her head, you oversized squid, I’ll gut you myself!”

The market around us remains a frenzy of haggling voices and grinding cart wheels. I hold my ground and keep my gaze on the furious harpy.

I’m a CEO. I employ private security forces and undead attorneys to keep confrontations like this far away from me. Yet standing here in the rain while a fishmonger threatens to gut me brings a strange sense of peace. Valerie fought me in my own office because she believed she was alone. Seeing Marta willing to draw blood to protect her proves she isn’t.