Page 6

The office doors open again, and Brighid steps inside with her tablet clutched against her chest. My selkie secretary is usually impossible to rattle, but today her eyes keep darting toward the hallway.

“Mr. Eiriksson,” she starts. “Madam Solveig is—” My mother walks in before Brighid can finish.

Solveig Haraldsdóttir rarely visits the surface, and she never arrives without a good reason. She crosses the threshold in a severe black gown, one hand wrapped around an obsidian cane. My mother always emits a particular kind of chill, and not just because she’s a kraken.

Brighid takes one careful step aside. Solveig barely looks at her before pointing the cane toward the hallway. “Dismissed, seal. Close the door.”

Brighid glances at me, but I give her a small nod. She retreats into the hall and pulls the doors shut behind her.

I get to my feet as Solveig crosses the antique rug. My tentacles draw closer to my back on instinct, and I make them settle again. My mother notices everything, so there’s no reason to give her anything extra to notice.

She stops on the other side of the desk and looks me over. Her glowing blue eyes move from my face to the contract the nagas left behind. “Sigurd,” she says, giving me the greeting with all her usual maternal warmth.

That is to say, none. I rest one hand against the edge of the desk. “Móðir. To what do I owe the lack of warning?”

She starts a slow circuit around the chairs the nagas just vacated. The hem of her gown brushes the rug while the obsidian cane taps lightly beside her.

I wait for the reason she crossed several hundred miles of ocean to stand in my office. Whatever it is, I already know I’m not going to enjoy it.

We manage our parts of the family empire from different worlds on purpose. Solveig handles the abyssal courts and old alliances, while I handle the surface business. It keeps both of us happier.

If she came to the surface herself, something is seriously wrong. She confirms it when she stops beside the desk.

“I just finished cleaning up your mess with the leviathan,” she says, leaning her weight on the cane. “The truce is signed. The war is paused.”

The fighting between the merman clans has been dragging on for months, and my mother made her position clear from the beginning. We were not to interfere.

Then my djinn friend Rakan needed my help, and I went into contested waters for him anyway. Lotan the leviathan took the intrusion exactly as badly as expected.

My mother had to buy a truce afterward, and she hasn’t let me forget the cost since. I’ve heard some version of the lecture every time we’ve spoken.

“Yes, Móðir, I’m aware.” I rest one hand against the edge of the desk. “And like I told you last time, I’ll look into options for the people along the human coastline.”

“The humans are irrelevant,” Solveig says without hesitation. “I’ve already ordered that quaint little town evacuated.”

My fingers tighten against the steel. The metal gives a faint groan beneath my hand before I realize how hard I’m gripping it. “Móðir.”

“You’re denting the furniture, Sigurd.” Solveig glances down at my hand. “Release it.”

“The desk is mine to ruin.” I ease my grip anyway. “Tell me why you signed an eviction order for Saltweather.”

“The port is a necessary casualty,” she says. Her tone suggests the matter should require no further discussion.

“It’s a thriving human community,” I tell her. “It’s also a logistical anchor. Clearing it out will disrupt routes all along that stretch of coast.”

“Your freighters can reroute.” Solveig dismisses the concern with one hand. “You swam into contested waters for the sake of your djinn friend. I had to offer the coastline to get Lotan to back off.”

She isn’t wrong about why the problem exists, but that doesn’t make evacuating Saltweather any less extreme. I look at her across the desk, trying to decide how she can regard an entire town as collateral and expect me to do the same.

“It is what it is,” she continues. “Now we have another problem. The clans are already stirring up outrage over the favor we showed the leviathan, and we need to make our position clear.”

I already dislike where this is going. “How?”

“You will escort Maren to Rakan’s wedding this weekend.” Solveig watches me closely. “It will remind them that our house remains allied with the merfolk.”

Of course she means Maren. The idea doesn’t appeal in the slightest. Three centuries with the siren was more than enough.

She lived for cameras, appearances, and public approval. I spent most of our relationship refusing to become whatever version of me she thought would photograph better.