Page 3 of The Naiad's Wish

I loved the way he smiled whenever he saw me.

Oh, I missed him. So fiercely.

Sometimes, I wondered what I’d do if he never came back.

If he decided that his city or his petLarswas more dear to him than I was.

If he went back to visit, and simply stayed there.

Perhaps he’d send his friend Henrik Berglund who lived in Laskeld to come out to my lake and find me.I am sorry, naiad, Henrik Berglund would say.Erik has found better things to do with his mortal life. You didn’t think you could hold his interest once he’d grown used to fucking you, did you?

In my heart, I knew that Erik wouldn’t do such a thing, not ever.

Not ever.

It didn’t matter. Fear was never rational, and my mind showed me terrible images of Erik living and laughing in Hallevalt, wearing fine clothes, riding about in carriages, and allowing hungry young men to seduce him and wind him in their arms, and keep him.

I tried not to think of it.

Every time I did, my breath grew short and a horrible, jealous anger rose in me. It was alien and unsettling. I’d known many emotions in all my long years, but anger like this was new.

It was territorial and furious.

Seething.

If Erik stayed in his city, I decided, I’d just have to go to him and drag him home.

Even though my lake wouldn’t want to let me leave, and would hurt me badly if I tried again.

I’d done it once before. Just once.

A mere handful of centuries after I’d fought the nix and made the lake mine, I’d been dying of loneliness. I’d missed my siblings. I’d missed their faces, their happy shouts, and the warm jostle of their bodies as we all ran and tussled and swam together. I’d missed my mother, who taught us all she knew before she’d sent us out to find our own territories. I’d missed her island, with its endless warm sands, deep glittering rock pools, and shady grey-green olive groves.

The absence of a life I’d once loved and had never wanted to leave was like an open wound. However much it had hurt, it was nothing compared to the agony that had felled me as I’d tried to pass the boundaries of my claim.

Fire scorched along every nerve.

Teeth bit deep into every bone.

My ears were filled with shrieking howls—my own cries, though I didn’t realise it at the time.

The waters I thrashed in were hot and red—it was my blood, though I hadn’t realised that, either.

I’d never tried again.

But for Erik, I would.

And I knew exactly how I’d do it.

It was simple: if I couldn’t leave my territory, I’d expand it. I’d claim every last waterway, from here to the city.

I would claim them one after the other—every river, brook, and stream. Every lake, pond, and puddle. Whether it was a foaming, rushing rapid or the finest filament of water connecting one body to the next, I’d claim them all, over and over and over, as I made my way through the land until I found the Great River that wound through Hallevalt.

Erik had mentioned this river many times.

He’d told me that when it froze in the depths of winter, the city folk held a Frost Fair on the solid ice. They swept the snow clear and set up painted wooden booths selling trinkets, roast chestnuts, hot cakes, and meat pies. They filled metal baskets with fire to huddle around, and heated pokers to plunge into wooden mugs of spiced wine. They played music, and strapped blades to their boots and skated around, dancing with each other or holding races with prizes.

It all sounded quite mad.

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