Page 4 of The Naiad's Wish

The rest of the year, the river was a clogged, sickly thing, polluted with litter and fouled with human effluent, sluggish and crammed from bank to bank with boats transporting goods and people.

Some of those boats had once belonged to Erik, who’d been a rich merchant in his former life.

He told me that the river ran through Hallevalt and out to the open sea, and the place where it did was crowded with docks and warehouses, like the ones I’d seen in the larger towns that clustered on the southern shores of my lake.

Would I have to fight many guardians, I pondered, as I claimed my way to this great and monstrous river?

I thought perhaps not.

The time of creatures such as myself, those of us closer to gods than to men, was ending. In another century or five, we’d all be gone from this world.

I hadn’t seen another water spirit since that far-off day that I’d fought the nix. I’d chased a curious little dryad away from Erik’s cabin a few times recently, and thousands of years ago I’d heard rumours of an Undying One haunting the barrows at the foot of the distant mountains, a creature who walked the world as a man and had a reputation for war and for hunger. Other than them—one of whom I’d never even seen—and the shifter pack who’d passed by and left traces when I was sleeping one winter, I’d lived alone among humans.

No. I wouldn’t have to fight. Even if we weren’t all passing through the veil, who of my kind would willingly go near a city filled with humans?

For my Erik,Iwould. I’d claim every single drop of water that connected the distance between us.

I knew that the house he’d once lived in and had given to his young cousin, Geir, lay not far from the river. He’d be there, and easy to find—I knew the pulse in his veins as intimately as I knew the smallest current in my lake.

I'd find him, and I’d take him in passionate triumph upon the marble floors of the hall, and then, when he was dazed and mindless with pleasure, I’d carry him down to the river and bring him back home with me where he belonged.

Yes.

I could do it.

Iwoulddo it.

That vast a territory would be a terrible burden of care and weigh heavily on my shoulders, but I wasold.

I was powerful.

I could bear that burden.

For Erik, I would bear it willingly.

I’d become the Naiad of Hallevalt as well as the Naiad of Laskeld, and he’d never again be so far away from me.

I’d brave anything for our love. I’d claim the world to reach him. I would?—

“Sayan.”

At the sound of Erik’s voice, I jerked in shock, folding at the waist and inadvertently plunging below the surface.

I braced my feet on the lakebed and surged up to the surface, sun-bright water sheeting over my head and shoulders.

Erik sat on the fallen willow, watching me with amusement clear on his face.

3

Istared at him indignantly as I scraped back my wet hair. When had he arrived? “You’re home,” I said.

“I’ve been home for a while,” he replied, leaning into the elbows he had resting on his thighs. “Don’t tell me I surprised you?”

“Of course you did not. Youcouldnot. I am aware of all things in and around my lake.”

I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been so caught up in my seething jealousy and my endless yearning that I hadn’t noticed him. That presumably, I hadn’t even noticed the turning of the world as two weeks slipped past like two minutes.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said. “I knew you were there the whole time.”

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