Page 45 of Between Salt and Serenades
“You would protect my mother? How can I guarantee your plan will work and I won’t get burned in the process?”
“If protecting your mother means we can go after the hybrids for what they’ve done, we will certainly do it. Nothing is a guarantee, fisherman, but if we don’t succeed, we lose our family too. You can trust we have just as much at stake.”
Rory pondered Breena’s offer for a long moment before he leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankles, and said, “What do you need me to do?”
The plate of cookies was gone before the three of us had come up with anything resembling a plan. Rory had refilled our mugs three times, and I was starting to feel an odd buzz in my chest, and my speech flowed way faster than normal. The burst of energy seemed to have hit Breena and Rory too, because the three of us were babbling over each other in an excitable flurry.
“How many days do we have before the hybrids notice you’re betraying them?” I asked all at once. I could hear the pounding of my quickening heartbeat in my head, and I spoke louder to drown out the insufferable noise. The sensation reminded me of when I was on a hunt, the adrenaline that coursed through my veins to encourage me to push harder.
“I’d give it five days,” Rory said. He still sat on the same settee, but he sank into it more now. Not in a way that was lazy or slouched, but one that said he trusted us not to murder him right here in his very home.
Did he say five days?
“I’m expected to ask my weak and starved pod to transition and come to land to fight the hybrids with nothing but a five-day notice? That’s absurd,” I said. Transitioning into my siren form and then again back into my human form all within one week was downright stupid, yet I sat there considering it. At least my pod would only have to transform once, but I, on the other hand, would be risking my life before even making it to the fight.
Rory nodded, and Breena bit her lip, staring at the side of my face as if she begged for me to look at her. I couldn’t let her see the gears churning in my mind.
“Five days it is,” I agreed, though my mind was screaming at me in protest.
“Are you sure, Sidra? Surely, we can get a message to your pod another way,” Breena said. I wondered if she thought of the blood that had smeared my back and was crusted between my toes as she stared at me with her bottom lip pulled between her teeth.
“Not a way they’ll trust. I have to go. And if I only have five days, so be it.”
“It’s settled, then.” Rory slapped his knees with his palms. “You’ll both return to the sea.”
“I didn’t imagine when I finally found my pelt and was able to return to the Selkie Cove that I would be expected to ask my family to fight on behalf of the sirens. With the help of the human fisherman who stole my pelt, no less,” Breena mumbled.
“Stole? You put your skin in my chest, and I just so happened to move it to an undisclosed second location without your knowledge,” Rory said. “But I didn’t even know you existed, or that either of you were aboard my ship.”
“Well, yeah. I know thatnow. But my point still stands.”
“That it does,” I reconfirmed, giving her thigh another squeeze. I finally gave her the eye contact she had been lookingfor, and when I did, I was filled with the warmth of her large, brown eyes. She batted her dark eyelashes at me, and I had never been so thankful for the woman. She was willing to go back to her pod and ask her family and the rest of the selkies to fight on behalf of the sirens, but more importantly, on behalf of the sea.
“And my mother?” Rory asked, breaking the unspoken moment between me and Breena.
“She can stay with my grandfather. The hybrids won’t know where to find her.” I pulled my gaze from Breena to focus on Rory once more.
“Who is your grandfather?” Rory asked, fidgeting the moment his mother came up.
“Wallace from Muliver’s Glass Ma?—”
“Your grandfather is a human? Wouldn’t that make you a?—”
“No,” I interrupted him right back. “I may not be a complete full blood, but I’m not a hybrid either. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them. Just maybe…thesehybrids,” I said, referring to the peculiar pod of hybrids forming on land. Fishermen’s intolerance of the hybrids is what got us all in this mess in the first place. I wasn’t about to let Rory continue down the same path so many others had.
“Well, I suppose we have differing views on that.”
“My father was a hybrid, and he was a good man. If anything, he had more of an appreciation for land and the humans than most sea fae,” I said. “Let’s get something clear. Hybrids in general are not your enemy—the ones threatening your mother are.”
“I suppose. What’s the difference between hybrids and full bloods anyway? Except being more human, of course.”
“You don’t even understand us, yet you’re quick to label the hybrids your enemy?” I scoffed.
“And you’ve done the same for the humans,” Rory said, his tone sharpening as his eyes did.
“Alright, alright,” Breena finally chimed in. “And the selkies are guilty of their own mistakes, but aren’t we all here to try to put that behind us? To create change to benefit all three of our kinds?”
Rory cleared his throat, and I released the rotting air filling my chest.
