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Corin.
I can’t help but smile a little wider. I talked the local smithy into making him a Tidal Lands version of a skateboard—a mini surfboard with wheels—and now every kid in the keep wants one.
What can I say? After all the battles, all the blood, they needed something fun.
So, it’s skateboards and training hoops for the sea tigers who like to play along the docks.
Kael says they followed me here, along with a pair of curved fin whales.
Every day I go outside, with my viyen or a guard if he’s elsewhere, and I work with the animals.
Kids usually come out to watch, and I’ve even started letting them help.
It’s good for all of us.
A chance to just be alive and free and happy again.
“Stay here. I’ll check on him,” I tell Amber, wiping my hands on my pants as I stand.
I head toward the noise, already calling out.
“Corin? Is that you, bud?”
But when I step into the foyer, my stomach plummets.
It isn’t Corin.
Thank God.
But fear fills me because who’s there to greet me is so much worse than anything I could have imagined.
It’s her.
The woman from the dock.
The one who shoved me into the sea and nearly ended me.
Only this time, she isn’t leaning on a walking stick.
In one hand, she clutches a—holy shit, I think it’s a wand—yes, a magic wand carved from something dark and jagged, pulsing faintly with power.
In her other hand, she holds a wickedly sharp knife, long and curved, the kind I’ve seen the cooks use to gut massive fish.
At her feet, two sea tiger pups lie crumpled. The sight punches the air from my lungs.
Their sleek striped fur, usually so glossy and proud, is matted with blood. Their small sides heave with shallow breaths, each one weaker than the last. Their bright eyes, wide with pain and confusion, flicker toward me—and it’s like looking into the face of a child.
They try to growl, a warning, a promise that they’re still wild and fierce. But it breaks in their throats, thin and pitiful, more whimper than roar.
My chest aches. Tears sting the corners of my eyes before I can stop them.
These creatures are Kael’s.
They are Nightfall’s.
They are mine.
They’re innocent, caught in the crossfire of a war they never asked for.
