Page 8 of Panther in the Shadows
The rain falls harder, soaking through my dress, plastering my hair to my skull. My magic responds to the water, making it dance around me in patterns that would look impossible to anyone watching. But there's no one here now. Just me and the ocean and the secret I've kept for ten years suddenly feeling far too fragile.
I look down at the dissolved triangle, at the water carrying blood into the cracks between stones.
And I see it.
Not with my eyes but with my magic. The blood carries an echo, a signature of the person who left it. Salt-magic like mine but perverted. Twisted into something that tastes of deep water and drowning and things that should never surface.
I know what she is now. And she knows exactly where to find me.
I press my hand flat against the wet stone, let my magic trace the patterns in the blood. I shouldn't. This is exactly the kind of deep magic Gran warned me against. The kind that opens connections both ways, that lets whatever I'm tracking sense me in return.
But I need to know.
The vision hits like a tidal wave, dragging me under before I can brace for it.
Dark water closes over my head. Cold seeps into my bones. Bodies drift in the current—the missing dock workers, weighted down with stones, their blood feeding symbols carved into the seafloor. They’re dead—their skin grey-blue, eyes filmed over, their bodies moving with wrong, jerky motions like puppets on strings.
The drowned don't always stay down.
And then I see her.
Standing at the edge of a sea cave I recognize from smuggling stories. A woman with salt-white hair and eyes thatglow faint blue in the darkness. Power radiates from her like heat from a forge, but it's not sea witch magic. It's necromancy. Blood magic. The kind that pulls at what should stay buried.
She turns as if she can sense me watching. Smiles.
"Hello, Moira." Her voice carries through water and vision both. "I wondered when you'd look."
I try to pull back but she holds me there with casual strength. Her necromantic magic wraps around mine like chains, and I feel the corruption in it. Blood magic. Death magic. The kind Gran warned me could call to the drowned.
"Your grandmother was strong," she says, circling me in the vision like Rafe circled me in reality. "Strong enough to bind what I've spent years learning to free. But bindings can be undone. And the drowned remember everything."
She's talking about raising the dead from Stormhaven's waters.
"I know about your sister," she continues, and her smile is terrible. "Little Elspeth Flynn, who drowned when she was eight. So much potential, wasted in the deep. But I can bring her back, Moira. I can give you what you've wanted for eighteen years. All you have to do is help me. Or..." Her eyes gleam. "You can resist, and I'll raise her anyway. Except she won't be yours anymore. She'll be mine."
The vision breaks, leaving me gasping on my knees in the rain.
She’s not familiar. Could she be here on my island? In my waters? Using my tides for rituals that reek of blood and corruption? Killing shifters who live under my protection? Using their deaths to wake something that should stay sleeping?
The territorial violation makes my magic surge with rage I haven't felt in ten years. Every instinct screams to find her, to drive her out, to show her what happens when you invade a sea witch's territory.
I stagger to my feet, magic thrashing inside me like a trapped animal. The ocean responds, waves crashing high enough to send spray over the cliff edge. I force it down with an effort that makes my teeth ache, lock it behind the practiced control I've maintained for ten years.
I can't let it show… can't let anyone know how much power flows through me. Can't risk Declan MacRae deciding I'm more threat than asset, but Rafe already knows. The most dangerous predator on Skara now knows exactly what I am.
And if whoever's hunting here thinks I'll help them, I won’t. I’ll die trying to stop them.
I stumble into the inn, lock the door behind me with shaking hands. The fire's burned down to coals in the hearth. The tables sit empty, chairs stacked on top for tomorrow's cleaning. Everything normal and familiar and utterly inadequate protection against what's coming.
My reflection stares back at me from the window glass. Hair plastered to my skull. Eyes too wide. Gran's pendant gleaming at my throat like a beacon.
I look like a woman who's just seen her carefully constructed life begin to crumble.
I look like prey.
Thunder rumbles outside, and I don't know if it's natural or my magic responding to my fear.
The pendant burns warm against my chest.
