AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I take that as a no,” I sighed. “She is going to eat both of you.”
Rainn opened his mouth to speak.
“Eat,” I reiterated, holding up a finger.
Tor blinked, shaking his head. “I will travel back tonight on the dried river path. Once night falls, I can leave.”
Rainn reached under his mattress, pulling out a roll of bread he had undoubtedly stashed there. “The Siren Queen has silvers.” He punctuated the sentence by stuffing the bread into his mouth. “Don’t the Reeds have a silver?” he said with a full mouth.
Tor wrinkled his mouth in disgust. “A single silver,” he conceded. “Though no one has traveled the thing in years. My father said it was cursed.”
“How can a silver be cursed?” I wondered out loud.
Tor grew even more uncomfortable. “He used to say that someone was always listening. He could sense it.”
Kelpies were empathic, and I guessed that such a statement carried much weight.
“We could give it a try.” Rainn swallowed his mouthful. “And Maeve and I can make our way to the Reeds from Cruinn once we have the Kraken’s other eye.”
Tor’s brow furrowed, and Rainn quickly explained my bargain with the beast at the center of the dark sea.
“And it tried to eat me!” Rainn told him joyfully as if the entire experience was hilarious rather than terrifying.
I dismissed Rainn’s insanity with a wave and turned back to the Kelpie. “Why did you come all this way?” I asked.
“I followed Rainn,” Tor said simply.
“As simple as that?” I scooted forward and perched on the edge of the bed by Rainn’s feet. “Why not petition the Siren Queen for sanctuary? Like I did? Like Rainn did?”
Tor’s dark eyes flicked to the Selkie before he returned his gaze to me. “Rainn is in the fortunate position of being able to prove himself as a Selkie. I, unfortunately, cannot do the same.”
“Do Selkies have some kind of immunity when it comes to traversing creeds and their kingdoms?” I joked, glancing at Rainn again. The Selkie’s eyes sparkled mischievously, and his lips spread into a grin that was nothing short of trouble. I narrowed my eyes and bared my teeth. My mind traveled a mile a minute, trying to piece together whatever cryptic nonsense Tor spoke of.
“Can anyone just say what they mean anymore?” I sunk down until my back touched the thin mattress of Rainn’s bed. He pulled his legs up, moving out of my way.
“What Tor means is,” Rainn licked his lips, displaying his nerves. “I could come here because you had something of mine. My claim to my… blanket… superseded any boundaries. You had the blanket, so I was able to join you here. Tor is in a much more difficult position.”
“Once night has fallen, I will find the silver to the Reeds.” Tor crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on the arch separating the crates from the pokey bedroom. “It’s no big thing.”
“No big thing?” I barked a laugh. “Right. Incurring the wrath of the Siren Queen. No big thing at all. A speck in the grand scheme of things.”
“Right.” Tor nodded, gesturing toward me in agreement.
Rainn stifled a laugh.
“I was being sarcastic,” I bit out through gritted teeth.
I watched from Rainn’s tiny window, waiting for true night to fall on the Cradle.
Rainn and Tor played a game on a deck of beautifully painted cards, the like of which I had never seen before.
Undine and the city of Cruinn favored a game called Pebbles, with a ring drawn in the sand, as you tried to knock your opponent's pebble out of the fighting ring with a single move each time. Moira and Liam told me about the beautifully painted sets sold at the Guppie Market on the city's edge—a place I had never been but had always longed to go.
The cards were thin enough to be paper and were no doubt enchanted in some way to prevent the water from turning them to mush. Tor must have brought them with him.
It didn’t take long at all for the night to fall. For the strip of orange on the horizon, crossing over the boundary between the Night Court and the Day Court to blink out of existence. The moon rose high in the sky, its beautiful glow the only light in the canyon—the dead trees and the stone formations leaving strange and frightening shadows across the Cradle.
No word was said about Cormac and his thirst for revenge against me.
