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Rainn’s lips flattened into a line. His arms swung as if he couldn’t decide if he should approach. I was glad he didn’t. Rainn lowered his voice, bending his knees until our eyes were level. “It isn’t my skin,” he repeated gently. Before I could reach out and throttle him, he held up a hand to stop my interruption. “It isn’t. It hasn’t been mine in a long time. It’syours.”
His words tumbled over me like rocks, chipping away at my thoughts. I tried to make sense of it, but I couldn’t. “What do you mean? Mine? I’m not a Selkie.”
Pain flashed over his face. “Maeve…” He sat back, groaning. “When a Selkie finds their mate, they gift them—”
I stood up so fast that my legs tangled. I fell back as I tried to scramble away from him. “No.” My eyes were round with horror. “I don’t—” I stopped that train of thought, unable to find the needed words. “I can’t. I can’townyou, Rainn.”
His smile was bittersweet. “Unfortunately, the skin chooses for the Selkie. It is rarely a decision made on merit and forethought.”
I covered my mouth with my hand, letting out an unhinged giggle. “So that’s it then? Your skin chose for you? All of it, everything between us, was nothing but following your skin's desires? When you held me? When we made love? Was it the skin? None of it was real?”
“Maeve—” Rainn reached for me.
I held my hands out before me, flinching away from his touch as if it were a blow. “Get away from me.”
“Maeve,” Rainn said more sternly. “Look at me.”
My lips pinned together, and I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to do as he asked. I felt an inch tall as if my body had been pressed together on all sides until I had shrunk. Bile rose in my throat, making breathing painful. I knew I couldn’t speak, even if I wanted to.
I wanted to run.
I was ten years old again, hiding behind tapestries as the courtiers laughed about the poor little orphaned princess. About how odd I was. How I was something to be pitied.
I wasn’t a child anymore. I might not have reached my majority in a ceremony on the Frosted Sands, but I was an adult. I was grown. I knew my mind and was sick of people deciding my fate.
I pushed myself to standing, my jaw rocking, as the muscle in my throat ticked. I knew the anger coursing through my veins well. It was the same rage I had felt with Lady Bloodtide, who had held a dagger to my throat moments before the lake ripped her apart and ate her skin, bones, and marrow.
It would be so easy. Every pulse of water, every current lapping at his skin, every rush through his gills as he breathed. A single thought and I could turn Rainn to foam.
He must have seen something in my eyes as pain and pleading turned to fear. Rainn’s face froze in a mask, hiding whatever thoughts crossed behind his sky-blue eyes as he unfurled himself to standing. His fingers twitching at his side as if he was prepared to fight me.
I cocked my head to the side, eying the Selkie as if he were a gnat. When I spoke, my words were strangled by the lump in my throat. “You gave me your skin. You lied to my face. I asked you, over and over, if it was your skin, but I trusted you, even with everyone around me telling me otherwise.”
Rainn blinked, not saying a word.
“I have no desire to be like my uncle. I don’t want to take your skin or force you to fight for me. To serve me. To love me.”
“Maeve, no—”
I held up a hand. “I swear to Belisama, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, if you speak another word, I will kill you. I mean it, Rainn Shallows. Get out of my sight.”
Chapter 13
Every time I took a breath, my lungs inflated against the fresh wound in my middle. Invisible to everyone else but me.
Betrayal coursed through my veins. The same burning endless feeling that never left only boiled down to a simmer.
I couldn’t do it.
I wasn’t strong enough.
I had no destination in mind as I raced away from the castle. No goal, save from getting as far away from Rainn—and Tormalugh—as possible.
They had both known.
I had been carting around Rainn’s skin for weeks like some pathetic unknowing child. Whenever I asked if it was his skin, Rainn had used Sídhe trickery to mislead me.
Wordplay.
