Page 38 of The Baker and the Kraken

“I won’t wind up with gills, will I?” Adam had asked.

“I don’t… think so?” Calder hadn’t sounded totally certain.

Well, as long as they didn’t show up on land, it would probably be fine.

For now, though, it was a breathing charm and the knowledge that Calder would stay relatively shallow and could propel Adam to the open air at practically any moment.

Adam fumbled a little as he sketched the spell with two fingers. (The more complicated spells used more than one finger to draw, and it took practice to move them smoothly together.) He shook out his hands, irritated with himself for messing it up. He’d practiced this spell so many times! But the cold water and pressure in the moment was making this a little more awkward than he’d expected.

Calder wrapped his arms around him, steadying him. “I’ve got you.”

Of course he did. Calder would never let anything happen to him, and he believed in Adam no matter what. Drawing a deep breath, Adam made another attempt, trying not to overthink as he once again sketched the spell in the air. It didn’t matter how long it took him to do this; it wasn’t an emergency, and Calder would wait for him forever.

After two more tries, it worked like he’d practiced it, and once he’d finished drawing the spell, he drew a deep breath and then pushed his magic into it. It flared a pale, ghostly blue, each line he’d traced glowing with magic, a spell successfully activated. It was gone the next moment. Adam stood there, readying himself… and then he drew another deep breath and ducked his head underwater. Calder went with him, because of course he did, and was watching carefully, clearly ready to yank Adam to safety if needed.

Uncertain but reminding himself that the spell had activated, Adam braced for choking or spluttering or something and sucked in a breath through his nose.

And he… breathed.

It felt incredibly counterintuitive to simply breathe like normal underwater, but the spell did exactly what it was supposed to, and it felt like he was breathing air despite the fact that he should have been snorting water. He was still immersed in water, and he didn’t see the air, but air was what he was breathing nonetheless.

Magic was weird. Super cool. But weird. All of Adam’s practice had paid off!

He pulled his face out of the water and beamed at Calder, who’d also resurfaced. “Ready!”

Oh, that smile on Calder’s face was so happy that Adam could feel himself swell with pride.

“I’ll tow you out deeper in my animal shift,” Calder reminded him. “Then I’ll shift completely. Sound good?”

Adam nodded. He knew full well that Calder would keep monitoring him and would bring him to the surface at the slightest hint of trouble. The breathing spell should give him an hour of being able to breathe underwater. Evie’s brother had found him a good spell that had a built-in warning, so that when you had ten minutes left in the duration of the spell, a pinching sensation would warn you to get a move on, and it repeated every minute until a double pinch marked the last minute of air.

Evie’s brother was a bit of a grump, but he’d helped Adam find the spells he needed. Adam was pretty sure Evie must have negotiated a discount for him, too. He knew that Spellreaders weren’t nearly as expensive as Spellsmiths, but still. Max had speedily found all the spells Adam had requested. They were each discrete spells that had to be cast separately, not like a Spellsmith could create, but they met Adam’s needs and hadn’t broken the bank.

Adam had made sure that he could cast a spell to form a large bowl, make the bowl unbreakable, and then summon seawater into it. If ever Calder needed to appear in animal shifter form in front of other people, Adam could help make that happen safely now. It wasn’t super fast, since he needed to complete each spell separately, but it would work.

Adam had been practicing to make sure he could cast them as readily as he could cast the unbreakable spells on the kitchenware. It was a bit silly, really, since obviously Calder could take care of himself. He’d been doing so for millennia. But he had a partner now, and Adam wasn’t going to stop trying to take care of him just because he was old and fierce.

He didn’t have to worry about that right now, though, because today was for seeing what Calder was like in his natural form in his natural habitat. With a sinuous movement, the man in front of Adam was suddenly a squid, and Adam tried not to startle. He’d known it was going to happen, but it was still somehow surprising to have a large squid in his face where his mate had been a moment before.

It looked like he’d gone bigger than a market squid, probably about twenty feet long. Calder’s arms and tentacles were definitely at home here in the ocean. They immediately reached for Adam, curling around his arms and gently tugging him closer. (Adam had watched a few videos of squid catching prey. They were not gentle.) His eyes were huge. Adam leaned closer and pressed a kiss to the skin between his eyes. Calder’s arms squeezed rhythmically around Adam, which he took as the equivalent of a hug. (He’d also seen the beak on a squid. There wouldn’t be reciprocal forehead kisses in this form, that was for sure!)

And then they were swimming. Calder used the fin on top of his head and his siphon to power them through the water, so much faster than Adam could ever move.

Calder wasn’t taking him too deep yet; without the bond, Adam didn’t have protection from the pressure, nor could he see in the dark. But he’d wanted Calder to have room to stretch out, to not bash his tentacles against the ocean floor, and to reduce the chance that Calder would be spotted.

Calder slowed sooner than Adam expected, but he’d been peering around himself at the fish and other sea life, losing all sense of how fast they were moving.

Holding up a couple arms, Calder made a gesture that Adam chose to interpret as “one minute.” He then let Adam go, and he wondered if the sign had actually been “stay here” or “don’t move.” (Yeah, Adam totally got the value of that telepathy now. Even emotional state might have helped.)

Adam watched the sinuous movements as Calder swam away from him, and then, between one blink and the next, he changed. He grew. A kraken was really, really big. Adam had known that intellectually. He’d even known it visually seeing Calder at a distance from the harbor boat. But as one little human swimming in the sea and then—poof!—a kraken? He was gigantic.

He was also, beyond a shadow of a doubt, utterly majestic.

“Wow,” he mouthed.

Calder seemed to relax, moving his arms and tentacles more naturally now. When he reached out tentatively, Adam nodded and allowed one of the massive arms to coil around him. He stroked the soft skin, cool to the touch here in the ocean. Calder pulled him closer, so that Adam was almost touching one of his huge eyeballs.

Yes, each one was definitely bigger than Adam was. Holy crap. He was less than eyeball sized! This made him laugh, which thankfully worked with the breathing spell.