Page 70 of The Dark Sea Calls

My nostrils flared as I bit back tears. The lump in my throat made it difficult to breathe. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

Rainn closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, as if he needed to gather courage before speaking. When his eyelids fluttered open, he sat on the bed, leaving enough space so I didn’t feel crowded but close enough to touch me if he extended his hand.

Rainn bent over at the middle, resting his elbows on his thighs, his body sagging with exhaustion.

“I found my fated mate, my Shíorghrá when I was a child,” he stated.

Confused, I pursed my lips and remained silent.

“It was my first time traveling outside of the Skala Isles. My mother and I traveled to King Irvine’s Coronation. I don’t remember much, but my mother later informed me that I was ‘rather taken’ by the Cruinn Princess.” Rainn lifted his hands in air quotes. “A Selkie knows when they have found their mate. It’s like your skin lifting off your body. I knew the moment I saw you, though my memories are vague. And when I told my mother, she also knew what that meant.”

“I didn’t see you at the coronation,” I said slowly.

Rainn shrugged. “I’d wager you had more pressing things on your mind.”

I nodded in agreement. Seeing Cormac’s father being beheaded definitely shadowed my memories of the coronation. I’d dreamt about his head flying across the room for years afterward.

“I knew it then and knew it the moment we found you on the Skala Beach,” he murmured, glancing at me through the unruly strands of his silver hair as it floated around his ears. “Do you remember the cottage on the beach?”

I thought back to the small hut made of driftwood on the shore. I nodded.

“That is my home,” Rainn said sheepishly. “Cormac proposed that we try to infiltrate the migration. To stop it in some way. When your uncle took the skins of those younglings and used them for fodder on the front line, it marked a shift in Selkie society. We protect our young beyond all else. It would not be the Selkie way to attack younglings.”

“But you were there on the Frosted Sands.” I closed my fists and pressed them against my thighs, feeling the pearls on my skin dig into my knuckles.

Rainn closed his eyes again in pain. “I knew who you were when I saw you on the beach outside my home. I thought the gods had delivered you to me until I saw how hurt you were. You might not have realized it, but I placed my skin on you as you slept until I could properly gift it to you without arousing suspicion. I knew what your uncle had done when he had possession of Selkie skins, and I needed to make sure you were not the same.”

“I understand why you didn’t tell me at first,” I couldn’t keep the hurt out of my voice. “But, Rainn, we’re past that. We’ve traveled the Twilight Lake together. You held me as I cried. You’ve seen me at my weakest, and you’ve seen me broken. You’ve beeninsideof me. When will it be enough? If I didn’t guess, would you have ever told me?”

“Maeve.” He reached out, moving a lock of my hair over my shoulder, exposing my neck. “I kept waiting for the right time, but it never came. Our creeds have too much past, and I didn’t want you to think I held so much stock in some prophecy that I would throw my lot in with an enemy I didn’t know to end the war between our people.”

I opened my mouth to ask my question again, but Rainn seemed to read my mind.

“Do I love you?” Rainn smiled, but it was a defeated sort of smile. “I have seen your weakness. I have seen you broken. I have followed you across the Night Court. You have saved my life as I have saved yours. We might be bound together by fate, but fate doesn’t make my heart feel like it’s breaking every time I look at you, and you don’t see me. Every time I want to hold you, but I don’t know if you’ll pull away. To be Selkie is to give yourself completely to your mate.” Rainn slid off the bed, dropping to his knees before me. He reached for my hands, and I allowed him to take them. “You could tell me to take a blade to my belly and cut myself from throat to cock, and I would have to do it,” he told me.

Disgusted, I opened my mouth to argue, but Rainn interrupted before I could say a word.

“And I know that you would never use the magic of my skin against me,” Rainn said. “I know this because even though you refuse to admit it, you love me.”

I fell asleep in Rainn’s arms, a dreamless sleep but a warm and fulfilling one.

When I woke up, Tormalugh greeted us, disheveled, his hair stuck up in all directions, his clothes wrinkled and dirty.

Before I could ask what was wrong, he held up a hand to silence me and, with a balled-up fist, pelted Rainn in the leg to wake up.

The Selkie shot up with a howl, bleary-eyed and ready for an attack. When Rainn saw that it was Tormalugh, he slumped back to sleep before the Kelpie thumped him again, much to Rainn’s dismay.

“Our scouts have reported several sightings of Fae with golden wings above the surface of the Lake,” Tor said.

Rainn cursed.

“I intend to keep the Reeds out of whatever battle Tarsainn and Cruinn wish to wage,” he continued. “But, that said, Maeve’s friend is in danger.”

“Liam Cruinn.” Rainn winced before turning to me. “We saw him in the dungeons but didn't know his importance to you. He was one of several Undine prisoners.”

My intake of breath was sharp. “There are others?”

Rainn looked like he had tasted something foul. “We can only hope that death has come to spare them from the kiss of iron.”

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