Page 67 of The Iron Flower

Gareth’s whole face tenses. “I’m not. I don’t know what I am. I don’t fit in anywhere.”

A fierce affection for Gareth swells inside me. “You fit in with us,” I adamantly insist. “You’re family. You always will be.”

Marina is petting Gareth’s hair, and her casual affection for people she’s accepted seems to be creating fault lines inside Gareth, everything held back for years rushing out as tears mingle with the water on his face.

“Has there ever been anyone else like me?” he asks Marina, his voice breaking as she rhythmically strokes his hair.

Marina’s brow tightens with evident confusion. She pushes in her gills and speaks with great effort. “There has never been anyone like any of us.”

“I mean...someone who is Selkie, who can’t go home?” Gareth stops, too choked up to continue.

Marina studies him for a long moment, a pained expression in her eyes. “I do not know.”

Gareth’s head drops as he brings a hand up to cover his eyes. Marina’s gills fly open, and she croons a flute-toned sound as she coaxes him into an embrace. He quietly cries against her slender shoulder, his whole face bunched tight.

Diana is watching them now with one brow cocked, her expression lit with some surprise, and I wonder what she’s reading in them.

Gareth eventually stills, and Marina pulls back a fraction, her slick hands coming up to caress his cheeks. She pulls her gills in. “My sister and the others,” she says, struggling to make the sounds, “they need help. They will know you are Selkie. I need you, Gareth Keeler...” She stops, as if momentarily overcome, her gills fluttering. She pulls in a long, uneven breath and forces them back down. “Please...help us. Help your people...” Her voice breaks into incomprehensible tones, her face distraught.

Gareth gently takes hold of her hand. “I’ll help you,” he tells her with the steady, quiet force of a vow. “We’ll find your sister and the others, along with your skins. We will find a way. I don’t know how, but we will. And then we’ll get all of you back to the ocean.”

* * *

Marina practices her newfound language skills almost without ceasing, talking to herself when not in conversation with others. Her ability to speak without dunking her head underwater improves quickly as her control over her gills increases, allowing her tones to form consistently coherent words.

Gareth spends every spare moment he has with Marina, often in our North Tower washroom, both of them completely submerged in our cold tub so she can effortlessly talk and sometimes sing to him in haunting, flute-like tones until deep into the night.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EVIL ONES

I open my violin case with reverent hands, my eyes immediately drawn to the crimson sheen of the Alfsigr spruce. It was a gift from Lukas that I’ve been meaning to return to him, but I can’t find the will to part with it.

It’s been weeks since I’ve played, but the bundle of sheet music that arrived this afternoon has me lifting the Maelorin violin from its bed of green velvet and setting bow to string. The music is from Lukas, written in his own hand—discordant and fractured, his usual precision giving way to something raging and turbulent, as if he’s blasted the notes on to the page.

When I attempt to play the pieces, I can only make it through about half of each composition before I have to stop. It’s too raw and too reminiscent of the same amorphous conflict that’s mounting inside me—a struggle against a powerful, dark current that’s all too easy to get swept up in, an essential part of him trapped.

Eventually, I give up and put the instrument away, but the disturbing music lingers in my mind and thrusts me into a troubled confusion. It’s as if Lukas has embedded a hidden message for me in the notation, and in the middle of his most turbulent piece, he’s written one word amid the violent crescendo.

Elloren.

Feeling suddenly restless and needing to walk, I grab up my cloak and lantern, my wand already pressed into my boot.

“Where are you going?” Marina asks me from where she sits by the fire.

“Naga’s cave,” I tell her.

“I want to come.”

I raise my brow at her. “Are you sure? My brothers might be there. And other men.”

“Gareth?” There’s a heightened intensity in her ocean eyes. I know that Gareth has become one of the few solid moorings in her life.

“He might be.”

Marina stands and braces herself against the bed’s headboard. “You say your people want to help free my sister.” Her gills ruffle, and her words momentarily devolve into incoherent tones. She tenses her throat and pulls her gills in flush with her neck. “I need to meet with the rest of them. Let me come.”

“All right, then.” I cede, inspired by her courage. “Come with me.”

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