Page 11 of The Dryad Storm

Gareth listens as Marina tells the tale. How this young Gardnerian priest-apprentice, Alaric, was thrown overboard by Vogel’s Shadow-corrupted magic and rescued by a Selkie, Nerissa. And how Nerissa helped Alaric survive on a small, deserted island, the two of them eventually falling in love and Nerissa being cast out of her Selkie enclave when she refused to forsake him.

“And then Alaric and Nerissa joined their tides,” Marina says with a look of great significance at the mention of the Selkie mating bond, passion flaring in her eyes, an unmistakable invitation there. The very air seems to shift between them, Gareth’s heart skipping a beat. It’s a struggle not to be swept into an unfightable storm of wanting her, the purple moon above only amplifying the draw.

“Gareth,” Marina says, gills flaring, “when Selkie’kin join their tides in a love bond, they link their abilities andmergethem. That happened with Alaric and Nerissa, even though Alaric is not Selkie’kin. He gained water power and the ability to wield it through the roots of water-bound trees instead of a wand made from the branch of a land-bound tree. And Nerissa gained a thread of his light power. An actual Mageline of it.” Marina pulls in a deep breath, gills ruffling with emotion. “My love, I believe there’s a chance we might free even more of your magic if we joined our tides as they did.”

A hard pulse of want surges through Gareth, the two of them poised on a precipice. But he holds back, the painful awareness that taking her to mate would inflict on her an inescapable reality. Marina would likely be shunned, like Nerissa. Forever cut off from her close-knit family. Her beloved sister. Gareth knows how much Marina loves her underwater home. Her life as a linguist and diplomat and musician. And her kindreds—she’s told him of her close relationship with several octopuses, the intelligent, color-shifter creatures enamored of her, as well. It’s a rich life she has, under the ocean’s waters. A joyous life.

A life hecannotrip her away from.

“We spoke of this back in Verpacia,” he says, voice rough, his want for her like a straining tidal wave caught in his center. “Mating for you—and for me, as well—it’s for life. You’d be forever trapped between two worlds. Like I am.”

“Gareth,” she presses, eyes storming, “Alaric canbreathe underwaternow.”

They stare at each other for a protracted moment, and Gareth feels as if the entire world has paused.

He swallows. “If we mate...” he begins, barely aware of the buzz of dragonfliesand the gentle lapping of the water “. . . our abilities may not manifest the way we would hope.” Their eyes lock. “It’s a risk,” he finally manages.

“Worth taking,”she insists without hesitation, and he can tell from the passion firing in her eyes that she’s already decided. “I don’t want anyone else,” she breathes out, adamant, gills flaring. “I’m already caught in the middle. So let me be caught there. With you.”

Gareth’s heart leaps, then expands, his love for her a powerful, surging tide.

He sets down the mangrove root and reaches into his wet pants pocket for the damp money pouch, then fishes out the vial within. “We were all given this,” he says, swallowing thickly as he hands her the vial, letting his gaze briefly wander over Marina’s form, his pulse thudding. “For Xishlon. It’s Sanjire root.”

Marina nods and draws closer, giving him a heated look as she unstoppers the vial and takes out some of the root, then places it on her blue tongue.

Gareth’s gaze skims over her full breasts. Her blue nipples. Her cascading silver hair. His cresting desire surges as he takes in the curves that lie below the shimmering purple water. And then Marina pulls him into an embrace and kisses him, the warm press of her body and the salt water on her lips sparking a heat that quickly intensifies to storming heights in the Xishlon moonlight.

Gareth groans and gives in to it fully, gives in to his bottomless love for her, as they pull each other under the waves, the mangrove roots twisting and arcing around them. Marina tugging at his pants. Then tearing at them. Shredding them off, her eyes bright with a want that further fires up Gareth’s own.

She presses her body against his, skin to skin, and he eagerly returns her feverish caresses, his arms encircling her as he captures her mouth with his. And then she wraps her legs around his waist, and his hard want surges as he kisses her ravenously, heatedly aware of how her thighs are open to him. She draws him closer, angling her hips in invitation, sliding against him.

Unable to hold back any longer, Gareth fully joins with her, a cry torn from his throat, the rush of ecstasy an unstoppable tide. Love and pleasure eddy through him in an ever-swelling current, and then... a series of stings blooms along the sides of his neck.

He pulls in a deep breath of water.

Stunned, he pulls in another breath, holding Marina tight, the salt water flooding his lungs, magic exploding to life within him as the entirety of the Waters links to his lines. He catches Marina up in another kiss and senses her awareness of thechange in him from the new urgency in her touch. The two of them passionately joined, they float down until he’s pressing her into the ocean’s floor, deep inside her and shot through with unbearable excitement. She pushes up against him, the two of them falling into a rapidly cresting rhythm until pleasure and love overtake them both in a hot rush and he cries out as their tides fully merge.

They stay like that for a long moment, wrapped tight around each other amidst the mangrove roots as a multitude of fish joyfully encircle them.

And Gareth pulls in breath after breath of glorious, salty Ocean.

“I can breathe,” he finally murmurs against Marina’s warm skin, stunned to find the words coming out of him in the Selkie tongue. He reaches up to find gills newly formed on the sides of his neck, his underwater voice incredibly clear. All the Ocean sounds around him incredibly clear, distant whale song resonating through him, sparking a reflexive ecstasy. “I never want to touch land again,” he huffs out in Selkie, overcome as tears heat his eyes and mingle with the cooler water. He takes hold of Marina’s hands, drawing back slightly to take her in, feeling wonderstruck. “My mate,” he says, the tears flowing. “My forever love.”

Marina is crying as well, a look of Ocean-deep love in her eyes.

“Do you feel the merging of our powers?” Gareth asks Marina, anticipation brimming.

She nods. “A line of tingling energy, forming inside me. I can both feel and see our combined magic flashing through it in the back of my mind...”

The purple light of the moon above the waves snuffs out, startling them both into silence, the underwater world snapping to gray. Gareth’s pull toward the mangroves intensifies with the energy of alarm.

Gareth meets Marina’s gaze, the shock racing through him mirrored in her eyes. They swim toward the water’s grayed surface and break through to find the moon turned to shadowy steel.

A sudden disturbance in the water has them glancing down. Another wave of surprise eddies through Gareth to see schools of fish and other Ocean animals rapidly fleeing north.

He exchanges a fraught look with Marina, fighting off the grove’s mounting, almost grappling, draw toward its center. The two of them launch into a fast stroke away from the grove, the Salish Ocean’s vast, gray-tinted expanse now spread out before them. Vu Trin alarm horns pierce the air, all the distant shore music and revelry extinguished.

Peering west toward the horizon, Gareth gives an inward start. There’s a rapidly enlarging mass of dark gray advancing over the water like a demonic tide.

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