Page 74 of Fate Promised

After that, Rordan fell silent, scowling, and Juri focused back on Triska. He needed to get her alone so after she felt better, he could talk to her about what she’d said.

The walk seemed to take years, but finally they reached the palace. He brought her up to the washroom near their bedroom. He ran a hot shower for her and washed the sand out of her hair. Her skin pinked up from its dull grayish color, and her eyes regained some of their luster. “Okay, I can finish up.” She made a shooing motion. She’d let him take care of her until now with scarcely a word, leaning on him and letting him run his hands over her skin.

Some of the clawing panic had faded, but still, her words rang in his ears. ‘I’m a selkie’. The thought made his blood run cold, and he was grateful for the hot water. He knew the legends of the selkies. Shit, he’d told them over the fire to others a time or two.

He ran his hand over his head. All the tales about selkies were sad and sorrowful. In every one, a man fell in love with a selkie woman and hid her pelt, trapping her on land and forcing her to remain with him. But in the end, she got her pelt back and returned to her seal form. Forever. She never returned, forgetting all about the life she’d had on land.

His hands turned to fists. Not Triska. This couldn’t be Triska. He’d never trap her on land, but he wouldn’t lose her to the ocean either. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom. Then we can talk.” And he left the washroom. He’d never dreaded a conversation with Triska, but right now, his feet were as heavy as lead.

31

Triska entered the bedroom, fully clothed but still using a towel to dry her hair, and her pulse skittered. Juri sat on the bed, his golden eyes watching her. “Tell me why you said you’re a selkie.”

No preamble or easing into it. She sucked in a breath, her stomach plummeting to her feet. “You weren’t the only one who discovered something about your true self in the time we’ve spent apart.”

He leaned back, his brows knitting together. “You found out you’re a selkie?”

Her gaze remained steady on his. “I learned my mother was one, and so am I.”

Juri ran his hand over his head. “But … a selkie’s time on land is fleeting because they want to remain in the sea. They live in their secret palace among the waves.” He scanned her face as if searching for the truth. “Are you sure what you learned is correct?”

A sob welled up in her chest, but she fought it down. “When a selkie drops their pelt and comes on land, it’s usually brief. Except for tales like my mother’s where …” she swallowed hard, “they fall in love and remain. But you know the tales. Those who fall in love with them are doomed to only feel pain. Because a selkie will never stay on land long.” Her words dropped into the room like stones.

“But you’ve lived in Ryba for one hundred and eighty-seven years.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ve worked really hard to push my selkie side away. It may be easier for me because I’m only half selkie.” She swallowed. “My mother left me a journal about selkie life.” Triska kept it tucked away with Juri’s letter and her drawings of him. “When she met my father, she burned her pelt, thinking it would help her conquer her need to be in the ocean.”

Triska lifted her chin. “She said a selkie can only have one love, the ocean or her mate. She chose my father, and tried to make sure that was enough. When my father was home, it was easy. Her love for him kept her grounded and at ease, but the sea owned him too. And when he was gone, well, you remember how she’d get.”

Juri nodded. “She wandered the beach and left you alone a lot. That’s why you stayed with us so often.”

Her mother would get a certain look in her eye, one Triska recognized even as a child. When that happened, her mother roamed, losing all sense of what she was doing. Only Triska’s father could bring her back. “My mother wrote that losing her pelt was overwhelming. The lure of the ocean never really stopped.” Triska’s chest tightened the way it always did when she thought of her mother. “She got more and more reckless swimming and boating in the ocean. Trying to feel the connection to it she’d lost.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she wiped them away with a quick slash of her fingers. “When I was fifteen, my father showed me my pelt. It appeared the day I was born, swaddling me, and he’d kept is safe for me. He told me what I was and gave me her journal.” Her lips tightened. “I knew how she’d died—she’d fallen overboard—but he told me more details. He told me the day she died, she’d taken one of his small sloops out of the bay into the proper ocean. Alone. She wasn’t a strong sailor, and the sloop was best with two people manning it. A squall came up and took her.” Triska swallowed hard. “You know how it is with bonded pairs. If one loses their mate, the other often dies, too. But he didn’t.”

Before her mother died, her father was away a lot, but when he came home, he’d loved to read pirate adventures to her at night. He had a loud, booming laugh that filled their small cottage, warming up spaces she hadn’t realized felt empty when he was gone. “He became a shell of himself. I mean, he survived, maybe because of me, but I saw how much he suffered. I won’t do that to someone else. Even if they are my mate. Especially if they are.”

Her father rarely laughed anymore, and his smile never quite reached his eyes. He didn’t speak of his sorrow, but when nor ’westers blew in, and the waves grew choppy and white-capped, he stood on the beach, and she suspected he spoke to the sea as if it were her mother.

Juri still stared at her, unmoving. “Have you ever taken seal form?”

She shook her head. “No. I think it’s made it easier to resist going into the ocean but …” It was like a dam burst. The sob stuck in her chest broke free. “It’s so hard. Especially down here. Down here … it’s unbearable.”

Finally, she could speak about the constant pull she lived with daily. In between shaking sobs, she told him everything—the unrelenting ache, the whispers from the sea, the way she never felt present, no matter what was going on. How she worried she was like her mother, always looking at the horizon and missing her real life, longing for another. As the words burst forth, sour on her tongue, Juri grabbed her and hugged her close. He stroked up her back. “The sea always calls to me, even when I’m quiet and happy. At night, sometimes I have dreams about dark, cool water.”

“You feel the pull right now?”

She kept her head buried in his chest, his heartbeat the only thing she focused on. “It’s better when I’m with you.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Eventually, Juri, the water will take me, just like it did my mother. Either in seal form or not. We need to …” Her breath hitched. “We agreed on just one night, but selfish me, I wanted more.” She lay a hand on his cheek. “But it’s only going to make it harder for you when I leave. We don’t have many days left until the full moon. I can’t choose you, even if I want to. I’m not leaving you here with a broken mate bond. A shell of who you are.”

“That won’t happen.”

“I know. I know you won’t bond with me because the vulk don’t take mates, but I … I can’t either. And I just had to tell you why.”

“That’s not—”

“It’s fine.” She stared down at her hands. “If I wasn’t a selkie …” Normally, she refused to live thinking about what might have been. It made things so much more difficult. But for one moment, she let herself picture what a future with him would look like.

Juri would be next to her by the fire. She’d be snuggled up close the way she always sat next to him, letting the rumble of his voice thread through her as he told one of his stories. He’d nuzzle her neck and get the expression she loved on his face—the one where his golden eyes deepened into amber. The one where she knew how much he cared about her.

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