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Many months before, I had washed up on this very beach.
I’d woken face down on the sand, with grit in my wounds and the undine palace guards looming over my dying body.
Before the abyss had been born, the Skala Isles had been visible from Cruinn. As a child, my mother told me stories of the Skala Beach and its beauty.
The merfolk had retreated as soon as I had turned to foam, and their path had taken them past the Reeds on their way back to Tarsainn. It was decided by Rainn and Tor that we would head to the Skala Beach to recoup.
Though the abyss had cleared from Cruinn, and my uncle was very much dead, I had no desire to return to Cruinn. I’d felt the hunger of the throne, tainting the water surrounding the city, and did not wish to bleed for the Sidhe that had used me and tried to kill me.
I’d never thought much about how the selkies came and went from their own beach, but my blood grew colder and colder the nearer we got to the Skala Isles. Though Rainn and Tor seemed unaffected, my teeth chattered, and my eyelids dropped. The sensation eased only slightly when we did not try to pass through the gap in the rocks but swam along the edge until we reached the rock pools further along the shore. The stone slabs on the water's edge were stacked and flat like tree bark.
Rainn got out first, and Tor lifted me from the water. Ten feet from the rocks stood a wall of trees, so densely packed together that the sunlight did not breach the canopy, though the orange glow from the Day Court colored the horizon.
“How much farther?” I rubbed my arms against the chill as my scales sucked into my skin and my gills dissolved. “It’s been hours.”
“We’ll set up camp in the forest,” Rainn told me. “We’ll go far enough so no one can see us from the shore. I have some supplies hidden.”
Tor glanced over the water toward Tarsainn, though it sat miles away. His heavy brow furrowed. “I need to send a message to Elsbeth to assure her I haven’t died.”
“I doubt Elsbeth thinks you’ve died.” Rainn laughed. “The undine can’t shuck an oyster with a knife, let alone a sword.”
I had no idea what he meant by that.
Tor shrugged, and we navigated the slippery rocks together until we reached the trees.
I rubbed my back, feeling the twinge of a wound that no longer existed. A matching scar to go with the puckered skin over my shoulder. Another injury I would try not to think about.
Cormac Illfinn stabbed me.
He truly hated me.
I’d thought that I could reason with him, get him to see that his mother's death was self-defense.
But Cormac was blind to his rage.
No doubt, the war would continue between Cruinn and Tarsainn, only now, I was the reason.
I didn’t have an army to fight the merfolk. I was a single Fae against an entire population of Mer. Though Rainn and Tor undoubtedly had armies and people willing to fight for them, I was done. Done with war, death, and blood tainting the water of the twilight lake.
Rainn led us through the forest, and though it was difficult to see in the darkness, he moved swiftly, cataloging every tree and hill. I didn’t know how long we walked, but my feet ached, and my thighs shook with exhaustion by the time we stopped at a gnarled tree with a knot on the trunk that looked like a face.
Rainn traced his finger on the edge of the knot, using his nail to pry the seam loose. Revealing a bolthole with a swath of material and a wrapped pack. He pulled out the supplies and handed us each a packet of dried fish jerky wrapped in a vine leaf. Rainn unfastened a skein from the pack and sniffed the bottle, jerking it away from his face. I could smell the alcohol from where I stood.
I tried to help set up the shelter against the tree, but I had no idea what I was doing, and after a while, I was sent off to find firewood instead. I tried not to feel useless, but it was hard.
Rainn and Tor were royalty. They had people to choose their clothes and wash their feet, yet they knew how to set up a shelter in the middle of a dark forest while exhausted. Compared to them, I knew nothing.
I dropped my twigs at Rainn’s feet as he hammered bolts into the ground. He smiled before pulling the flask from his pocket and holding it out to me.
“That’ll warm you up.” Rainn winked.
I raised a brow. “What is it?”
“Sú Amadán.” Rainn grinned.
“The fool’s drink.” Tor supplied, distracted as he paced the area we’d carved out in the forest. His eyes shone yellow in the darkness. “It’s a selkie favorite.”
I eyed the flask as if it would bite my hand before shrugging and plucking it from Rainn’s hand. I was tired and cold. If drinking a fool’s drink would numb my body enough to fall asleep after such a horrible day, I would welcome it.
