Her surprise drifted across his awareness, doubt and desperate hope tangled together.
“We’ll see,” she said. “When the time comes, we’ll see.”
They planned through the afternoon and into the evening.
Malachar had Marina’s pelt. Without it, she couldn’t fully shift, couldn’t access the deepest wells of her selkie power. The first step was getting it back.
“The good news,” Estelle said, setting down her teacup, “is that he can’t simply destroy it. A selkie’s pelt carries ancestral warding—generations of protective magic woven into the hideitself. Destroying one requires a specific unraveling ritual, and from what I know of the process, it takes days.”
“He’s had it for days,” Alessandro said, the words tasting like ash.
“But not enough of them. The ritual demands precise lunar alignment, and the full moon hasn’t arrived yet.” Estelle looked at Marina. “Which means your pelt is still intact. But we’re running out of time.”
“He’ll be expecting us to come for it,” Dante said. “Probably has it warded six ways from Sunday.”
“Then we don’t go for the pelt directly,” Bea countered. “We make him come to us.”
“How?”
“He wants the curse to continue. That’s his food source.” Bea’s eyes gleamed with chaotic inspiration. “What if we made him think we’d found a way to break it without the recipe? Something he couldn’t stop?”
“He’d come running to prevent it,” Alessandro said slowly.
“Exactly. And while he’s busy trying to stop our fake ritual, someone else retrieves the pelt.”
Alessandro looked at Marina. “What do you think?”
She blinked, surprised, maybe, that he’d asked. That he was deferring to her judgment instead of charging ahead with his own plan.
“It could work,” she said. “But it’s risky. If he realizes the decoy is fake before we get the pelt, he’ll destroy it.”
“Then we need the decoy to be convincing enough to buy time.” Alessandro turned to Estelle. “Can you create something that looks like a real curse-breaking ritual? Enough to fool him?”
“I can create a distraction,” Estelle said. “But I’ll need help. Kitsune magic is illusion-based. Combined with Bea’s chaos energy and your dragon fire…”
“A three-way working,” Bea said, grinning. “Chaotic and elegant. I love it.”
“Marina and Dante retrieve the pelt while we’re distracting Malachar.” Alessandro laid out the plan carefully, making sure everyone understood. Then he stopped. “Unless someone has a better idea?”
The pause felt significant. He was asking for input. Genuinely asking.
“The hotel where Malachar was staying burned in your rampage,” Dante pointed out. “Where’s he keeping the pelt now?”
“I can find out,” Marina said. “The pelt is part of me. If I concentrate, I can sense it.”
“Can you do that now?”
She closed her eyes. She was reaching, stretching some inner sense toward the thing that belonged to her. Her face went still with concentration, and he could feel the ache in her, the longing for something that should have been hers and wasn’t.
He wanted to reach for her. Wanted to pull her into his arms and promise that everything would be okay. But he’d made promises before, and he’d broken them. This time, he would prove himself with actions first.
“East of town,” she said after a moment, her eyes opening. “Near the cliffs. There’s an old lighthouse that was abandoned years ago.”
“I know it,” Estelle said. “Isolation. Defensible position. Smart choice.”
“Can we get in without him knowing?”
“Dante and I have worked together before,” Bea said. “Chaos magic can confuse wards. Dragon senses can detect traps. If we move fast enough…”
