“Well, I haven't figured out anything. I'm learning."
"Which is more than most managed." He took a step closer but still careful. "I've spent fifteen years on the river. I've seen fae magic used in a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, most of them badly. What you have isn't a liability, Isla. It's extraordinary. And the way they've got you tucked away out here, practicing in a field, keeping your head down so the town doesn't get nervous." He shook his head. "It's a waste."
"Nobody's got me tucked away. I chose this."
"Did you? Or did you run out of other options?"
She felt the charge prickle along her palms and pressed her hands flat against her thighs. The river picked up a choppy surface texture that hadn't been there a minute ago.
"You seem to know a lot about me," she said. "For a man I've never met."
"I research my interests. It's how I've stayed ahead in a business that rewards information over muscle." He paused and let the silence sit. "September 14th. Ardenmere. Two fishing vessels lost, crew of eleven. A storm that came from nowhere and a dock community that needed someone to blame."
The air went out of her lungs.
"The records are public," he continued, his tone gentle, almost sympathetic. "Harbor filings, fae-weather archives, incident reports. I didn't have to dig deep. The trail was there for anyone willing to follow it." He watched her. "Your father was a stormcaller too. He died that night, whether he was to blame or not. And you've been moving ever since, town to town, coast to mountains, trying to outrun the thing that makes you extraordinary. I think you’ve been denying what you are truly capable of. What you’ve already done."
"Stop."
"I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to tell you that I understand what you are better than anyone in this town does." He took another step. Six feet now. "The people here are kind. Ican see that. But kindness built on caution isn't acceptance. They tolerate you because you've made yourself small enough not to scare them. What happens the first time you can't?"
"I said stop."
"And Rafe Lupeus." Malrick's voice shifted, still warm, but with an edge now. A scalpel wrapped in silk. "He told you about me, I'm sure. The bitter rival. The dishonest captain. Did he tell you the rest?"
"What rest?"
"Did he tell you about the Kellert account? How he held that contract for four years by undercutting every other bid on the channel? How he used personal relationships with port officials to lock competitors out of filing windows? How the only reason I got that contract was because I finally found a way past the wall he'd built around it?" Malrick's smile had gone thinner. "Rafe Lupeus is not a victim, Miss Green. He's a territorial alpha who treats the river like his personal hunting ground. When someone challenges him, he doesn't compete. He eliminates."
"That's your version."
"And his version is that I stole from him. I'm sure it's very compelling over candlelight." The warmth was back, but she saw the machinery behind it now. Every expression chosen. Every pause calculated. "I'm not asking you to trust me over him. I'm asking you to consider the possibility that the man who told you about the big bad wolf on the river is himself a wolf. One who's been sitting in your kitchen evaluating what you can do for him."
The charge in her palms was building. The river surface had gone rough, small whitecaps forming where the current hit the rocks, the wind picking up along the bank in gusts that pulled at her hair.
"What do you want, Sloane?"
"I want to offer you something no one else has. Perspective." He held up both hands, palms out, the universal gesture ofharmlessness that she didn't believe for a second. "You have a gift that people have feared for centuries. Most stormcallers died because they had no one who understood what they carried. No one to help them see it clearly. I'm not offering to fix you or train you or tame you. I'm offering to treat your power as what it is. Remarkable. Valuable. Worth building something around instead of hiding from."
"You want to use me."
"I want to work with you. The distinction matters."
"Not to me it doesn't."
She held his gaze. The river was loud now, the wind cutting across the water at an angle that sprayed mist along the bank. The charge was in her forearms now, the sky answering the anger, the fear, the guilt his words had shaken loose. She pressed it down with the discipline she’s been striving for.
"I'm going to walk away now," she said. "And you're going to let me. Because whatever you think you know about stormcallers, you do not want to find out what happens when one of us stops being polite."
Malrick studied her before stepping back. One step, then two, his hands still raised slightly, that smile still in place like it had been painted on.
"Think about what I said. That's all I ask." He turned and walked back up the river path with the stride he'd arrived with, unhurried, unthreatened, as if the conversation had gone exactly the way he'd planned.
She stood near the river's edge until she couldn't see him anymore. Then she sat down on the bank and put her head in her hands.
Her father. He'd talked about her father like it was a footnote. Like September 14th was a data point in a research file, something to be leveraged over tea and polite smiles. The guilt she'd been keeping in its box, the one she sealed with routineand practice and the careful fiction that she was getting better, cracked along its seams.
Two fishing vessels. Eleven crew. A girl in the tree line.
