Reva.
A buzzing fills my ears, and once again, I drop to my battered knees on the hard floor. I’m barely aware of the shattered glass that digs into my flesh as I bend over her body, shifting the mass of hair from her bloodless face. My hands are bloodied and covered in stolen magic, leaving a messy trail over her skin and hair.
There are raised voices around me, but I can’t make out details over the intense buzzing in my ears.
I scoop Reva’s lifeless form into my arms, my spines re-emerging as if to ward off any attempts to take her from me. She’s warm still, her face peaceful like she’s merely sleeping hard. Someone touches my shoulder, and a growl erupts from my chest. I twist and snarl, tightening my grip on the precious cargo in my arms.
“Tor, come on, man.” Someone’s touching me again, but I’ve lost all sense of reason by this point. I snarl again.
Eyes darting around wildly, I’m aware of concerned faces that look vaguely familiar. Jack and Kit and the witch, Aster, are standing amid more rubble and destruction. Light is flooding through the massive hole in the ceiling, and even Captain Finch’s kraken seems to have paused its rampage.
Why are they all just standing there?
I can just make out Jack’s concerned expression. But his concern is useless.
“Do something,” I growl.
“You’re going to have to set her down for that, buddy. We can’t help her if you’re holding her like a possessive teddy bear.”
I grunt, but something in his tone pierces the haze in my head. It’s familiar, and I carefully lower Reva to the ground, sweeping clear any shards of glass. There are blobs of black goop on her skin where I was touching her, and I use my arms to clean them off as best I can, considering my hands are caked in the stuff.
Something odd happens once she’s laid down. My hands flicker in and out of sight. One moment they’re there and the next they’re gone.
I don’t focus on that though, needing all my attention on the woman lying on the ground as Jack squats beside her with the witch. They’re both running their hands over her and making my spines stick straight out and quiver. I force myself to hold back, to push back the urge to snap their fingers.
Aster murmurs words under his breath, and I’m so focused on his hand over her chest, it barely registers that the voiceless man has spoken at all. His hands shake as he pulls them away, dropping onto his backside with a nod.
“She’s breathing, Tor,” Jack says. “Looks like she’s hit her head, but she’s alive.”
I’m knocked back onto my arse by the weight of my relief. My eyes stray from her perfect face with its scattering freckles surrounded by a halo of wild curls to my dirty and bloodied hands and the blood dripping onto the floor from the wounds on my back.
But even when I scrub away the grime covering my forearm, I still don’t see the mark on my skin.
Reva might be back, but the mate bond hasn’t returned.
Chapter 1
Reva
Icy seawater swishes around my legs as I wade through the waist-high water, dragging my lifeless sealskin beside me. My movements are heavy and I drop down into the water until I’m on my knees, tilting my head back and letting it soothe some of the ache in my hip.
For a moment, it’s bliss.
The water moves over my skin, caressing me like a good lover. And for a second, everything melts away. It’s just me and the ocean.
My relief only lasts a moment, though. The cold digs deep into my flesh and I can’t stay still for long. I force the rest of me up and out of the water before wrapping my sealskin around my shoulders. Then I wait for the telltale shimmer of magic to roll through me as I shift into my seal’s form.
... but nothing happens. I’m left shivering in the shallows, pushing down my disappointment.
I don’t know what I was expecting. It’s been weeks since I first woke up and discovered my sealskin had been so drained of magic, I can no longer connect with my other half. So far, none of my daily dips in the freezing sea have made Noush appear.
I blow out a defeated sigh and plod along, wincing at the immediate return of the ache in my joints. It feels like my bones are rubbing against one another and the cold isn’t helping.A shudder wracks my body, and I hurry my pace, travelling through the shallows toward the shore.
With Kit’s and Torin’s faces and names plastered all over Kit’s hometown and a warrant out for their arrest, Captain Finch decided that the entire crew should hide out somewhere together. I don’t know how they found this place, but the same day we found the first warrant, it was decided we’d be heading here and hunkering down. We don’t know how long it’ll be before the king’s forces add the entire crew’s names to the warrants, but it seemed that sailing around on an infamous pirate ship would leave Finch’s entire crew as sitting ducks.
So, over the past few weeks, we’ve been staying on an abandoned tidal island, one that’s cut off from the mainland by a couple of miles of water when the tide is high and connected by a long, straight causeway when it’s low tide. A wild, unkempt forest borders the island. The first thing the crew did when they arrived was to cut a path through the dense vegetation and I search through the thick brush for the opening in the trees, then pad along the path for the half mile until I reach the centre of the island and the mansion house that hides there.
It’s old and imposing. Half of the windows have at least one hole and many are shattered entirely. The roof also leaks on one end, meaning it’s both damp and frigid inside. Making my way through the side door, I wipe sand and mud off my feet with the freezing tap in the mudroom and then continue along, past the warmth of the kitchen which still has the faint scent of the dinner I no doubt have missed by now. Who knows how long I spent out in the water this time, but judging by the way my veins are currently pumping slushy ice around my body, it was longer than it should have been.
