Page 111 of The Goddess’s Thief

RADA

THREE MONTHS LATER

“Rada, you can’t leave yet,” Wren grouched from her bed. “Eliza’s naming ceremony isn’t for another nine months.”

I stared down at the chubby-cheeked, red-haired baby in her crib next to the front of the narrow castle window. Outside, I could just see Leviathan and Lusca messing around in the cove outside Drakonspear, shooting enormous jets of water up into the sky at Frol and Skadi. The dragons were dropping giant stones and boulder-sized snowballs into the waves. I wasn’t certain if they were really trying to hit the krakens or not. It looked like they were winning, until Kellin jumped in, shifted into a kraken form, and gave the sea royalty the advantage.

I smiled, remembering how stunned Kellin had been to discover that Lusca hadn’t just given him a title and crown, but a whole slew of abilities, including shifting into any aquatic animal.

He’d shocked Lusca by trying to become a kraken after seeing Levi again and getting the idea. It had worked perfectly, and he’d modeled his carapace after my nautilus necklace, an enormous teal shell that loomed behind his teal and green tentacles. He couldn’t make himself as big as Lusca or Levi, though, so he looked like their little brother.

He could still shift into a seal form with his own brother, though, which had all of us tearing up, Lachlan most of all. My Omega mate had carried guilt about Kellin’s sacrifice, and playing together in their familiar shapes had healed his heart.

But my own sorrow grew by the day. Lex was still trapped, or dead, and even though my mates did all they could to keep my spirits up, I’d fallen into a depression not even a giggle from the world’s cutest and only female baby kraken could lift.

My time was up. Ten years had passed since I’d made my deal with the Goddess in a cave in the center of Starlak. It was time to pay.

“Your Omegas and the children are all safe in Turino?” Wren asked quietly. I glanced at her. Her long red curls were piled on her head as she stitched a few extra pockets into the gray assassin’s cloak that had appeared in the hall a few days before, with letters from Haven and Vilkurn.

“They are. Tally has decided to join the King’s Guard in a year or two. Haven’s husbands are sponsoring him and giving him lessons in blacksmithing and Rimholtian history. Haven’s in her element, with all the children’s rooms filled again. Queen Vali took possession of the inn two doors down and turned it into a shelter for Omegas. Haven said the first residents showed up two days after they hung up the sign.”

Vilkurn had added a note in code. The Omegas had been twins, both of them nineteen. They’d been hiding in the gutters of Turino, and were as feral as I’d been when he saved me. I hear you have a collection of males and monsters to torment there in Starlak. But if you ever want to return to Rimholt and become Master Spy, the job is yours, Ratter. The city is yours as well. Send any Omegas who need safe shelter. The king asked me to tell you that we will protect them all, even if it means building rooms onto the castle.

I wasn’t going back, of course. But Wren needed to think I was.

“It breaks my heart to say goodbye so soon, Ratter,” she said. “But at least you’ll have a cloak. It was eerie seeing you walk around without one. Like a shorn sheep.” She shuddered.

“I felt naked, even if Skadi insists he is my cloak now.”

“That dragon cannot be trusted. You know he swiped fourteen silver forks last week? One fell out of his scales when he was play-fighting with Levi!”

I laughed as she snipped off the last stitch and held out the cloak for me to inspect. She’d done an amazing job, creating so many new and cleverly hidden pockets, I was almost certain I’d be able to keep at least a few of my vials safe from Skadi’s thieving tail. She’d even made a long, leather-lined one for my dagger with an intricate puzzle fastener. That one would frustrate him. I couldn’t wait to watch him struggle.

“I can’t stay, Wren. I’ve got promises to keep, and one more lead on how to rescue Alexios.”

She thought I meant back in Rimholt, but that night after dinner with Stellina, Wren, and her lovely, powerful mates, I slipped out of my bed, dressed in silence, and joined my mates. None of them spoke. None of them smiled. We all climbed onto the backs of the dragons who would carry us into the heart of Starlak, to a cave only Goran and I knew how to find.

We reached it just before midnight, when the full moon was high overhead. Skadi set down Lex’s coffin, shifted, and he and Serak each took an end. “Lead on, little spy.”

Lusca, looking paler by the second, pulled out his flask of seawater and took a long drink. I frowned. “You don’t need to come down with me,” I told him yet again. “It’s the heart of the dry.” He shared power with us, but still got nauseous when the sea was too distant.

“And you’re his heart, brat. We’ve got this,” Lachlan said as he and Kellin slung arms around him from both sides. They wore identical flasks on their hips, and I had a feeling Skadi may have stashed a few sheep’s bladders full inside his scales as well.

Serak murmured a few words to Frol. “Frol watch. Keep safe,” the Alpha replied, and stood menacingly in front of the hidden, door-sized gap in the mountainside.

“Come on, my Warqueen.” Goran took my hand and pulled me into the passage we’d gone down long ago. I could feel Serak’s unease as we trudged deeper underground, as Lex’s stone coffin scraped the narrow walls of the passage. After about twenty minutes of walking, though, the passage widened, and the walls began to glow.

“What is the light?” Lachlan wondered aloud as the passage grew brighter and the space widened into a room.

“The moon,” I said, pointing upward. There was a fissure in the rocks that led to the sky. The room itself was a castle carved from dripping water and sediments for millennia. The walls were covered with gleaming white cave formations, stalactites and stalagmites making columns that transformed the space into something that appeared almost holy.

“Our old blankets are still here,” Goran murmured. “Ah! And a cask of Starlakian potato whiskey.”

“A whole cask?” Kellin echoed, tilting his head at Goran and me. “What were you two doing down here back then?”

I bit my lip. Goran rubbed the back of his neck.

“Getting drunk and fucking,” Lachlan said with a chuckle as he unearthed some gem-studded wine goblets from under a stack of furs.