SISTER OF THE SEA
Winslow Witch Chronicles
Book the Second
Lena Mae Hill
Copyright © 2018 Lena Mae Hill
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, and events are entirely coincidental. Use of any copyrighted, trademarked, or brand names in this work of fiction does not imply endorsement of that brand.
Published in the United States by Lena Mae Hill and Speak Now.
www.lenamaehill.com
This edition
ISBN-10: 1-945780-31-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-945780-31-8
Blurb:
The last thing Sagely needs is romance. The first thing she needs is to figure out how to use her magic before she kills someone.
Again.
The most likely victim? Fox, her faerie fiancé. He drives her crazy in the worst—and best—way. As she continues her mission to bring home the Winslow Witch Coven, she struggles to control of her magic, her growing feelings for Fox, and Raina’s erratic behavior.
~
Raina has always dreamed of mermaids. Ever since she was a little girl, when her brother ran away with a sea faery, she has longed for the freedom and romance of the sea.
On a quest to find her brother, she leads Sagely and her friends to the coast. There, she finds her deepest wish within her reach. But as they old saying goes, be careful what you wish for…
~
This is the second book in a fantasy romance series with reverse harem elements and a touch of 80’s flair. Because certain events in the story required it, this novel is told in dual point-of-view.
OnE
Tennessee, 1987
Sagely
As the fire burned down to embers, the conversation around the campfire dwindled as well. After driving most of the day, the foursome had decided to camp in the woods for the night. Now Sagely sat on a log next to Fox while Shaneesha and Raina held their familiars and yawned every few minutes. They had nothing but the seeing stone and a hunch of Raina’s to go on, but with their combined magic, Sagely was confident that they’d find their missing coven and bring them home.
“Anyone going to stay up and keep watch?” Shaneesha asked, gathering her green snake familiar and standing.
“I think we’ll be okay,” Sagely said. “Viziri already got what he wanted from me.”
“At least somebody did,” Fox grumbled, stalking off towards his tent.
The loss of her void magic still ate her up, but Sagely had no regrets. She’d saved Quill by giving away her magic.
Now she was going to save the coven without it, and without Quill. He’d only agreed to let her go without him if she took two of the strongest witches they knew, and the faerie king, who just happened to be her second fiancé and a stubborn pain in the ass.
“Are you still mad at me?” Sagely asked, shaking out her sleeping bag.
“I’m still not talking to you, if that answers your question,” Fox said, turning his back and unrolling his own sleeping bag.
“Fine, then I’m going to bed,” Sagely said with an exaggerated yawn. She wasn’t going to beg Fox’s forgiveness.
“My tent,” Fox said, pointing to it with a fierce frown.
“Don’t order me around,” she said. “I’m fine in my own tent.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said. “My job is to protect you, and as your fiancé, that’s exactly what I intend to do. With or without your agreement.”
“Charming.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you,” he said with a smirk. “Even if you beg for it.”
“Fat chance of that.”
He grinned, showing sharp teeth that made her shiver in more than one way. “When you make a mistake, you’re supposed to offer to make it up to me,” he said. “You gave away my seeing stone. That’s a precious, priceless object. Not to mention a token of the deepest love.”
“Well, maybe you should have explained that when you gave it to me.”
“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have taken it.”
“So you tricked me into taking a token of your love, and now you’re mad that I gave it away?”
Damn, he was infuriating!
“Exactly,” Fox said. “I didn’t think you’d give away a heartfelt gift from your betrothed.”
“Again, I had no idea it was a heartfelt gift,” Sagely said. “I picked up that it was valuable, but you barely knew me when you gave it to me.”
“But I knew I wanted to get to know you a whole lot better,” he said, his brown eyes sliding appreciatively down her body.
Sagely shivered, forcing her trembling thighs to still. She had no idea how she was going to get through a journey with Fox without breaking her vow to Quill. Before they’d left, she’d promised that he would be her first. And yet, every time she looked at Fox, all she wanted to do was devour his delicious little body.
Unfortunately, the feeling seemed to be entirely mutual.
This trip was already harder than she wanted it to be. Not only was she lusting after a man who irritated her beyond measure, she missed her other man painfully. And she couldn’t deny that seeing Shaneesha and Raina’s close friendship made her a little jealous. She’d had casual friends, but she’d never had what they had.
“I can think of a great way for you to make it up to me,” Fox said, gliding a few steps closer.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sagely said with conviction she didn’t feel. At all. Not even a tiny bit.
Luckily, Fox seemed to respect her boundaries…most of the time.
“Share my tent,” he said, taking her hand. “Otherwise, I’ll sit outside your tent all night, and you really don’t want a grumpy faery in the car with you all day tomorrow.”
“You’re just afraid if something happens to me, Quill will kick your ass.”
“No, I’m afraid something will happen to you. Period. If there’s anyone I’m afraid of, it’s you, not Quill.”
Sagely tossed her red hair back. “I did beat you up once.”
“Quill might break my neck, but you, my love, are the only one who can break my heart,” he said, lifting the back of her hand to his lips.
“You’re impossible,” Sagely said, rolling her eyes. But a tremor of longing snaked up her arm from where his lips brushed her skin.
A smile teased Fox’s lips. “Impossible to resist.”
“Sure. That’s it.”
“Thank you,” Fox said, tossing his sleeping bag into his tent.
Sagely tossed her sleeping bag into her own tent and crawled in, only to find a gaping hole in the back wall of the tent. “Fox,” she yelled.
“Yes, my beloved?” His head popped into her tent, a smug grin on his face.
“I can’t believe you,” Sagely fumed. “You cut a hole in my tent so I’d have to sleep with you?”
“No, I cut a hole in your tent so you’d stop being a stubborn mule and listen to reason. You’ll be safer with me.”
“Did you just call me a mule?”
“Hey, if the horseshoe fits…”
“You infuriating little man,” she growled through clenched teeth, grabbing her sleeping bag.
“Not little where it counts,” Fox said with a smirk. “Now let’s go to bed, shall we, my sweet? I’ll sleep so much better
with you at my side.”
“I doubt I’m in any kind of danger,” Sagely said, ducking into the tent and sliding into her sleeping bag without undressing. “I can’t say the same for you.”
“I’ll guard my groin,” Fox said. “One day you’ll be begging for me to fill your belly with little faeries, and you’ll thank me for taking such good care of my vulnerable bits and preserving future generations of our children.”
“Don’t count on it,” Sagely said, kicking at her sleeping bag. “And I don’t need protecting. Like I said, Viziri took all my magic. He has no use for me now.”
“But I do,” Fox said, scooting his sleeping bag closer as he slid in.
“Hey,” she protested. “You promised to be good.”
“Oh, I’m good, all right,” he said with a chuckle. “Very good.”
Sagely’s body wailed in protest as she turned her back. She could just imagine how good he’d be. But she wasn’t going to let herself imagine it too long. That would lead to trouble.
“Goodnight, Fox.”
“Goodnight, my darling little mule.”
TWo
Raina
Raina had always been fascinated by mermaids, jellyfish, and the romantic idea of the ocean. It had come as no surprise to anyone when, upon coming into her magic at age twelve, she had shown an immediate preference and talent for working with water above other elements.
“I should have known,” her mother, an earth witch, had sighed.
Raina had held her tongue, but she’d remembered the terrible day when a faerie had predicted this moment would come. She’d been a child of only eight years old when the faery had ridden by their mountain home and stolen away with Raina’s brother, promising to take him to the sea. River had vowed to stall the faery and take Raina with him.
But he hadn’t.
For years, she had looked for him around every bend in the mountain passes. Her mother never recovered from the disappearance of her only son, and as soon as Raina was old enough to set out on her own, she had. But that had been eight long years since her brother’s abduction. By then, Raina had learned as much as she could about faeries, and she’d determined that River was dead.
Only when Sagely had given her the seeing stone had she learned the truth. Grudgingly, she admitted to herself that it was thanks to a faery that she’d learned of her brother’s existence. River was very much alive, and, if she could trust what the seeing stone had shown her, he was happily living the life his kidnapper had promised so long ago.
But no. She pushed that thought away. He must have tried to come back for her, just as she’d tried to find him. Something had happened that had prevented him from returning for her.
After Raina’s companions had retired to their tents for the night, she sat by the embers of their campfire, holding her seal in her lap. Scooting close to the fire and checking her surroundings, she drew a small pouch from inside her shirt. She loosened the cord around her neck and slipped the pouch from it, carefully tipping it into her palm.
A smooth, white stone slid into the hollow of her hand, its iridescent shine like a pearl’s. Seeley stretched his neck up to snuffle at the stone, then drew back, regarding it warily. Its surface remained cold to the touch even after resting against Raina’s body all day, and when she studied it closely, she could see the whiteness inside it swirling slowly, like an ocean current.
She probably should have given it back when Fox threw a fit about Sagely giving it away, but she couldn’t part with it yet. When she found her brother, she’d give it back. Until then, it was safer with her than Sagely. Someone might attack Sagely for her last bits of rare void magic—Viziri had come for her before. They couldn’t risk the stone falling into the hands of a warlock who might use it to track down every witch in the world and suck their magic out like a vampire.
He wouldn’t bother a witch like Raina, with nothing but common water magic. The stone was safer with her.
She slipped a small mirror from the pack she’d taken with her when she left the Winslow Witch coven. The coven was what had prevented her from searching for her brother. For the past five years, since she’d left her mother, they had been her family. She had given up hope of River returning by then, anyway. Why not stay with the coven that had so willingly accepted her as one of their own, though she was not an earth witch as they were?
She very well might have stayed forever if she’d married Quill. But she hadn’t. He was intended to Sagely, who had appeared out of nowhere and destroyed the coven in a matter of months.
That’s not fair, Raina told herself, though the bitterness remained. Sagely had given her the stone, willingly parted with a precious object for Raina’s benefit alone. She couldn’t hate the other witch just because Quill loved her.
Not when she had hope again for the first time in a very long time. Fitting the stone into an indentation in the carved wood that backed the mirror, she wound the cord that had hung from her neck around the stone and the mirror, fastening them together.
Seeley turned his big, innocent seal eyes up at her, and she couldn’t help but feel he was judging her. “Just one more look,” she whispered, kissing his velvety nose.
Ever since she’d asked the mirror to see her brother, she couldn’t stop looking. She had to make sure, one more time, that he was still there. That he was really alive. And yet, she didn’t know if she would believe it fully until she saw him in the flesh.
Opening herself to the stone’s magic took a heavy dose of sheer willpower. It was faerie magic, and she had spent most of her life distrusting and despising the fae. Now, she had to open herself to their brand of magic in order to use their stone. Seeley whined at the prospect, knowing what came next. He shared her magic, and now that she’d opened herself to the stone a few times, he knew that it was a magic that he couldn’t access.
“Show me my brother, River,” Raina whispered, forcing herself to stay open, receptive, and not close off to the foreign magic churning within the stone.
The surface of the mirror reflected the flickering firelight for a moment, and then it began to swirl and darken. Seeley buried his head in her armpit, and she cradled him close so he’d know she was okay, even if she was accessing a magic neither of them could quite comprehend.
A scene appeared before her, as beautiful as the last one she’d seen. River was in the sea even now, at night. Moonlight glinted off the deep blue waves that crashed against the sandy shore somewhere nearby. His head bobbed in the swells and his laughter rang out across the water. His laughter was deeper than she remembered, richer and fuller. He was a man now, not eight years old, as he’d been the last time she saw him.
A man with a woman, she realized as she heard high-pitched laughter join with his. Another head had bobbed to the surface. Raina knew she should look away, but she was transfixed as the girl and her brother swam closer. A stab of envy pierced her heart as they circled each other in the water.
This should have been her life. Her brother frolicked in the sea without a care in the world. She’d been living underground like a mole, mastering her element among a bunch of earth witches who knew nothing of the fluidity of water. She’d mastered earth, too, and air and fire as well as she could. She’d been working her ass off, while River showed no sign of struggle. Both times she’d seen him, he’d been happily lounging about in the ocean. Immersed completely in his element.
Their element.
River and his girl had joined together in their dance. Raina looked away in disgust. She almost missed the last glimpse of her brother. A glint of light drew her attention back to the mirror just before she could pull the stone from it. There, cutting through the shimmering path of the moon across the gentle swells of the ocean’s surface, she saw two unmistakable shapes.
They were not the shapes of two people’s heads as they played in the water. They were the shapes of two tails, their fins spread wide. Raina gasped, bringing the mirror closer, wanting to zoom in to get a closer look. But t
he tails slipped through the surface ripples and disappeared beneath the water.
Another stab of pain plunged through her heart. Seeley whined, and she gripped him, holding back her own cry at the depth of betrayal she felt. She could have asked the mirror to see River again, to follow him, to show her the next minute of his life and the next. But she couldn’t bear the anguish another moment.
Now she knew why he hadn’t come back for her. He couldn’t. He had no feet to travel the miles in search of her. She would never admit it to anyone, but the dream of mermaids was still there, that feeling, that longing, that ache. Awakening from dreams, she’d still feel the water around her as if it were a part of her. The freedom and depth of the sea would ring in her ears all day as she trained in a dank, underground cavern.
But it was her brother, the one who had been kidnapped, the one she’d mourned all her life, who had found his place in the sea. He’d become a mer. But how? And more importantly, how could Raina join him?
three
Raina
Raina woke in the night with a chill running over her skin. She sat up, sucking in a deep breath. Her magic had awakened her with a warning. Since her brother’s abduction, she’d never ignored these warnings. If her magic told her that she was in danger, she was.
Instantly, she felt for the stone in the pouch around her neck. It was still there, a ball of ice against her chest. But it could be attracting attackers. She had no idea how its magic worked, which made her uneasy. She knew that her own magic was visible to other witches when she used it, though. They could feel it, sometimes for miles around, if she used a lot. Had using the stone drawn vicious faeries to their camp?
Raina slipped from her sleeping bag and drew a knife from her pack, using the glow of her ring to find it. Seeley raised his head and looked at her with his wise, black eyes. He’d woken when she had, always attuned to her magic like all familiars were to their witches. “Come on, Seeley,” she whispered.
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