The Shift of the Tide

by Jeffe Kennedy

  He raised his brows at me. “With all your observational skills, you’ll have noticed I’m not a farmer.”

  I set my jaw. “I’ve explained over and over that if I don’t take Final Form, I’ll have to find a compatible father. Shapeshifter, not mossback.”

  “You need to outbreed and you know it,” he shot back. “More inbreeding will only exacerbate your problems. Your chances of viable babies go way up with me. Ask any expert in husbandry.”

  “I’m not a broodmare,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Then why do you claim your decisions are based on that? If you didn’t view yourself that way, the argument that I shouldn’t father your children wouldn’t even come up,” he reasoned.

  Something about that phrase gutted me. Father your children. It made me want in that horrible, famished way. The mermaid longing for land. “I’ve told you over and over, I probably can’t even have children,” I said, willing my reply to be as rational and even as his.

  But he glanced at me with eyes full of understanding. “I know and accept that. But if you can have children, I want to be the one to father them. And if you can’t, I can provide you with many nieces and nephews to love. And we could adopt children to raise. Wars make orphans and there will be plenty who’d benefit from a loving mother like you.”

  I wanted to cry. To scream at him. To throw him to the ground and pummel him or kiss him silent. “You’ve come a long way from seducing me into considering you as a lover for one night to demanding to be the only father of my children.”

  He regarded me seriously. “That’s true. You’ve changed me. And you’ve given me reason to hope, so…” He shrugged and grinned at my consternation. “You can’t ask me not to hope, when being with you has made these the best weeks of my entire life. I’m greedy. You’ve given me more of yourself than I ever expected, and now I want even more than that. I want it all and I want forever.” He ignored my black look. “Also, I’ve been thinking—remember Dafne’s circles on the maps? My family has been in this region for generations. I’m as connected to any of this as she is. I think it’s not only possible, it’s likely that I am compatible.”

  I gaped at him. I couldn’t seem not to. “You’ve been thinking about this ever since.”

  He nodded solemnly. “We’re a good fit. You can’t deny that.”

  “I can deny it!”

  He laughed, surprising me, shaking his head in amusement. “True or false: admit it. You’re in love with me.”

  Caught like that, I couldn’t summon the lie. It would have been easier to drive him away, tell him that I’d lost interest. Cut this thing between us off cleanly and neatly. Though it was far too late for neat. And though it would be easier to drive him away, to play a game and make him angry, I couldn’t do it. Gone was the person I’d been, who could pretend that truth and lies were mutable, just another part of the spectrum. Which left me only bitter honesty.

  Time to tell him and break his heart. That would be his forever.

  “I can shift again.” There, I said it. Made it real.

  He gazed at me in astonishment, then with such sincere joy that my heart shuddered under the pressure of it. “What? When?” He asked. “You didn’t tell me!”

  He made me smile, even with the heartache. “Last night, when you startled me awake. I thought you were in danger and slipped into tiger form for a moment without thinking.”

  “You were defending me.” He had a pleased quirk to his expression, a knowingness that bothered me.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I repeated, realizing as I said it that I’d failed to make a good argument.

  “If you say. I knew you’d never really lost it. It makes sense that you simply needed to relax and allow it to come back to you naturally again.” His smile radiated such pride and love that I had to look away.

  “You’re not thinking this through,” I told him softly, holding his gaze, and his smile faded. Such was my effect on him. I hated that we had to do this.

  “Final Form, you mean,” he replied after a long moment.

  I looked at him and he returned my gaze soberly. “Yes. Once I free the dragon under Windroven, I’ll go see Kiraka and take Final Form. It’s time for us to accept the inevitability of a goodbye.”

  He was studying me. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about the completion of cycles, and how Deyrr’s reanimation of creatures takes them outside of that. And how you don’t like to use magic to do anything that interferes with that cycle.”

  I frowned at him, not understanding the direction of this argument. “So?”

  “So, it occurs to me that Final Form breaks that cycle. Why is that all right with you when the rest isn’t? By becoming the dragon you’ll make yourself immortal and unable to bear children. That’s not part of the cycle of life.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  I shrugged him off. “Besides, this is for the greater good. It’s not about me and my personal happiness. I’m taking Final Form. Nothing will stop me.”

  He studied me, contemplating. “Dafne is a companion to Kiraka, keeping her sane and with some of her humanity, you said.”

  “That’s how I understand it,” I replied warily, not sure where he was going with this.

  He nodded, that decisive gesture. “Then I’ll go with you. I’ll be your companion.”

  “What? No.”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking about this.”

  “You’ve been thinking about a thrice-cursed lot of things.”

  “Yes, this is important to me. You are important, so I’ve been thinking through all the possibilities. You’ll need someone to be your human companion if you take dragon form. Who better than the person who loves you better than anyone in the world?”

  “Anyone but you!”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. You have a life to live. I know you want children to add to that horde of a family of yours.” Thinking of Dafne’s swelling pregnancy, how perfect little Iris had fit just so in my arms, irrational jealousy filled me. “And if you think I’d forgive you taking a wife and happily impregnating her while being my friend and human companion, I wouldn’t.”

  “You’d incinerate my wife?” He tried to sound aghast, but the corners of his mouth quirked with delight.

  I’d trapped myself, revealing too much. “I won’t have to do that as you’ll be off on the farm bedding her in your little cottage. I won’t have to see it.” Ugh, but the image was far too vivid in my mind. The thought of another woman in his bed, sleeping wrapped in his scent and arms did make me want to breathe fire.

  “I don’t think you’d put it out of your mind so easily,” he said, still looking pleased, as if he could read my thoughts as he claimed to. “You’d know and you’d hate it, thinking of me with another woman, living the life you could have had.”

  As always, he was right, but Moranu take me if I’d admit it. “You’re wrong. I won’t give you and your boring mossback life another thought after I become the dragon.”

  “Liar,” he said, grinning.

  I didn’t know how to deal with him, how to make him see. I growled, feeling the tiger wanting to rise up.

  Marskal held out a hand, expression going serious. “Don’t upset yourself. I’d never leave you. I don’t want another woman, ever. You’ve spoiled me for mossback girls. I want you and I’m staying with you. I love you, no matter what form you wear.”

  “Marskal,” I said hopelessly, “you can’t give up your whole life.”

  “You’re giving up yours. You expect I’d do less?”

  “It’s not the same. I’m sacrificing for a greater good; you’d be doing it for me, and I’m not worth it.”

  He dropped his hand, face going stern with determination. “Don’t tell me what you’re worth to me.”

  “This was always my plan,” I said, holding my voice as steady as I could. “I never expected more
than that. Never expected…” To fall in love. That was this tangle of emotion. Moranu take the man, he was right.

  He knew it, too, easily filling in what I hadn’t said. “I love you, too,” he said quietly. “That’s not a tragedy. It’s a gift.”

  “A gift I can’t accept.”

  “No? Remember who gave it to you.”

  When I frowned, puzzled, he smiled. “A goddess is guiding your steps. I’d be careful of thwarting Moranu’s plan.”

  Having had enough of him and his certainty, I let go. Not reaching, but slipping down. Taking falcon form, I let the fur cloak drop away and took to the icy blue sky.

  Taking refuge in flight and not thinking about anything at all.

  ~ 27 ~

  I circled above, watching Marskal ride the one horse, leading the other, my staymach bird on one shoulder, his on the other. He’d bundled up my fur cloak neatly on the saddle, riding along in his direct, unhurried way. I’d considered flying ahead to Windroven. I could have been there and gone before he reached it. If freeing the dragon wasn’t too difficult.

  That, however, would be the coward’s way out. I’d run from our conversation, but I was done escaping all the time. If I was going to take Final Form, then I needed to embrace every consequence, good and bad, that came with it.

  Besides, I missed him.

  Marskal spotted me, his face lifted to watch my descent. He held up a leather-clad arm, so I landed on it, careful not to pierce his flesh with my talons. Looking into my eyes, he caressed my head with a gloved finger. “Welcome back, quicksilver girl,” he murmured. “Good flight?”

  I hopped off his arm, landing on human feet and summoning a fur cloak and boots to wear also.

  Marskal raised his eyebrows. “Nice trick.”

  As if nurtured by the time of disuse, my shapeshifting ability did indeed feel as if it had grown. A vast reserve of power awaited, like a reservoir deep beneath the earth. It made me wonder if Kiraka had intended that, priming me for the shift to Final Form.

  “I still think you’re impossible,” I told Marskal.

  He smiled easily at me. “Likewise. See how well suited we are?”

  I shook my head at him in exasperation. “You can stay with me until we release the dragon. Then we part ways.”

  “No,” he replied. “Hungry? My mother packed lunch.”

  I huffed at him, but I let him feed me anyway.

  Though we didn’t send our staymach birds ahead—as I hadn’t thought there would be anyone there to understand their mind messages—Queen Amelia and her consort, Ash, were awaiting us at the castle gates, clearly alerted by the Avonlidgh watch. The castle, built into the volcanic rock of the high peak, reminded me oddly of the carved dragons at the Nahanaun harbor, entwined into their perches. There was no peak or crater as at Nahanau, but sulfuric smoke lingered in the wintery air, a distinctive odor I remembered well, and ash sifted with the occasional flurry of snowflakes. The rumbling I heard might be the sleeping volcano—or dragon—or could be the violent surf dashing itself on the cliffs below.

  As we made the last turn up the narrow road that climbed the old volcano, we easily spotted them. Queen Amelia looked like a lavish hothouse flower against the winter-bare rocks, in her elaborate pink gown, a fur-trimmed cloak in a deeper shade over it. With her hood thrown back, the wind off the ocean caught her famous rose-gold curls, that the poets called the color of sunrise, grown much longer now. Ash, a step behind her and dressed in deep green, stood as still as the Sentinel stones we’d sailed through months ago.

  “The last time I did this,” Marskal murmured to me, “we brought her husband’s corpse home. The day was just as bleak.”

  I cast him a narrow glance. “I hope you aren’t being superstitious now.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Of course not. Mossbacks don’t care for such things.”

  Because I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, and even I wouldn’t do that in front of a queen, even one not mine, I studiously stared into the distance, ignoring his chuckle. As one we dismounted, walking the last few steps. Marskal bowed to Amelia. I inclined my head in respect. The poets call her Glorianna’s avatar and, while Ami looked nothing like Salena, she carried her mother’s shapeshifter magic in her blood, too—which manifested in her unearthly beauty. In contrast, Ash’s scarred visage revealed little of his Tala partblood, but his apple-green eyes were those of a healer.

  I acknowledged him, too, belatedly wondering if he had enough mind magic to read the staymachs. Something to find out.

  “Cousin Zynda,” Ami said in her musical voice. “Lieutenant Marskal. Come in out of the wind.” We followed them into the inner courtyard. “I understand you’re here to rid me of vermin in the cellars,” she continued.

  “Ah, you received some letters then?”

  “From Dafne ages ago and now Her Majesty sent one only yesterday, commanding me to render all assistance and not to be a brat about it. Verbatim.” Her lovely mouth twisted in wry humor. “So here I am, graciously rendering all assistance. I should tell you, though, that the rumbling has subsided considerably since the Feast of Moranu. Maybe the dragon went back to sleep?”

  I didn’t know, but small hairs of foreboding rose on my skin. I reached out with my magic, sensing the presence of dragon that felt like Kiraka, but couldn’t discern more. “We’ll find out.”

  “Go ahead.” Ami smiled prettily. “But I’ll be put out if you wreck my house. What do you need?”

  I glanced at Marskal who returned it blandly. Up to me, then. “I just need access to the depths of the volcano, I suppose.”

  “We need access,” Marskal corrected. “And I can find my way through the lower tunnels, Your Highness, if we have your leave to go where we may.”

  Ami smiled at him, so radiantly lovely that even the stoic Marskal looked dazzled. I suppressed a snicker at his expense. “That’s right, Lieutenant,” Ami said. “I recall you and some of the other Hawks whiled away the time during my lying in by exploring the tunnels.”

  He bowed again. “We did, and—”

  A small furry shape hurtled out the doors to the inner castle, followed by another. One resolved into a little girl with curls like her mother’s, but in Tala raven black. She threw herself at me, climbing me like a tree, small fingers digging with clawlike tenacity, shrieking, “Auntie Andi! Auntie Andi!” The other remained a small black cat, but—not to be outdone—climbed my other side with actual claws, ending perched on my shoulder.

  Ami lost all regal bearing and gasped in maternal horror. “Stella! Astar! That is not your Auntie Andi. Get down immediately and greet your Auntie Zynda appropriately.”

  Ash stepped forward, ready to assist, though Marskal only grinned at me, no help at all. “Stella—what have we discussed about licking people?” Ash said sternly.

  For Stella was indeed licking my cheek, snuffling happily, while Astar purred in my ear. “That’s all right,” I told him. “This I actually know how to handle.” I threw Marskal a significant look, but his grin remained undimmed.

  Turning my head, I sniffed Stella’s cheek and licked her in return, sharing her scent, murmuring to her in Tala and sharing some baby thoughts with her, as I would with a staymach. Her eyes widened and she stuck her little finger in her mouth. With a pang, I realized Anya’s daughter might have been just like Stella, the magic of the mark thick in the air around her. My staymach bird that had taken wing in startlement circled her head, and she immediately focused on it, drawn by its magic.

  “Would you like to play?” I asked. “Must be good and stay in human form.” She transferred her intense deep blue gaze to me and nodded. “Hold out your finger,” I said, the warm memory of teaching Marskal the same catching me unexpectedly. I looked his way to find him watching me with sensual intensity, no doubt remembering also. Setting Stella down, I showed her how to hold the bird, and nudged an image into her mind of how to exchange pictures with it. A very simple child’s game.

  Her brothe
r dug his claws into my shoulder, feline eyes glinting entirely the wrong color. We’d have to work on that.

  But I rubbed whiskers with him, giving him the same greeting, and he relaxed his claws, purring. I gave him a little suggestion, promising that he could play with the staymach, too, if he’d take human form. He shivered into a toddler again. Naked, but that could be fixed with more practice. Reaching for Stella’s staymach, he screeched like a cat, and I had to firmly remind him of manners. He quieted, wide eyes just like his twin’s, and put out his finger for the bird Marskal offered, so they’d have one each.

  I smiled gratefully, and gave Astar the same instructions. Both twins put their heads together, murmuring to the staymachs and showing them to Ami and Ash.

  “Now who’s the baby whisperer?” Marskal murmured, brown eyes alight with quiet mirth. He nodded when I raised my brows. “I know they call me that.”

  “Well, I might not know babies,” I replied, “but I know how to herd unruly shapeshifter children. See what a narrow escape you’ve had?”

  “I don’t want to escape,” he replied in that making-a-vow voice. “I want that.”

  I made a sound of frustration. “It’s never going to—”

  “You’re hired,” Ami said, swanning over and waving her hands at me in wonder, interrupting our hushed exchange. “Stay here forever. I command it. Ash—disarm the lieutenant. They’re never allowed to leave.”

  “If only,” Ash fervently agreed.

  “True,” Ami sighed. “The Tala nurses Andi sent hated…well, everything here so much that I let them go home. We’ve yet to find a new nurse capable of keeping Willy and Nilly from escaping at every turn, much less shifting into something new every week.”

  “Must run in the family,” Marskal noted blandly, and I glared at him, making no dent in his good cheer whatsoever.

  Ami laughed, a sound like sunshine made musical. “We do have some information you might need. So, in return for ridding me of an unwanted dragon and taming my beastly children, we can at least fill you in and feed you before sending you into the bowels of the volcano.”