She looked into the saltwater and watched the silhouettes of mermen and mermaids flipping through the water. Occasionally, there was a dolphin or something seal shaped, but in general, it was the under-fey.
Thadra smiled and looked back at her bag. To her amusement, the bag had been unpacked, and the doors to the closet were opened to receive her dresses and casual clothing as the hangars floated in.
“Thank you. It is most considerate.”
The closet closed neatly, and there was a happy hum to the room.
She smiled and looked around. “Do you think I should go for a bit of a walk?”
The room warmed slightly in agreement.
“Thank you for your response. Here I go. Let’s see how many fey I can scare.”
She rubbed her hands together, and she opened her door, heading down the steps and smiling at Juno and Derix. The shifter was swatting her mate. So, apparently, he had said something she wasn’t fond of.
Thadra slipped out and into the daylight, leaving the two guardians to fix whatever they were squabbling about. The sun waited, and she loved just to walk around absorbing the light. Most of her work was done in the dark.
She walked onto the bridge that was over the brackish water and stared out to the constructed sea. Near the bridge, she could see the merfolk, but out in the distance, she could make out a fin. Interesting. There really were all kinds of shifters here seeking mates.
She smiled and walked toward the shops and the scents of food. It was time to take the little charm on her wrist for a spin.
* * * *
Rik caught the formal court dress out of the corner of his eye as he walked out of the water. The stand of hip wraps was in front of him, and he took advantage of the provided covering.
He turned, and she was gone. “Damn it.”
Six weeks he had been at the Isthmus, and for six weeks, he had waited for his mate to show up. His mother had seen that his mate would appear at the Crossroads, so she had sent him along without asking him if he was ready for a mate.
He sighed and headed into the tower.
Derix and Juno were glaring at each other, and he asked, “Is there anything I can help you two with?”
Juno gave him a bright smile. “Nope. Derix is just being a superstitious ninny.”
“Superstitious?”
Derix growled. “I am not eager to have death under our roof.”
Rik blinked. “You have no problem with me.”
Derix shook his head. “Of course not. The guest in question has a reputation for disaster following in her wake.”
“But is it a confirmed situation or just a rumour?” Rik smiled slightly.
Derix frowned. “I don’t know. It is just one of those things that is common knowledge.”
Juno snorted. “He didn’t even know who the guest was until he heard the name. You fey and your weird superstitions.”
Derix scowled at his mate. “You are half-fey now as well.”
She chuckled. “Only my magic.”
Derix looked at her and took one of her hands. “You are magical, love.”
Rik smiled. The tension was broken. His mother’s training in simply listening had paid off once again.
He asked casually, “Who is the new guest?”
Juno glared at Derix and then smiled at Rik. “She is a half-fey named Thadra.”
“What is she looking for?”
An amused female voice came from behind him. “I was looking for a sandwich, but I settled for a pretzel dog with mustard.”
The woman in question was standing, backlit by the light of the open archway. She was wearing a court gown with an embroidered sash that carried a family crest he wasn’t familiar with.
Her hair was swept up on top of her head, and it cascaded down in a wave over her shoulders, barely concealing the severely pointed ears that were the hallmark of mixed-blood fey.
She bit into the mustard-slathered item in her right hand, and she chewed slowly. “Shall I leave?”
Juno chuckled. “No. I would like to introduce you to our current longest resident, Rik. Rik, this is Thadra.”
The woman smiled at him and waved with a mustard-dotted hand. “I would shake your hand, but it wouldn’t end well.”
He looked at the bright amusement in her eyes as she took a neat bite once again. “I will take a raincheck.”
She wrinkled her nose and looked around. “Where did they go?”
Rik looked around him and chuckled. “I believe they have evaporated. They tend to do that during moments of first contact.”
She cocked her head, and there appeared to be surprise on her face. “Is that what this is?”
There was a golden bronze tint to her skin that darkened as he looked at her. He tilted his head to one side. “That is what this is.”
She glanced around. “I get the feeling that I should back out of here or something.”
He chuckled. “I can get dressed. Would you like a tour?”
She cleared her throat, and the colour rose. “Don’t get dressed on my account.”
He shrugged. “If you don’t mind then, shall we go for a walk?”
She hesitated and then smiled. “Thank you. I am rarely out of my depth, but this is one of those times.”
He smiled again and watched as her blush filled her cheeks. Could she be the one he was waiting for?
* * * *
Walking in on the conversation had felt a little rude, but as they were discussing her, Thadra felt that she was entitled to contribute to it.
She wanted to go on the tour with Rik, but she had no idea what to do with the pretzel dog. She looked around, the wall wavered for a moment, and then, a garbage can and small fountain appeared. She grinned. The tower was really listening.
Thadra walked over and disposed of her snack before washing her hands. The mustard came off surprisingly easily. She flicked her fingers a few times and then heated them to dry.
When she turned back to Rik, he was standing there with an amused look on his face.
“Are you a fire elemental?”
She smiled. “Yes. Family inheritance. Judging by your attire, you spend a lot of time in the water.”
He inclined his head. “Family inheritance.”
She nodded and took a step toward the open doorway. “Shall we?”
“Of course.”
To her amazement, he offered her his arm. He wasn’t afraid of her, he was simply accepting her as a woman. She blinked at the novelty of being normal. It had been a very long time since she was just a lady walking with a man.
His skin was warm and had a texture that she couldn’t quite place. She could swear that she felt a pulse beneath the skin and that it sped up when she touched him.
Thadra’s hand was on the back of his forearm, and he moved it, tucking it in the crook of his elbow. His smile was flirtatious. “We are not entering the royal court.”
She blinked. “Right. Apologies.”
He stared at her for a moment and then chuckled softly. “You don’t get out much, do you?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not really. I spend most of my time working or doing research.”
He started walking, and she followed his lead. He asked politely, “What sort of research?”
“Genetics. My father is one of the rare in court that managed to climb to a relatively respected position, despite having a blended background. I help him with his research by getting samples and documents from other families with the same traces.”
Rik nodded. “Interesting work.”
“It can be.” She sighed in relief. It seemed he was accepting her hobby as her occupation. For the first time in recent memory, she didn’t want someone to know. “What do you do in the real world?”
“I am a geologist. I work with rocks and stone and try to tell the history of the world by what has layered with time.”
She smiled. “It sounds very romantic.
”
“My family expected me to work with water, but the rock always called to me. I like it.”
“Do you dabble in seismology?”
They were walking across the bridge. “Yes. How did you guess?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Water and rocks collide violently in one place, and that is under the sea.”
Rik nodded. “You are very intuitive.”
“It helps me to work things out. Another gift from an ancestor.” She quirked her lips.
His bare feet seemed not to be distressed by the walkway, the stone, and the sand that they walked on in turn. He showed her the shops, the restaurants, and the beaches that led to the artificial ocean.
“This is where I spend most of my days. In the human world, I have to time my shifts and make sure that there are no witnesses. Here, I can just shift and swim whenever the urge takes me.”
Thadra smiled. “It looks nice. I don’t get along with water. I mean, I do, but I prefer to be over it or next to it. There is nothing like the sound of it lapping against a rocky shore.”
“Can you swim?”
She bit her lip. “I haven’t for quite a while, but I believe the skills are still there.”
“Would you care to join me? I mean, I won’t shift if it will make you uncomfortable.”
Thadra smiled. “I won’t be uncomfortable for long. Do I have to get undressed? I don’t do that often in front of strangers.”
He nodded. “Right. Not a shifter. If you don’t mind getting your dress exposed to saltwater, be my guest.”
She smiled and removed her shoes, digging in the sand a little with her toes. Before she stepped into the water, she looked at him and asked, “What kind of shifter are you?”
He shrugged and removed the wrap around his hips, discarding it casually as he walked into the water. “I am most closely related to a large shark.”
She swallowed and waded in after him. It was going to freak her out, so she was better off being in the water with him when he shifted. It would make her less able to make a run for it if she had to swim past him.
It was time to see how meeting men at the Crossroads could go.
Chapter Five
She had just gotten the hang of treading water when Rik smiled and disappeared beneath the waves.
The surge of magic underneath her was impressive and had undertones of different brands of fey and shifters. The variety of ethnicities in his magic was more evident than the strong mix of pacific islander and Asian in his features. The feel of the magic was from Japan.
The waves shifted around her, and the huge fin rose out of the water ten feet away. The tail also cut through the air, and the barbs on top of it reminded her of something she had read about once. Off a certain part of Japan, there was a creature that could spear fishermen off a boat with its tail in order to eat them. That was one part of the beast she was looking at. The rest was great white shark.
She was in the water, treading water, with the largest predator she had ever seen.
He moved slowly toward her, and she could see the black of his eyes under the water. There were tribal markings in the grey of his skin, and they mixed and melded, shifting in a constant barrage of patterns. She recognized the patterns as representing sharks in at least twelve different mythology sets. His ancestors really got around.
He nudged her with his side, and she dipped under the water for a moment before she came up, spluttering. He nudged her more carefully, and she caught on. He wanted her to get on his back.
It was a little risqué for her first moment alone with a man, but she slipped her leg over his back and sat with her hands gripping his dorsal fin. He began to swim, and she settled into a comfortable kneeling position on his back. He was too wide to straddle comfortably for long.
She watched the slow tour of the coastline and smiled at the cottages and cabins that overlooked the Isthmus sea. The hide that Rik’s beast had was rough or smooth, depending on which way she moved.
Thadra was smiling and enjoying the trip when she noticed other creatures in the water swimming with them. The shapes got closer, and she could make out mermen racing her ride through the current.
When the first merman shot out of the waves and splashed on the other side of Rik, she held onto the fin a little tighter, but when the second left the water and tackled her into the waves, she shrieked as she was flung into the cool embrace of the saltwater.
Thadra concentrated on getting her head above the waves as Rik turned, and teeth flashed in the direction of the mermen.
She bobbed to the surface and took a deep breath before the current tugged her under.
There was no way for her to stay above the water for any length of time, so she did what she didn’t want to do. She called the stone.
It took a lot of focus, but she pulled a column of molten rock up out of the base of the Crossroads, and it rose toward her with a lot of energy. She held her breath and kept herself calm as the bubbling stone pier approached.
When it got close to her, she flattened it and let the surface cool while the molten column pushed her platform upward.
Her gasp of fresh air was a bellow of relief. Rik was a distance away, dealing with the mermen. Thadra looked back the way they had come, and she sighed. It was going to be a long walk back, so she had better start now.
Making a plan to get back, she began to extrude her pathway back to the shoreline. It was a few hundred metres, but she should be able to reach it before she ran out of strength. If she could manage it, she was going to run.
The first step was the hardest, but as she pulled the magma out of the seabed and it became lava, she ran it along the edge of her platform and turned it into a walkway. She took one step, got into a rhythm, and she ran to the shore as fast as she could.
Her feet struck sizzling rock over and over until she finally stumbled onto sand. There would be a five-kilometre hike back to the tower, but at least, she was on solid land.
She lay on the sand for a few minutes before she sent the walkway back to where it had come from. Her senses tracked the stone, and soon, it was molten and resting deep under the sea once again.
She sat up with her arms around her knees, and Rik finally finished playing with the mermen, and his fin headed for her.
Thadra waited, and when he switched shapes, he jumped easily out of the water and walked up to her, stark naked.
Thadra slowly let the air back into her lungs. She had been holding her breath.
Rik frowned. “Are you all right?”
She blinked and nodded. “Just catching my breath. I am really not that good in the water. The current was pulling at me.”
He crouched next to her, and it made keeping eye contact very important. “I saw that. I also saw that you managed to call stone.”
She smiled brightly and got to her feet. “Yes, that is my party trick.”
He stood, and he looked back at the water. “Would you like a ride back to the tower? It is a long walk.”
Thadra shook her head. “I am good with the walk.”
She put her money where her mouth was and started the walk along the coastline.
Rik fell into step with her. “Do you mind the company?”
“No. I am sorry that I am not more enthusiastic about the water.”
“It is not a problem. Did you ever swim in the ocean?”
She nodded. “I did. I swam every day when I was a child. My mother passed, and after that, I had no one to swim with.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
Thadra sighed. “I am sorry for wrecking our first day of interaction.”
“It is called a date, even if it wasn’t formalized.”
She chuckled. “Our first date then.”
“You didn’t ruin it. Those idiot mermen did. They have been picking fights with me for the last week, but I didn’t think that they would come at me with a guest on my back. I certainly never imagined tha
t they would attack you.”
Thadra shrugged. “I wasn’t prepared for the possibility of my being in deep water, so I rescued myself by instinct.”
He nodded. “It was a good instinct. So, you are an island builder?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. I have to be careful with what I do and where. The human satellites are everywhere. They see the kind of work that I do if I am not careful.”
He nodded. “So, you are registered as human?”
“Oh, no. My parents took one look at me and registered me as half-fey. So, I have an international passport and no country to call home.”
“You speak in a North American dialect.”
“I do. It is one of nineteen languages that I have been exposed to. My father and I have a small island in a volcanic chain of islands, and that is where I call home. International waters are wonderful.”
“You never have issues with it?”
“The occasional fisherman comes knocking, but we offer hospitality, and then, my father sends their boat on its way, with the fisherman lacking the memory of the visit.”
“You meddle with memory?”
“My father is authorized and only removes all information that would lead more to our door. He also removes the GPS record.”
Rik chuckled. “Thorough.”
“My father is nothing if not thorough.”
“How old is he?”
She paused as she did the math. “I believe he is seven hundred years old. He probably knows right down to the day, but yes, that is a good estimate.”
Rik let out a low whistle. “May I ask how old you are?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I would have to check my passport, but I think I have been an adult for five decades.”
He stumbled in the sand. “Really?”
Thadra shrugged. “It is my best guess. I don’t move through the world in a linear manner, so it is hard to tell. What about you, are you registered human?”
Crying Fire Page 3
