by Raye Wagner
The king pursed his lips, and his gaze went glassy and unfocused for several seconds before he straightened with a grin.
“Steele,” King Ozark said, giving the army fatigue dude his attention. “Who was in charge of the contingency of warriors left at Dark Row?”
Army fatigue dude, aka Steele, stood, and his gaze darted from the king to my least favorite selkie. “Chinook.”
The king nodded and then rotated his head slightly. “Melody?”
The female selkie raised her head. “Yes, My Liege?”
“Stand up,” he said, waving his hand at her to rise.
She froze, unmoving.
“Stand up.”
She jumped to her feet, her eyes wide.
“Now, you were with Chinook, weren’t you?”
‘What the hell is he doing?’ I asked Rage, glancing at him out of the corner of my eyes.
Rage shrugged. ‘No idea. It’s either a demonstration for us or because of us.”
I wanted to ask what that meant, but my attention jumped back to the female selkie as she bobbed her head.
“Can you confirm that he gave the order to follow the wolves?” the king asked.
Melody’s gaze bounced from the king to Chinook and back before she said, “Yes.”
King Ozark stroked his chin. “So the reward for bringing me these two wolves should rest solely on the shoulders of the selkie who risked so much to accomplish this daring feat, should it not?”
Chinook raised his chin and grinned.
“Melody?” The king’s prompting was accompanied by a stern look at the female. “Does anyone else deserve credit for his daring decision?”
“No, Your Majesty. Chinook made the decision. The rest of us were just following his orders.”
Holy frickin’ mage. I glared at the selkie, fuming as I spoke to Rage. ‘If Chinook gets props for—'
‘Wait,’ Rage said to silence me.
“Steele,” King Ozark said, rising from his throne. “Your blade.”
‘Is he going to get a knighthood?’ I snarled. Why did the dirtbags always get ahead?
Steele drew his sword and handed it to the king.
The king took the blade and then stepped in front of Chinook—who was no longer grinning. In fact … was he shaking?
“There’s a reason I give orders. Always a reason. And your disregard cost us two selkie warriors—”
“But I brought you the alpha king’s heir.” Chinook raised his head and gritted his jaw in anger. “His first heir!”
King Ozark swung, and the blade sang as it sliced through the air—
My eyes bugged as the weapon disappeared into one side of Chinook’s neck and out the other side. Something warm sprayed my legs, and I blinked. No way … no way!
Chinook stiffened, and then his head toppled forward, falling off his body and bouncing once before rolling onto one of the green rugs. His body sagged, slumping toward me as blood gushed out of his severed neck.
Rage yanked me close, out of the trajectory of the beheaded selkie, but it was too late. I was covered in blood.
Holy Mother of Mages. The king didn’t mess around with his punishments.
“There’s no place in my herd for a self-aggrandizing jackass who can’t follow orders,” the king muttered. He wiped the blade on his pants and then held it out to Steele. “Your blade.”
Steele swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he took the blade.
“Now, where were we?” the king asked as he ascended his throne. He sat and then turned his attention to Rage and me.
Rage met the king’s gaze, and I could see the vein pulse in my mate’s neck as he lowered his head in respect to the man. All right. So this was happening. I followed his lead, glancing out of the corner of my eye to see when Rage lifted his head.
King Ozark looked at Rage with a grin. “Are you indeed the first heir?”
“I am Courage Midnight.” Rage licked his lips and then pointed at me. “And this is my fated mate, Nai Crescent.”
“How lovely.” King Ozark turned to Steele. “Kill them and send their heads to the alpha king.” He issued the command and then glanced down as if to inspect something on his lap.
Wait. What?
Steele turned toward us and pulled his blade as Rage yelled. “Wait!”
The king looked at him with a raised eyebrow and then rolled his eyes. “Let me guess: let you go, and you’ll give me useless gold”—he narrowed his eyes—“or a false promise of reuniting our races and allowing the island to become Shifter Island once again? I’ve heard these lies all before. Your people do nothing but lie.”
Fur rippled down Rage’s arms. Was he going to shift—oh, right, the magic powder … that canceled magic.
My mate stepped forward. “Let me go, and I’ll give you the current alpha king’s head, and as first heir, I’ll become alpha king. Then I will have the power to reunite the shifter races on the island once again. This I swear on my father’s grave.”
Whoa.
The king cocked his head and narrowed his eyes as he leaned forward. “You’d kill your own uncle?”
“Absolutely,” Rage said without hesitation. “He’s a monster. I don’t align with his beliefs—now that I better understand them. I’ll do what’s best for my people, and that’s to stop this war between our races.”
Holy mage. Rage was going to fight for the alpha spot early? Pride and fear wrestled inside of me, churning my gut.
The king straightened, crossing his arms over his jacked-up chest. “Would you swear it? In a binding?”
Rage went very still before nodding once. “You have my word. Let me and my mate go and I will bring you the king’s head.”
‘Rage, what’s a binding?’
“Fetch the mage,” the king told Melody, who scurried off at his word.
‘Rage,’ I pressed my mate.
He sighed. ‘It’s a magical agreement I can’t back out of. Similar to the one you took with Surlama to give her monthly blood donations.’
Oh…
Oh! I remembered Surlama laughing and saying something about a curse falling upon me and my children—or was it that I wouldn’t have children? Either way, she’d promised bad things would happen if I didn’t fulfill my promise. Which reminded me … when was the next full moon? Definitely had to kill Surlama before then.
Kill Surlama.
Bring back Honor.
Get the alpha king’s head.
No big deal. Normal to-do-list, right?
‘So if you don’t kill your uncle, you’ll…’ I purposefully left my statement open, waiting for Rage to clue me in on the consequence of his oath.
‘If I don’t fulfill the terms of our agreement in time, I’ll die.’
I shook my head. ‘Do not make me come to the Realm of the Dead for you, Rage.’
“Steele, once we’ve finished with the mage, tell the girls in the kitchen we’ll have guests for breakfast,” King Ozark said.
Breakfast? Oh, right. Being nocturnal, selkies were probably just having their first meal. I snickered nervously and then said to the king, “I hope you don’t mean have the guests for breakfast.”
Rage closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You have no filter, love.’
Grimacing, I forced my gaze back up to the selkie king. “It’s a nervous habit. I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, I called Rage an asshole in front of all the other alpha heirs on my first day.”
King Ozark raised his eyebrows, seemingly amused. “Indeed?”
I nodded.
‘The last time he asked that question of someone, they got their head cut off.’
“I’m going to shut up now,” I said with a wave. And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop: “I like my head where it is—attached to my neck and all that.”
Rage groaned, but King Ozark’s eyes were dancing with delight.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to win a diplomacy award anytime soon, but at least I seemed to amuse him.
Rage took a deep breath and then shook his head. “Not typically.”
Aww—
‘Usually, you’re worse,’ he said with a wink.
Whaa—? ‘That was just rude,’ I said, digging my elbow into his side. ‘You’re not exactly Mr. Congeniality yourself.’
Rage cleared his throat, and I looked up to find King Ozark staring at us. This time, I bit my tongue.
“If we’re both going to be ruling our people on the same island eventually, it would be good to get off on the right foot,” the selkie king said.
‘Or flipper…’ I chirped to Rage, this time being careful to keep my thoughts inside my head.
“I want to be reasonable … give you every chance for success. I myself was only a year older than you when I became king.”
‘How does he know how old you are?’
‘Please, Nai, I’m trying to get a read on him.’
Ugh.
“What kind of timeline are you proposing?” he said to the king.
“A year. I’ll give you a year to dethrone Declan and bring me his head.” He held out his hands. “I think building trust between our two races would benefit us both.”
“Trust would be a good thing to start with,” Rage replied.
‘Maybe don’t use quite so much sarcasm,’ I told Rage.
‘Do you think he noticed?’
‘Let’s hope not. I wasn’t kidding about liking my head where it is.’
Not even a breath later, the slapping of rubber against rock drew my attention toward the entrance. Was that flip-flops?
I turned and, sure enough, a male mage wearing Bermuda shorts, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt with none of its buttons fastened, waltzed into the room. His body was thin but lithe, and all eight of his abdominal muscles popped like little squares between the two sides of his shirt. I knew better than to judge a mage by his appearance, but this dude looked young. He pushed his bleach-blond hair out of his eyes and grinned at the selkie king, showcasing his mage mark, a thin triangle with a single dot inside.
“Hey, Ozzie, whassup?” he drawled. “Mel said you needed a binding or somethin’?”
Did he…? I frowned, certain I’d heard that wrong.
“It’s King Ozark,” the king growled. “Not Ozzie.”
The mage shook his head. “Uhh … trust me, Ozzie is cooler—” He held up his hands when the king snarled. “But suit yourself. What can I do for ya?”
‘He’s got a teenage mage who might be high or drunk.’ Could mages get high? My attention went from the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old young man to Rage. ‘And you’re going to let that kid do a binding on you?’
‘Do you have a better suggestion?’ Rage responded.
King Ozark finished telling the mage what he wanted, and the young man grimaced.
“What?” Ozark snapped. “Can’t you do a simple binding?”
“Simple?” the young mage asked. “Sure. But what you’re proposing ain’t no simple binding. There are terms and limitations, like timing and what if—”
“You’re supposed to be a prodigy. Why do I keep you around? Can you do it or not?” Ozark bellowed.
The young man’s gaze darted back and forth between the king and Rage while tapping his chin as if weighing whether or not the binding was possible. “What’s your affinity, Alpha Heir?”
‘Damn. Not info I wanted the selkie king knowing.’
Rage took a deep breath and said, “Fire.”
The mage dude’s attention jumped to me, and his eyes widened slightly. I glanced down only to see the mark on my chest was peeking out over the stretched-out neckline of my damp shirt.
“Yeah,” the young man said. “I can do it.”
‘I don’t trust him,’ I said to Rage. ‘Something is off. He only said yes after he saw the tip of my high mage fire mark.’
‘Are you sure that was it, or was he checking out your breasts?’ Rage asked, his voice laced with possessiveness.
I didn’t know. Not . ‘Killing him might upset this tenuous trust thing you’ve got going on with the king. Maybe hold that thought for a bit.”
The mage listed off items, everything from a wooden bowl to an iron needle, a glass of fresh water, and strips of muslin. Steele wrote the list onto a small notepad he had produced from his pocket, and seconds later, I heard shouts from outside the great hall echoing the list.
Way to put the hive mind to use.
The longer the mage spent listing off items, the more it felt wrong.
There was too much; it felt showy. Surlama hadn’t required a million things to work her magical binding. In fact, I didn’t recall anything more than the tools she used to get my blood. Then again, her minion had appeared with the elixir, so who knew what kind of ritual she went through even though the ingredients were two: blood and mage wine. The Keeper of Souls didn’t use any fancy props either for our agreement.
Melody, aka Mariah II, returned with two additional women wheeling carts of materials. Of course, a nice long knife sat atop the folds of fabric, which could only mean…
Blood magic.
‘Time to use those diplomacy skills, Rage. Chat up King Ozzie, and I’ll see what I can find out from the mage dude. I don’t trust him.’
‘Got it.’
Rage turned his attention to the selkie king and asked, “How long have you ruled the selkies? The last record we have was when King Pike ruled.”
“That was back when your uncle banned us from Shifter Island,” Ozark replied, his tone heavily weighted with displeasure. “Nearly twenty years ago.”
Yikes! I hadn’t realized the timing was so close to when Crescent Clan got the boot.
I tuned out their conversation and approached the young mage. “How many bindings like this have you done before?”
“A couple dozen.” He shrugged and began to organize the items, setting the knife, three wooden bowls, and a bottle of mage wine on one cart and everything else on the other.
I sidled up closer and dropped my voice. “Sooo, you seem pretty powerful. Are you an adept? Or maybe even a master mage?”
I probed for how well this guy knew his magical crap since he was about to cut into my mate.
“No,” he muttered, shooting me a glare. “Only the rich mage kids get to attend the High Mage Academy and get a mage ranking.”
What? High Mage Academy sounded lame—or maybe that was all of mage society. “That’s stupid.”
He looked up from his sorting and just glared at me. “It is what it is.”
“What’s with all the ingredients?” I pointed to his bowls and other stuff he’d amassed. “You sure you can do this? I’m sort of fond of my mate and don’t want it backfiring.”
He glared at me and shook his head. “Of course I can. Why else would I be bound to the selkie king if I wasn’t the best in my village?”
Whoa. “Bound? Like an indentured servant?”
Was that even legal? I guess so since Surlama said her sister was in a similar situation with the alpha king.
He shook his head, and the tension coiling in my chest waned.
“My mother had eight kids. She couldn’t afford to feed all of us, so she sold me—” he leaned forward. “—like a slave. That’s what happens out here when you’re born into poverty, Alpha Heir.” He sliced the tip of a dagger through his hand, letting the blood from his wound drip into the wooden bowl.
Someone was grumpy, not that I could blame him.
He wound a piece of muslin around the cut and then faced me. “Or should I call you High Mage Heir?”
‘My cover’s been blown. Mayday! Mayday!’ I told Rage, but he just looked at me funny from across the room.
I straightened, my heart thundering in my chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I played coy but yanked my top up to cover my mark in case it was exposed again.
“Sure you don’t.” He shook his head. “There’s a differ
ent name for those like you…”
I stepped back, willing him to keep his mouth shut.
His expression tightened, and he hissed, “High crime.”
Frick.
“Are you ready, Jakko boy?” King Ozark asked from across the room. “Breakfast is done, and I’m famished. I’m sure our guests are hungry as well.”
The mage glared at the king and poured some mage wine into the bowl with his blood. Then, he dragged a strip of linen through the elixir and set it into the next empty bowl. When he looked up toward the king and Rage, his expression smoothed, and he smiled vapidly. “Give me your hand next, Alpha Heir.” He looked to Rage.
‘Is it okay?’ Rage asked.
‘I don’t know.’ I swallowed hard. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t take very much blood, but I couldn’t get a good read on him.’
I didn’t know crap about magic, but why was Jakko using his blood in the spell when it was only between Rage and the king? I guess I didn’t do a very good job of scoping this dude out. But we’d have to roll with it if we wanted out of here.
Three drops of Rage’s blood later, and the mage grabbed a clean piece of the cloth and wrapped it around Rage’s finger. “That’s all I need from you.”
Rage nodded and stepped back. ‘That was easy.’
‘Too easy. He didn’t even ask you to swear an oath or make a promise.’
‘Maybe that’s next?’ Rage said, but he side-eyed the stoner mage with suspicion.
Maybe I should have asked the dude how much weed he smoked today. That might’ve been better than grilling him on magic I knew nothing about.
“All right, King Ozark,” the young man said, waving for the selkie king to come closer. “It’s your turn.”
Ozark descended the dais and towered over the mage kid, but I only saw that out of the corner of my eye because my attention was riveted on the wooden bowls. Jakko hadn’t poured Rage’s blood into the main bowl that he’d put his own blood and mage wine into. Not that I knew if he was supposed to or not, but … it didn’t feel right.
In fact, the little stoner had taken the cloth from out of the bowl where he’d collected Rage’s blood and then wiped the entire dagger’s blade with it. He switched his grip on the hilt, and my alarm bells started ringing. Instead of angling the blade to the side, to prick the king’s finger … he held it tight in his fist like he was going to stab someone.