“I didn’t,” he murmurs as he leans down.
My heart speeds up. Is he going to kiss me?
“You didn’t what?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
“Read your mind. I read your face, and if I’m reading it correctly right now…” He brushes his lips against mine.
“You are,” I whisper as I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him again. “You are.”
This break will be one I’ll never forget. I helped to stop a maritime war, reconnected with my mom who I thought was dead, and gained a boyfriend. Who knows what the future will hold, but I’m ready to dive in and find out.
Enjoyed this story? Be sure to leave a review! Want to read more about some of the characters mentioned in the story? Then read the completed Magical Hunters Academy series.
About the Author
Nicole Zoltack is a USA Today bestselling author who loves to write romances. Of course. She did marry her first kiss, after all!
When she’s not writing about knights, superheroes, or witches, she enjoys spending time with her loving husband, three energetic young boys, and precious baby girl. She enjoys riding horses (pretending they’re unicorns, of course!) and going to the PA Renaissance Faire dressed in garb. She’ll also read anything she can get her hands on. Her current favorite TV shows are Game of Thrones and Stranger Things.
Sign up for her newsletter to learn when her next book is released as well as excerpts, cover reveals, and giveaways!
Salt and Stone
Rachel A. Marks
Salt and Stone © 2020 Rachel A. Marks
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 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 permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Chapter 1
Sareck found the body clinging to the rocks near his favorite fishing spot. A young woman, her pale form stark against the shallow pools. A pink crab perched on her upturned palm. In the dim light of the early morning, he thought her a washed-up sea creature, a storm-tossed remnant. Which, he supposed, she was. But he couldn’t even guess at the shore or ship she’d been tossed from.
The morning current had brought him a ghost.
Her hair was dark and wild around her face, woven with seagrass and small shells. Her naked form was delicate, a strange slick sheen to her bloodless skin. Violet slashes marked her lower back and her ribs, and her palms were scraped raw—as if she’d pulled herself over the sharp stones before she’d died.
He studied her in confusion and rising horror as the silver of the sea churned around the rocks. Where could she have come from? What madness had brought her to these shores?
He was alone on the island, no port for more than a hundred leagues. It was such a strange sight, unnatural. For a moment he wondered if he was dreaming.
Was the goddess Morrígan tormenting him yet again, ensuring that her brother Lyr brought Sareck this reminder? A reminder of death. Of her grip on his fate, on his soul.
He closed his eyes to the vision at his feet. “Why won’t you leave me in peace?” he whispered to the goddess.
Only the crash and hiss of the tide responded.
The gods never answered back. Never. Sareck hardly understood why he still tried to speak to them as if they cared. His sweet Breanne had been the one to catch their ear, the seer, her soul had understood the things of gods and spirits. Sareck was only a simple man. He was a man of war. A man of blood. He’d never heard the voice of the gods as his wife had.
With her gone . . . his link to the Otherworld had been wholly severed.
Still, as he looked down on the dead girl, he couldn’t help feeling as if the eyes of some deity were on him.
He couldn’t leave the body here. He couldn’t leave it to the sea, to the sun. She deserved a proper burial. Someone must have loved her.
As he’d loved his Breanne.
He stepped across the rocks, moving closer. The tide rushed up and slid over his boots, speckling the woman’s body in its salty foam before slinking away again.
The body shifted with its tug, skin catching the sunlight, color changing from grey to blue, then violet, then back to its original dull grey. He paused, noticing something odd coating her shoulder. A strange scabbing in a grey and blue curving pattern that ran down her back. Are those . . . scales?
As he bent closer, the pattern disappeared.
He shook his, muttering to himself, “Foolishness.”
The last three years of solitude had obviously made him lose his grip on reality.
Her body was cold against his as he lifted her it into his arms. He carried her from the shoreline, climbing up to his small hut that was settled among the trees on the higher ground.
His raven, Muninn, perched on the roof, released a tattling cry at his approach, sounding its disapproval. Sareck gave the bird a grimace and tapped the unlatched door open with his boot.
The scent of ash and leather filled the air of the shadowed room as he entered. A small fire still simmered in the hearth, its orange glow casting its warmth across the stone walls.
He walked across to his pallet and settled the body in the soft pelts. He hadn’t held a woman in six years, since his wife’s death. And now he found himself clinging to a ghost once more.
As he released her and stood his arms felt empty.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” he whispered to the dead girl. She looked even stranger in the low light, her skin cracked in places he hadn’t noticed before, on her belly, near her lips. Brine and speckles of salt stuck to one of her cheeks, just beneath her closed eyes. There were barnacles behind her ear and stuck to her chest. And the kelp he’d thought tangled to her from being tossed in the waves now appeared very different. It seemed to . . . grow from her flesh. It wrapped around her breasts, its roots trailing down her sides only to reemerge at her hips and lower back in small little copper and green sprouts here and there.
A chill wove through him as he studied her oddities. He took a step back.
Stories of strange beings that hid within nature rolled through his head. Tales of the fae, of water creatures that called you into their arms only to drown you.
But she was dead. Whatever, whoever she was.
He needed to just have this done and burry her so her soul could rest.
He grabbed his pickax and left the hut. He scanned the surrounding hills, considering where to bury the body. Beneath one of the many trees seemed a betrayal of her nature—she was obviously a soul that belonged to the sea. Perhaps the western cliffs. The earth was rougher terrain there. And if he placed enough large rocks over her, the animals would leave her be.
He made his way down the small hill, heading towards the water once more, stopping on the cliff’s edge. Dark rocks jutted in spots where large crevices had opened in the earth. This was where he’d buried his war ax when he’d first come to this island. He could put the dead girl here too. Somehow it seemed right.
He dug and picked, moving around the rocks and dirt, making a place for her to rest. When he was done he found himself pulling up several clutches of heather, tucking the purple flowers it into his gambeson for her grave.
Those last memories of his Breanne scratched at the ache within him, of her pale fingers clutching the cornflowers to her chest as he covered her face in linens. Her mouth drawn in a gr
im line, her bloodless cheeks gaunt from malnourishment.
She had died trying to give birth to their child only days before he’d arrived home. He discovered later that the famine had weakened her while he’d been away. She’d not eaten for many, many days. The child came early. In the end, both were lost. Wife and babe. His future. His Breanne . . . it was all taken in a breath.
He hadn’t been there when she needed him most. He hadn’t been there to save her.
The loss inside of him now seemed never-ending, a stone weighing down his bones becoming heavier each year that passed without her. It’s why he’d hidden himself here on this island, far from human contact. He felt death by his own hand was too easy an escape, He so deserved torment, agony for leaving her to fend for herself when she’d needed him most. This island, this solitude and loneliness, was his punishment.
Only the dead visited him now.
He walked back into the hut and gathered the strange, cold body of the young woman in his arms, then he made his way back to the cliffs. He placed her into the crevice he’d widened for her and tried with everything in him not to see Breanne in her pale features. Not to feel as if he was burying his wife all over again. He hardened his heart and placed the dirt and rocks over the face, the belly, the feet, not allowing himself to really look at her. Until only strands of hair were visible in the ruble, like a tangle of roots emerging from the grave.
He pulled the heather from his gambeson then and placed it on the rocks before turning away.
Sareck couldn’t sleep. Even with his bones weary from working to break up a tree for the week’s heat, he couldn’t find rest.
The icy winds knocked at the door of his hut and rattled the walls, the roar of the sea rising like a crashing thunder. But this was nothing new, it was the same as any winter’s night here on the isle. Usually the ocean’s restless nature was a comfort to him, an echo of his own inner turmoil.
But this storm felt different, a stranger’s rage, rather than his own.
He rolled over and groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
Perhaps it was the sight of the dead woman that had caused him to be so unsettled. He wanted to pretend he felt none of it. But the tug of death, of his memories, the threads of Fate, it all seemed to hover over, around him, voices from the past whispering, the voice of his wife, the scent of blood, the sound of his own cries as he wept over her, over her swollen belly, the crunch and clack of the rocks being placed on the body of the young woman . . .
He was glad he’d piled so many rocks over her or she’d be washing away with this storm.
Thunder cracked at the sky, followed by a flash of lighting under the door.
His raven, Muninn, released a disgruntled titter.
Sareck sat up, rubbing his forehead, cursing, “Gods teeth.” He’d not sleep a wink with all this racket.
The sky, the sea, seemed to growl in response, confirming his thoughts.
“Very well,” he grumbled back. He rose from his pallet and moved to the hearth, poking at the dying embers. Water dripped down from the small flue, hissing in the ashes. He placed a chip of peat and several dry pieces of wood on the fading glow and brought it back to life once more.
The flames snapped at the darkness and smoke curled around him before trailing up into the flue.
He picked up the piece of cedar he’d found during his foraging the day before, as well as his small carving knife and turned the piece of wood in his hands, watching the firelight move across it. What shape wished to emerge from within? What sort of beast would peek out of the grain?
A horse was his first thought. But the longer he studied the twisted stick, the sea roaring outside, the walls around him rattling, the more the wood seemed to shift, asking to be something else.
And so he dug in, picking and chipping at the surface, his thoughts centering. He forgot about his wife, his sorrow, the dead girl and the storm. He thought only of the stick in his hand, of the smooth timber beneath his fingers. He etched and sculpted and sliced, until more detailed shapes began rising to the surface.
An arm, a neck, a cheek, hair like vines—no, kelp.
He released a breath of laughter at the thought. He was certainly losing his mooring.
His raven flapped its wings, then hopped down to the peck at the dirt floor. A grub worm curled from its beak before the bird swallowed it. It hopped over to Sareck’s side, tipping its head at the carving.
“Do you not approve?” Sareck asked, holding it out for the raven to see.
The bird pecked at the wood, beak leaving a notch in the belly of the figurine.
Sareck shooed it back. “It’s not a worm, little bastard. Go back to your perch.”
Muninn screeched and fluttered up to the eves, then pecked at the wooden beam in annoyance.
Sareck ignored the raven’s tantrum and turned his attention back to the carving—
Dark liquid pearled up from the gash in the figure’s belly.
He frowned and ran a thumb over the substance.
It smeared the grain, staining it—red.
Blood.
His limbs froze, heart crashing in his chest at the sight.
No, that’s not right. It isn’t blood. It was only sap. He was seeing things.
But even as he tried to convince himself he was losing his wits over nothing, the liquid pearled up again, more this time. Before it ran down the curve of the figure’s belly in a thick crimson line.
A metallic scent filling the air as it slipped across his fingers. Warm. And red.
Sareck dropped the carving on the hearth and scuttled back, franticly wiping his damp hands on his trousers.
The dark fluid only emerged faster, drip, drip, dripping into the scattering of grey ash and slinking over the floor. Insistent and horrible.
Sareck looked up at his raven. “What’ve you done?”
The bird squawked and tipped its head at him.
He turned back to the carving, ready to kick it into the flames, to destroy the fowl thing.
But the wood was clean, stains gone. Only the small nick in the belly from his raven’s beak showed he hadn’t imagined everything completely.
Clearly no blood, though. Nothing. Just wood and soot.
Gods. He was losing his wits. Most certainly. He could have sworn there was something—
The hut’s door burst open, smacking against the wall with a bone-jarring finality.
Sareck jumped in his skin, now scrambling away from the gaping darkness. The icy wind swept in, rain collecting rapidly in the room, pooling in the entrance. The protesting screech and rattle of the wooden walls of the hut grew louder.
And a strange echo seemed to thread through the crashing storm and linger in the space just feet from the doorway.
He stared out at the swirling midnight, straining his eyes to see.
Something’s quick breath.
But how could he hear it over the racket of the storm? How could it be real—no, it wasn’t real. It was more foolishness, more—
“Help me,” came a whisper, the breath close enough to cool his cheek.
His heart skipped sideways in his chest.
There’s nothing there, he told himself. I’m alone. Always alone. It was only the storm. Only the tapping of the rain. The whistle of the wind.
He was imagining the voice, imagining the blood. None of it was real.
Why are the gods tormenting me?
An icy touch slid down his neck as if an invisible hand were reaching out from the shadows. The chill of it spread, threading down his spine.
“Please,” came the strange whisper once more, its presence pressing at the space beside him.
Not the gods. A spirit.
A demon.
He covered his ears. He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t accept it in his house. “Leave me be! By Lyr’s bones, stop this!”
Stillness fell like an anvil.
The rain slowed to a swirling mist, the wind fading to nothing. The thundering sky cal
med. Even the rhythm of the crashing waves slowed against the rocky shore, settling.
The only sound remaining was Sareck’s pulse crashing in his veins. He pulled frantic air into his lungs, feeling as if he’d run a hundred leagues.
But it was over, whatever it had been.
It was gone.
He stood slowly and walked to the doorway of the hut, searching the black night.
It was like trying to peer through tar.
Nothing. He saw nothing now. The only sound was the soft, distant rhythm of the tide murmuring through the air. As if the storm had been a dream. As if it were simply any other summer night filled with warmth and ease.
Yet the calm was as loud as a roar.
The next morning Sareck went about weaving a charm to hang around his neck, and a second one for his lintel.
Muninn perched on his shoulder as he braided the seagrass and landgrass over and under each other, tucking shells and stones into the folds. He’d bring the ocean and the earth together, draw them into balance. It was worth a bit of trouble even if it didn’t work; the action of it set his mind more at ease in any case. And any spirits trying to make mischief would know where he stood.
He’d never encountered anything like this.
And only one thing had changed in the endless monotony of his life. The dead had found his shores.
This thought tickled the back of his mind all morning.
Thoughts of the dead girl. Her pale delicate features, the strange markings on her shoulder, the sea life growing from her skin.
He finished the charms as the sun rose over the island at midday, nailing one to the lentil and the other he placed around his neck, tucking it into his gambeson.
Then he made his way across the fields to the cliffs. To the grave he’d made for the dead girl just the day before. But as he approached his steps slowed. Something was wrong.
The larger stones he’d placed over the grave had tumbled over. The earth was sunken in, part of the ridge missing. He looked over the cliff, seeing the fresh dark earth and stones cluttering a lower ledge.
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