She reached forward again, taking Fox’s hand when he turned to see her. Holding each of their hands felt strange, but also right.
“Then this isn’t going to work,” she said. “I don’t have enough void magic to find them, and their magic is unrecognizable now.”
“We can’t just leave them out there like we left Raina, and hope they’ll come to their senses and come back,” Shaneesha said.
“No,” Quill said, his eyes locked on Sagely’s. “We can’t do that.”
“So what are we going to do?” Shaneesha asked.
Sagely swallowed all her pride. Holding Quill’s gaze, she raised her chin in defiance. “We’re going to get the stone back,” she said.
“How are we going to do that?” Shaneesha said.
“We’re going to get Raina.”
“Again, how do you propose we do that?”
Sagely was a strong woman, secure in her man’s love. Once, she’d been so jealous of Raina and Quill’s connection. For the first time, she was thankful for it. She could lure Raina back the same way she’d been lured out there to begin with.
Though Quill said it sometimes happened, she wasn’t about to actually share a man in her collective. But Raina didn’t have to know that.
“We’re not going to get her back,” she said. “Quill is.”
twenty-Four
Raina
“I am not going to change you into a shapeshifter,” Queen Thalassa said as she opened what Raina was pretty sure was a coffin. “Though that would be fun, it would take a lot of magic. It’s nearly impossible to change your essential makeup.”
“So you’re not making me a mermaid?” Raina asked, her heart sinking.
“Oh, I am,” Thalassa said. “I told you I would, and so I shall. But I will do it a much simpler way. I’m swapping your…soul, if you like…into a mermaid’s body. You will be a mermaid, not a witch.”
“And how do you do that?” Raina asked, peering into the coffin. A hermit crab scuttled against the side.
“Oh, there you are,” the queen said, bending to scoop it out on one long fingernail. “I’ve been looking for you all over.”
Raina glanced back at the pool she’d emerged from, where Seeley was waiting for her, as he always did when she came to have an audience with the queen. His head bobbed in the water, his black eyes bright with curiosity.
“Am I supposed to get in there?” Raina asked, a shiver of uneasiness rippling through her.
“It’s easier for your soul to find a home in another body if it’s nearby,” she said, gesturing to a closed coffin beside the open one.
Raina took a step back. “So you’re putting my soul in a dead body?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” the queen said with an exasperated sigh. “To have a mermaid’s body.”
“I do, but…”
“And she’s not exactly dead yet,” Queen Thalassa said, holding up the hermit crab. “She’s in here.”
Raina gulped. “And you just let it crawl around and get lost? What if it had fallen in the pool? I don’t think hermit crabs can live on the ocean floor.”
“And neither can humans,” the queen snapped. “Now, I don’t have all day for this. You asked for a large favor, and I’m willing to grant it. Do you want it or not?”
“I do,” Raina said, stepping into the coffin.
“Good,” Queen Thalassa said. “Nothing irks me more than indecisive humans wasting my time. Here’s what I’ll need you to do. I’ll coax you through a spell, whereby you’ll give up your body. Essentially, your soul will float out of it. It’s perfectly safe. Humans have been doing it in rituals for centuries.”
“You mean dying?”
“Oh, you mortals are always so fixated on terminology,” the queen said with a flick of her wrist. The hermit crab fell from her hand, and Raina gasped. But Queen Thalassa plucked it out of the air and settled it back into her palm. She obviously was not too concerned with the death of a mortal or two.
“If you want a word for it, humans called it projection. Once your soul is free of your body, I’ll put it in the mermaid body and bind it, so it doesn’t go looking for its proper place. If you were to leave the body again, and I wasn’t here to place it back, it could float the seas forever as a wraith, or take up in a hermit crab like this and have a very short life indeed.”
“Okay,” Raina said, lying down in the coffin. She was relieved that the queen didn’t lower the lid. Instead, she knelt and set the crab beside Raina, so it couldn’t escape.
“This is your last chance to change your mind,” Thalassa said, her eyes for once looking serious, and as old as time itself. “I can put the mermaid soul back in her own body, and you can swim back to the surface and live on land, where you belong. I’m afraid you will not like this life undersea as much as you expect.”
It seemed too late to give it up now that she’d gotten a taste of it. Raina had come so far, finally gotten the goddess to agree. She’d already given up the stone. And she’d seen her brother splashing and enjoying mer life, seen Yvonne do the same. Since her earliest memory, she’d longed to be part of this life. How could she say no?
She folded her hands over her chest and closed her eyes. “I’m ready.”
twenty-Five
Sagely
“Are you sure about this?” Quill asked, glancing at the boat, his brow furrowed. Maude ran up and down the length of the boat, sniffing everything.
“No,” Sagely admitted. “Do you have any better ideas?”
“I don’t know how I feel about being used as bait,” Quill said. “If she’s enchanted by the siren, I don’t think my showing up with make a difference.”
“Maybe not,” Shaneesha said. “But it’s all we’ve got. If we want to get the coven back before it’s too late, we need to get that stone.”
Only Guthrie had objected to tricking Raina, but when they assured him they wouldn’t force her to come back if she would just give them the stone, he relented. He would have done anything to save his own coven, if they’d been the ones brainwashed by a dark warlock.
“And she loved you,” Sagely said to Quill. “If she still does, maybe that will be the one thing that can break through to her, like it did for Eli.”
“And for me,” Quill said, circling her waist with his arm and pulling her close. “You saved me.”
“Which is why you have to save her,” Sagely said, though she hated the thought of him out there without her. But if Raina saw her, she’d only think bitter thoughts of loss. If they wanted to have a chance for love to bring her back, it had to be Quill as he’d been when he’d been with her, before Sagely.
Shaneesha stepped up to Sagely and took her hands. “I gotta say, I underestimated you,” she said. “You’re actually pretty rad. And a bigger person than most women would be in this situation.”
“I trust Quill,” Sagely said simply. “And if something were to happen to him, well, I trust you, too.”
Shaneesha pulled her in for a tight hug. “Nothing’s going to happen,” she said. “I’ll bring him back without a scratch.” With that, she turned and climbed into the boat, where Guthrie was already seated, a wind-blown captain of his tiny vessel.
Sagely smiled and waved to him, though he was only a dozen yards away. “Thank you,” she called.
Guthrie grunted in response, his thick eyebrows drawn together in a fierce frown, as if making sure she knew he was not doing this favor for her. She was well aware.
“I don’t think your brother likes me very much,” Sagely said to Gale, who stood on shore with the others.
“Aww, he’ll come around,” Gale said. “He’s slow to warm up, that’s all.”
“He warmed up to Raina pretty fast.”
“You sound bitter about that,” Quill said, taking her hand again. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t,” Sagely said. “He’s a bit of a jerk. No offense, Gale.”
She may have been a big enough p
erson to send her man out to save his ex, but she wasn’t about to send him off without reminding him what he had to come back for. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down, locking her eyes on his gorgeous green ones. “I guess it’s your turn to go off on a dangerous mission alone,” she said. “Make me proud.”
She stood on tiptoes and pressed the length of her body to his, relishing the strength of his arms around her, the hardness of his chest against hers. Pulling him down, she kissed him fiercely and with all the love she possessed. His tongue slid into her mouth, and she clung to him as he bent her back, swept up in the passionate embrace.
She was lost to everything else in the world for a minute…until Fox cleared his throat. “I guess I’ll skip the goodbye, then,” he said.
Sagely began to pull away, but Quill held her possessively another few seconds, making sure Fox didn’t think he had a say in how long they kissed. At last, he pulled back slowly, stroking Sagely’s hair back and gazing into her eyes. “All the sirens on earth couldn’t keep me from coming back to you,” he said, his eyes sparking with intensity.
“But maybe a faery could,” Fox growled.
“Boys, boys,” Sagely said, pulling back from Quill. She took one of his hands and one of Fox’s, and they walked across the sand together, barefoot. She imagined this is what a wedding to one of them would be like. Somehow, she would have to learn to keep peace in her household, between all the men in her collective. She couldn’t imagine wanting more than she already had.
twenty-Six
Raina
As Queen Thalassa began to lead Raina through the ritual, her mind relaxed and her body followed. It wasn’t so bad. Kind of like falling asleep, and then having that moment where the sensation of actually falling made her wake up. Only this time, she didn’t jerk back into her body. She jerked out.
There was a terrible moment of weightlessness, and then her consciousness was yanked back. She felt herself being pulled hard in two directions, then three. And she knew what each pull was—her body, the mermaid body, and the pull of her magic, of Seeley and the coven and her years of training.
Something in her balked when she began to enter the mer body. She tried to thrash out, but she had no substance. She felt as if she were being shoved into a…well, a coffin. But she wasn’t kicking and screaming. More like digging in and refusing to be stuffed into a too-small body that didn’t fit right, anyway.
It happened like an ocean wave, building and building, resisting gravity. Then, all at once, it was too much. The wave crested, then crashed down, thundering tons of water onto the shore. Her soul crashed into the body, and she sat up, sucking in a breath so loud it almost sounded like a scream.
But it wasn’t her screaming.
It was Seeley. She struggled to stand, but she couldn’t. Her legs were bound as if inside a too-tight sleeping bag that she couldn’t kick off. And then something snapped inside her chest, and she fell back with a cry.
Thalassa was standing over the coffin where Raina had lain down, chanting and swinging a seashell over her abandoned body.
Another band snapped inside Raina. It was her magic leaving her, sending shockwaves through her body as if she were being stung by an eel. She cried out and tried to hold onto it, but it could not be contained in this body with no legs, this body that was not hers.
After only a few more threads of magic snapped, she felt only a lingering glow of it. She lay in her box, catching her breath. But then she felt a band tighten around her heart—the heart of her magic. That ember that never died, her tiny flame of magic from which all her magic grew and blossomed.
“No,” she cried, grasping instinctually at her belly. But it continued to unravel. She heard Seeley cry out again, and she struggled to sit up, but the pain knocked her backwards. It felt like someone was scraping away her heart with a rusty spoon, one bit at a time.
Seeley!
She screamed his name, but it didn’t come out her mouth. It came from somewhere inside her, echoing through the sea. Somewhere, other mer would hear her anguish. Yvonne had been able to communicate telepathically with other mer, which meant that now Raina could, too. But she didn’t want them to hear this. Her anguish, her torment, her desperation for an animal that was her very heart.
She screamed out loud this time, answering Seeley’s screams with her own. She had to get to him. She dragged herself up, shrieking in pain at the loss inside her. At last, the scraping feeling stopped, and all that was left was a void. A yearning.
A giant cavern had opened in her chest where her magic had been. It wasn’t simply waiting to be filled, like an empty stomach. It would be there forever, this hunger, this ache. It was a dry riverbed that would never again know the rush of water.
She opened her mouth to scream again, but before she could, a last wave wrenched out something within her, the very roots of her being, and blackness washed over her.
*
When Raina woke, she sat up to find herself looking into a mirror. But it wasn’t a mirror, because she was no longer in Raina’s body. She stared down at her own hands, holding them up and then turning them over, as if they could tell her who she now was. Her tail told her, though.
“I think it’s time you two met again,” Queen Thalassa said, motioning for them to join her.
Again? Her heart nearly stopped. No. It couldn’t be. Don’t let it be River.
What if her brother had been trying to come back to her all these years, and the queen gave him a chance—in her body? And she’d come to find him, and now she was stuck in his body? She wanted to scream, to fall to the floor and burst.
Raina’s body stepped from her coffin, wobbled on her legs, and sat heavily on the edge. Raina tried to stand, but of course she couldn’t. She pushed herself up with her arms, then tried to lift her tail over the edge of the coffin. On her third try, she succeeded in heaving it over, only to have the weight of it throw her body off balance. She went sprawling on the floor in a flopping, fishy mess.
Raina’s body laughed. Queen Thalassa laughed.
Raina did not laugh. She didn’t even want to get up. She felt hollow, as if her soul had been destroyed in the transfer. “Where’s Seeley?” she asked, her eyes wildly searching the pool where he should be.
“When your attachment to him snapped, he swam out,” Queen Thalassa said impassively.
Raina’s heart split open like a dead clam. “But I need him,” she cried, trying not to show how betrayed she felt by his abandonment. As if all they’d shared in his eyes was magic.
Everything had fallen apart in seconds. Why hadn’t she listened to the queen’s warning? She’s probably lived thousands of years. Of course she knew better than Raina.
“On the contrary,” Queen Thalassa said. “A mermaid most certainly does not need a familiar. Now. Turn and meet your partner. Yvonne, this is Raina. Raina, Yvonne.”
As they stared at each other, realization dawned in Raina’s mind. “You? You’re the one who wanted to be a human?”
“Who wouldn’t want to be a human?” Yvonne asked. “But—but it was so we could be together.”
She turned on Queen Thalassa, who held up her hands. “I never promised you’d be together. You wanted legs to walk on land. I told you it would not make you happy. She wanted a tail to swim in the sea. I told her it would not make her happy. You both said you’d love each other even if you were forever separated. You didn’t ask to be together.”
“But that’s why I wanted to walk on land,” Yvonne cried. “To be with Raina.”
Though the thought touched Raina, that Yvonne had given up this body to be with her, when she looked at Yvonne, all she saw was herself. That self she’d been for so long. The one that had felt trapped even then. And she didn’t want to be reminded of that miserable life any longer. She’d shed that life when she’d shed that body. She wanted to be far away from it, to never think of it again.
Now she knew that what the queen had told her was true. Yvonne had
enchanted her with her voice, and that enchantment hadn’t let go when she stopped singing. Just like those oilmen who had willingly handed over their most precious belongings, she had been duped. But she no longer felt more than a touch of pity for the girl who had bewitched her. The body swap had broken the spell, and like Thalassa had said, her love had melted away like seafoam.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go find Seeley.” He would always be part of her, even if he didn’t know it anymore. She couldn’t give up on him, or her brother. For the first time since she’d arrived, her mind was clear and fully her own.
“Raina, wait,” Yvonne said, but Raina was already struggling towards the pool. Her tail felt slightly dry, and she couldn’t wait to get it in the water.
When she did, it was even better than she expected. A cool, blissful embrace fell around her as she sank into the water. The relief made her moan and laugh at once. She’d never felt anything so welcoming, so soothing and joyful at once. Every current in the water caressed her scales. And when she flipped her tail…
She knew then the joy her brother had felt that night she’d seen him. And now, they could be together, both of them mer. He could show her the life he led under the sea.
Her laughter echoed through the chamber. She dove under and surfaced with a whoop. She’d never felt so strong, so powerful. Again, she dove beneath the surface. This time, she did not return.
twenty-Seven
Sagely
Sagely and Gale stood watching the little fishing boat expertly navigate the waves until it was past the breakers.
“Are you sure they’re going to be okay?” Sagely asked.
“No,” Gale said lightly. “But they’re all strong witches, and you said Quill can do a shield in case they’re physically attacked.”
Sister of the Sea: A Reverse Harem Witch Series (Winslow Witch Chronicles Book 2) Page 13