Page 9 of Hymn of Breath and Bone

“It could help, actually, to meet him there,” Marina continued, eyes ablaze with the light of hope. “It would give him a chance to see the selkiesand sirens living together. That might do more to convince him than anything I could say.”

Marina met my gaze again, and I knew she was thinking back to her discovery that the world was not what she believed. Skies, if it wouldn’t upset her, I would wring her lying father’s neck. But I didn’t want to contradict her by suggesting that her father knew perfectly well what Nordhavn was like.

“A sword would convince them just as easily,” Arctos spat.

“Arctos,” Hesperus admonished, looking stonily at the elderly male. “It's not your place.”

Arctos lifted his hands in surrender, a wicked gleam in his ancient eyes. “Apologies, Highness,” he said, deliberately using the wrong title to irritate me. Arctos had been a staunch supporter of my father. He was a traditionalist, and his way of thinking was rigid and outdated. He and my father and many of the older generations had become embittered after so long in exile, believing it better to rid the world of the selkies rather than try to live peacefully with them once more. He had not been happy to bend the knee to me when my father fell, and only did so now because the alternative was death. “Forgive an old male. I know how you handle those who disagree with you.”

The silence went taut for a moment, and a phantom pain lanced the scar over my breast.

Zephyr cut in with a nonchalant wave of her hand. Bless my first mate for always coming to my rescue. “How many sirens should we bring to such a meeting?”

The rest of the meeting passed—thank the great skies—uneventfully, making plans for how many sirens and ships we’d need for such a rendezvous and drafting a letter to Marina’s father.

Marina was impressive during this part of the meeting, dictating and correcting slight errors in wording that we would never have known might give offense.

She wrote two additional letters: one an appeal to her father, promising to be at the rendezvous if he would agree to come, and imploring him not to bring the full force of his guard, lest the meeting devolve into violence. The other was a letter to her friend Sereia, begging for her help in convincing her father.

“Give this to Sereia,” she commanded. “Fourth floor, second window from the left. She’ll help you, I think.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Astraios asked skeptically as I signed and sealed the letters then stamped them with my sigil.

“Then she’ll likely call the guard on you and we’ll have to rescue you from the dungeons,” she replied with a shrug. “You’d better convince her to believe you.”

Astraios grinned appreciatively at the joke, and I told the feral beast inside me to calm down.

“No one but you delivers this,” I added, handing Astraios the folded parchment. “Take a ship and your most trusted sailors. Don’t leave the Isles without a reply. You have two weeks at most.”

“As you will it, My King. My Queen,” Astraios replied in rare solemnity. I knew he only used my title as a formality in front of the council, but I appreciated the optics of his loyalty and respect. The fact that he also gave that respect to Marina made me feel inclined to grant him a long vacationwhen all of this was done. And perhaps not tear him limb from limb for flirting with my mate.

“Why only two weeks?” Marina asked after the council members had finally left, whispering amongst themselves in a way that had my hackles rising.

“Because it will take us another week to get to Nordhavn and establish a meeting point.” I explained, taking her hand as we wound our way out of the council chambers and to a cliff exit. “And you’ve been here for nearly a week already. That will bring us to the end of the month.”

“Oh,” she replied, brow furrowed as I scooped her up and leapt into the sky. “I see.”

I felt something cold slinking through my veins mixed with the usual exhilaration Marina felt while flying. Dread. Dread over having to decide whether or not to leave me, perhaps. Astraios’ mission gave me only two weeks to convince her to stay and fight for us.

Fight for me.

“You’re thinking hard,” Marina teased, running a finger over the line that had formed between my brows. “Is it about the meeting?”

“Actually, that went better than I expected,” I said, alighting on one of the ledges to the upper levels and pushing aside the mossy curtain that disguised the entrance. “You were perfect.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” she replied with a grin that had my heart skipping a beat. She must have felt it because her smile faltered. “Caspian—”

“Training first,” I insisted, interrupting her with a quick kiss. I knew she was about to ask me about my parents or why I had yet to bed her, but I wasn’t prepared for any of those conversations— not with the memory of Arctos’ words still ringing in my head.

I know how you handle those who disagree with you.

“Cas,” Marina insisted, lifting a hand to cup my cheek as if she sensed the dark turn of my thoughts. “You’re a good male. A good king. A better one than my father. Whatever you did to make Arctos say what he did, I know you did it for the right reasons.”

My brow softened, and I wondered if the mating bond had told her where my anxieties lay without her even realizing it.

I also sensed a similar struggle in her—to love the father who had lied to her, despite the fact that he had hurt her mate. I understood it more than she could know—to reconcile my love for my father with the male who was slowly killing my people. In the end, my people had won out.

“Thank you, Urchin. But I’m not above resorting to violence, as you know.” She looked up at me, and I sighed. “And I don’t think your father is a bad male or a bad king. I think he’s…”