Page 2 of The Rake OR The Orca Who Met His Match in a Selkie Desiring Revenge
Elspeth couldn’t remember the last time she’dactuallycleaned the place and was confident that it likely had been the result of Hamish spilling something. He was a dear old man, but he was unsteady on his feet on the best days. Truthfully, when they’d needed a new Guide, the council had voted to install Hamish since he had no family to speak of. This way, he had a home, an income, and Elspeth to check on him each day.
Please Hamish, please get your ass up and dressed before we have to open the door.
If she was lucky, he’d saunter out of his room momentarily—but she hadn’t been lucky a day in her life. No matter, she’d always believed that you make your own luck, so she proceeded to have a faux coughing fit.
“Oh, I’m so, so sorry!” she gasped between fake hacks. “I must have inhaled too much dust yesterday when we moved everything!”
“It’s a wonder any of you survive at all. Truly it must be a trial to be so frail,” the elf said, leaning down to squint at her. “Where is it then?”
“I’m sorry?” she asked. “Where is what?”
“The ‘everything’you moved yesterday. Surely you had a reason for removing furniture from His Divine Majesty’s temple, though I can’t fathom why that might be. Nor, forthat matter, why you would have let said furniture get dusty in the first place. Show it to me.”
Her fake coughs cut off abruptly, her whole body going cold.
“Where. Is. The. Furniture?” the officer hissed, spittle flying from his lips.
“I … I... I don’t know,” she tried to stall, mentally pleading with Hamish to leave his room and interrupt. The elf’s sharp claws dug into her arms in a flash, drawing pinpricks of blood.
“Phloy'd! Get in here! We have a matter that needs investigation.” Another elf, similarly tall and imperious, burst through the door. “Take this filthy seal out of my sight. She’s a liar who I fear has strayed from the Path. Take her away until I can decide what to do with her.”
The new elf chuckled and seized Elspeth, taking special care to draw a taunting finger across her pelt where it hung from her shoulders.
Elspeth froze. The people of Hillskerry had taken special care to hide their connection to their pelt from the Empire. If the Pathians knew of a selkie’s need for their pelt, they were all in a great deal of trouble.
The elf’s fingers dug into her arm, pulling her from the relative safety of the temple and into the stark, cold daylight. Around her, shesaw faces she knew and loved contorted in rage, their mouths shouting words that she couldn’t hear over the pounding of her own heart. It was remarkably like being underwater. She was aware of what was happening, but she was removed from it.
Her arm hurt and itwasloud, but in her mind, she floated beneath the waves, serene and detached. The soldier tugged her along, muttering disgusting words, his fingers on her pelt a violation of her very being.
“Ellie!” Her brother’s voice cut through the terror, streaking across the square to assault her ears.
What was he doing at home? He should have been out on their boat, fishing with their mother.
She could survive whatever the soldiers would do to her, she was strong, she knew. But Feann was hers to protect, hers to care for. She would walk to the ends of Timonde if it kept him safe.
In another world, another life, perhaps he could have protected her, but in this one, she protected him. As much as the sound of his voice broke her heart, she loved him for it.
“Mind your business!” she yelledto him, conscious to keep his name from her mouth.
The Navigator stepped in to intercept him and snatched Feann’s pelt from his shoulders. Feann stopped short from his sprint to her, gasping and falling to the ground once he was farther than five strides from where the elf held it captive. On the ground, Feann crawled, fighting every instinct he had, every magical tie to get to her.
The fresh sting of tears jolted her and she realized that the wetness on her face wasn’t due to the misty morning rain. The shorter soldier hauled Feann up by his collar. Kicking and screaming, Feann refused to give up the fight, even as the soldier sliced his hand and smeared his blood across Feann’s pelt.
How could the Pathians possibly know so much of them?
Her people had been socareful.
At the sides of the street, huge orcs barred any more of her people from interfering, their faces impassive. They were huge, and intimidating—even on remote Hillskerry she’d heard of their efficient ruthlessness and unmatched prowess.4
Once the blood was on his pelt, Feann curled up on himself. His stomach would be twisting, his insides screaming at thewrongness of someone touching his pelt without permission, and Elspeth couldn’t imagine how horrid it would be with theirbloodon it.
It was a sick distortion of their mating ritual. A desecration of the old ways they bound themselves to their chosen partners. A blood bond was permanent and binding, but it was meant to be beautiful. A pledge two people made to one another. A lifetime intrinsically tied, sworn and bound to obey one another. In the context of a mating, it was a glorious pledge of mutual fealty and a commitment to living one’s life to please their partner. It was an expression of trust so deep, granting someone permanent control, that few rarely initiated until they’d been mated many years.
But without the abiding love it took to give so much of oneself away? It was an abomination. An exploitation of the deepest vow that existed among her people.
Behind the wall of orcs, parents shielded their children’s eyes, and others gasped in horror.
But no one moved to help. It was too late. They all knew it. The second the blood touched his pelt, Feann was lost to them. He’d be unable to disobey an order from the soldier for as long as the soldier lived, and no one here stood a chance against the wall of orcs that protected him. The elf would leave with her brother and she’d never seehim again.