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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“You can’t work out why she’s ashamed? Really?”

Jonathan’s eyebrows came together in a scowl that made no sense.

He should be on H?ra’s side here.

He had been so far, hadn’t he?

“She was a nun,” Jonathan continued.

“You read the Bible, even if you didn’t know the other books she told you about. Don’t you remember what that bloody thing says about men who shag men, and women with women, and so on?”

H?ra winced.

“Oh. A bit.” There had been a few passages about how humans weren’t supposed to mate with other humans of their own gender.

It hadn’t seemed relevant at the time, since H?ra hadn’t known she’d want to have sex with Madeleine, much less that Madeleine would want to have it with her.

Dammit. This was going to be a problem.

H?ra offered, “She cares about other books more, she said. About saints and whatnot. Maybe those are different.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

“You don’t know, though. You’re not like her, you don’t even believe in God. Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I’m more like her than you are, aren’t I?” Jonathan asked.

The words cleaved between the two of them with the sharpness only truth could carry.

Jonathan had his arms crossed and a hard look in his eyes.

“You don’t understand her. You’re not even trying.”

Unbelievable.

It wasn’t even one of Jonathan’s bad jokes.

He looked much too serious.

“How can you say that? I’ve done everything to understand her!” H?ra began to count on her fingers.

Her human fingers. “I learned your customs. I learned to eat and drink the disgusting things you do. I learned to read. All so I could talk to her and ask her the right questions.”

“Did you learn how to listen to her answers?” Jonathan stalked over to his computer, looking much too upset about this.

After all, it was H?ra’s crisis, not his.

“She didn’t give me any answers. Not proper ones. She just ran away after I…after we …”

“Kissed. You said.” Jonathan threw himself into his desk chair and stared at the monitor, which H?ra couldn’t see from the other side of the desk.

In the window behind him, the day’s sun sank toward the horizon.

Not much time left.

“I didn’t know your lot did that,” he said after another moment.

“You’ve told me how different my body really is from yours…and his.”

She groaned.

Jonathan ought to know that now wasn’t the time to talk about Asgall, of all things.

Never was the time to talk about Asgall.

They had to solve H?ra’s problem, once they worked out what it actually was.

“You’ve been queer since she got here,” he continued.

His knobby fingers rubbed over the white hair at his chin.

“And now you’ve got a look in your eyes that reminds me of him.”

H?ra stiffened.

“I thought he cared about me,” Jonathan said to the monitor.

Whatever he saw there appeared to fascinate him.

“And then he tried to drown me.”

H?ra stepped forward, heart pounding.

She hadn’t seen such a distance in Jonathan’s eyes since the night they met.

“I am not Asgall,” she said, with all the force the words could hold.

“No? You want to hold her, same as he did me. And I don’t mean for a sweet little kiss.”

Nothing had been sweet or little about that kiss.

It had eaten up H?ra as surely as a storm ate up the shore.

As surely as she’d intended to eat up Madeleine at the beginning, which Jonathan didn’t and mustn’t know.

“We talked about this at the start,” she said evenly.

“I saved Madeleine’s life. I care deeply for her. It’s not the same as Asgall and you. Did my brother ever kiss you?” She said the last in a lighter tone, thinking the situation could use some levity.

“What do you think?” No levity in Jonathan’s voice.

Instead, there was something deep and dark, like pain.

That must mean no . Of course it did—the idea of Jonathan and Asgall kissing would be laughable, if anything about this was funny.

“There you are, then. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“It better not be.”

H?ra started.

Jonathan had never sounded like that before: his voice low, heavy, almost cold.

It sent a chill through her blood.

“Where’s this coming from?” she managed.

“You’ve always supported me.”

“I don’t know. Like I said, you got that look in your eyes when you were telling me about what happened. And I remembered you’re not like me. You’d think it’d be hard to forget, wouldn’t you? What with how you eat raw meat and don’t sleep. But it’s that look that makes me see you as you are.”

“As I—” Finally, H?ra could move.

She rushed around the desk to kneel next to Jonathan’s chair, where she looked imploringly up into his weathered face.

That face had smiled at her for years.

It wasn’t smiling now.

“I dreamed of him, you know,” Jonathan said.

“All the time.”

H?ra started.

“It felt like more than just dreams. I saw him, I heard his voice clear as day, and he was always calling me back to the rocks. For so long, I wondered if he was coming for me…if he wanted to find me.”

“I—I didn’t know that,” H?ra stammered.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The hell’s the point? It hasn’t happened. Nothing’s ever happened in decades.” He pursed his lips, and the white bristles of his mustache rose.

“Except for you. Thought that meant something.”

Something?

Surely it meant more than something .

Was it time to tell him the truth after all?

They were friends—he was the only friend H?ra had ever had.

Perhaps after all their time together, he wouldn’t hate her if she explained the situation.

H?ra took one of his hands.

It was cold, although the house wasn’t.

His circulation was bad, the doctor had said.

“It does mean something,” she said.

“It’s true I’m not human. I can’t help that. But listen…”

“I know you can’t help being what you are.” Jonathan didn’t pull his hand away.

He didn’t curl it around H?ra’s either, though.

“That’s what worries me now.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at her, finally.

His eyes were hooded, unreadable.

“If I thought I’d been wrong about you this whole time…if I thought you meant her harm…”

Her entire body froze.

She clutched his hand harder, but he didn’t wince or tug away.

Just kept looking at her.

So much for telling him the truth.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” she said hoarsely.

“Jonathan, I swear it.”

That, at least, was true.

Whatever must happen between them in the end, H?ra didn’t want to hurt Madeleine.

Not the woman she’d kissed, who’d spoken to her about things that mattered.

Jonathan kept looking into her eyes.

All of a sudden, H?ra was back in the whirlpool, staring into the black eyes of the witch who sought her innermost self.

Her heart stopped. She’d thought, only hours ago, that the trow was the only one who understood her.

Had she been wrong? Jonathan seemed to be looking into the heart of her.

What would he find? Would he see the truth, whatever that was…

?

Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

When he opened them again, they looked as they always did, and a rueful smile tugged at his mouth.

“Sorry, lass. I ought to know better.”

Relief made H?ra’s head dip down.

Her heart began beating again.

Jonathan did not hate her.

“This mad situation’s carried me back, is all,” he continued.

“Last night, I had a dream he was calling me again. I woke up half ready to walk into the ocean. Scared the hell out of me. Then you came home tonight and…” He shook his head.

“Never mind that now.”

H?ra felt another chill.

Years ago, when her family had tried to kill her, she’d had a vision of Sister Madeleine promising to return to H?ra.

Nothing like that had happened since.

H?ra had certainly not been able to call Madeleine to her side.

She’d never heard of any Each-uisge doing that with their prey.

Then again, no Each-uisge had failed with their prey in living memory, nor spent the sort of time that Jonathan and Asgall had together.

“You didn’t tell me about that either,” she said.

Jonathan shrugged. “It was only a dream. I just said I’ve had it off and on for decades. It makes sense, doesn’t it, after all that’s happened?”

She wouldn’t know.

Each-uisge didn’t dream.

Jonathan did, though.

He’d know what was normal and what wasn’t.

Other problems loomed larger now.

H?ra didn’t want to hurt Madeleine.

She didn’t want to hurt Jonathan.

She didn’t want to be found out as inhuman.

She didn’t want to return to the ocean and be torn to pieces by her kin, or give herself up to a witch.

She stood, feeling heavier than she had the first time she’d stepped on land, dragging Sister Madeleine’s unconscious body with her.

“I’m going out to the barn. Perhaps we can talk more later.”

Jonathan nodded, and H?ra glanced toward the computer monitor he’d been staring at for so long.

The power wasn’t on.

She could see nothing but the two of them, their shapes reflected and distorted in the darkened screen.

There would be no whale mating songs for her tonight.

Nor self-pleasure or any other rewarding thing.

It was after midnight.

Jonathan was long abed, but H?ra couldn’t rest. Not after the events of today.

She leaned against her bedroom windowsill.

Her breath fogged the glass as she glared at the dark pasture outside.

The farm: her gift to Jonathan.

So far, her only legacy.

She could imagine what her family would say to that—even her father Alban, who’d been so intrigued by humans.

H?ra’s legacy shouldn’t be making a human man happy for a time.

That, and kissing a former nun into a state of confusion until she ran away.

H?ra smacked her palm against the window, welcoming the sting and the coolness of the glass.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It was supposed to be some other way.

Sister Madeleine was supposed to return to Jorsay as the nun she’d been before.

She and H?ra were meant to meet, have some sort of instant understanding, and talk.

Then, H?ra would eat her, return to the sea, and become a Stormhorse.

Simplicity itself.

Becoming a human was much less simple than being an Each - uisge .

H?ra couldn’t figure out how…

H?ra wasn’t becoming a human .

She recoiled from the window as the obscene idea crawled over her mind like a roach.

Becoming human? Where had that come from?

Ridiculous. She wore a human form around herself like a rough oyster shell hiding a pearl.

Hadn’t Jonathan just pointed out how inhuman she was?

He’d know better than anyone.

Human! Why? Because she’d drunk wine and learned to read books?

Because of her flimsy trappings, was she thinking of herself as one of them , weak and pathetic as they were?

What was next? Starting a collection of useless objects, or whinging about Parliament, or the other pointless ways they spent their short time in the world?

This was going too far, too fast. Within the span of a few days, since Madeleine’s reappearance, H?ra’s life had spun more out of control than ever.

And that was saying something.

If thoughts like these were occurring to her, that had to be a sign.

Of what, she didn’t know, but it couldn’t be good.

H?ra stormed to her bureau.

She yanked open the top drawer and dragged out the wooden rosary she’d pulled from Madeleine’s drenched body on the beach.

For years, H?ra had treasured it as a reminder of what they had together.

Now, it was just another symbol of something that separated them: something H?ra couldn’t understand but that was so important to Madeleine that it made her run from an all-consuming kiss.

Maybe she should march over to Madeleine’s hotel right now, wake her, and confess everything.

That would show exactly how inhuman she was.

Then she’d do what she had to do, return to the sea, and never have to face Jonathan’s disappointment and anger.

She could persuade Madeleine to leave the hotel.

Go for a walk out of sight.

Transform into her true shape.

She hadn’t done that since she’d come to live on land.

That must be part of the problem.

She’d forgotten what it was like to be herself.

She would transform and watch Madeleine’s eyes widen with horror as she beheld the monster she would believe H?ra to be.

Then, this would all be over.

H?ra would eat Madeleine, and Madeleine would be a part of her forever.

She’d return to the sea in triumph, gain her wings, and take to the sky.

No more confusion or desire, no more deluded reflections about wanting to stay on land.

No more worries about a human man’s opinion of her.

And definitely no thoughts about becoming human herself.

She’d remember who she was.

Each-uisge , predator of the seas, destined for the skies.

Not a woman with a cold current in the pit of her stomach and skin that prickled with panic.

She’d take care of this once and for all.

H?ra threw the rosary back in the drawer—neither she nor Madeleine would need it, after all—and stormed through the house.

Time to leave and never come back.

She paused briefly by Jonathan’s closed bedroom door.

He was snoring on the other side.

She’d never see him again.

He’d wake up to find her gone.

Eventually, he’d hear that Madeleine had disappeared, he’d put two and two together, and he’d know that H?ra was what he feared.

As bad as Asgall.

Well then.

He would be correct.

But he’d be all right, wouldn’t he?

She’d made him prosperous.

The community respected him now.

He’d found a purpose in running the farm.

Once H?ra left, he’d no longer share his home with a creature who was everything he despised.

Jonathan would be better off without her.

H?ra swallowed down a groan and fled what had become her home for a brief and brilliant time.