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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Madeleine hadn’t turned and run after H?ra’s revelation, which was a surprise.

True, for a few moments, it seemed she couldn’t move at all.

She’d gaped up at H?ra, face drained of all color, body rigid.

She hadn’t taken either the rosary or the scrap of blue fabric from H?ra’s hands.

H?ra wondered if she was going to pass out and need to be caught for a fourth time.

Madeleine hadn’t passed out.

Instead she’d said, “I need a second,” and leaned against the nearest fence post to stare off into the distance.

After that second had passed, and then a few more, H?ra had suggested they go for a walk, and Madeleine said she couldn’t think why not.

Now here they were: tromping over the fields H?ra had learned to call home.

Madeleine stuffed her hands in her pockets.

H?ra let hers swing free and easy at her sides to match her long stride.

The secret was out. Finally, H?ra had found courage to match Madeleine’s.

No more lies.

Madeleine looked at the green grass as she walked.

“You saved me on the beach.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not an angel.”

“Definitely not.”

“Then what are you?” Madeleine stopped and looked up with an expression of frank fear.

“The opposite? A demon? You can tell me. I can handle that. I just want to know.”

Madeleine’s pallor didn’t suggest she could “handle that,” so it was just as well H?ra could say, “I’m not a demon either. I’m an Each-uisge .”

Madeleine shook her head in incomprehension.

“Like a kelpie,” H?ra clarified.

“But from the ocean, and smarter.” Bigger and stronger, too, and a mighty hunter with a herd, not a loner who lurked in a loch.

She’d never been so insulted as when Jonathan and Madeleine had confused the two.

“Like a kelpie,” Madeleine repeated, sounding numb.

“So you’re a…horse. Or at least you look like a horse sometimes. And sometimes you look like…”

She looked H?ra up and down and didn’t finish her sentence.

“I’m not a horse,” H?ra said forcefully.

She mustn’t grab Madeleine again, as urgent as it seemed to make her point right now.

“Horses are dumb beasts of the land. My other form resembles them, yes, but we’re not the same. I can…” She hesitated.

“Even in that form, I can speak.”

“Speak?” Madeleine narrowed her eyes.

“You didn’t speak to me last night.”

“No,” H?ra admitted.

“Why not?”

“I…didn’t know what to say.” It sounded foolish, but what could she have said?

Please walk back into the ocean so I can drown and eat you, and we’ll see what happens next?

Please don’t hate me?

“I can think of a few things!” Madeleine hunched her shoulders and looked back toward the farm, where Connor and Jim were moving around the barn.

They didn’t need an audience for this.

H?ra said, “Let’s keep walking.”

“I’d like to stay within sight of other people, if it’s all the same to you. This is bad enough without worrying if you’re going to eat me. Which I thought you were last night.”

“I wasn’t,” H?ra said quickly, with the benefit of hindsight.

“Then what were you doing? No. Wait.” Madeleine held up both hands in a warding gesture.

“Go back to the beginning. Tell me everything. What the hell’s going on?”

H?ra raised her eyebrows.

Madeleine hadn’t sworn in her presence before.

She was obviously agitated, and why wouldn’t she be?

This had to be handled carefully.

No more lies, but that didn’t mean Madeleine had to know every insignificant detail.

Like how H?ra had originally intended to eat her to become a Stormhorse.

She wasn’t going to do that anymore, so it wasn’t relevant.

She’d be able to tell Madeleine eventually and deal with whatever look came into her eyes.

Just not now.

“Let me tell you first about what I am,” she said.

“Instead of what I’m not.”

The explanation ran long.

By the time H?ra had finished telling Madeleine about the Each-uisge, they were sitting on the side of the hill, the damp earth soaking into their trousers.

“That explains a lot.” Madeleine wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees.

The wind whipped her hair.

“Everything you said about your family being nomadic, and how you don’t…”

When she didn’t finish her sentence, H?ra prompted, “I don’t what?”

“How you don’t fit in,” Madeleine said slowly.

“How sometimes you sort of…miss the mark when we’re talking. Behaviors that are just a little bit off, basic things you don’t know that most people would.”

H?ra’s face grew hot.

Madeleine wouldn’t do much better if she suddenly became an Each-uisge .

She snapped, “I’ve not done badly. I help to run a farm, don’t I? I even learned to read and do maths.”

“That’s impressive, yes.” Madeleine pursed her lips and turned back to H?ra.

Her beautiful eyes missed nothing now that they’d been opened.

“I want to know how you did all that,” she said.

“But first, I want to know why .”

She and H?ra looked into each other’s eyes.

For a moment, H?ra’s foot seemed to dangle over the edge of a cliff—the highest one on Jorsay, maybe, with a sheer face down into the sea.

“For you,” she said.

Madeleine’s face went from pale to red.

She flinched but didn’t look away.

“That night changed me too,” H?ra said, her heart thundering like a storm.

“Like it did you and Jonathan, all three of us. You know who I am, don’t you? Not only your rescuer, but the horse you cut free from the dock, too.”

Madeleine picked at a loose thread on her jeans.

“I thought I’d drowned you when I was trying to save you.”

“You did save me. If I’d stayed stuck, either a human or an ocean predator would have found me. You cut me loose, and I was going to swim away, but then you fell into the water.”

Madeleine grimaced.

“A life for a life,” H?ra said.

“I couldn’t let you drown after you’d rescued me. I dragged you ashore.”

After a pause, Madeleine said, “And then you became human.”

“No, I didn?—”

“Or you looked human, whatever! Why?” Madeleine curled her hands into fists.

“Why didn’t you drop me on the beach and then go back into the water? Were you staying with me until help arrived?”

“I…”

“But if it was only that, then why would you kiss me?”

The words, and the memory too, rang like a bell.

Madeleine’s mouth under H?ra’s, soft and hot.

I kissed you because I couldn’t eat you.

H?ra couldn’t say that.

“I didn’t understand why.” That was true.

Even in human form, the urge to kiss had been alien.

“I just knew I had to do it. You were there, and I needed to…”

She looked at Madeleine’s mouth, which she had kissed years ago, and again only yesterday.

That and more, only yesterday.

“I needed to,” she whispered.

Silence. H?ra looked at Madeleine’s eyes again; they were wide and dazed.

H?ra continued, “You’re not the only one looking for answers, but I know you’re mine.”

You’re mine .

Would Madeleine understand the double meaning?

Judging by how she gulped, she might.

Still holding her knees, Madeleine turned back to the farm.

Jim was on the tractor.

Connor was opening a fence.

It all looked ordinary—or would, to a human.

Which H?ra was not, and would never be, no matter what thoughts occurred to her at night.

“This was all so strange to me when I got here. Life on land. How humans live every day.”

“It must have been. So how did you end up living with them? That is, us?” Madeleine asked in a low voice.

H?ra’s laugh tasted bitter.

She could try being completely forthcoming about this part and see how it went.

At least it would show Madeleine her commitment to a goal.

“I returned to the beach the night after I pulled you out of the water,” she said.

“I hoped you’d come back, as I bade you.”

Madeleine blushed again.

“You didn’t, but Jonathan came instead. He, ah…well, that’s a long story, and he should tell you himself. But he’d encountered my kind before, and based on what you said, he thought one of us might be involved. He was drunk and angry, and he yelled over the water, and I went to him. I knew he’d helped you and might be able to tell me about you.”

She’d been so hungry then.

For everything, including information.

The last few years hadn’t fed her enough.

Madeleine frowned. “And you became friends after that?”

“So it seems.” It had been such a shock to realize what seemed normal now.

“I made a deal with him. I brought him a treasure chest from the ocean, which he used to buy the farm, in exchange for him teaching me your human customs.”

“Why did you want to learn those?”

“I think you already know.”

They looked at each other again in silence.

“Tell me anyway,” Madeleine murmured.

Well. All right. H?ra smiled wryly.

“I wanted to be able to talk to you,” she said.

“To understand you when you returned.”

Madeleine hugged her knees more tightly, as if holding herself together.

“How did you know I would? Did you—did you?—”

H?ra frowned.

“Did I what?”

“Did you cast a spell on me?” Madeleine blurted.

“Did you compel me to come back?”

What a question.

Did Madeleine think H?ra was a witch at the bottom of a whirlpool, full of magic and still unable to save herself?

“If I could’ve done that, you’d never have left in the first place.”

That didn’t seem to reassure Madeleine.

“So…you would have compelled me if you could.”

“Didn’t I just say that?” H?ra turned toward Madeleine so she faced her rather than sitting parallel to her.

“I would have then. It’s different now. I don’t want to trap you here.”

“No?”

“No. I’ve learned about being somewhere because you’re forced to.” H?ra looked back down the hill toward the farm.

Her life’s work. “You can find good things about it, but it’s still not your choice. Why would I want you to feel that way about me?”

Madeleine was silent.

H?ra kept looking at the farm, waiting.

“You’re forced to be here?” Madeleine asked eventually.

“Yes.” It was hard to look at Madeleine for this part.

How strange. “My family caught me transforming and coming ashore. I’m not sure how. I think it was Asgall who saw.” He was much more likely to have been lurking around the surface than Beathag or Calder.

“Asgall?”

H?ra pursed her lips.

“My brother.”

Madeleine looked horrified.

“Your own brother turned you in?”

“Asgall hates me. He always has. He’s a creature of bitterness and spite.” H?ra heard plenty of bitterness in her own voice.

“My mother—Beathag—isn’t fond of me either. When I returned from Jonathan’s one night, she and Asgall were waiting for me, along with the Sire of the herd. They tried to kill me. I escaped, although they believe I’m dead.”

So she hoped.

Yet again she thought uneasily of the horse’s head she thought she’d seen in the water last night.

All those precautions she’d taken for all these years couldn’t be for nothing, could they?

But she’d seen nothing else.

Out of everyone in the herd, only Calder, Asgall, and Beathag knew her human form.

If they’d seen her alive, they’d have come ashore to destroy her for good.

The presence of one lone human wouldn’t have deterred them.

In fact, Madeleine would have been a bonus prize.

The thought led H?ra to grab Madeleine’s hand.

Madeleine hadn’t been eaten by anybody last night, including H?ra, she was alive and well, but touching her still felt necessary.

Just to make sure.

Madeleine didn’t pull away.

“Your family tried to kill you,” she said softly.

“That’s horrible. I’m so, so sorry.”

H?ra blinked.

The horror was still in Madeleine’s eyes.

It was easy to forget what a different view some humans could take of matters like this.

What to Madeleine was an atrocity was simply a fact of life to H?ra.

In the moment, of course, she’d known rage and pain, she’d felt such betrayal, but…

But…

You’ve never been what you’re supposed to be, Beathag had snarled, her disgust wounding H?ra as surely as her bite had done.

“Never mind,” H?ra said gruffly.

“It brought me here.”

Madeleine bit her lip.

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

“Yes. Jonathan used the treasure I gave him to buy the farm, and we run it together. I didn’t intend to be here, but…but…” She leaned forward, holding Madeleine’s hand more tightly.

“Do you remember what I said about rainbows?”

For a moment, Madeleine looked uncomprehending.

Then her brow cleared.

She even smiled a little.

“Life is hard, but there are rainbows.”

That smile, tiny as it was, was the emergence of the sun from the clouds.

H?ra exhaled deeply to see it.

“Yes. That’s the farm. That’s Jonathan. That’s…”

You .

She didn’t say it, but they both heard it.

“You know,” Madeleine said after a pause, “I’d be well within my rights not to believe any of this, even if you do have my rosary and a piece of my jacket.”

“Unless I demonstrate? I can, although perhaps not here.” She’d prefer not to change shape while Connor, Jim, and the dogs were all in plain sight.

It might raise a few questions.

“Not here,” Madeleine agreed.

“And not now.”

“Tonight, then?” It would be much safer to transform under the cover of darkness.

“I don’t know.” Madeleine looked at their joined hands.

“If I see you do it, then…it’s real.”

H?ra frowned.

“Of course it’s real. That’s the point. I’ll prove it.”

“I’m sure you would. I’m not ready for that.” Madeleine raised her green gaze to H?ra once more.

“I know I said I could handle it. But none of this is anything I was brought up to believe. I need time to get used to it.”

“Maybe not. You said you’d need more time to think about our kiss, but here you are.”

It sounded like airtight logic to H?ra.

It didn’t seem to strike Madeleine the same way, since she chuckled ruefully.

“When I do something, I go all the way, don’t I?” she asked.

“It wasn’t enough just to stumble over a magical creature. I had to go and kiss it.”

H?ra didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“I’m not an it . I’m a…”

How did she finish that sentence?

She couldn’t say person , and Each-uisge wouldn’t make anything better.

Neither term felt right, either.

All she could think of was, “I’m myself. Just as you are.”

“Whatever I am.” Madeleine tugged her hand free of H?ra’s and looked back over the fields.

“Turns out I came here to discover that and got more than I bargained for.”

“These beliefs you speak of,” H?ra said carefully.

Here was something else that needed delicate handling.

“Isn’t it good to know more about the world, even if it means you were wrong about some things? I’ve learned that too.”

“I didn’t say I was wrong about anything,” Madeleine snapped.

She glared at H?ra. “I told you I believed in mysteries. You’re definitely one, even if you’re no angel. And just because you exist doesn’t mean I have to throw out every single thing I was taught!”

The fear was back in her eyes.

That meant she might not believe what she was saying.

However, that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

H?ra agreed, “That’s right. You have to think about it. I did. And I’ve had much longer to do that than you have.”

“No kidding.” Madeleine propped her chin on her knees and hugged herself again.

If she hugged herself tightly enough, H?ra wondered, would she be able to contain whatever surged in her now?

“And I’ve got less than a month to do it.”

Was that a joke?

H?ra leaned forward.

“What are you talking about? You can stay longer. You can stay as long as you like.”

“I can’t. I have a life.” Madeleine bent her forehead until it touched her knees and H?ra couldn’t see her face anymore.

“I’ve got a job that starts in August and a place I pay rent on. And I have a plane ticket it’ll cost me a fortune to change. I don’t have any treasure chests to tap into.”

H?ra said impatiently, “August is longer than a month away, and we can help with your plane ticket. Even if we couldn’t, would that be more important than what’s happening here?”

Madeleine didn’t reply or look up.

“It wouldn’t. You know that, don’t you?” H?ra placed her hand, lightly, between Madeleine’s shoulder blades, atop the torn jacket.

Madeleine trembled at her touch.

Fear, or something else?

If only Madeleine would look at her.

She said, “Jim’s moving out of the cottage soon, and you can stay there. I already said so, do you remember?”

Madeleine’s voice was muffled.

“I remember.”

“You returned to me.” H?ra swallowed hard.

“Now stay with me. At least a little longer.”

A shiver ran through Madeleine’s body, more pronounced than the tremble.

H?ra mustn’t panic. Not even if the moment—if Madeleine—felt like sand falling through her fingers, something that couldn’t be held or made to stay.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” she said, with some difficulty.

How awful it would be not to have Madeleine’s answer immediately.

But it’d be much worse to get a negative one when, if she waited, that might change.

Maybe she was learning to think ahead.

Jonathan would be pleased.

Madeleine finally raised her head.

She turned her face to the cloudy sky, her expression unreadable.

“I might leave, I might not,” she said.

That was better than I’ll definitely leave , at least. “What about you?”

“Me?”

Madeleine’s gaze was sharp.

“I understand why you stayed here. But did you never at least dream of leaving? Seeing the rest of the world instead of this one, tiny island near the family that tried to kill you?”

Put like that, it sounded only logical.

“I don’t dream. But you’re speaking in metaphors—yes?” When Madeleine smiled a little and nodded, H?ra continued, “My kind remains around the islands of the North Sea. And I can’t leave the ocean no matter what form I wear. My strength deserts me the farther I get from it. I couldn’t survive inland.”

For the first time, Madeleine’s expression softened.

“Forced to be here…as you said. That’s unfair. I’m sorry.”

If Madeleine had seemed sorry for H?ra, that would have been infuriating.

Madeleine seemed sorry about something else, and it brought compassion to her eyes.

That alone gave H?ra the courage to say, “But you can choose. When you’re ready.”

At the word ready , Madeleine’s eyes hardened again.

She didn’t look angry, though—at least not at H?ra.

Instead, she turned that sharp, resolved look up to the cloudy sky.

And H?ra knew Madeleine wasn’t going to wait to make her decision.

She held her breath.

When you’re ready , H?ra had said, as if Madeleine could ever be.

Foolishly, when setting out for Orkney, she’d vowed to be ready for anything.

In hindsight, she’d only prepared herself for a limited set of options.

She would meet her angel, or not; she would find answers to questions she didn’t know how to ask, or not.

She’d found other things instead.

Chief among them, the existence of something that didn’t exactly mesh with her belief system—although it wasn’t entirely incompatible.

God had made all kinds of creatures, and science couldn’t account for everything.

Madeleine believed in things both seen and unseen, and what else was a miracle but an impossible thing made possible?

H?ra ought to be impossible.

And yet, when Madeleine had realized the truth, she’d thought: Of course .

Of course she’s magical .

To the descriptors “odd,” “rude,” and “wildly attractive,” Madeleine now had to append “magical.” It seemed of a piece with the rest. Madeleine had taken one look into H?ra’s eyes, and a part of herself she’d buried long ago had leapt instantly to life.

Resurrected, you might say.

H?ra wanted something from Madeleine too, that much was clear.

For one thing, sex, which wasn’t on the table.

It was definitely not on the table.

For a lot of excellent reasons.

But H?ra wanted more than that.

When you just wanted to have sex with someone, you didn’t pepper them incessantly with personal questions—or spend years of your life learning to live as a different species.

Madeleine’s fingers trembled, and not just because of the cold air.

She squeezed her knees more tightly and kept her eyes on the sky instead of on H?ra, since looking at H?ra would only throw her into confusion again.

H?ra was trapped here, but Madeleine wasn’t.

Choosing to leave would definitely be the smarter option.

She could return home and start figuring herself out in the absence of any supernatural elements.

She’d find a way to reconcile the beliefs she’d cherished all her life with what she’d learned about the world, and about herself.

The ground would steady under her feet again.

She just had to go home.

No, whispered a voice inside her.

The same voice she’d heard in her hotel room when she’d been ready to change her flight.

You’ll regret it. When else will you ever have an opportunity like this?

She’ll set you free .

Freedom. Answers. In their own ways, H?ra and Madeleine sought the same things.

They weren’t going to find them separately.

Madeleine took in a shaky breath, exhaled it, and turned back to H?ra, whose expression was grave—bordering on worried.

H?ra, of the apparently limitless confidence, worried?

If the situation weren’t so serious, it would have been adorable.

“I don’t want to leave,” Madeleine said.

H?ra’s eyes lit up again.

“In fact,” Madeleine continued, “whenever I’ve thought about leaving, I’ve felt the strongest pull against it. Like a little voice telling me I need to stay here until I figure this out. I don’t think it’s a bad voice. Not that I’m saying I’m hearing voices, it’s not like that, it’s just…” She trailed off.

H?ra said nothing, which seemed like its own kind of miracle.

She waited.

“Look, whatever’s going on, I’m not ready for—for what we did in that alley.” Madeleine’s face burned.

“It isn’t just that you’re not…like me. Although it is that. It’s a lot of things. It’s—I mean, for one thing, you’re a lot younger than me, aren’t you?”

“No,” H?ra said.

“I’m nearly one hundred years old.”

For a second, Madeleine grew dizzy.

She put her hand to her forehead.

“Oh.”

H?ra frowned.

“Why would our ages be important?”

Okay.

Madeleine could deal with this too.

She could deal, somehow, with all of this .

“I, um…I guess in the bigger scheme of things they’re not. Listen, I can’t imagine I’m the only one who should think about this. If you’re not like me, then I’m not like you. Doesn’t that give you pause?”

H?ra pursed her lips.

Then she nodded, looking as if she didn’t want to.

A strange feeling squirmed in Madeleine’s stomach.

It felt like an improbable mixture of relief and disappointment.

“There you are. We both have a lot to figure out. But…” She took in a breath so deep that it was painful to exhale it.

“I think we should figure it out together.”

H?ra’s face changed again.

Its long, sharp planes softened.

Her eyes glowed. In relief, possibly.

How could Madeleine learn to interpret her?

Unless she stuck around?

“However it happened, we were brought together for a reason,” she said in a low voice.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I believe that. And I want to see what it means.”

“So do I,” H?ra said.

“I thought I knew what it meant once. Now, I’m not sure.”

“What did you think it meant?”

H?ra hesitated.

“Nothing. Never mind. It wouldn’t make sense to you.”

Did any of this?

Madeleine stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets again.

“I’m not saying I’ll stay all summer. But my plans just got more flexible.”

She’d have to tell Becca, who might be supportive of her extended stay.

Or Becca might think she’d lost her mind, and she wouldn’t be shy about saying so.

And that was without putting the whole “supernatural creature” element into the equation.

“I’m glad.” H?ra scooted toward her on the ground.

They didn’t touch, but it was close enough that H?ra was sharing her warmth.

“In spite of everything, I’m glad all of this has come to pass. It’s shown me so much about the world. I hope it will to you, too.”

Madeleine wasn’t sure what to hope for, other than for everything to make sense again, which didn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon.

Only one thing was certain now.

Whatever path lay before them now, she and H?ra were destined to walk it together.