Page 20 of Traitor Witch (The Deadwood #1)

Chapter Twenty

NILSA

T he mainmast is down, leaning drunkenly over the side of the ship. It’s charred and still burning in places, despite the rain. But I can’t focus on it because Cas is already dragging me up onto the quarterdeck.

Kier is battling with the ship’s wheel and beyond him I can make out Rysen, soaked from the rain and huddled over someone on the deck. The fae and the vampire are tied to the railing with long strands of rope that knot around their waists, but Cas doesn’t bother with it.

I suppose a sea-based shifter can just swim so far below the waves it doesn’t matter if he’s swept overboard. Still, I would have appreciated the same courtesy.

Cas reaches Val and pulls me down beside him.

The captain is face-up on the wood, his clothes soaked with rain and blood that trickles from his ears and nose. The transparent, white fabric of his shirt showcases a hideous set of burns that continue down his arms. I fall to my knees beside him, my hands hovering over each injury, cataloguing it.

“Why did you bring her up here?” Rysen snaps.

“Because those cliffs are right on top of us!” Cas roars back.

I ignore both of them.

Strangely, now I’m in the thick of things, my fight or flight has finally kicked in. My brain is crystalline with focus as every healing spell in my limited repertoire rushes straight to the front of my mind, drowning out the sight of the black clouds and the cliffs looming in my peripheral vision.

I can’t heal something this big. But I don’t need to.

He’s an immortal.

All I have to do is get Val conscious enough that he can steer the boat and his immortality will fix this for me.

“Mother Moon,” I begin, and am rewarded with an instant pulse of power. “Grant me the power of compulsion.”

The wind rips away my words, but I see Cas’s head turn sharply in my direction for a split second before the glow of the Goddess’s magic envelops Val and me like a cloak.

“Wake up.” I put as much force into my words as I can.

I’m rewarded when Val’s eyes snap open, his lips parting on a gasp of pain.

“Get up, fix the boat, and sail us the fuck out of here.” I can feel the magic pulsing through me, reassuring me.

It makes me feel stronger, better.

Less afraid than I was just moments ago.

Val moves like a robot, climbing to his feet and taking the wheel from Kier. His skin lights up with inky-purple mage symbols which flicker across the hull at the same time. The mast rights itself, the charring fading away under Val’s command.

And as the ship pulls itself back together, his wounds start to fade .

The burns start to heal.

The rest of the crew sag in relief, but the storm isn’t over. More lightning flashes around us, and a huge wave looms over the Deadwood .

Val’s heading straight for the damned thing.

The glow of witch magic is fading, replaced by his own as he fights against me.

“I’m trying to help you, idiot!” I yell, but he ignores me.

The feeling of my magic being forced out is like a punch to the gut. The glow fades just as we smash through the next wave.

“Rogue wave!” Val yells.

I have no idea what that means, and I pay for it when water surges over the edge, taking me with it.

I flail blindly, reaching out to catch hold of anything.

There’s nothing.

Then I hit the ocean.

There’s no air left in my lungs, and my mouth opens on a silent scream, earning me a lungful of water as I try to breathe.

The roiling storm drags me further beneath the waves, then tosses me around like a rag doll. I can’t tell which direction is up, and which is down. Even if I could, I can’t seem to move. My flailing limbs are doing nothing to help.

My vision gets darker around the edges, and I choke on another mouthful of foul water.

I’m suffocating.

Drowning.

Consumed by the cold, raging ocean.

CASIMIR

“Mother Moon, grant me the power of compulsion.”

The silver glow that wraps around Nilsa and the captain blinds me for a second, making me unable to process her words.

I was expecting a healing prayer to the Sun Goddess. A spell for blood loss. A chant that could fix burns.

But Nilsa hasn’t called on the Goddess of Healing.

No, she chose the Lady of Death.

She didn’t even use a healing spell.

“Wake up.” Her words are sharp, but they do the trick.

Val’s eyes snap open and immediately fix on her.

“Get up, fix the boat, and sail us the fuck out of here.”

Like a puppet, Val moves to the ship’s wheel, transmutation circles flicking to life across his skin and the Deadwood at Nilsa’s command.

She used a spell that negated free will.

Compulsion is dark magic.

Nilsa is a Lunar witch.

I’ve just come to that conclusion when the light of her power leaves them both, Val fighting back in typical, stubborn mage style.

“Rogue wave!” he yells.

Just as another rips across the deck, sweeping Nilsa and me into the angry sea.

I shift on impact, my beast taking over to protect me.

For once, he lets my mind remain at the forefront, man and beast working in perfect harmony.

We have to find our mate.

He knows, as well as I do, that this needs my mind and his body working together. Or else she could be lost to us forever. If I wasn’t so desperate, I’d revel in the feeling of being all that I’m meant to be for the first time in decades.

My body snakes through the waves, my fins working overtime as I race to find my mate.

Where is she? I demand of the waves, my eyes peering through the muck that’s been stirred up .

She’s immortal. She might be young but, theoretically, she can still survive drowning as long as her head and heart are intact. I just have to find her.

But there’s no sign of her. I twist in the water, searching.

There! A flash of creamy fabric followed by a cloud of dark hair.

Her body is sinking, disappearing into the darkness of the seabed.

She’s not moving.

Fuck. Why is she not moving?

My beast thrashes in my mind. His panic making him that much stronger.

I surge forwards, carefully catching her dress between my teeth and holding her there as I drag her up to the surface.

We breach the waves in a burst of scales and fur. My roar echoes, but it’s lost in the thunder.

Lightning strikes and I have to dodge, only for another bolt to slam into the water by my tail. The searing pain doesn’t affect my larger body, but it does confirm what some part of me has known all along.

More bolts strike nearby, the closeness and frequency too accurate to ever be considered natural.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise this is no ordinary storm. This is something much different.

This is something more.

I can’t see the ship, but that doesn’t mean anything. I can’t see land either.

I’m a sitting duck out here.

With a sigh, I let my long, forked tongue snake out, wrap around Nilsa’s unconscious body and tug her into the cavern that is my mouth in this form. I haven’t done this since I was a teenager, playing with my friends, but it still works, even though I’ve grown.

I close my jaw around her, knowing she’ll kill me for this when she wakes up covered in slobber, and dive back into the depths that are my home.

Down, far below the surface, the waves are barely noticeable. The lightning is nothing more than a subtle glow above us.

I keep going, my serpentine body propelling us back toward the ship’s last known location.

It takes some searching, but I know the dark shadow of the bottom of the Deadwood ’s hull when I see it. The lightning is striking around it constantly, following the ship's path with an eerie accuracy.

The flashes are still following us, closing the distance with each bolt. Close enough to make me anxious, but I don’t have a choice. Nilsa still isn’t moving, and my beast is about to lose it.

I rise out of the water, my height dwarfing the mast as I open my mouth and drop my mate onto the deck beside Kier.

The impact doesn’t do anything. She stays as still as a corpse, but the fae is on her before I can blink, turning her onto her back and sealing his lips over hers, pushing air into her lungs.

It takes three attempts, but eventually she jackknifes upwards, water spilling from her mouth and all over the wood of the deck.

I let out a roar, my relief weakening my mind to the point when my beast can easily wrestle away my control.

Blackness consumes me, just as her eyes fix on my form.