The Sea King by C. L. Wilson
Dilys bit back a snarl and curled his fingers into fists. It was a gesture of peace—albeit an uneasy peace—a sheathing of claws that he could not force to retract.
Talin turned back to his female. “Lily, who stopped him?”
“She did.” She clutched the bloody body of the other Summerlander closer. “But he was going to kill me.”
“Are you saying your sister did this? Gabriella stopped him?”
Lily buried her face in Talin’s neck, nodding and sobbing, her whole body heaving as Talin gathered her close.
Thunderstruck, Dilys stared at the bloodied form of the unconscious woman in the lilac dress. The Shout had come from her? A Summerlander farm girl? How was that possible?
Her face was turned away and there was too much blood and hair covering it to make out her features. One arm lay limp at her side, slender, fine-boned, the palm looking so slight and vulnerable. Her palm was scraped. Her gown was bloodied, torn, and soiled with mud and dirt. That had not happened here, in this building. And it hadn’t happened by accident, either. There were several muddy boot prints on the waistline of her gown.
Someone had kicked her. Stomped on her.
He glanced at the pile of meat that had been her attacker. Gauged the man’s size by the length of his femur and the meaty hand still attached to the remains of his arm. A big, full-grown man. Hulking, by the mass of him. Not as large as a Winterman or a Calbernan, but compared to the women, plenty large enough.
He turned back to the Calbernans crowded behind him. Spotted Ryll in the midst. “Ryll, send for a healer. Quickly.”
Talin was rocking Lily, trying to soothe her as she sobbed in Sun Tongue against his throat. After a few minutes, Talin looked up with a frown. “Forgive me, my prince. My Sun Tongue is not the best. She keeps saying something about the princess. That she’s killed the princess.”
It took a moment for that to process.
And then, for the second time, Dilys’s whole body froze as that fiery, newborn volcano at his core erupted all over again.
This place—his gaze flew around the room, touching on the jumbled desks piled up against the walls—it was a school. The queen of Wintercraig had founded a school in Konumarr. She was very proud of it and had spoken of it often since his arrival. One of her sisters taught at the school—had, in fact, used it as her excuse to stay away from the palace since his arrival.
The Seasons were known by their giftnames, but they all had another. Ridiculously long Summerlander names. He knew, because he’d memorized them all before coming here. Including the name Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate.
Gabriella.
The Season known as Summer.
Dilys lunged forward, dropping to his knees on the blood-soaked floor.
Every Calbernan in the room snarled at him.
He didn’t snarl back. He roared. He didn’t even have to use a Word this time. The mere force of his furious warning was enough to choke their threatening snarls into discontented rumbling. Still unhappy, but no longer verging on challenge.
Dilys reached for the fallen, unconscious woman. His hands were shaking. He stopped. Stared hard at them. Then concern for her managed what will alone could not: his battle claws retracted, disappearing into his fingertips so as not to risk the slightest nick to her precious skin. Only then did he let himself touch her, brush back the blood-matted hair from her face.
“Gabriella,” he called softly. “Myerialanna Summer . . .”
He heard Talin’s sharp intake of breath. The ballista operator hadn’t made the connection. Apparently none of them had, because the others in the room fell abruptly silent and the tension dropped by a significant, palpable measure. As well it should.
If the fallen woman was, indeed, Summer Coruscate, then both by dominance and by contract signed in blood and salt, the right of courtship belonged to Dilys. Without challenge.
He turned the woman’s face towards his and wiped away the scarlet spatters, revealing delicate, warm brown skin and serenely beautiful features. Her eyes were closed, but he didn’t need to see their deep, beautiful blue to know.
Dilys bent his head, drawing in a ragged breath of both relief and stunned wonder.
It was her.
Summer Coruscate. The Season who had haunted his dreams since his arrival. The shy, fearful, reputedly powerless princess of Summerlea who somehow—by some impossible, incredible miracle of fate—spoke with the legendary Voice of a Siren.
Chapter 9
“Myerielua . . .” Talin said, his voice oddly shaking. “Myerielua . . . your ulumi . . .”
Dilys glanced down at himself. Every tattoo on his body was lit up as if from some inner fire, shining a bright, phosphorescent blue.
At the sight of those shining lines, something snapped inside his brain and memories—clear, true, and irrefutably his—flooded into his mind. The woman standing on the dock in the moonlight—that had been her. The eyes—blue that turned to gleaming gold when she used her most shocking gifts—those were her eyes. The fingers tracing the shining, illuminated blue lines of his ulumi—hers, as well. Her voice saying his name with wonder and longing as she recognized the nascent bond between them. Her lips cementing that bond with a kiss.
There was no mistaking what was happening to him—what had begun that first night, on that dock in the moonlight, when he’d dived into the fjord to save her and emerged a man bound in liakapua.
He had begun the mating ritual of his species . . . with her, Gabriella Coruscate. The Summerlea princess who had used her magic to manipulate his mind.
The Siren who had used her Voice to make him forget that he belonged to her, body and soul.
Before he could begin to process that, her body convulsed in a wracking cough. Blood splattered across his face. Her blood.
“Where’s that healer?” he roared. “Get her here now!”
He laid Summer gently on the floor and pressed his palms against her chest. “You will not die, moa kiri. I will not let you.” His mother had gifted him with her strength—almost all her strength—before he left Calberna. He carried it inside him now, a powerful, tremendous life force, raw magical energy, a vast ocean of it, from which he drew his own strength and powered his own gifts.
He had no power over flesh and bone, but blood . . . that was a different matter.
Blood was, primarily, water. Part of the ocean that had given life to all things. Part of Numahao that every living creature carried within itself.
And over water, Dilys ruled.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the press of anxious bodies, focusing on the blood—the water—that flowed through Summer’s veins. She was in a bad way. Her ribs had been broken, her lung punctured. One lung had collapsed. The other was rapidly filling with blood. There was also a rapidly growing pool of blood in her abdomen where her attacker’s booted foot had lacerated her kidney. She had other injuries as well, but those were the most severe. He focused on the lungs first. If she ceased to breathe, no other wounds would matter.
He found the punctures in the delicate lining of her lungs where tiny rivers of blood were pouring through. One by one, he blocked those flows, capturing the crimson currents with his magic and forcing them to turn, to follow a different path, using his magic to replace torn and ruptured cell walls with invisible barriers that routed her blood back into her veins.
The wounds inside her were many. Controlling them all was difficult. Dilys could move an entire ocean of water with a minor flex of his sea gifts, but every broken blood vessel, every tear in a vein, was like a separate ocean to be controlled. Controlling oceans was, in fact, far easier, because this work was so delicate, requiring intense concentration and finite control. And no matter the severity of the wound, each ruptured blood vessel required the same amount of effort to control. The task taxed his abilities to their limits. And still she needed more.
Her heart was stuttering. Her body shutting down. Even working as swiftly as he could, she w
He gave her his.
There was no hesitation. No question. His life had belonged to her from the moment she’d kissed him on the docks that first night. Everything his mother had given to him and all the life his own cells possessed, he poured into to her now, trying to keep her alive until the healer came to repair the damage he could not.
“You will live, moa kiri. I will not let you die.”
Her need was great. He drained himself, giving her everything except the magic he needed to keep commanding the blood in her veins and the life force he needed to keep breathing from one second to the next, and still there was no sign of the healer. He would have given her more—he would have sacrificed his own life to save hers without a second thought—but until the healer arrived to repair the damage to her organs, the only thing standing between Gabriella and death was Dilys. And Dilys was not going to last much longer without aid. He needed more energy and fast.
“Ryll, Ari, to me! I need your help!”
They had the closest connections to him, the strongest ties of love and blood. They could give him what he needed more quickly and with better results than the rest of his men, but he would drain every last drop of life force from every last Calbernan in Konumarr before he let her die.
Hands gripped his shoulders. Fresh energy—strong and powerful, life and magic freely given—poured into him. He channeled it down his body and into Summer, siphoning only enough to keep the holes and tears in her veins dammed up and keep him working to seal the rest.
Someone was still sobbing hysterically. The girl. The witness.
In Sea Tongue he snapped, “Talin—the girl, Lily . . . you have a connection with her?”
“Tey, Myerielua.”
“She knows too much. You must take care of it. Is your connection strong enough or do you need help?”
A hesitation, then . . . “Ono, Myerielua. I can do it. No aid needed.”
“Then do it. Now. Before the healer arrives.”
A moment later, he heard Talin murmuring softly to the pregnant girl, Summer’s friend, and a swell of susirena filled the room.
“I was the one to kill her attacker,” Dilys instructed. “Tell her that. I am not sorry that I did, only that I did not get here sooner.”
He heard Talin murmuring in Eru, his voice rich with susirena as he erased Lily’s memory of Gabriella Shouting their attacker to death and replaced it with the memory of Dilys ripping the brute apart with his bare hands.
Mind control, used in this case for memory manipulation, was one of the most secret gifts left to native-born Calbernans. It was a gift Calbernans kept even from their oulani mates. A lesson they had learned the hard way back in the days of the Sirens. People rightly feared magic that could control their minds, and when enough people regarded the source of that magic with enough fear, those people became dangerous. That was why for the last twenty-five hundred years, Calbernan sailors had made a point of seeking out and destroying all record of the Sirens, their abilities, and their fate, and spreading misinformation specifically designed to cast doubt on any surviving accounts. And why, for thousands of years, while secretly and tirelessly working to bring the full magic of the Sirens back to Calberna, Calbernans had been systematically and equally tirelessly working to turn all outlander knowledge of that magic into myth and legend.
And they had succeeded. Though Siren-lore still existed, the Sirens had become mythological creatures, rarely, if ever, associated with Calberna. And although modern Calbernan magic didn’t hold a candle to the power the Sirens of ancient times had wielded, the people of the Isles had restored enough of their ancestors’ susirena gifts that all imlani could influence thoughts and—with enough of an emotional connection to their target—even erase and supplant memories.
But Siren’s Song—true Siren Song—a Voice so powerful that it could not only control minds but also shatter solid objects and more—that was a magic that hadn’t been seen since the Slaughter.
Not until now. Not until Gabriella Coruscate.
And she was dying faster than he could work to keep her alive.
He had just managed to contain the worst of the bleeding into her lungs, when a sudden drop in blood pressure pulled his attention to her lacerated kidney. One of the large veins had torn open, sending a river of blood coursing into her abdominal cavity.
“Calbernari! To me now! We are losing her!” Desperation and fear forged a band of steel that squeezed tight around his chest, making it hard to breathe. Dozens more hands slapped down against his flesh, flooding him with power. Scores more formed chains connected to Ari and Ryll, flooding them with power that, in turn, flooded into Dilys as well. He took everything they gave, and channeled it into his efforts to stop Gabriella’s internal bleeding and keep her heart pumping. “Damn it! Where is that healer?”
“Here!” A voice called from somewhere near the back of the room. “I’m here!”
Bodies jostled as the Calbernans crowded in the room squeezed together to clear a path.
Tildavera Greenleaf, the old, gray-haired nurse he’d seen hovering around Queen Khamsin, hurried through the throng, carrying a satchel. The White King himself stormed in close on her heels.
“What the Hel is going on? Who did this?” Wynter Atrialan’s ice-blue eyes, already turning white with wintry flurries, pinned on Dilys. The temperature of Dilys’s body dropped rapidly. “Did you do this?”
“Not the time,” Dilys snarled through battle fangs that shot down in response to Atrialan’s insulting question. What he really wanted to say was “fark off,” but that would have started more trouble than it was worth. He switched his attention to Tildavera Greenleaf. “You. Nurse. Her kidney . . . the vein burst. Can you fix it?”
“Yes. Let’s get her up on a flat surface so I have room to work.”
“Can’t.” Every word was rapidly becoming an effort that took more energy than he had to spare. He forced the explanation out. “If we move her, she dies. Work where she lies. Right kidney.” He jerked his chin to indicate Gabriella’s right side. “Hurry.”
Without a word, nurse dropped to her knees beside Gabriella and opened the satchel she’d brought with her. She rummaged through the contents of the pack and pulled out a wrapped bundle that she unrolled to reveal a selection of surgical implements. Then, she pulled out a second bundle that contained a series of needles of various sizes and strands of what looked like dark thread.
Using a small pair of scissors from the bundle, she cut through the waist of Summer’s lilac dress and the white linen chemise beneath and bared Summer’s abdomen, which was mottled with dark bruising from the attack and swelling from the internal bleeding.
“I’ll need the growing lamps,” she said as she worked. “A dozen of them. Set up in a circle around us.”
The Winter King turned around and started barking orders.
The lamps arrived a short while later, and within moments, Dilys, Nurse Greenleaf, and Summer were surrounded by a ring of blazing miniature suns that turned the area around them as warm and bright as full day. Nurse Greenleaf bathed Summer’s skin with a pungent salve then picked up a small, wickedly sharp blade. Dilys had to fight back an instinctive surge of protective aggression as she cut into Gabriella’s flesh.
“Oh, dear,” she whispered when she parted the incision to reveal the damaged kidney.
“Fix it. Quickly.” He was holding the pool of Summer’s blood in a bubble of magic, feeding it back into her veins, but with the amount of blood pouring out, the task felt like bailing water with a sieve.
Setting her jaw, Tildavera Greenleaf went to work.
Dilys had to hand it to her. The elderly nurse was a swift, efficient, and divinely-gifted healer. She made short work of stitching the ruptured blood vessels and lacerated kidney while Dilys blocked Summer’s blood from the area where Nurse Greenleaf was working. When her needlework was done, the Nurse sprinkl
“You have a gift, Nurse,” he said.
“A little herb magic. A temporary measure only. She’ll still need plenty of rest, sunlight, and healing to ensure it holds.” Leaving the surgical wound open, she directed the light from one of the sunlamps onto the exposed kidney, then turned her attention to Summer’s broken ribs and collapsed lung. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Now, this is going to take more doing than a bit of thread and some herb magic. I hope the cursed bastard who did this to her died a painful death.”
“He did.”
The Nurse flicked a glance up at him. “Your doing?”
“Tey.” The lie fell without effort. Not that it was much of a lie. He would have joyfully ripped the farking krillo limb from limb had Summer not beaten him to it.
Tildavera Greenleaf’s mouth compressed in a brief, grim smile. “Good.” The smile disappeared as she directed her attention back to Summer’s ribcage. “You don’t happen to control air as well as water, do you?”
“Ono. Alas, I do not.”
“We’ll do it the hard way then.”
For the next half hour, they worked. Nurse Greenleaf made another incision to relieve the pressure on the collapsed lung and to repair the broken ribs. Several shards of bone had broken off to pierce Summer’s lung in multiple places. The healer removed each tiny piece, stitched up the larger tears in the delicate lung tissue, and then realigned the broken ribs, sprinkling green powder and magic as she went.
The whole time she worked, Dilys crouched over Summer, stroking her face, her neck, her hair, filling each tender caress with energy and strength, whispering into her ear in his most beguiling tone. “You will be fine, moa kiri. You are strong. Life and magic and strength flows through your veins. You are a wellspring of power, a queen of all waters. All the life and energy and vitality in every ocean, every sea, every river, lake and stream lives in you. And if you need more, then take it from me. What is mine is yours without question or limits. So long as there is breath in my lungs, you will never stop breathing. So long as my heart beats, yours will never stop. Whatever pain you have, let me bear it for you. I offer my strength and magic and life force to nourish your own. Stay with me, moa kiri. Live for me.”