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The effort to hold in his fury was so great, Jarrod shook with it. But this close to the surface, he risked observation if he gave voice to his rage. That thought alone was enough to choke him, his neck straining with the force of suppression. The words he’d overheard – his despised half-brother urging Skye to abandon his people to death – churned through him like poison. But still he didn’t let himself hurry his descent through the shifting blue.
He had lingered in the Bay after parting from Morgan, and seen Skye find Hunter. Like a gullible fool, he had given them their moment, their fond reunion.
But unable to resist, he’d crept up the lower side of the great rock to hear Hunter convince Skye to return to the Nemaro. Instead, he’d persuaded her not to.
Jarrod wasn’t strong enough to take Hunter one on one, there was no shame in admitting that. Furious, he’d been careless when he re-entered the water, and when he looked back, Hunter had moved them beyond earshot. But he’d heard enough.
There was no trust, and waiting was over.
Jarrod’s plan had been forming. Domination had been bred into him and would not be denied. Why should the incompetence of his father in using Hunter as the conduit for the Seers’ spells rule his life forever? He had refused to let it so far, bending everything thrown at him to his will.
Banished to the ocean, he made it his playground. Robbed of human warmth and cast beyond human recall, he used the cruel terms of the curse to serve his own ends. They had served him well. He stretched out with his mind and felt the rewarding response of those who depended on him for life and will.
Now that invisibility was falling from him and his clan, it was time: strike, before the humans struck at them.
He drifted around a giant pillar of rock, passing through a school of fish that hid in its shadow. He struck out at the fish nearest him, and at his touch the whole school broke and spilled into the muted light beyond the pillar. He grinned as the predatory shadows circling above sliced into the silver cloud to feed.
Lithus loomed below and he quickened his pace, crossing the shattered edge of the city, speeding over the empty streets. He felt no pang of remorse for those who had once peopled this place when it stood tall on the cliff’s edge so long ago. That was all on his father and the other Seers. It was on Hunter, witless fluke of genetics. And it wasn’t as if their sacrifice had been wasted. He for one relished the span of years afforded him, eked out through Hunter to him and his clan. Until Hunter had bestowed the lives on Skye, dooming them all.
For a brief instant he regretted the absence of Thea, his clanswoman, so like him in her willingness to embrace all that was Nemaro. She wouldn’t have hesitated in dragging back anyone if it served the clan. Or her own selfish ends. That had been her undoing.
Thea, daughter of Seers, still obsessed with Hunter. She abandoned her birthright when she put the entire clan at risk, trying to drown Skye. Skye, now the Keeper of souls. They needed Skye here with them, alive, and sustaining them all. And Hunter chose to let them die.
Nearing the great hall, half ruin, half splendour, the blank gazes of his court turned to him, like a garden of waterlilies following the sun. Morgan’s laughing green eyes, snapping with spirit and life, soft with thought, came into his mind again, sending an unwelcome, familiar qualm of cold uncertainty through him. Deeply irritated, he shrugged off the confusing emotion. He had done what he could for Morgan.
He raised his hands. The court of pliant humans drifted back, making room for the Nemaro who eagerly assembled around him.
