A Wilderness of Glass - Grace Draven Page 0,27

protects our skin from other things too.” She nudged his chin with her nose. He obliged her by bending to eagerly press his mouth to hers, cool lips against hers, warm tongue sweeping the interior of her mouth.

She had taught him that the previous night, and he’d been an enthusiastic student of what he called her “land magic.” Brida might have taught him even more were it not for the far-off hint of a whistle. Ahtin’s fluke slapped the water, and his features had pinched with annoyance.

“I must go,” he told her, leaning his forehead against hers with a sigh. “Come back, Brida?”

Caution dictated she should have said no, but she’d thrown that notion to the wind the moment she’d first seen him injured on the beach. “Tomorrow,” she’d agreed.

He’d led her out of the cave, staying by her side as she waded back to the level, drier shoreline. No threatening dorsal fin raced toward her, nor had any appeared tonight, for which she was thankful.

None of this would last. She’d never been under the illusion that it could. Ahtin was a dweller of the sea and she a dweller of the land. They’d found literal common ground here, but her life was in Ancilar among her people and his somewhere in the Gray’s liquid wilderness, with other merfolk and creatures savage and sublime. That he was even here now was a wondrous thing in itself.

She refused to think beyond this ephemeral moment, this hidden place where she and a fabled merman traded loving caresses. To him, she was simply beautiful Brida. Not Brida, alone and widowed, viewed by some as a woman to be pitied while they silently thanked the gods they weren’t in her shoes. The memories she made with him would last her lifetime, gifts of value beyond measure, more precious even than the priceless pearl he’d given her.

He lifted her braid to wrap its length around his arm, letting it uncoil before catching it in his hand. He painted his cheek and the bridge of his nose with the end. “Swim in the water with me.”

She shuddered at the idea. “The pool is freezing. At least for me.” It was bad enough that her feet were submerged. If she didn’t have them pressed to the sides of Ahtin’s tail, they’d be numb from the cold. Wading all the way in was out of the question, especially since she’d have to strip to her shift so as to have dry things to wear during the trek home. “Just how cold can it get before you start to feel it?”

He shrugged. “We can swim in the waters when ice floats there, and we dive deep where it’s dark and no sunlight can reach.” A troubled expression settled on his features, and the hand on her thigh tightened for a moment. “But we don’t stay in one place. Soon, all the mer will swim for warmer seas, where the women with child will birth their young.”

The bottom dropped out of Brida’s stomach. “How soon?”

“When the aps say so. They decide when the families make the journey.”

They were migratory, just like the dolphins and the whales. She guessed it might be so. The idea lodged in the back of her mind like a splinter, making her wonder each time she traveled to meet him if he wouldn’t be there.

Ahtin nuzzled her, rubbing his nose in the soft hairs that lay against her temple. “Swim with me,” he whispered. “My magic will hold back the cold.”

A tingling sensation spread across her feet, washing feeling back into her toes. Brida pulled away from him to stare at the pool. Ahtin’s palm rested atop the surface. Runnels of fiery light coursed along the tendons and veins in the back of his hand, spreading up his arm. The water grew warmer by the second until it turned tepid.

Brida laughed, delighted, and kicked her legs so that water splashed behind Ahtin. “Amazing! So much good magic! Can all the mer do this?”

He grinned at her compliment, pale eyes glittering in the cave’s half light. “When we must. It helps the laboring merwomen and the infants when they’re born.” He tugged on her skirts. “Now will you swim?”

With the pool now more temperate than a bath, she had no reason to refuse. She’d learned to swim as a child. Too many who lived by the sea lacked the skill and had paid the ultimate price.

Brida stood and stepped farther back from the pool’s edge to shed