19. Moss

19

Moss

You lied to me, Moss raged to the monster in his soul.

It didn't reply. Not in words. Its meaning thundered against his mind.

*I never lied.*

We had a deal. She would be safe until she returned to her friends, and you wouldn't touch her. You would stay hidden.

* She IS safe. I have not done anything to her. And I have stayed hidden.*

We're thousands of fucking miles from where we thought! Nobody's going to find her, and we can't get off this rock with the dragon to find them! You did this. You brought us here, somehow. You tricked me.

The kraken was silent.

She was meant to be SAFE.

*She is safe.*

Stuck on an island in the cold end of the Pacific with nobody but a baby dragon and US? Moss snarled. He struck out for the distant horizon, arms ploughing through the water. That isn't safety! It isn't a life! She needs more than that! Anyone would!

The kraken's thoughts loomed like an iceberg in the night. It showed him an alternative to a life alone on this isolated rock, with her mate and a dragonling for company.

A life utterly alone, beneath the waves.

No. That isn't an option.

The island—the chance to be together, to avoid that lonely fate—

It'll drive her mad. She's already hurting. What will happen when she finds out she's stuck there because of me? That you saved her to keep her trapped? What will the shadow dragons do when they discover you've held their child captive? What will they do to the mate of the kraken who broke its vow?

It would do what it always did. What it was here for.

Moss frowned. Was he imagining the hint of resentment in the kraken's thoughts?

You'd kill Maggie's family?

*The sun-bright shimmer of light and mischief? No.*

Then what? What do you want? To doom Carol to the same fate as us? She shouldn't have anything to do with this. She should never have met us.

Memories so old and big he couldn't span them with his mind rolled over him. Time so vast it ceased to have any meaning. Minds and souls so much smaller than the kraken—so delicate, beneath their hard shells of determination. All washed away, worn down, as the ocean wears everything down. Until there was only a glint of life left, then a mote, then nothing.

A grief Moss barely understood clawed at his throat.

That can't be her future. I won't let it.

He concentrated.

The kraken's powers were his powers. That was the way it worked. He didn't know how the fuck it had managed to drag them all to this godforsaken rock, but that didn't matter. That wasn't the power he needed right now.

He reached out with the kraken's senses— his senses—and reached for the ocean's song.

It hit him like the full weight of the ocean. All the breath left his lungs. And then the kraken was there, a mental shield against the symphony before it boiled him from the inside out.

It wasn't about to let him kill himself. There was so much of him still left.

Of course you aren't , he growled. Then you'd have to find another sucker for your plan. Whatever that plan was.

His own plan was simple.

The ocean sang of everything it touched. The salt-spray reaching to the clouds above, the floor crushed by immense pressures below, the crack of tectonic rock and the hissing heat that boiled through the gaps. The darkness, and the filtering light.

Carol had gone out to see if she could find anything familiar in the surrounding ocean. He was doing a similar thing. But whereas her senses were limited to the waters directly around their island, his were not.

He was right. They were close to home. He hadn't had all these extra senses the last time he was home in Te Waipounamu and had hung out with his family, but he still recognized the chill tenor of the water. A long sail or swim away.

The kraken could probably zip them over there in a flash. If it ever had any intention of actually rescuing them.

They'd been on the island a few days. Was it long enough for Pania and Ataahua to have flown home to tell the rest of his whānau what had happened?

Yes.

There they were.

His family. He could have wept. Maybe he did; this deep in the ocean's song, he could hardly feel his body. It was a numb and distant part of himself. Small and far away. Lost.

And his whānau, his family, were gathered close enough to the sea that he could almost hold them.

Mum. Dad. Worry gathering like clouds around them. Pania and Ataahua, bright like stars, heavy with the grief they were about to share. The salt tasted it on them, in their weary shoulders, tired breaths, the burn of dried tears in the corners of their eyes. Humans were mostly water, and his people rarely left its sight; the ocean knew its own.

Mouths moved, but the ocean didn't hear the words. He concentrated. If he could sense them like this, then surely…

* Pania? Ataahua?* He didn't dare crack open the chrysalis of despair that was talking to his parents, but his cousins? Who'd shared his fears and already knew what he was? Their minds were easier to find.

And they heard him, with shock that blazed like a comet.

* Moss? Is that you?*

*How is this possible? Are you—we thought you would be—*

*Is the kraken—?*

He aimed his thoughts at the monster. After this, we go, he told it. She'll be safe. No more putting off our destiny.

Without waiting for a response, he spoke to his cousins.

* I've got some bad news and some worse news,* he began. * Which do you want to hear first?*

He told them everything. The kraken. The plane. The strange shifters who'd attacked Maggie and Carol. The island.

* But shouldn't you be gone by now?*

*Ataahua!* Pania sounded like she wanted to smack her.

* It's true! If our great-uncle is dead—the prison is unguarded.*

*The dragons guard the prison. They can fucking deal for a few days.*

*What if something happens and he's not there to hear the call?*

Moss's thoughts were starting to get hazy around the edges. Something was trying to help, but if it held too close, it would hurt him more. He tried to shake his head to clear it, but it was like shaking a numb arm after sleeping on it. * I will go. After this. This is the last time I'm going to be able to talk to you.*

*Moss, no—*

*You need to find Carol and Maggie. Get in touch with Lance MacInnis. Pania, you know my logins. Get Grant Diaz's number and go through him. They'll say he's busy. Tell them it's about the dragons. You know where they are. Where they need to look for Maggie and Carol and the eggs.*

*But where are you?*

That was a point. Where was he?

Somewhere in the South Pacific or Atlantic. That covered a hell of a lot of ocean.

The knowledge pressed against him, sudden and almost overwhelming, a crescendo of information he fought to make sense of. Tides and temperature and currents and stars and—

There.

He translated the flood of information into something he hoped Pania or Ataahua would understand.

* Got it,* Pania said decisively.

He was running out of time. The edges of his mind weren't hazy; they were unravelling. He'd pushed things too far, the way his octopus used to, jimmying at the hinges until the whole thing fell to pieces. And… he wasn't the only one.

The kraken was exhausted, too, more deeply than it had let him know. Plucking Carol from the sky, bringing them all here, had taken more energy than it had thought. And that energy was slower to return than it had expected.

They were both fading.

But Carol would be safe.

He couldn't concentrate enough to speak to his parents, even if he had the heart for it. Their grief was too raw and new, and it would be an anchor on his soul. He had one thing left to do. He needed all his strength for it.

The kraken might not like it, but he'd held up its end of the bargain for it. And now it was time to hold up his.

To spend whatever time he had left in the dark and the deep, until the dragons called, or he wore down into that glint, that mote, then nothing.

He closed his eyes, if that was what he was doing. He wished he'd told Carol the truth. Wished it had all happened any other way than this. His octopus would have found a way, probably. A way to pull everything to pieces and find another way to put it together.

But his octopus was gone. There was only him, hoping against hope that he could ignore the fate bearing down on him.

All he could do was push Carol out of the way and take the hit himself.

Job done, he told himself, and let go.

*NO!* the kraken thundered, and everything went dark.