Chapter 37

Rose

W hen it came time to head back home, it was still pretty early in the evening—dinner had only lasted an hour and a half rather than the customary three. I kissed my mates before sending them on their way with a promise that I'd be back as soon as possible. Then I followed Ava and Aira to their house.

Ava went straight into the kitchen and grabbed three large glasses of her infamous chocolate milk, and even though I wanted to razz her about it, I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Aira also didn't question her fiancée's choice. I simply took my customary spot with the sacred chocolate milk in hand and savored it. Yes, I had my own gallon at home—a nearly half-empty one—but getting it from Ava directly was different in a way I couldn't rightly explain.

"So, what's this super-secret conversation you want to have with us?" asked Ava, settling in and snuggling close to Aira.

When faced with the expectant looks of my best friends, all my earlier gusto fled. Aira's relationship with her father had always been fraught, but after what had happened at Oki, well, I was sure it had only fractured their already precarious bond. It didn't help that Mr. Shioji hadn't deigned to come to the leaders' meeting.

"I have a favor to ask," I said finally, looking into my friend's dark eyes with remorse, "and you're absolutely going to hate it."

Without missing a beat, Aira asked, "Something to do with my father, I assume?"

I nodded. "I need to ask if he will allow me a chance to bond with the Heart of Casper. I know it's somewhere on his land, but I don't want to trespass and get eaten." I clenched and unclenched my fists at my sides. "You know I wouldn't ask if I thought I could get a meeting with him on my own, but since he's decided to be a stubborn asshole about all this, we both know I may as well yell at the clouds for all the good it would do."

Even Ava grimaced. "You couldn't ask for something easier? Like a pony?"

"Unfortunately, no." I shook my head. "If I could bond with the Heart, I could fortify it against Joseph should he discover they exist. There's also the fact that Mr. Shioji is the only person I can think of who's strong enough to oppose Joseph. I know it's a long shot and that I'm probably going to be turned down, but I have to at least try."

Aira's usually expressive features clouded over, a mask of pure emotionlessness sliding over her face. The moment I saw it, I regretted my request, my stomach churning with anxiety. I opened my mouth to try and take back the words, to smooth things over so she wouldn't look so hopeless, but she spoke before I could form a single syllable.

"Are you certain my father can even help you?" she asked, not angrily. Not upset. Just… resigned.

"I mean, look at how easily he dealt with Joseph's influence. If he can do that, he can maybe, at the very least, teach me what I need to know to do it myself." I huffed a frustrated breath. "Not only that, he's the oldest and most powerful among us—"

"He's not the most powerful among us," Aira said, cutting me off gently. "You are."

I tilted my head. "What do you mean?"

"My father is old and powerful. But you… you are brimming with the power of a deity. You could hand my father his ass if you only knew how to use your magic," she replied with a heavy sigh of her own.

Ava snorted. "Hell, I'd pay to see you do it. You could really knock him down a few pegs."

Aira didn't join her fiancée in laughing. "Is there another alternative? Do you have any other options?"

The desperate edge to her questions was not lost on me. "I…" I started, then paused, trying to think of the best way to answer this. "Milo, Will, and I are leaving regardless, to help me learn how to protect my mind from Joseph. So, if your dad decides not to help, it won't be the end of the world, but it will complicate things if Joseph somehow manages to take your father's mind from him."

"Shit, that's true." Ava's usually jovial expression now turned serious.

Silence fell between us. The weight of the situation sat heavily on our shoulders. I wasn't sure what else to say, other than to walk back my request, but they knew the stakes. They knew what would happen if we didn't succeed.

"If you don't mind," Aira started, her eyes meeting mine, "could you let me think about this?"

"Of course." I nodded hastily and moved to sit next to her, grabbing her hands in mine. "But please don't do anything that will make you uncomfortable. If the price is too high, don't worry about it. I can find someone else to teach me."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Not wanting to push her, I just gave her a hug, hoping this wasn't going to be bad for her in any way. I couldn't live with myself otherwise.

My fingers fussed over the newest pearl added to Milo's necklace. Will and I had had to negotiate how we were going to handle Milo's courting gifts, whether we wanted to share a strand or make two separate ones. In the end, practicality won out, and we decided to use only one. But, despite Will telling me not to worry because the "furball" was both of ours, I still felt like I'd encroached on his territory.

After I'd returned from my best friends' house, I'd told my mates about what had happened. I was still unsure whether I would get my meeting with Mr. Shioji. Of course, there was honestly little chance the man was going to allow me anything even if we did meet, but even though it put a damper on my already low spirits, I'd had to at least ask. For my own sake, I needed to know I'd exhausted every option here before we left.

"There is something else we can do to aid you," said Milo, an unusual hesitance in the cadence of his words.

He'd been pensive in the hour since I'd returned, and neither Will nor I wanted to push him to open up about what was on his mind. So, hearing him say this, I raised my eyes to stare at him, my attention on his pearls derailed completely. I almost didn't want to know what this "something else" was, not when I saw the uncharacteristic reluctance on his face.

"What's that?" Will asked, rounding the couch to sit down next to us.

"I've been giving this a lot of thought since our talk this morning," he said, his eyes meeting mine. "You said you need power, more than what you have now and more than what Joseph has. There's a way you can have that." Once more, I sensed a bigger meaning behind his words, and I was still clueless.

"Milo," Will warned, not angry but unsure.

However, our selkie forged on anyway. "There's something called the soul stitch," he said before our merman could stop him. "It's a ritual that would bind our souls and our life forces together. It would allow you to draw on and use our power as your own."

I blinked at him. To use their power as my own? Such an offer was… unimaginable.

Will huffed. "If you're going to tell her about that, then you should tell her about all of it, so she can make an informed decision." He turned to me, his features softening just a little. "The soul stitch does indeed combine our lifelines. It would extend our lifespans to the longest lived of the three of us, allowing us to have more years together. However, there are dangers in it. If one of us is killed, the other two would follow at the same time. You could burn your partners' magic out if you took too much power from them."

"And if your father took one of our minds, he could wield all three of us," I whispered in utter horror as the realization dawned on me. In truth, I had no idea how powerful my mates were. Hell, the relative power of other Otherkind wasn't something I truly understood, if I was honest, but I had no doubt that they had more than enough to supplement mine. However, as images of their mindless husks flashed through my mind, I couldn't help but shudder.

"Yes," said Will, then he sighed. "The soul stitch is supposed to be the ultimate marriage ceremony. The binding of our souls in this life and the next. It can be done in emergencies or for things like this, but it's not common."

I looked back at Milo. "Is this what you want?"

For a moment, he just sat there until, eventually, his shoulders drooped. "No. This is not how I envisioned being bound to my mates, but if it helps you, if it can bring an end to all this nonsense with Joseph faster, then I can deal with that."

What he wasn't saying, I knew, was that he would be disappointed should I agree to such a bond now. He clearly had a vision of our future I wasn't privy to, but he was too good a man, too selfless, not to put it aside if he thought it would give me the best advantage. After all, our lives couldn't progress until I'd finished my quest.

I thought back to the two souls I'd sent to the afterlife, the ones who'd bound themselves to each other. Their love for each other was infinite, thinking they'd have so many years to enjoy their lives together. But all it had taken was one of them crossing paths with Molly to ruin everything, and both had paid the price.

But it wasn't just Milo's potential misgiving or the prospect of dying together that had me hesitant, though he did deserve all his dreams to come true and more. it was the image of his and Will's faces, slack and devoid of everything that made them the men I loved. Alive, but barely. Their autonomy gone. My worst nightmares were plagued with these visions. If stitching our souls together would lead to that… I couldn't do it.

While I grappled with my thoughts, Will asked Milo, "Do you even have what we'd need to do it?"

Our selkie nodded. "I may or may not have liberated a sacred needle from a temple in the late 1800s. It's in my vault downstairs."

"Was there any crime you didn't commit with that friend of yours? Nero, was it?" Will asked, holding back a smile.

Milo thought about this… for too long of a moment. "Definitely not bestiality."

This time, I couldn't hold back a snort and eye roll of my own, but I sobered again right after. Looking between the two of them, seeing the light in their eyes, I made up my mind. I couldn't do it. It was one thing if Joseph ended my life, but the thought of him ending theirs as well… or that they could be used to end mine, should Joseph realize what we'd done…

Reaching out, I gripped Milo's hand in my own. "Thank you for telling me about this." I stared deep into his jade eyes. "But I want to wait to make it something special."

"Oh, Rose." He brushed a kiss to my forehead. "Are you sure? You could have more time to think if you needed to."

"I'm sure," I replied. "Maybe I haven't ever really spoken about this before, but I would like to have a normal girl experience. You know, a proposal, a wedding, a family. I'd like this to be something normal for us as well."

Will moved to sit behind me and pressed his lips to my shoulder. "And you shall have it."

"Aye, that you will," Milo agreed.

A soft knock on our front door interrupted what I wanted to say next. Will hopped up to see who it was, and the second he opened it, he moved aside to let Aira in. Darkness shadowed her expression, and my heart sank into the pit of my stomach.

"My father said he'd meet with you and Milo only," she said without greetings or preamble. "Nine a.m. tomorrow morning."

I was by her side in a moment. "What did you have to do to get him to agree?"

She looked away from me, but before she did, her pupils shifted to slits. When she spoke, each word was threadbare and forced. "I agreed to stay here on the islands. And I must come to dinner weekly to reaffirm my familial ties."

The weight of what she was saying hit me heavily in my chest. "You're not going to get to leave. Because of me."

"No, don't feel guilty, Rose," she replied quickly, squeezing my hand. "I believe what you're doing is right, even if I'm unsure how much good it will do. This is a small sacrifice for the greater good of our home. Once Joseph is dealt with, this won't be a problem, and I can leave if I choose."

There was something in her words, a hesitation, that made me uneasy. "You don't think he'll allow me to go to the Heart."

Aira took one deep breath, then another, before shaking her head. "No, I don't think he will. I think he wants to make sure he refuses your request to your face so he can lord himself over you."

I wanted to sink to the ground in shame for asking when I knew it was futile to begin with. She'd given up too much for the outcome we both knew was coming. Yet she grasped my shoulders and met my eyes, the intensity in her gaze almost too much.

"I don't think my father will do the right thing. He's too prideful and too old. But I believe in you, Rose. I believe in what you're doing. And if this is the only way I can help, then so be it. But it will not be said that I sat back and allowed Joseph to take my home from me," she said, resolute in a way I'd never heard before.

I couldn't help but pull her into a hug and squeeze her so tight that neither of us could breathe properly. "Thank you, Aira."

"No, thank you, Rose. You're going to save us all."

Though I opened my mouth to refute her claim, I stopped myself. I wanted so badly to believe her. I wanted to believe I could save us all. Joseph was going to die by my hand, one way or another. But would that be before or after he decimated the rest of the islands I loved so much?

Either way, it would come down to whether the oldest, most stubborn sea dragon I knew would be at my side or if I'd be doing it alone.

Something told me that it would be the latter.