"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
When the floodwaters spilled across Beqanna, Ivar was freed from the prison crafted by the sea witch and the magician. The tall walls of the cenote in which he’d spent nearly twenty years were no barrier when filled with water. The kelpie swam to the surface of the new ocean, the one that covered lands that he’d once known.
Beqanna had become an unfamiliar place, melancholy and wariness thick in the air, and so Ivar had left it behind.
Tonight he returns, accompanied by a full moon that hovers just over the edge of the sea. The kelpie steps onto land, shaking out the wet hair of his blue and white mane as the seawater drips down his scaled sides. There are more marks on him than when he’d left, thick scars across his well-muscled body. One crosses over the white blaze that bisects his sapphire face, a dark edge on his otherwise preternatural beauty.
Ivar has never had trouble drawing attention, so he does not bother to cast the lure of his golden gaze. Instead he wades through the water, climbing onto the bank and shaking the last of the brackish water from his body. Someone will come soon, he knows, and they’ll tell him about this place.
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Wishbone has found peace in the river, specifically the place where it becomes one with the ocean. It is a spot of Beqanna that reminds her of Tephra, now buried under the ocean, because the forest meets the coastline without shame. Her childhood home had been that way — the humid foliage of the jungle had kissed the charcoal beaches, and she could always hear the hum of the waves when she was among the undergrowth. The river is different because it slowly winds its way into the sea. One moment she is walking to the tune of the river’s song, and suddenly she is around a bend, and the wide expanse of the ocean greets her.
It is one of her favorite paths to take, to watch the ocean open up before her, unfurling like a rose.
It is especially beautiful on this night, and Wishbone watches from inside the treeline as the full moon glistens off the soft waves. Further out, beyond her swimming capabilities, the moon is a perfect reflection on the ocean’s face. Her amber eyes trace the edges of the moon’s reflection over and over, her mind playing a distant memory of Sickle and Malik (of her failure — because she cannot shake her regrets and shame these days).
The sound of water moving against its will draws her attention away. She is thankful for the distraction. Yet her eyes catch on the shape and color of a body she hasn’t seen in many years. Wishbone feels her breath flee from her chest, but she is able to recover before anything more than a sigh leaves her lips. She’s seen his face since her death — since he murdered her — but it had been during the eclipse when monsters could pick apart your brain and form into something false. His form had been a shadow, a monster, a hoax.
Wishbone knows without touching him that this Ivar is very, very real. And she finds that she is not quite as angry as she had been toward the monster. In fact, she finds herself watching him with a cool, if not amused, expression. She wonders if much has changed with him, but she guesses not by the way he ignores his surroundings as if assuming someone would become enthralled by him and simply have to approach him.
She looks very different from the last time they met, but two things have yet to change — her honey-and-whisky voice and her bright, amber eyes. Wishbone steps from the shadows quietly, just behind his shoulder, and says rather simply, “I’m always surprised what creatures the full moon drags out of hiding.”
Ivar hears the crack of brush underfoot only a heartbeat before the mare steps from the shadows at his shoulder.
He smiles.
It is not a smile of recognition, but it could pass for one. It is hunger, and Ivar had worn it while watching Wishbone often. But she is not Wishbone. He hardly remembers who Wishbone is; she is as deep in the sea of memory as the rest of his life before the cenote.
Almost half his life spent in there - a blur of tepid water, clawed stone walls, and blood.
That is what he knows best: blood and water and the hunt.
The horse in front of him is no one. She is prey. She is just a purple mare, one with a viciously glowing scar across her chest. Unkillable, that scar says to the kelpie. A challenge.
A creature, she calls him without palpable fear, and Ivar’s too-wide smile becomes a grin. That voice is no longer familiar, but the rasp of it is like that of a drowned woman, and it lures the creature nearer. They taste so much better when they are not afraid.
”Surprised?” He repeats lightly, a lift of his brows displaying dramatically falsified incredulity. ”I was hoping for delighted, but I can work with surprised.” He reaches out to touch, but catches her amber eye with his gold one in the moment before his lips meet her cheek.
Nothing. There is nothing there.
There’d almost been, and perhaps she will see the split-second of hesitation it had caused, or notice there was no demand in his sea-cold touch against her cheek.
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Her stomach drops when he flashes that characteristic smile. Perhaps in the days after her (first) death, when she was tall, ebony, and confused, his smile would’ve made fear drop icy-cold in her belly. Wishbone won’t deny that she was genuinely afraid in the days after her death. Ivar had taken her fearlessness along with her life, yet she had regained it quickly. Her bravery would never melt so suddenly again, even in the face of a Curse that left her dead when she refused to say any word on Sickle and Malik.
Maybe it is her fortitude that makes her stomach drop now. She doesn’t feel the coldness of fear, but a warmth that builds deep down. It spreads and burns stronger as his eyes catch on the glowing outline of her scar, cutting deep and jagged across her chest. Ivar would be right to assume it means she is unkillable, though it isn’t the whole truth. Wishbone does die — at least for a few painful, splintering moments. She can’t deny that it’s an uncomfortable process, but it beats the hell out of dying and staying dead.
He moves closer, smelling of saltwater and manly musk and the faintest hint of blood. Wishbone’s life with the kelpie feels so far away, yet the smell and sight of him act as vessels to transport her to the past. It has a cascading effect, and even as Ivar is talking, the pangare mare finds herself thinking about the twins she has failed (both sets of them), the kingdoms she has failed... and maybe Ivar eating her alive will numb the guilt that acts the same.
Their eyes meet. Although his gaze seems to lack recognition, Wishbone feels the burn deepen. She feels like she is playing hide-and-seek with the truth. She is keeping a secret now, and she doesn’t want to give it up yet. Her eyes have never been much good at gatekeeping, and thus their expression is one of mystery and a flash of amusement. They might show more humor if she knew how her voice sounds to his ears, raspy from ocean waves filling her lungs by his command.
“You strike me as someone who could even work with ‘disgusted.’” Ivar’s touch is surprisingly gentle. She closes her eyes against the sensation for a brief moment, tipping her chin up slightly. Her long, dark purple locks fall back against her broad neck, revealing the smooth curve of her throat just inches from his mouth. Although he might not remember her, Wishbone hasn’t forgotten him — or the behaviors that might tease him.
The golden-eyed kelpie watches his prey carefully as he draws nearer. She does not shift away, not even a little, and the bright amusement is irresistible bait in those almost-familiar amber eyes. The compliment that she speaks against his cheek hooks the arrogant beast, and a soft chuff of amusement passes between his glittering teeth in response.
Her heartbeat is quick, but not fear-quick. She is beautiful and flirtatious, and seems entirely unafraid of a creature whose every scale is designed to lure her kind to the watery depths and rip out their throats.
She is Ivar’s very favorite kind of woman, served up on a silver platter the very moment he emerged from the sea.
A creature with more wisdom might have wondered who arranged the platter, or marveled at how quickly he’d been tempted by it.
She bares her throat, shaking back the lustrous curtain of her hair.
His gaze immediately fixes there, just below her jaw. .
He knows better than to kill on land.
He does.
Ivar has learned that lesson well, and often. It is too messy; it leaves too many traces for the seekers to find. The blood flows better in the water anyway, eddying and spiraling until it coalesces into a curtain of crimson that fills his belly and his lungs.
He knows better than to kill on land.
Yet the slow look of lascivious contemplation down the rest of the mare’s rounded curves are as much to give the kelpie time to remind himself of that knowledge as to appreciate the bounty that has been laid out for him.
Ivar wants to slide his teeth down the long purple column of her throat, to feel the last faint flutter of her pulse against his tongue, and to breathe in the taste of its finality. He wants to feel her heart rekindle, like the glowing wound in her chest suggests it will, and then he wants to start all over again.
He wants it, and the kelpie has never denied himself what he wants.
”Let’s go for a swim,” He says. There would be blood if he’d tried to press a simultaneous hypnotic command to comply with a kiss, so he relies on enthrallment to lure her back toward the sea.
I know my lies could not make you believe in my dark times, baby this is all I could be
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Is she willing to relive it? Is she ready to feel the ocean fill her lungs? Does she want to thrash under the sharp pain of his bite?
Wishbone isn’t sure of the answers to those questions, but she does know she deserves it. She has earned Ivar’s bite and the ocean’s saltwater sting because she has failed as a mother and queen. Tephra, Nerine, Sickle and Malik, or Rivuline and Delphi forgiving her matters greatly — yet she knows that forgiving herself will be the hardest challenge. She has spent so much time already riddled with guilt and regret, feeling her heart heavy in her chest. Wishbone hopes that this death will be the redemption she longs for. Deep down, she knows that she is not worthy of vindication just yet.
She must pay for her sins a little longer before she allows herself freedom.
She cannot deny there is a piece of her that enjoys this. Wishbone has always been a flirt, seeking the attention of different men, and she has missed the chase. Perhaps her zeal for the opposite sex is what eventually pushed Wolfbane away from her, but that history is so distant that her relationship with her childhood friend is not added to the pain that holds her down now. The purple mare finds her guilt is very faintly lessened under Ivar’s luring gaze, and the burn she feels tells her that she wants him, along with the pain she knows is coming.
A swim, he says, and she can’t help the rough chuckle that follows his suggestion. There’s a bite of irony to the sound of her amusement, something almost sarcastic. Of course, he would mention a swim, would want to get her where she is powerless, would want to be in a place of control. Wishbone realizes that perhaps Ivar has always been the most predictable thing in her life. She didn’t know it before, but she is almost certain of it now.
She exhales a warm, soft breath against the curve of his scaled neck and then shifts away, turning herself toward the ocean’s star-speckled waves. The water is calm but cold, and Wishbone closes her eyes to enjoy the feeling of it. She had stayed away from the ocean for a short time after Ivar drowned her, but her affinity for it had been stronger than her fear and it hadn’t been long before she was swimming again.
She wades deeper, letting the waves splash up against her chest and curved sides. The water glows faintly near her scar, creating a soft ethereal ambiance underwater. Wishbone turns her head to find Ivar, her heart pounding quicker knowing that justice might soon be served.
Ivar follows her as he always follows them, driven toward the water by the hypnosis elicited by the touch of his kind. The control he’d nearly lost is easier to reign in as they move closer to the water. Everything is easier in the water. His satisfied smile grows as he joins her in the cold sea, feeling it splash first against his white scaled legs, and then the gold and sapphire of his chest and sides.
It is not until she looks back at him, her amber eyes clear and sober, does he pause. Belatedly, he recalls the way she hadn’t faltered at seeing his too-sharp smile, the lack of hesitation to join him in the sea, the way she’d so casually shown him her throat.
His golden gaze moves there, to the length of her lavender neck just below her jaw. Unmarked, without scars. What does she know of kelpies, he wonders? How to tempt them, it seems, and perhaps even how to get away unscathed.
At the thought of her escaping he moves just a little nearer, enough that he can feel the heat of her body in the water as the sea shifts around them. Near enough that he can see the night-black water lick at her shoulders, her sides, her glowing chest.
So tempting.
So fearless.
He could pull her below the chest-deep water between one breath and the next, his teeth around her neck, her blood sweetening the sea. But as his gaze moves from her throat to her beguiling smile, he recalls the water witch who’d trapped him; the confidence in her amethyst eyes and his inability to crush it..
If his imprisonment had taught him anything, it was that Ivar likes his victims glassy-eyed, and cares little if it is with lust or hypnosis.
So he slips closer, drawing his lips along the line of her shoulder. ”Would you like to swim?” He asks, feeling the heat of her skin against his sea-cold mouth. With each touch he presses the command to be truthful.“Or something else?”
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
Wishbone lets herself melt under his hypnosis, under the warmth he brings as he moves closer. Her memories and the guilt that comes with them are heavy, and she feels their weight less while his eyes burn into her. As his gaze traces the line of her neck up to her mouth, she shivers. It is in anticipation of what she knows is to come, rather than the night-cold ocean water. She feels hyper in expectation for the splintering of her body — for the few, blissful moments where she can focus on the shattering pain of death rather than the endless grief.
She tips her chin upward again, her amber eyes finding the details of the galaxy above their heads. Yet — there is no bite to her skin, no spray of blood flavoring the ocean, no sensation of shattering into a thousand pieces and reforming. He has hesitated, and Wishbone wonders if he is beginning to remember. If he has not recognized her, Ivar is at least smart enough to notice she has performed this dance before, that she knows what tempts a kelpie.
When he touches her, she leans into it. He urges her honesty to his questions, and Wishbone feels herself relaxing further into his guidance. It is easier to let her mind drift, to give into Ivar’s power, to allow herself to indulge in the heat that simmers under her skin at his proximity. “As much as I like swimming, there are other things I like more.”
She responds to the desires of her body and moves in the water elegantly (though she is not of the sea in the ways he is, she has spent enough of her life among the tides to move with grace). She dances around him, her warm mouth tracing the lines of his deepwater-cold scales. They have moved this way together before, in the tides of a beach now submerged. She wonders if he recognizes her steps, for she has always moved the same way despite her various forms over the years. Wishbone knows how he will move in response to her, and her movements are in time with his.
Does she dare tell him now? She contemplates letting him keep wondering; maybe he thinks she is a mind reader, with how in-tune her actions are with his. Though she knows enough about Ivar that he might not even remember her name, should she give it? How many other lovers has he dragged under the water, ripping their throats to shreds and feasting on their blood? Wishbone can imagine she is just another name, just another meal to fill his belly all those years ago.
It’s enough to keep her quiet about her secret. Yet Wishbone can’t help herself when she feels on fire — when not even the deep of the night is enough to cool her burning. She writhes against him, and his name slides from her mouth in that familiar honey-whiskey voice. “Ivar.”
‘There are other things I like more’ she answers, and Ivar’s golden gaze rises to hers, his mouth leaving the warmth of her shoulder for the cold and empty autumn air. He’d commanded her to be truthful, and she answered with exactly what a kelpie would want to hear. Exactly what he wants to hear.
His gaze lowers again to her neck, smooth and unmarked, and he once more ponders the absence of scars. She’s not the mare from Ischia, he thinks, unable to recall the name of the purple mare or her piebald daughter. Had they been a lighter shade?
Ivar cannot remember.
He tries though, casting back in his water-logged memory for anything familiar. He tries harder still when the honey-eyed mare begins solicitations. He knows those moves, this dance, the way she presses against him…
Doesn’t he?
It is there, the memory, like a wave that keeps breaking just before he reaches it. And it is so hard to reach for it, so difficult to focus on anything but the way she’s sliding her warm body between Ivar and the cold grasp of the sea, the heat of her pressing back the icy blood hunger that lurks at his very core. He knows he’s forgotten, and he knows that forgetting is dangerous, but she is so very very warm. This disconnect between mind and body is not something he suffers well, as he has always preferred a life led by instinct alone. Yet the memory of the cenote…of being well and truly trapped?
It remains ever at the edges of his mind, makes him wary even as he fails to stifle a groan, the fire of desire overpowering the frigid bloodlust. She almost seems to know him, Ivar thinks, just as she breathes out his name.
The kelpie moves quickly.
Ivar pins down the writhing creature, drawing her tight against him as he presses the cold scales of his chest against the warmth of her back. He’ll rip out her throat, and bear her body down to the depths of the sea before she can trap him - or do whatever it is she plans. His teeth pierce the skin of her crest, preparing to close his too-wide jaws around her neck to press her below the surface. He swallows brackish water, and blood, and at the taste of her that illusive wave of memory finally crashes over him, and his cold hunger begins to rise.
“Wishbone.”
Not a trap then. Just something of his, returning to him as Ivar feels his belongings always should. Ivar smiles, savoring the taste of her blood as he lifts his head slightly, and watches a bead of it fall to her shoulder before sliding down to join the sea.
”You should’ve learned better than to come out here by now,” he breathes against the side of her cheek, his voice low and quiet and cold as the sea. ”But I don’t mind repeating the lesson.”
