Chapter Twelve
The mattress still held the warmth of Lachlan's body when I woke, but the space beside me was empty. Pale dawn light filtered through the salt-crusted windowpanes, illuminating the hearth where peat embers had died to grey ash. Fresh-cut logs lay stacked neatly beside the fireplace, their bark still damp from the storm, and the place looked unusually tidy.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, expecting the usual morning stiffness, the arthritic twinge in my knees, the familiar pinch where melanoma had metastasised along my ribs. Instead, my body moved with liquid ease, muscles responding like I'd spent months at sea rather than one night in a shapeshifter's arms. The spider conch necklace lay coiled on the bedside table, its surface gleaming with an unnatural sheen.
Needing a shower, I padded across the cold flagstones to the bathroom, to find the mirror's reflection staring back at me wasn't mine. Or rather, it was mine, but very different, almost rewritten.
Runes spiralled across my torso in intricate patterns, glowing faintly like bioluminescent plankton disturbed by ripples in the water. They traced the paths Lachlan's tongue had taken hours earlier, but now formed complete sentences in some oceanic script. My fingers trembled as they hovered over a particularly dense cluster above my heart, the same spot where the brooch had burned hottest during our coupling.
Then I noticed the absence.
The scar above my left rib, the one shaped like Australia’s coastline where the surgeon had carved out the first tumour, was gone. Not faded. Not healed. Gone.
My fingers skated across my unblemished skin where the melanoma lesions had mapped my mortality for years, now rewritten in glowing runes that pulsed faintly with each breath.
I turned sideways, craning to see my back in the mirror’s reflection. The cluster of lesions near my spine, the ones the oncologist had called "concerningly aggressive," had vanished into spirals of luminous script. Each whorl and stroke shimmered like wet ink under moonlight, reacting to my touch with a warmth that resonated bone-deep.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up my throat. I’d taken this remote island post specifically to die surrounded by the sea I loved, not to become… whatever this was. The bathroom tiles chilled my bare feet as I braced against the sink, watching droplets from last night’s storm slide down the windowpane like reluctant tears.
As I stood mesmerised in the mirror, I heard footsteps creaking on the porch decking outside. Not Lachlan’s fluid gait, but the deliberate tread of boots.
Saoirse’s voice cut through the salt-heavy air as she stood at the open door.
"Steven? The scholars are losing their minds over your brooch’s translation. You’d better..." her words dying as I walked out of the bathroom, naked, the morning light catching the runes snaking across my torso and down my arms.
Her open satchel, full of papers and her laptop, hit the flagstones with a clatter. "Christ on a bike," her fingers hovered near my collarbone without touching. "Those are… Manannán’s script?"
"Hi, Sis. I wasn't expecting you."
Normally, Saoirse would’ve made some crass joke about my nudity or lobbed a sarcastic barb about my morning wood. Instead, her fingers gripped my shoulders with uncharacteristic urgency, spinning me around like a specimen on a turntable. Her breath hitched audibly as she took in the full panorama of my transformed body, the runes pulsing along my spine, the absence of scars, the way my skin seemed to hum beneath her tentative touch.
"Jesus wept," she whispered, her fingers hovering over the twin spiral marks branding my lower back, Lachlan’s claim. The pads of her fingers traced the raised edges with a scholar’s precision, then jerked back when the markings flared gold-green in response. "These aren’t just tattoos. They’re... alive."
I shivered as her hands ghosted over my ribs where the melanoma lesions had been, her nails scraping lightly through the trail of dried cum still streaking my abdomen. Her usual smirk was nowhere to be found, just a pale, slack-jawed wonder that made her look younger than her fifty years. "Your scars are gone," she murmured, more to herself than me. "Even the one from when you fell through Gran’s greenhouse at twelve."
A gust of wind through the open door sent fresh air into the place. Saoirse’s gaze widened further. "That’s Manannán’s script along your collarbone," she breathed. "The same sequence from the brooch’s inner rim. But it’s... evolving," as her fingertip hovered over a swirling rune that hadn’t been there last night, its edges shimmering like heat haze on sand. "This bit here? That’s new. It’s growing."
The crunch of gravel outside made us both freeze as Dr Fitzgerald stood framed in the doorway, her gaze flicking between Saoirse’s hands on my bare hips and my thoroughly marked skin.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she exclaimed and not because of my stunning nudity.
Dr Fitzgerald's clipboard slipped from her fingers, pages scattering across the floorboards like startled gulls. Her eyes, sharp as flint under those ridiculous tortoiseshell glasses, didn't blink as they tracked the luminous script pulsing along my ribs. "Those are... authentic First Cycle orthography," she whispered, stepping closer without permission. Her fingers twitched like a philologist's near the Rosetta Stone of ancient Celtic. "May I...?"
I nodded, bracing for the clinical touch of academia. Instead, her fingertips brushed my sternum with unexpected reverence, tracing a spiralling rune that flared sea-green at her touch. "This clause here," she murmured, her Cork accent thickening with excitement, "it's a binding vow from the Crane Bag fragments, but personalised. See how this stroke loops back into your heartbeat?" as her nail tapped the glowing line intersecting my pulse point. "It's adapting to your cardiovascular rhythm."
Saoirse made a strangled noise behind me. "Kelly, for fuck's sake, stop fondling my brother's tits and explain why he's glowing like a plankton bloom."
Next, Dr Fitzgerald’s hands slid to my groin, feeling the branding that was now embossed, a raised relief from the surface of the skin. The scholar didn't flinch as she declared, "He's been claimed," she said simply, her thumb rubbing a thumbprint-smear of dried cum from my abdomen without a hint of prudishness.
"Before you continue, Dr Fitzgerald, can I at least put some pants on. I’m feeling like a lab rat being scrutinised?"
"Sorry, yes of course," she replied, taking a seat by the fireplace.
"Now with an element of modesty provided by my Y-Fronts, I sat at the desk, turning the chair around, and my sister joined Dr Fitzgerald by the fireplace.
Dr Fitzgerald adjusted her glasses with trembling fingers. "Your brother has become a Rosetta Stone of ancient Gaelic," she said, her voice hushed as though we stood in a cathedral rather than my hobbit-warren.
"I can now read runes we've never been able to decipher before. It's magnificent and..."
Her gaze flicked to the doorway where Lachlan's damp footprints still glistened on the floorboards. "The man you call Lachlan is more than that. It's beyond belief. He is folklore. He’s a legend come to life."
Saoirse snorted, but her usual bravado faltered when she glanced at my arms, where new runes were still appearing like ink bleeding through parchment. "Bullshit. There's always a scientific explanation."
"Then explain this, Dr," as Dr Fitzgerald seized my wrist, turning it to reveal a cluster of runes pulsing blue-green along my veins. "See how these strokes mirror the brooch's inner coil? But here..." her nail tracing a whorl that hadn't existed yesterday, "... it's responding to tidal patterns. The spring tide peaks in six hours, and this character is already anticipating the swell."
She looked up, eyes blazing. "Steven's body is translating the sea itself. We've only played with understanding the ancient legends and stories. Now we can decipher them all."
A gust rattled the windowpanes, carrying the scent of iodine and something older, like the inside of a just-opened tomb. The brooch on the bedside table hummed in response, its serpentine coils twisting as if alive.
"Saoirse."
I caught her sleeve as she reached for the whiskey bottle. "You saw Lachlan fuse with that thing last night. You watched markings burn themselves onto my skin while scholars gaped through a webcam. At what point does 'impossible' become your working hypothesis? By the way, how did you get here so quickly?"
"Helicopter," Saoirse responded while pouring a whiskey large enough to drown a seal.
The glass trembled slightly in her grip, amber liquid catching the morning light as she drained half of it in one go. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing salt crusted there from the storm. "Dr Fitzgerald chartered one after the video call when I sent those brooch translations."
Dr Fitzgerald’s fingers tapped an erratic rhythm against her thigh. "Where is he?"
The question came out sharper than intended, her gaze darting to the door where Lachlan's footprints still glistened on the floorboards, each one fading slower than nature should allow.
I rubbed at the runes spiralling up my forearm, watching the markings ripple like disturbed water. "Probably talking to his grandmother," I muttered, feeling his presence with certain clarity.
Saoirse's laugh was too loud, too bright for the tension thickening the air. "Right. The murderous seal-granny. Forgot about her," as she poured another three fingers of whiskey, this time splashing some onto the table where it pooled like liquid topaz. "So let me get this straight - you've been shagging an immortal shapeshifting prince who..."
"He's not a prince," Dr Fitzgerald interrupted, adjusting her glasses with academic precision. "If the brooch's lineage markers are accurate, Lachlan's bloodline predates any Celtic monarchy. He's more akin to a..." her fingers sketching shapes in the air, searching for the right term. "A living relic. A vessel for Manannán's power. If legend is right, he's a living God."
Silence erupted between us at the word just used. Impossible. Ridiculous. Earth-shattering, almost.
"Can we meet him?" Dr Fitzgerald asked.
The brooch between us pulsed once, not gold-green this time, but a deep, warning violet. I barely had time to register its heat before Saoirse's whiskey glass shattered in her grip, amber liquid blooming across the table like a bloodstain.
"He's waiting," I said, the words tasting of brine though my lips hadn't moved. "For both of you and I can hear him saying, your sisters bleed poison," I declared. "You wear the sea's poison next to your skin. If you want to meet him, you must discard that poison. Not sure what he's referring to, though."
Dr Fitzgerald was quick to grasp the meaning as she asked me. "Your briefs, they're cotton, are they not?"
"They are, why?" and then I got it. "Synthetic fabrics are poison."
"Correct," Dr Fitzgerald replied, "It appears if we want to meet a living God of the sea, we have to make sure we wear no synthetic fabrics."
Saoirse coughed into her fist, face flushing pinker than the spilt whiskey on her palms. "That's practically everything I'm fucking wearing," she muttered, plucking at her polyester blouse like it had personally offended her. Even her bra straps peeked out in synthetic rebellion beneath the slipping collar.
Dr Fitzgerald adjusted her glasses with academic purpose, though her fingers trembled slightly. "Steven," she said, voice hushed as if we stood in a chapel rather than my disaster of a hobbit-warren, "do you by chance have spare cotton briefs? And perhaps shirts?"
Saoirse emerged from the bathroom first, her usual bravado crumbling as she tugged at the hem of my old university t-shirt, now stretched obscenely over her generous chest, while my briefs barely hung against her hips. "I look like a fucking toddler playing dress-up," she hissed.
Dr Fitzgerald fared worse. My second pair of briefs rode up her thighs in precarious folds, the cotton straining dangerously across her scholar's frame. She'd forgone a shirt entirely, wrapping her nudity in one of my grandmother's handwoven shawls like a besieged Roman senator.
Chapter Thirteen
The walk to the granite outcrop was silent save for the crunch of shale underfoot, and Saoirse’s muttered curses about the cotton briefs riding up her thighs. Dr Fitzgerald moved like a sleepwalker, clutching the shawl around her shoulders with white-knuckled reverence, her scholar’s mind already cataloguing every glowing rune that pulsed across my skin in the morning light as I led the way.
Then we crested the rise, and the world tilted.
Lachlan sat atop a weathered boulder like a king holding court, his naked body gilded by the rising sun, the cloak he was wearing appearing to change colour in real-time. The sword strapped to his waist wasn’t metal but living kelp forged into a blade. The crane bag across his chest shifted as if alive, its contents clinking with the weight of men’s secrets. When he turned, his mercury eyes held depths no human face should contain.
"Mo ghrá," he murmured, the words resonating through my bones.
Saoirse made a sound like a gutted seal. Dr Fitzgerald sank to her knees without a sound, her glasses slipping down her nose as her lips formed silent Gaelic phrases.
"Is that..." Dr Fitzgerald's voice cracked like thin ice beneath a seal's weight. Her trembling finger extended toward the kelp-forged blade strapped to Lachlan's back. "Fragarach?"
Lachlan's grin flashed white as breaking waves against basalt. "Aye," he said, the single syllable resonating with the depth of a tidepool carved into stone. His fingers brushed the sword's hilt, not leather-wrapped, but living bull kelp still glistening with seawater. "The Answerer remembers its keeper."
Saoirse made a strangled noise behind me, her fingers digging into my forearm hard enough to leave crescent indents matching Lachlan's from hours earlier. "That's impossible," she hissed. "Fragarach was lost when..."
"...when Manannán mac Lir took it back to the Otherworld," Lachlan finished, his mercury eyes tracking the way Dr Fitzgerald swayed on her knees as the sword shifted against his side as if responding to her reverence, its blade catching the sunlight in prismatic flares that painted the granite with fleeting rainbows. "Lost to mortals, but not its owner."
A gust carried the scent of ozone and something older, the metallic tang of godsblood, perhaps, or the inside of a just-opened reliquary. The crane bag at Lachlan's hip stirred, its contents clicking together like bones in a storm.
Dr Fitzgerald's glasses slipped further down her nose as she leaned forward, her scholar's composure shattered. "May I...?" as her hand hovered midway between worship and academic hunger.
Lachlan's gaze flicked to Dr Fitzgerald's trembling fingers, then to the cotton briefs stretched obscenely across her scholar's hips. His nostrils flared, not in distaste, but something closer to amusement. "You've dressed them in your skin," he murmured to me, his thumb brushing the matching spirals branding my hipbone. "Clever."
Dr Fitzgerald's fingers twitched toward her throat as if plucking words from the air. "You should be speaking a language we can't understand," she breathed, her Cork accent thickening with disbelief. "How are we comprehending this? That sword alone should be vibrating at frequencies that shatter human eardrums."
Lachlan's laugh rolled like a tide over shingle. He tapped the brooch now fused to his sternum, its serpentine coils pulsed gold-green in response. "Every word I speak passes through him first," he said, and I felt the truth of it like a second heartbeat beneath my ribs. "Steven's body translates more than script now. He is my love, my servant and my vessel for mortal men."
Dr Fitzgerald's breath hitched as if she'd been struck. "I…we…have so many questions," she managed, fingers twitching toward the notebook she'd carried.
Lachlan's smile cut deeper than Fragarach's edge. "And I," he said, rolling a seashell between his fingers that hadn't been there a heartbeat ago, "have so many answers for you," as the shell cracked open in his palm, revealing not a pearl but swirling seawater that reflected constellations no human sky had ever held.
Saoirse's whiskey-roughened voice cut through the salt-heavy air. "But why my brother?" as her fingers twitched toward my chest where the runes pulsed, then jerked back as if burned. "Of all the humans in the world, why choose my brother as your... whatever this is?" gesturing wildly between Lachlan's kelp-forged sword and my glowing runes. "Lover, servant, vessel, pick a fucking title."
"I felt the purity of his heart that day when he was a young boy," Lachlan said quietly, his fingers tracing the air as if following the remembered shape of my childhood face. "Even then. Most humans see seals and think of skins for profit or pests stealing fish. But your brother wept when he touched me, not from pain, but because he loved me as a... creature of the sea."
The confession landed like a stone in still water. Saoirse's lips parted, her usual sharp retort dying unspoken. Even Dr Fitzgerald stilled, her scholar's curiosity momentarily eclipsed by something more fragile.
The wind stilled as if the island itself held its breath. Dr Fitzgerald's fingers twitched toward her notebook, her scholar's hunger warring with something deeper, the visceral understanding that history was being rewritten before her eyes. "What happened?" she breathed, her voice barely louder than the tide lapping the rocks below. "Why do you hide?"
Chapter Fourteen
Lachlan's smile held the patience of eroding cliffs. "We do not hide," he said, his fingers trailing through the cracked-open seashell in his palm, stirring constellations in its miniature ocean. "Landwalkers became blind," his mercury eyes flicked to the distant mainland, where skyscrapers glittered like broken glass on the horizon. "You decided you could rule land and sea both. Crowned yourselves gods with concrete and steel."
A gust carried the stench of distant oil rigs, undercut by something fouler, the acidic tang of microplastics leaching into seawater. The crane bag at Lachlan's hip shuddered, its contents clattering like teeth in a skull.
Saoirse crossed her arms, my borrowed t-shirt straining across her chest. "Folklore's full of..."
"Folklore." Lachlan spat the word like a fishbone as the runes along my forearms flared violet in response. "Your libraries reduced us to bedtime stories while your trawlers ripped up seagrass meadows older than your scriptures," as his thumb brushed the kelp-wrapped hilt of Fragarach. "You poison the oceans, the land and the very air you breathe, then wonder why the Tuatha Dé Danann stopped visiting."
The boulder beneath us was still warm from the morning sun, its rough surface biting into my thighs as I settled beside Lachlan. He smelled of kelp and storm winds, his shoulder brushing mine with casual intimacy while Saoirse and Dr Fitzgerald had walked down the water’s edge, fumbling with driftwood styluses across the tidal flats below us.
"Start with the wave-curl," Lachlan called down, his fingers sketching the shape against my knee where only I could see. The touch sent shivers through me, part memory of last night's claiming, part new awareness of how thoroughly our bond had rewoven my flesh. "No, Saoirse, like this," as he plucked a razor clam from the rocks and demonstrated, its edge scraping perfect spirals into the wet sand, having now left his makeshift throne to join the ladies.
Dr Fitzgerald made a sound like a choked sob, her glasses fogging as she scrambled to copy the motion. "This changes everything," she whispered, her scholar's hands trembling around her makeshift stylus. "We've been misreading the Book of Ballymote for centuries."
Lachlan's chuckle vibrated through me, rich as tidepool echoes. "Your scholars drew them backwards," he said, plucking a strand of seagrass to demonstrate. The blade glowed briefly in his grip, its edges sharpening into a living quill that danced across the tidal pool's surface, the runes flaring blue-green in its wake, swirling like ink in whiskey before dissolving into the brine. "You tried to carve what should flow."
I watched Saoirse's face as the truth of it hit her, the way generations of academics had chiselled dead stone while Lachlan's people wrote with the sea itself. Her usual bravado faltered; the hand usually clutching a whiskey glass now hovered over the ephemeral script like a supplicant at a shrine.
The tide had retreated by the time Lachlan demonstrated how to read the sand ripples, not as patterns, but as sentences written in a language older than stone. Dr Fitzgerald's hands shook as she traced the ephemeral script with her stylus, her glasses slipping down her nose when the waves erased her clumsy attempts.
"Again," she breathed, seawater soaking the hem of her borrowed blanket, which she discarded onto the rocks, now semi-naked as a child, as she crouched in the shallows. Lachlan's laughter rolled over her like warm surf as he guided her wrist through the motion, his fingers atop hers as the next wave curled ashore, the water carrying their combined markings up the beach, a perfect spiral of glowing Gaelic that pulsed twice before dissolving into foam.
Saoirse snorted from her perch on a driftwood log. "Show-off," she muttered, but her fingers twitched toward the notebook balanced on her knees, her own crude sketches of Lachlan's demonstrations smudged by whiskey-sweaty palms.
Lachlan flicked a barnacle at her with deadly accuracy, it landing in her whiskey cup with a plink. "Your turn, landwalker," he teased, the old Gaelic endearment laced with unexpected warmth.
Saoirse's attempts looked more like drunken eels than proper script, but Lachlan nodded approval when she managed a passable wave-curl. "Not bad," he conceded, "for a mortal who smells of dead barley."
It was unreal how the time flew that afternoon, until the dusk started to descend upon the gathering of children learning to write anew in a language that hadn’t lived for… gosh, maybe three thousand years. My sister and Dr Fitzgerald were engrossed in the lessons, as the living god showed them in sand and water what they had always dismissed as babble.
They didn’t want to leave the shoreline. It was only when Lachlan mentioned that the sea was calling him that we departed, the walk back to the hobbit-warren mixed with awe and questions to me as he disappeared, leaving me to guide them as if first year under graduates on freshers week.
Chapter Fifteen
Lachlan waded out of the water, having answered the call; the fire on the beach, igniting from nothing but Lachlan’s breath, a puff of salt-laced air that burst into flames as if the sea itself had granted him kindling. The driftwood crackled to life with a sound like distant waves breaking, the flames licking upward in hues of blue-green, colours stolen from the ocean’s depths.
Saoirse’s stomach growled loud enough to compete with the tide. She glared at her own abdomen like it had betrayed her. “Christ, I could eat a whole fucking seal,” she muttered, then froze, remembering exactly who she was sitting beside.
Lachlan’s grin was warming in response. “Not these,” he said, just as four sleek heads broke the surface of the shallows. Dark eyes gleamed in the firelight as the seals hauled themselves ashore, their movements fluid even on land as each carried something in their jaws, silver flashes of fish, the iridescent coil of an octopus, and a lobster still twitching in protest.
They deposited their offerings at Lachlan’s bare feet with reverential dips of their heads before retreating to wallow in the shallows in a playful mood, enticing the ladies to come and play.
Dr Fitzgerald’s fingers twitched toward her notebook. “That’s, those were wild seals,” she breathed. “They hunted for you.”
Lachlan shrugged, flipping the lobster onto the fire with casual grace. “They’re cousins,” he said, as if that explained everything, as the lobster hissed as it hit the flames, its shell blackening instantly. "If you think they’re beautiful, would you like to meet someone special and magnificent?" he asked.
"Depends," my sister said, as Dr Fitzgerald stripped off my cotton Y-Fronts, discarding them on the shore, and waded naked into the sea to play with the seals, spurring my sister to follow suit.
As my sister and Dr Fitzgerald played with the seals, Lachlan stood and held his hands against his mouth, shouting once, "Aonbarr."
Dr Fitzgerald recognised the name as it reverberated across the water like a whip of lightning. Silence pooled for three heartbeats, then the sea erupted.
A wave taller than my hobbit-warren surged from calm waters, its crest foaming unnaturally white. At its peak rode a horse the colour of storm clouds, its mane whipping salt spray as hooves struck the surface without sinking. The beast's eyes burned like drowned suns, casting eerie gold reflections across our stunned faces.
"Fuck me sideways," Saoirse breathed, one hand clutching her whiskey bottle as she sat in the water with a seal's head on her thigh, the other unconsciously covering her naked breasts as the horse thundered towards the shore. Its wake sent Dr Fitzgerald scrambling backwards, her scholar's grace momentarily overridden by primal terror as she fell backwards onto the sand, her nakedness visible even to the seals that didn't care.
Aonbarr skidded to a halt where waves met sand, seawater steaming off his flanks. Up close, I could see his coat wasn't grey but thousands of overlapping scales, each one etched with minute spirals that mirrored the markings now branding my skin. He tossed his head with a sound like a rockslide, seaweed tangled in his bridle, no, not a bridle, the straps were living eels, their gills flaring as they tightened around his muzzle.
Lachlan pressed his forehead to the beast's flank, murmuring in a tongue that made my brooch burn violet-hot. Aonbarr's responding snort sent a gust of brine over us, the scent laced with something metallic, blood or lightning or both.
Aonbarr's nostrils flared as he scented me, his hot breath stirring the damp curls at my temples. The horse's eyes, too large, too knowing, tracked the pulsing runes along my collarbones with eerie focus. When I reached out, his scales parted beneath my fingers like sea foam yielding to touch, cool and impossibly smooth.
"He remembers you," Lachlan murmured against the beast's flank as his fingers tangled in Aonbarr's seaweed mane, the strands coiling around his wrist like affectionate serpents. "From when you were knee-high and building sandcastles where his foals sleep."
Dr Fitzgerald made a wounded noise behind us, her bare feet leaving wet prints on the granite as she edged closer, her scholar's hunger overcoming terror. "That's..." her voice cracking like thin ice. "Manannán's steed shouldn't be corporeal. The texts clearly state..."
"Your texts are landlocked minds guessing at tides," Lachlan interrupted, his thumb brushing a spiral between Aonbarr's eyes that flared gold at his touch. The motion left afterimages on my retinas, the same way staring at the sun would. "Aonbarr swims where he pleases, but he answers my call wherever he might be."
Saoirse's whiskey bottle hit the sand with a thud. She stood barefoot in the surf, her nudity forgotten as the waves licked against her knees. The seals circled her like curious children, their dark eyes reflecting the firelight. One bold pup nipped at her leg, making her yelp and then laugh, but it was Aonbarr's gaze that captured their attention as he stood melting into Lachlan's touch.
Aonbarr snorted as Lachlan murmured something in a tongue that made my brooch pulse like a second heartbeat. The great steed tossed his head, scales flashing iridescent in the firelight, before turning toward the sea with a sound like a rockslide. His hooves struck the water without sinking, each step sending up prismatic sprays until he vanished into the horizon, where storm clouds still lingered.
Aonbarr’s departure left a gap in the gathering that the lobster shells filled when cracked open with a sound like breaking waves, their sweet flesh steaming in the driftwood fire’s blue-green flames. Saoirse barely waited for them to cool before tearing into one with her teeth, juices running down her chin as she moaned around the mouthful. "Christ, I'd convert to paganism for this," she mumbled, licking her fingers with uncharacteristic grace and manners.
Dr Fitzgerald tried to eat with scholarly manners, turning each morsel in the firelight like a relic to be studied, but failed when devouring the flesh with groans of delight and taste. When she bit into the octopus tentacle, her eyes fluttered shut, not in pleasure, but something closer to reverence. "This is how they described the feasts of the Tuatha Dé," she whispered. "Food that tastes of the sea’s memory."
Lachlan poured wine from a flask that hadn’t been there moments before, its surface carved with spirals that mirrored my new markings. The liquid glowed faintly gold in the firelight, tasting of salt and something older, like the inside of a just-opened tomb. Saoirse downed hers in one go and immediately reached for more, her cheeks flushing beneath her freckles.
We spoke of nothing and everything, the way tides pull secrets from the shore, the ache of cities built where forests once breathed, the particular loneliness of scholars who love dead languages more than living people.
Dr Fitzgerald’s laughter surprised us all, bright and unguarded as she confessed her childhood fear of selkies. "I’d check under my bed every night," she admitted, wine loosening her tongue. "Not for monsters, but in case one left a skin for me to steal."
I hadn't seen my sister naked in years and years, but as we all sat on the beach, it seemed appropriate, if not surreal. Four naked people around a fire, on a beach in the Isles of Scilly, the age of our bodies not material, our physical beauty perceived only by the eyes of the beholder. It didn’t matter. The only difference was that one of us was a living God who still had answers to the many questions the ladies continued to ask.
Chapter Sixteen
The fire had burned down to embers when Dr Fitzgerald yawned hard enough to crack her jaw, her wine-loosened limbs sprawled across the driftwood like a shipwrecked scholar as she lay down on the sand, one of the seals offering themselves as a pillow. Saoirse was already half-asleep against a seal pup, her fingers still twitching toward the whiskey bottle even in her dreams as the pup just lay there, possibly bonding or possibly thinking, it was bedtime for him to.
Lachlan caught my wrist before I could suggest heading inside. "Leave them," he murmured against my temple, his breath warm with that strange golden wine. "The cottage smells of land-sickness," as his fingers traced the newest runes spiralling up my thighs, markings that hadn't been there at sunset, as the tide lapped closer to our bare feet.
I watched in silent fascination and awe as Lachlan scooped a handful of dry sand and blew across his palm. The grains swirled into the air, weaving themselves into a floating mat that pulsed with bioluminescence. More sand joined the dance, layering itself into a perfect rectangle that hovered just above the high tide line, its surface rippling like the skin of a drum.
The floating sand-bed undulated beneath us like the skin of some great sea creature, buoyed by unseen currents. Lachlan's fingers traced the newest runes flaring across my hipbones, markings that pulsed in time with the distant tide's pull. "Watch," he murmured against my throat, his breath stirring the fine hairs at my nape as the bed rotated slowly, aligning us with the moon's silver path on the water.
My gasp echoed across the bay when the first wave lifted us, not roughly, but with the same inevitable gentleness that had carved these islands from granite. Lachlan's mouth found mine as the sea rocked us upward, his kiss tasting of that impossible golden wine and something deeper, the metallic tang of storm-churned depths. Our bodies moved with the rhythm of swells older than stone, his hips rolling against mine in perfect synchrony with the waves beneath us.
Dr Fitzgerald's snore carried faintly from shore, underscored by Saoirse's drunken mumbling about "bloody selkie show-offs."
The sounds should have shattered the moment, but Lachlan's laughter vibrated through me like a seal's sonar pulse, his teeth grazing my shoulder as another swell lifted us higher. "They'll remember this tomorrow as a dream," he promised, his palm sliding down my abdomen to where our bodies joined, his touch igniting runes I hadn't known could glow there.
The bed tilted as a larger wave approached, but Lachlan's arms anchored me effortlessly. Our coupling became a dance with the sea itself, each thrust of him matched to the cresting swell, each withdrawal timed to the trough. In pure rhythm with the sea, he thrust in and out, slowly edging me closer to heaven. When the wave broke beneath us, sending salt spray across our heated skin, Lachlan's groan blended with the crash, his fingers tightening on my hips as the floating bed became a vessel riding the froth.
I arched against him, my nails scoring his shoulders as the runes along my spine flared violet-hot. The response startled me, not pain, but a pleasure so intense it bordered on holy terror. Lachlan's mercury eyes reflected the moon's path as he whispered, "That's Manannán's script rewriting your nerves," as his thumb circled the pulsing mark at the base of my throat. "Every pleasure you feel now echoes through the tides, and every shapeshifter and selkie knows, I have claimed you, and we bond and couple as always destined to do."
Lachlan moved with the precision of tides, each thrust measured, deliberate, testing the give of my body like currents shaping sand. His fingers traced the glowing runes along my stomach as they flared brighter with every pass, the script responding to his touch like shorelines yielding to the moon's pull. When he angled deeper inside me, brushing against that impossible spot, the runes across my abdomen erupted in gold-green fire, branding the moment into my skin.
"Watch," he murmured against my throat, his voice rough as surf on shale. The floating sand-bed beneath us shimmered, particles rearranging into a mirror above our tangled bodies. In its reflection, I saw how thoroughly he'd rewritten me, Lachlan's markings now pulsed through my subcutaneous layers like bioluminescent veins, each spiral and knot lighting up in sequence as he moved. His next thrust sent a shockwave through the patterns, radiating outward from my pelvis in concentric rings of light.
I arched against him, my nails scoring his shoulders as the pleasure crested, not a wave breaking, but the moment before, when the water holds its breath. Lachlan's hips rolled with the patience of millennia, his rhythm syncing with the distant pull of the spring tide. The sweet spot inside me became a lodestone, drawing him back again and again, each pass sparking fresh constellations across my vision.
"Breathe," he commanded, and I realised I'd stopped. Air rushed back into my lungs carrying the scent of him, storm wrack and ambergris, the musk of sealskin and something older, like the inside of a just-opened reliquary. His next thrust sent the floating mirror scattering into a thousand glowing particles, our reflection fragmenting into ephemeral runes that hovered briefly before dissolving like sea foam.
My climax built differently this time, not the crashing breaker of our first coupling, but the slow, inevitable rise of a tidal bore. Lachlan's hands framed my hips, his thumbs pressing into the twin spirals branding my pelvis as he guided me toward the edge with terrifying precision. The runes along my inner thighs flared violet, then white-hot as he changed angles minutely, hitting that perfect place with every stroke.
The runes on my entire body flared hotter, not just light now, but heat that seared without burning, like molten glass particularly along the whole length of my hard shaft as my climax hit with the force of a storm surge, my vision failing in lights and colours that blinded me as my back arched off the sand-bed, fingers clutching at Lachlan’s shoulders where his own markings pulsed in tandem, as ropes of cum spurted from my cock in an almost shocking intensity, as it hit my face and chest multiple times.
Lachlan's climax followed, hitting like the tide swallowing a sandcastle, inevitable, absolute, rewriting the shore in its wake. His hips stuttered against mine, the rhythm breaking into something primal as his head tipped back, throat working soundlessly before the cry tore loose. It wasn't human. It was the sound of a skerry splitting under wave force, the groan of whale song echoing through midnight depths.
His release pumped into me, seemingly unable to stop, as the warmth embraced my very soul, and each thrust brought more seed to the party. This time, he pulled out, while still in mid flow, painting my abdomen in streaks that shimmered like bioluminescent algae, each splash reacting with my runes to form temporary runes before dissolving into my skin.
So much cum lay on my stomach and chest that it created its own stream, rolling over the edge onto the quartz surface of the floating sand-bed, trembling beneath us as if the sea itself shuddered with his pleasure, the granules rearranging into spirals that matched the ones now pulsing across Lachlan's collarbones.
I wrapped my legs around him as he collapsed onto me, kissing me tenderly as any man would, against the person he loves, while I could feel his seed seeping from my body, providing reassurance that this was no dream.
Finally, a wave rolled us onto the shore, depositing us beside the smouldering fire where Saoirse and Dr Fitzgerald still slept, tangled with seals as pillows. The creatures blinked up at us with dark, knowing eyes before slipping back into the surf, their movements silent as shadows. Only one remained, a grey-muzzled elder who pressed her cold nose to my palm before vanishing likewise into the tide.
The dawn light had barely crested the horizon when I shook Saoirse and Dr Fitzgerald awake, their limbs stiff from sleeping tangled in seal pelts and sand. Saoirse groaned something obscene about selkie stamina before rolling over, while Dr Fitzgerald blinked up at me with academic fascination, her fingers twitching toward the fresh runes spiralling across my thighs and calf muscles, taking note of the cum on my chest, choosing to be ladylike in her lack of comment.
The walk back to the cottage was quiet, save for the crunch of shale underfoot and Saoirse's muttered threats against whoever invented sand in places sand shouldn't be. When I returned to the shore, Lachlan lay sprawled across the floating sand-bed like a king awaiting tribute, the morning light gilding every scar and rune across his body. His mercury eyes tracked my approach with lazy hunger, one hand idly stroking himself to full hardness as the tidal swell rocked the bed beneath him.
I smiled, and for the first time, I whispered, “I love you,” as I rejoined him with the desire for more.
What I hadn’t noticed was Saoirse lingering in the marram grass until my knees hit the wet, my heading moving towards what I desired most.
The first taste of Lachlan was always a revelation of salt and storm wrack, the kelp-bitter musk of his arousal, something ancient and metallic beneath it all. His fingers tangled in my hair as I took him deep, my lips stretching around his girth while the sand-bed swayed beneath us. A groan vibrated through him when my tongue found the sensitive ridge beneath his head, his hips bucking upward in a motion that sent seawater sloshing over the bed's edges.
I edged him ever closer, running my lips along his entire shaft, sucking his balls and nibbling his head, just so. So many times I enveloped him deeply, tasting, slithering and sliding the whole length until he could take it anymore.
Lachlan's climax hit like a rogue wave, sudden, overwhelming, leaving no part of me untouched. His fingers convulsed in my hair as his hips jerked upward, the taste of him flooding my mouth, richer than last night's golden wine, saltier than the sea lapping at our floating bed. I swallowed instinctively, each pulse hotter than the last, until his shuddering groan melted into a contented sigh.
The floating sand-bed cradled us as I crawled up his body, my cheek finding its familiar place against his sternum, where the twin to my brooch pulsed slow and steady. His fingers traced lazy spirals down my spine, not the demanding touch of earlier, but something softer, more human. The tide carried us in gentle circles as his breathing evened out, our limbs tangled in a way that made it difficult to tell where his runes ended, and mine began, and somewhere in the rocking rhythm of waves and warmth, sleep claimed us both.
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