No one could remember how the war had begun.

Any one of the Avians would tell you it had been spurred on by a horrific assault on one of their cliffside nests, a slaughtering of their young by the cruel and heartless creatures of the sea. And if you asked one of the Merfolk, they’d tell you it had clearly been provoked by an aerial attack on a school of their own, arrows rending flesh, piercing scales, bloodying the sea foam.

Both sides would swear on their grandmothers’ names that their account was accurate, and the others spoke only lies. Both of those answers were true, depending on who you asked.

It was just that the Avians were cruel and dangerous and warlike, according to the Merfolk. But the ocean-dwellers were vile heathens, if you asked the ones that took to the air; the sea-folk had embraced the deep magic, twisted it to their will, and must naturally pay the price of their profane folly. Both were convinced the other wanted nothing more than total destruction. A victory so absolute that the other would be wiped from the face of the planet.

Endless retaliation against slights and insults and provocations had fueled them both for centuries. And both cultures had long memories, a fierce will to see their own way as the right way, the proper and logical way, and the others as monstrous and barbaric.

So it had been for centuries.

In the midst of all this hatred, a warrior flew over the towering cliffs of her home, her bow clutched in her hand. Her hair was cropped short, in the style all of the wardens wore. A quiver was slung across her back, the supple leather well-worn and familiar between her tawny wings. She was young, newly appointed to her post and eager to go on patrol. But she was no untried fledgling, and had seen her own arrows pierce deep beneath scales and skin as she soared over her quarry.

This was the way things had always been, the way she had been trained, and what she found pride in doing. Her aim was true, her cause was righteous, and even if few would say outright that they wished the Merfolk would swim into the deepest trench in the ocean and drown there, the young warrior was fervent with pride and spite. She would say it, and mean it, every word.

And it was not without cause.

“Enara,” Merrit, one of her patrol-mates, called to her. “They’ve moved on. We’d best be heading back in to give our report.”

The Merfolk that they’d been hunting had come far too close to the cliffs, but it seemed now that they’d turned back; now, Enara looked across the ocean, and the low-hanging summer sun, and saw only the tops of waves. Not a glint of scales to be found.

But then: a flash of color. Inky-green and distinctive. A scale. And… was that the flick of a fin, too? Merrit had been lording her count over Enara the whole three weeks they’d been assigned together. Enara wanted nothing more than to bring back a pair of fins and prove her worth to her rival. If there was a straggler down there…

“All right,” Enara called back. “I just want to check something out. I’ll meet you there.”

Merrit saluted, and swooped and curled in the air, her dusky tan wings catching the sunlight as she moved.

Show-off, Enara thought. But was she any better?

She hesitated. Everyone knew that the Merfolk were much more dangerous in greater numbers. Their twisted magic worked in concert drawing down winds and making the seas rise. But her people were dangerous all alone. And Enara had always excelled at marksmanship. She would surely capture her prize, win glory, and rub it in Merrit’s face.

As her wings steadied, Enara caught a gust and rode it down, down, to a low-lying sea cave. There was the glint of light again, undoubtedly a ripple of scales. It was almost pretty, like the light on the water, but… more. Not as pretty as an Avian, of course. That was absurd. But Enara was drawn to it, closer and closer, as she was drawn to all shiny, mysterious things. Her wings were dotted with sea-spray, and she could feel it splashing against her skin as she came lower and lower. All she wore was a light linen tunic and short, knee-length trousers, made of soft, thin leather. Her clothing was light for flying, but did nothing to shield her from the spray. She shivered.

This is a bad idea.

The realization struck her almost in the same moment as the wave.

Enara’s cry was cut off by the slash of stinging water as it hurled her into the rock. Unnatural, unholy—surely called down by one of the Merfolk. She didn’t have time to think of how one alone could’ve wielded such power, not when her body slammed into the stone. The water stole her cries of pain, and made any struggle impossible. Drenched, her wings flapped uselessly, and she realized, as she was tossed and turned until she hardly knew which way was up, that she could die here so very easily.

The water came again, and she ducked, and found herself flying inside of the cave, landing hard on the side of the stone. Her vision went black, and she crumpled, her whole body wracked with pain as she struggled against unconsciousness.

Her last thought, as her body trembled and shook in pain, was of a pair of dark, dark eyes, in a pale face, and sharp, pearl-white teeth: a snarl, twisted in anger. The face of the one who surely would be her death.

She slipped into darkness, and knew no more for a very long time.

—

Enara awoke to utter blackness, as thick and impenetrable as the deepest part of a night when the moon hid her face from the stars.

She had no knowledge of how much time had passed, or whether it was daytime or evening. Her wings ached, the left much more than the right, and she pushed to sitting on slow, shaking hands.

Her arms trembled.

She felt… weak. Faintly dizzy.

Gently, she lifted her hand to touch her wings. The right seemed to be fine, but the left—

the joint ached, and a spike of pain shot down her spine as she moved it. Enara could not stop the yelp of pain that it provoked, and she folded her wing tight to her body, shuddering as she steadied it as best she could. It felt like it might even be broken, which meant she wasn’t going to be able to fly her way out of this place, assuming she could even see where out was. And assuming rocks hadn’t covered it for good, trapping her here.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, she chastised herself. Instinctively she knew that Merrit wouldn’t come, nor any of her friends. The patrol’s flight had taken them far west and north from her home settlement; only Merrit would know to look for her, and knowing the other woman, that… wasn’t likely.

Enara frowned at these uncharitable thoughts; even if Merrit or any search party did fly by, how would they know to look behind the rocks? And in which place? If the wave of terrible magic had disturbed the stones enough to cause a landslide, the waves would have washed away all evidence of dust and recent movement.

She was truly trapped here.

She wanted to cry. Shame coursed over her, bitter shame and self-reproach, but it was dark, and nobody was going to find her anyway, so she did not stop the tears when they came. She was trapped, injured and alone—

All at once, the half-formed memory of the face returned to her, and Enara gasped, and sat up, scrabbling uselessly and painfully back on the rocks. Now that she was awake, panic had made her senses alert, and she smelled it on the air, the scent of something, someone, trapped in the space with her. She had missed it when she’d first awoken, but now she could detect it: Mixed with the briny smell of the ocean was the smell of sweat and fear and skin… and the tang of blood.

Blood.

Enara was fairly certain she was not bleeding. They were injured as well, then. Maybe she could use that to her advantage. But first, she had to find out where her enemy was.

“I know you’re there,” Enara called out; she’d already made noises of her own, and there was no sense in pretending or being silent. “Make yourself known, or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” came a low, threatening voice. It was a woman’s voice, one that was deep and resonant and different, and Enara shivered from the cold and from fear.

Something moved off to her left; she heard rocks shifting, a few pebbles rolling down and hitting what sounded like a small pool of water. Her hands went to her waist, but the belt she usually wore must’ve been knocked off when she’d fallen; the knife wasn’t there. Enara patted the ground around her, finding only sharp rocks slick with seaweed and the curve of something smooth and wooden—

My bow!

She grabbed it, and it felt good and right in her hands, her fingers curling around the familiar grip. But she had no arrows, and her quiver had torn from her back when she’d been thrown. She remembered the sound of it, the snap of the braided leather, amidst the chaos of the rocks and the sea.

She would fight, though. With everything she had, she would fight.

“I’ll defend myself,” Enara said. “Against anyone who seeks to harm me.”

There was a wet sound, the slap of a hand on water, she thought, and then a soft grunt of pain, barely muffled.

When the woman’s low voice spoke again, it was full of bitterness. “I expect no less from one of your kind.”

“We are not the violent ones!” Enara exclaimed, wrapping both hands around the bow, brandishing it out in front of her in the darkness. “If your kind were not so violent, we’d—”

“Have peace?” the other woman scoffed. “Do not lie to me, feather-brain. Your kind are terrors to our young. You water our oceans with your arrows, and with our blood. Tell me you have not seen it, and I’ll call you an ignorant fledgling.”

Enara bristled at this. She pulled herself upwards and spread her wings to fly to the voice and—

Pain shot through her body. She fell back, onto the rock, and tried to catch her breath, hands clawing at the stones. Her wing was broken; pride and anger had made her careless. Pride and anger had trapped her here, and she was a fool, an absolute idiot.

A killer.

What the other woman said was true. She had seen it. But… it had been twisted. The sea-woman simply didn’t understand.

“And now we’ll die here,” the voice mused. “Enemies, trapped together. Seems almost poetic, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know about the kinds of poems your kind write,” Enara panted, trying and failing at disguising the agony in her voice as she rolled to her side. “This is not what we sing of.”

“Oh?” the woman replied. “Tell me, then. What do your kind sing of?”

Enara scoffed. “Our songs are not for your ears.”

“Very well,” the woman replied. “I care not. Besides, your kind lack the intelligence to even comprehend our songs. They can only be heard beneath the sea, and I doubt one of you bird-brains would volunteer for a dunking.”

“Stop calling me that!” Enara exclaimed, and grit her teeth. “If you’re going to kill me, then do it. Or can you not see me?”

The other woman made an amused huff that was almost a laugh. “Of course I can see you. My eyes are quite good in the dark. And you’ve just confirmed that you can’t see me—”

“How have I—”

“—because if you could, then you’d know I’m trapped here,” she continued, her voice level but brimming with an undercurrent of frustration.

“Well of course we’re both trapped here,” Enara said. She found the least-uncomfortable rock nearby and heaved herself upon it, tucking her injured wing in close to her body. “I don’t have to use dark powers to perceive that.”

“It’s not a ‘dark power,’” the sea-woman replied, “it’s night vision. An adaptation, not unlike your wings, I suppose. The depths of the sea can be quite dark, where the sun does not reach.”

Enara shivered, and winced as the involuntary movement made her body twinge in pain. They were different, more so than she could possibly understand. And what kind of a life could there be, down the depths of the ocean? A life without sunlight, fresh air? “Sounds horrible.”

“Well, I’m certainly not volunteering to live high up on the rocks, either, so the feeling is quite mutual.”

Enara sighed, and closed her eyes. She set her bow across her thighs and wrapped her arms around her body, grasping her elbows in her freezing-cold hands, hoping for a scrap of warmth in this dreadful sea-cave. There was no difference in what she could see whether her eyes were open or closed, but she imagined the sight of the rocks, the place she called home, and longed for it more fiercely than she had ever longed before.

Coming in from past patrols, Enara had sometimes felt… not guilty, not quite—she had felt a sense of wistful longing to stay out a little longer on her patrol. To fly a little farther, to see more. Returning home, despite the sweet air and the wild crags into which her home village was chiseled and constructed, sometimes felt like a reminder of how far she still had to go, how inexperienced she was, how she wanted a chance to win acclaim and prove herself.

She had come down here, hunting, intending to take a pair of fins and leave the creature to bleed out. To die.

But now that she had spoken to one of them…

No. It was no different. Nothing had changed. Of course both of their kinds could speak, but that did not make them equals. The sea-woman had used her powers to trap Enara here—trap them both.

A sudden idea arrived in her mind at this line of thinking. Her kind were expressly forbidden from any kind of dark magic, but… if she could convince the other woman to free them both, then that, strictly speaking, would be no sin, she thought. It would benefit both of them.

“You said you were trapped here,” Enara began, “But you could be freed, if you chose to be.”

“Oh? Could I?” The sea-woman seemed almost amused by her suggestion.

Enara frowned in the general direction of the voice. The fact that she could be seen, but not see, was disorienting as well as aggravating.

“Yes,” Enara continued firmly, “You could.”

“And how would you propose I do that, little bird?”

“I’m not little,” Enara spat back. “I’m fully grown. And you could use your… you know. Your power. That’s what got us into this whole mess.”

“Ah, my power,” she said. “I admit to knowing far less of your beliefs than you do, but… I was always told that our power was an affront to everything your kind held sacred.”

“It most certainly is,” Enara replied, a little primly, tightening her arms around her body, willing herself not to shiver and failing at it. “But—it would benefit you. Or else you stay trapped in here to torment me before you kill me.”

“I have no desire to kill you.”

She scoffed. “I find that impossible to believe.”

“You have done me no direct wrong, although our people are enemies. It would be against my beliefs to take your life, just as it would be against yours for me to use my, as you call it, power.”

Enara sat in still silence at this. Could it be true? Surely it was a trick, or a joke. Because if it was true, then that meant her own people were…

Responsible.

For so much death.

If it were true, then that would make them murderers, not warriors.

She did not want to think about it, and yet…

“So if I injured you,” Enara said, dropping her hands to her lap and clutching her bow once more. “If I struck you, you’d have reason to kill me, and then—”

“And then we’d both have a reason for this conversation to be over,” the other woman finished. “Yes, I do see the appeal of it…”

Enara said nothing. It was true that there was a sharp reply waiting there on the tip of her tongue, but for some strange reason she could not say it. Perhaps it was the weariness or the cold. Her enemy would not strike her unless she struck first; it troubled her, this knowledge. Enara frowned. It was true that her patrol leaders had instructed them all to shoot first, and swiftly, and leave none alive in the sea. But that was not cruelty, that was justified; the sea-folk were merciless and would overwhelm them with their magic; it was safer, then, to kill, or be killed. War was not fair.

Except… now the sea-woman was saying it was not so.

And it was true, Enara had never seen it happen, one of them striking first, unless an arrow had pierced the surface of the water.

That was not how her own people thought, not how they fought at all. An attack against one was an attack against all; that was how they had justified retaliation. There were no innocents, not in a war. Anyone swimming too close to the cliffs was considered to be a threat, and threats had to be eliminated, for the safety of the whole village. Yes, that made sense.

She was not a murderer. She was a guardian.

What she was doing was right. It had to be.

She shivered again, and—unable to stop the jostling of her broken wing—cried out in pain from the sudden movement. It seemed as if she could not stop shivering.

“Come closer,” the sea-woman said. “You’re cold—”

“I’d rather be cold than huddle for warmth with the likes of you,” Enara said venomously. She shuddered, imagining the feel of cold scales on her skin. Slimy and slick and—she’d never actually touched one of the sea-folk, but she did not wish to, either. But surely, it would be disgusting just to touch them.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

They did not speak for some time after that. Enara did everything she could to hold back her sounds, drawing on all of the strength she had and all of her training. It worked… a little.

But she was cold. And she had no way of knowing how long they had been trapped here. Whether it was evening or well into the night. If people would be searching for her, worried about her—or if Merrit had told them something to keep them from it.

Enara frowned. That would be like Merrit.

She wanted to go home.

“So you could use your magic,” Enara said, at last, “you just choose not to? To… spite me? If you can see me then you know I am injured. I’ll have to crawl up the cliffs to get home.”

“I cannot use my magic even if I wished,” the other woman replied, slowly, almost too slowly. “I have lost… oh, a great quantity of blood by this point, I expect.”

“Your magic is tied to your blood?”

“A fact I had not wished my enemy to learn,” she sighed. Was it Enara’s imagination, or did her voice sound a bit slurred? “Forgive me my weakness; I’m tired.”

Enara felt a jolt of understanding. If the sea-woman had lost blood, then she was injured; if she slept, now, she might never wake. Surely this was… this was right, to let her sleep, and eventually fade. One more dead sea-folk was one more step to peace, wasn’t it? That was what she’d always been told. But it did not feel right.

Belatedly, she realized that if her enemy died, that also meant her own chance of leaving the cave and not dying beside the sea-woman was next to impossible. But it shocked her how secondary this motivation was.

It was not right to let the other woman die. Enemy or no. It was not just.

So she rose on shaking feet, finding her way closer to where the voice was coming from.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve lost blood,” Enara said, carefully picking her way across the stones, holding her injured wing in tight to her body. She was so cold now it was almost numb. “If you sleep, you won’t wake.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the steady rush of the waves outside and the sound of rocks moving under her careful feet.

“Why would you help me?”

She was very close to the voice now. Close enough that if she reached out, she could probably touch its owner. Enara crouched down, and her fingers searched along the rocks, until—

Something smooth.

Warm.

Alive.

She gasped a little, and flinched back, looking up, into the black void that surrounded her. As ever, she could make out nothing—no face, no form—but she could have sworn she felt a gaze upon her in the darkness. Watching her as she stilled her hand, then reached out and touched the living flesh again.

“I can feel you glaring at me,” she said. It came out closer to a whisper, because she was so afraid. Enara had never been this close to one like her before.

But she did not move her hand.

“I’m not glaring,” the sea-woman said. Her voice, too, was hushed.

Enara could feel otherwise, but she did not argue. She slowly put her other hand down and slid it up, feeling—with some surprise—the edges of each individual scale as they overlapped, all the way up to… to skin.

Despite herself, she blushed. It was clear that she had reached the woman’s torso, and beneath her hands the skin felt smooth and firm, with the flex of muscles beneath it as she shifted just a little under her touch. The sea-woman said nothing, so she moved her hand down this time, and felt that the scales were smooth going this direction. She kept going, down and down, until she felt it, and then the sea-woman bit back a noise of pain as Enara’s searching hand found the spill of slick blood along the scales. There was so much of it, at least by feel; Enara frowned as she searched with her hands, forming a picture in her mind as she touched the sea-woman gently, down at the base of her tail. She had lost so much blood.

Near the fins she had once vowed she would sever, and hoist as a prize, there was a wound. In another place, in another circumstance, perhaps she still would. Now, though, her focus was sharp.

Then she gasped as she found the source of the injury: A sharp, jagged-edged stone had fallen on her tail, and pinned her there.

“You can’t move,” she said, as the dawning horror washed over her. “You really are trapped!”

The sea-woman laughed, mirthlessly and softly and wearily in the dark cave. “Yes, I’m trapped. And I will die here, and then you can take whatever part of me you wish back to your leaders, and say what a fine prize you have won, and such a fair fight, too.”

“Don’t say such things,” Enara said, bristling because she had struck far too close to the actual tenor of her thoughts. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t you? I’ve seen the bodies of the ones you leave behind. You, and others like you. I know what fate awaits me if I cannot return to the sea.”

Enara did not reply. Instead, she kept feeling around the rock, determining how heavy it was, what she could do. Her hands moved, and her difficult, complicated thoughts faded to distant noise, now that a task was set before her. Inspiration struck her, and she stood, scrambling back to where she had been seated, hands patting along the ground.

“What are you looking for?”

“My bow,” she said.

The sea-woman scoffed. “Will you shoot me in the dark?”

“Can you see it?” She ignored her question, and kept searching. “Tell me, with your wondrous eyes. Can you see it?”

“To your left,” she replied. “A little—no, further in front of you.”

Her hands closed around the familiar wooden shaft, and she smiled. Enara returned to the sea-woman, and began to touch the stone that had pierced her tail once more. She knew what she had to do. Now it was only a question of would the other woman allow her to do it?

If she didn’t warn her, then there would be no need to secure permission, only forgiveness.

Enara took off her tunic. It was already ripped a little, and she had to release the tangled ties that kept it up around her shoulders, but soon enough she had the garment unwrapped from her torso. It was dark; the sea-woman, with her much keener eyes, could still see her like this, but… Surely this was no different than the times she and the other women of her own kind had bathed together. Enara had not flown close enough to the sea-folk to know if they were similarly equipped, but breasts were breasts, and hers were relatively unremarkable, and anyway there were much more important things at stake.

“What are you doing?” The sea-woman’s voice seemed much more alert now, as if a little shocked at Enara’s boldness.

“Hold very still.” Enara set her tunic down across her knees and found a spot to wedge the end of her bow beneath the jagged stone that had caused the wound. Before the sea-woman could protest, or ask any further questions, Enara levered the bow beneath the stone, pushing it against her boot and up and off of the woman’s tail.

She cried out in pain and surprise. The shout echoed off the stone around them.

Swiftly, she brought her tunic down to the sea-woman’s fin, pressing there against the wound. She could feel the hot surge of blood as it soaked the linen, and he thrashed a little but did not harm her.

“You must bind it tightly,” she said. “Stem the flow of blood.”

“Why are you helping me?” The sea-woman’s voice was full of gentle awe as her tail moved beneath Enara’s hands. Was she sitting up? Enara could not tell what she was doing, only that her tail flexed powerfully, so strange and different from her own body, but warm and alive.

Not slimy, save for the blood.

She did not answer. Could not.

Gently, a wide, warm hand came to rest upon her wing joint, on her back. Enara’s eyes went wide; it was an intimate gesture, a place only lovers touched, but the other woman would have no way of knowing such a thing. And, at any rate, she had unerringly sought out the place where it was broken.

Now it was her turn to gasp in surprise.

When the sea-woman’s magic flowed into her, it felt like—

There were no words to describe it.

It was warm, and yet cold. Flowing, like catching a current of air, boundless and free. It felt lovely, comforting. Like coming home.

When her hand retreated, Enara’s wing felt… it felt sore, still, but sore from a weeks-old wound, not one that was merely hours old. She tested it, flexing her wings gently.

“Why—?” she began to ask, but her voice faltered.

The sea-woman’s hands were still on her skin. Warm and sure and… and powerful. Gently, so gently, she lifted her hand, until only her fingertips brushed against Enara’s back. And then, the gentle scrape of sharp claws; Enara shivered, hyperaware in the darkness that this woman was strange and different and unlike herself in so many ways. The sea-woman’s tail curled and moved against the stones, as if testing the improvised bandage. Then, she made a soft noise of pain.

Enara grew bold enough to speak. “Wh- what is your name?”

“Akhra,” the sea-woman replied.

Enara tried, clumsily, to repeat it, and the sea-woman laughed. She repeated it “Akhra,” and on her tongue it felt warm and rolling and beautiful.

“What does it mean?”

“A rock.” The sea-woman shifted, her tail seemingly flexing and moving. Enara found that she no longer found the movement quite so disgusting as before.

And her hand, Akhra’s hand, was still gentle on her back, right above her wing joint.

“That’s… a good name.” Her words felt slow and sluggish in her mouth. Was this some kind of magic, the way she felt now?

“And yours?” the sea-woman asked. “What is your name?”

“Enara.”

Akhra’s talons continued their gentle, slow scratch. Emboldened by this, captivated by the darkness and the rush of healing and the ebbing away of her fear, Enara placed her hand tentatively back on the sea-woman’s waist. Akhra gasped a little; Enara’s hand slid down, feeling that tender place where her skin turned to scales.

“We’re so different,” Enara whispered. She felt dizzy, not from pain but from something else; she wasn’t sure if she’d spoken aloud or merely thought the words, but apparently she had given them voice, because Akhra chuckled.

“We’re not so different,” she replied, in her resonant, sea-rich voice.

Enara did not understand, but then Akhra’s free hand was on her wrist, and together, their hands moved down to the slick elegance of the sea-woman’s scales. There was a slit there; Enara’s searching fingers found it, parted it, and Akhra gasped at the hot, tender flesh she found. This, in its way, was familiar to her; the fact that she was touching another woman was… not. But she didn’t move her hand away, either.

“Is this…?” Enara knew what it was, but she meant to ask the other woman, was it okay, what she was doing—what they were doing, because Akhra’s nails were teasing her sensitive wing joint, and she was melting into her enemy’s embrace—but the words cut off abruptly, the shock of lips meeting hers, a kiss that was salty, and gentle, and sweet.

Strange, and yet wonderful.

Enara had been kissed before—on cheeks, kisses from her mother, from her friends. And on her mouth, once or twice, by a boy, when they’d been no more than children. But this was different. The sea-woman’s mouth was soft against hers, wet and open, and Enara made a low noise of pleasure almost without realizing it had come from her own throat. Down below, her fingers were still rigid against the yielding place on the other woman’s body—different, yes, from her own body, but not so much that she was in uncharted waters. Enthralled by the sea-woman’s soft noises, the press of a soft mouth against her own, Enara rubbed clumsily against the slick, parted flesh, and was rewarded by a bolder gasp, a more needy nose, a movement, body against body, scales against skin.

“There,” Akhra gasped, her breath warm and sweet against Enara’s damp, swollen mouth. “Like… like that, there…”

Enara complied. In the dark, it should’ve been easier to pretend that they weren’t enemies. Instead, every sense was heightened—touch and taste and smell—

Akhra bucked against Enara’s hands, and together they found a rhythm. Enara knew what it was when she chased her own pleasure like this; she knew what she liked, but to hear another woman’s voice in her ear as she delved and retreated was entirely new, and entirely wondrous. It felt powerful, crooking her fingers inside of the sea-woman’s tight entrance and coaxing out a moan.

And when, at last, the sea-woman’s pleasure crested, Enara pressed her own legs together, an answering echo of unspent pleasure making her own body feel restless and unsure. She pulled her fingers away from the sea-woman’s body, and once again her eyes strained in the darkness, searching. If she could just see her, then she would—

Then what?

All sense and reason fled, and fear was long gone as well, when she pressed her fingers in deep and felt the other woman’s body clench around them. A breathy cry escaped the sea-woman’s throat, and Enara gasped as well, enthralled by the power of it, the quiet beauty she could not see, could only feel. She had been the cause of that pleasure, that sound; she alone had driven someone else to the peak, and felt them crest and fall and fly.

Her heart was racing. The sea-woman let out a breath, shuddering and pliant in Enara’s arms, and she felt her fingers slip free from the passage, felt the moisture trailing from her slit and down across her smooth scales.

Scales.

She had… she had been with someone who was not even of her own kind. What had she been doing? There had to be some… some magic to blame for this. Some reason why her own heart was thudding in her chest, why her body was eager and yearning and wet, as wet as the sea-woman’s had been.

“What is it?”

“We… “ Enara swallowed, her mouth dry. “We… we can’t… this can’t…”

“You didn’t harm me,” Akhra hastened to say, shifting in Enara’s embrace. “And you—”

“I can’t,” Enara repeated, panic overtaking her, senseless and raw and wild. “I can’t want this, not with you.”

Whatever biting retort the other woman might have said was lost as Enara tripped on the unsettled stones, letting out a cry and pitching backwards. She felt herself fall, could not right herself, and expected to collide with unforgiving rock.  But instead, Enara came to rest upon a body that was warm, and solid, and strong.

“You cannot change what you desire,” Akhra said. “And why would you?”

“It’s not… it’s not that simple,” Enara replied. Her back was throbbing again, pain from the subtle, still-healing wound now overtaking her panic, even her desire. Everything was a tangle. She felt like weeping, like embracing the sea-woman once more.

“Sleep,” the sea-woman said.

Enara did not want to sleep, though, but a strange feeling had begun to flow over her, a steady pull she could not strain against. She felt her body grow slack, and slumped to the side. Arms held her, and, before sleep claimed her at last, she felt…

She felt safe.

How strange.

—

Enara awoke to sunlight.

It took several long, disorienting minutes for her to understand where she was, and why the sun was on her face, and why she was so damned uncomfortable, but once she processed it, she bolted to her feet in the cave, and ran to the now-open entrance, staring out into the sea.

The rocks had been moved away.

She did not understand it. But, with a backwards glance into the now-empty cave, she felt her body fill with an unfamiliar emotion. Joy at her freedom, to be sure, but…

The sea-woman was gone.

The woman who had saved her—no, the creature who had trapped her there in the first place, she amended. If the sea-woman had been the cause of her imprisonment, her injury, then why should Enara think kindly about her at all?

Akhra.

The creature, the sea-woman, she had a name, Enara reminded herself. She stood there at the mouth of the cave and looked out at the ocean, feeling the wind rise and kiss her bare skin. Akhra. The memory of what had passed between them, what she had done, what she had felt, it tumbled around and around in her thoughts like the churning of the sea. She looked down, and realized she was bare from the waist up. And then she remembered taking her tunic off to help save stem the flow of blood that had poured from the sea-woman’s wound.

The stranger.

Her enemy.

Akhra.

And the cave was empty behind her.

Empty, save for one small glint of light.

She went to it, retracing the route she’d taken in the dark the night before, seeing the spill of dark, dried blood on the stones, and beside it, her broken bow. It grieved her to see how it had been destroyed, but saving the sea-woman had been worth it.

Hadn’t it?

She crouched down, and picked up the object that had been glinting.

It was a single, luminescent scale.

For as huge and powerful as Akhra’s body had felt under her hands in the darkness, the scale was relatively small, almost delicate. It sat in her palm like a coin, shimmering deep green and blue as she tilted it in the light, turning it this way and that. She had flown down here for a trophy, the mark of a kill, and instead, she had found the reminder that she had not done so.

She had not taken a life, nor a trophy.

Instead, she had experienced something else entirely. Something which had frightened her beyond anything.

Something which still called to her, even now.

Enara tucked the scale into her pouch, and picked up her broken bow. A few paces away lay her quiver, and she gathered the arrows back up in it.

She walked back towards the mouth of the cave, and looked out across the water. As if entranced by the memory of that brief, heady moment, Enara raised her fingers to her lips, and tasted them.

They tasted of salt, and of sweet.

Same as her lips.

Enara shivered, and pushed the feeling down.

Tentatively, she tested her wings. She’d feared the worst when she’d first woken up in the dark cave, but now, they only ached, but no longer pained her when she tested them. She’d have to explain why she was shirtless when she flew home, but she could still fly—thank the winds, she could fly! She lifted off, soaring and laughing and grateful, but as she crested over the water, her eyes caught on a faint glint of light, a shimmer of movement…

Was it her?

She dared not go lower and check. In that moment, a voice called out to her from the skies.

“Enara!”

She looked up, mortified to see that it was Merrit who was flying to her now. Of all the people… of course it would be her, to see her now in her shamed state.

Beside Merrit flew Theo and Anlyth, two other patrolers that Enara had flown with before. Theo was broad-shouldered and powerful, with deep bronze hair and wings of a darker auburn color, while Anlyth was fairer, slight and closer in age to Enara. She covered her chest, and, as Theo approached, he turned away, giving her modesty as Anlyth swooped down, offering Enara her short cloak to drape about her chest.

“What happened?” Anlyth said, her blue eyes wide as she fretted over Enara in midair. “You’re injured!”

“I was… knocked into a sea cave,” Enara said. She knew she was a terrible liar, and had to fly as close as possible to the truth without giving too much away. “I must’ve been knocked unconscious. It was dark… and then when I awoke this morning I flew out.”

“Oh, thank the skies!” Anlyth said. “Let’s get you home.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Merrit said, and Enara turned to look at her, wondering at the glint of clever suspicion in Merrit’s eye. “The one you were hunting.”

“No,” Enara said, reaching for the pouch at her waist and drawing the single scale out, the color flashing in the morning sunlight. “But I found this. The creature was injured. And I would’ve caught her, too.”

What had made her say such a thing? Pride alone—and the satisfaction of seeing Merrit’s smug expression falter a little. But as Enara put the scale back in her pouch she felt regret and sadness wash over her. She felt as if she had shared something private, but now could not take the words back.

They flew back together, rejoicing, asking her what was injured, where she ached. Theo escorted her to the infirmary, where Enara—despite her protests that she was fine, and just needed rest—was subjected to a full examination by a stern-faced avian doctor who frowned down at her and then prescribed rest and nourishing, hearty foods, and a break from patrols for at least a month.

Enara wasn’t pleased to be grounded, but when she returned at last to her own bed, in her own room, she shut the door and went to the window, looking out once more at the sea.

There was a secret inside of her, one she could never tell the others. One she herself did not fully understand. One she wanted more of, and wanted to run from, in the same heartbeat. Wanting, and fearing.

As she looked out, was Akhra looking back for her, too? 

—

She couldn’t sleep.

Her bed was soft, so much softer than the stones had been, and she was warm and wearing soft sleep clothes. She had bathed in a great copper tub, washed her hair and scrubbed her body clean, applied salve to all of her remaining scrapes and cuts, groomed her feathers to neatness, and now, Enara sat by the open window and listened to the rush of the sea.

The scale was light in her hand, but she caged her fingers around it, holding it so that the wind would not catch it and blow it away.

Distantly, Enara wondered if she’d left a feather behind for the sea-woman to find, if she had kept it, too—and then she scoffed at the sentimental notion. A feather like hers would be useless under the waves. It would soon grow bedraggled and bent. And why would she keep it, anyway? Why was she even keeping this?

She looked down and turned the scale this way and that. It was pretty, despite what it was. What it represented.

And she’d told Merrit that she would’ve taken the sea-woman’s fins. But she hadn’t; instead, she’d helped her. And more than that, too. Now, she sat here mooning over a sparkly bit of nothing she ought to throw out of the window and forget. She should forget Akhra, too. Forget the way the sea-woman’s body had felt, under her own searching hands. Under her fingers. Forget the way her slit had parted and the way she had sunk in, and in.

Why had she done that?

Why had she wanted to do more?

Akhra.

The woman’s name resonated within her, impossible to forget, beautiful. Of course the sea-folk had names, but… she had never had occasion to ask one of them, nor share her own.

It hadn’t ever mattered—the names of her enemies. But they surely had names, and lives, and families. They had lovers, and they had joys and celebrations. Traditions she knew nothing about. So many things none of her people had thought to ask about, or find value in.

Songs that she would never hear.

Not that she wanted to, of course. But it was the principle of the thing. The idea.

She frowned. Maybe Akhra had gone back to her family, greeted her loved ones and met her children with open arms. Maybe she was telling them, even now, of her daring escape. How she had fooled the feather-brained idiot who had shown her mercy. Maybe she was gathering an army to strike a final killing blow upon her, and upon all she loved. Their magic together would be enough to shake the very foundations of the cliff, and send all of her people crumbling down beneath the slide of rock.

Enara shivered, and clutched the scale even tighter. The edge of it was sharp, and she winced as it cut into her palm, just a little. Not enough to draw blood, but enough that she could not forget what it was she held. She set it down on the table beside her bed, and turned away from the window.

She ought to at least try to sleep.

But as she curled on her side, after she had blown out the single candle, she felt the sticky drop of blood pooling there from the cut, and she wondered whether she would know herself, truly know or understand herself, ever again.

—

Weeks passed.

Enara healed, and it grew easier to fly. Easier, too, to pretend, and forget, and return to the way things had been. The way she had once felt, when the world had been simple, and the lines pure and clean. When the war was once again righteous.

She returned to patrol, and was grateful every night that she returned home with the same amount of arrows in her quiver that she had flown out with. None of the patrols seemed to see any sign of the sea-folk, no flick of tail or flash of scale.

But that was good.

She didn’t yearn to know whether the sea-woman was there, nearby, in the water; it was better if she wasn’t there, so much better if she had gone away, far from this place, and taken all of her kind with her, too.

That was what she told herself. By day, it was easier to pretend she hadn’t changed. Hadn’t awakened.

But at night, it all came rushing back.

And Enara burned.

She had spent the first three nights back in her own room feeling restless and uncertain. Her body ached for sleep, and yet it also ached for other things. She would find herself walking the chamber, looking out to the ocean, hearing it far in the distance, down below the rocks, and then she would hate herself for the compassion she had shown her enemy.

More than compassion. But she wouldn’t think of it, she wouldn’t.

After three nights of this, Enara had asked to change rooms, and had happily accepted ones that faced inwards, towards the center of town, rather than out to the sea. She’d been so hopeful that this, at last, would bring her peace.

But it hadn’t worked.

If anything, it had made things worse.

By day, she was a hunter, a killer. That was what her people had trained her to be, and she had never needed to question it before. By day, she flew beside Theo, dodging his pointed requests to come with him after patrol hours, enjoy herself. Merrit and Anlyth were their usual selves, too, always flying close together, sparing no chance to glance back at Enara and then laugh at some private joke.

Before, it might have bothered her. But now…

She did not go out in the evenings after patrols, not with Theo, not with anyone. How could she celebrate death? How could she enjoy it, knowing what she now knew? It felt as if her whole world had been upended, inside as well as out; she felt changed, transformed, and it was disorienting.

And she could not ignore it.

For when she did fall into bed, weary and needy, her body would claim ownership of her mind, and her hand would move down between her legs, and she would close her eyes to feel that the darkness was around her once more.

She wanted.

She wanted things she dared not ask for. Again and again she chased those memories, slicking her own fingers with her tongue, trying to remember the way the other woman had tasted. And then, when the pleasure would rise and build, when her body would tense, taut as her bowstring, she would muffle her own cry and feel the answering rush of pleasure and shame, spun together in a cord she could not unwind.

What was she, if not an avian warrior, proud and strong and fierce? Who was she, if not a defender of her people? A guardian?

Enara did not know.

All she knew was that, when the moment came, when the call sang inside her blood, Enara felt more than knew what it was she was meant to do.

And where she was meant to go.

—

The flight down was a treacherous one in the dark, but the moon was full overhead and the sky was cloudless; even the sea-spray did not frighten her, nor the wind, for all that it tried, once or twice, to half-heartedly dash Enara against the rocks. She flew with darting speed, determined and focused.

Somehow she knew that Akhra would be there, waiting for her.

As she touched down, the long-healed cut on her finger throbbed, just a little. Enara brought it to her lips, and searched the moonlit waves and rocks.

It is some dark magic, she thought. She has poisoned me, tricked me…

The moment she saw her, though… all fear faded.

At first, it was just a shape, smooth and elegant against the jagged stone. The suggestion of curving hips, a long tail. The tilt of a head, emerald-green hair flowing down from it. Strong arms, wide shoulders, bare breasts with dark, pointed nipples. And then, as Enara approached, the figure… changed.

She was beautiful.

And she was glowing.

“You couldn’t do this in the cave?” Enara asked, when she was close enough to stand beside the sea-woman who now rested on the rocks. There was no question in her mind: This was the one who had trapped her in the cave, the one who had healed her. The one who had—

The woman smiled. With a gentle movement, she rolled her shoulders, and the line of glowing green dots and stripes shifted like the moonlight dancing on the water, pulsing, then fading to a soft, gentle light. Enara had never seen such a thing, and was sure it was not paint, as paint would have washed off in the water. No, it must be a part of her, somehow.

Akhra smiled. “I had lost quite a lot of blood. And anyway, our kind… well, we try not to show this to yours.”

Enara crouched down. “Then why are you showing me?”

“I wanted you to see me,” the sea-woman replied simply.

When Enara reached out, the sea-woman did not flinch away from her searching touch. Enara’s fingertips brushed, feather-light, across the glowing skin, and she watched with some amazement the way the glow seemed to respond as if it had a life of its own.

Then, she remembered.

And she pulled her hand away.

“What did you do to me?”

Akhra cocked a dark eyebrow at her. “I could ask the same of you, except I know precisely what you did to me.”

Enara blushed, and looked down at the stones at her feet. “Don’t… you and I, you know we can’t…”

“We can’t?” 

“What did you do to me?”

“I don’t know!” Akhra exclaimed. “I could feel your restlessness, your distress. It wasn’t my doing, believe me. Whatever it is between us, we—”

“There can be no us!”

“Why are you so afraid?”

Enara sat down on the stones, and covered her face with her hands. “You’re my enemy. Wanting you like this—”

“So you do feel the same?”

“Would I have come down here if I didn’t?” Enara bit back. She dropped her hands, let them fall in her lap, and glared at the woman before her; now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see her features more clearly. The sharp brows, dark and green like her long hair, and the fullness of a mouth that Enara longed to kiss again.

“And would I have risked coming so close to your people, if I did not also feel the same?” Akhra whispered.

Her voice was like the call of the sea. Enara sighed, and came closer. Despite herself, despite her fear, she leaned against the sea-woman, and let her head fall to her warm, solid shoulder.

Akhra’s hand lifted tentatively, playing through Enara’s hair. “I came to warn you,” she murmured.

“Of what?” Enara asked. “An attack?”

“No. A storm.” Her talons were soft in Enara’s hair, the motion gentle, rhythmic passes from root to end. “Our people have felt it coming. It will be a great storm, and your city… your people will be vulnerable—”

“But yours will be safe.” Enara sat up a little, looking into Akhra’s eyes. “Did they tell you to come? Or did they warn you to stay away?”

Akhra smiled faintly. “They do not know I am even here.”

Enara lay her head back down on the other woman’s shoulder, and closed her eyes. For all the weeks of fear, and all the sleepless nights—all the ways she had punished herself, denied herself, hated herself—now that she was here, she felt warm, and safe, and good. It was all so simple. She didn’t have to struggle anymore. She could just let go.

Held closely in Akhra’s arms, Enara felt that familiar desire, that slick wetness, begin to pool between her legs once more. There were so many things they could do, so many things they could experience, if the two of them weren’t what they were.

“I wish we could just…” Enara began, but her words halted the moment she heard voices coming from above them.

“Down here!”

“Over this way!”

Enara scrambled away from the sea-woman and looked up into the sky; she could see them bobbing and dipping as they flew closer—the lanterns, lit with fire and housed in windproof spheres, mirrors cunningly worked inside to cast the light farther.

“They know I’ve gone,” she said, half to herself, half to Akhra. “They know—”

“Let me speak to them,” Akhra said, desperation tinting her words. “Let me try. We can make them understand—”

“They won’t,” Enara said, turning back to look over her shoulder at the sea-woman. “They’ll kill you.”

“Let them try,” came Akhra’s response. She raised her hands, and tilted her chin down, eyes full of determination and resolve. The glowing swirls along her shoulders, her arms, her bare chest, they all flared to life.

Once, the sight of this strange power would’ve frightened her. Now, Enara felt only the fear that she had made herself more visible to her enemy.

“Get into the water,” Enara said, desperately. “Swim! Go! Far from here! I’ll… I’ll find you, I’ll come back, when it’s safe—”

“It will never be safe,” Akhra said. “You know it’s the truth.”

Before Enara could respond, a cry came from above, and all the lights fixed on their position. A net came down, entangling them both, drawing them together, and they clung to each other, one pair of wings beating frantically against their bonds, one powerful tail lashing uselessly against the rope.

“This is the one you were hunting,” Merrit called, hovering above them, with a half-dozen other avian warriors, bows drawn and aimed. “Isn’t it? The one whose scale you kept. A trinket, or a lover’s memento?”

“Let us go!” Enara cried. “She wasn’t harming anybody!”

“She wasn’t?” Merrit crowed. “She’s one of the sea-folk! You blind idiot, what have you done?”

An arrow flew past them, skittering on the rocks. Merrit turned back to chastise whoever had let the first one go, and Enara cried out, but she clung to Akhra all the same, feeling safer in the arms of her enemy than if she had been flying beside her own kind.

“Hold tight to me,” Akhra said, softly, for Enara’s ears alone.

And Enara held on.

A burst of magic surrounded them; Enara could feel it under her skin, crackling there like lightning. When she closed her eyes she could still see the glow of it, radiant and beautiful, bright as the noonday sun. An instant later, amid the war-cries of the ones that flew above them, she flapped her wings, spreading them wide, as if the ropes had melted like ice in the heat of it all.

And then, into the water the two of them plunged.

—

She couldn’t see a thing.

Instinctual fear enveloped her, as did the frigid water; it pressed in around her as she thrashed in Akhra’s arms. Her grip tightened. Her kind did not swim. They might go into the water up to their hips, but they always kept their feathers out of it. Now, though, it was everywhere. She tossed and turned; she did not know which way was up, how to find the sky or how to swim towards it. And the sea-woman’s arms were like bands of iron around her body, even as she struggled in blind panic against them.

Then: Something soft, and firm, and wonderful pressed to her mouth. Air blew into it—sweet, fresh air—and Enara gasped, taking a breath that was half air, half water. Pressing her lips against the sea-woman’s mouth.

Enara stopped thrashing and relaxed, although her lungs were burning and she was still so afraid. Akhra’s mouth was firm against her own, and she opened to it, taking in the breath as a powerful fin undulated around them, pushing them—she didn’t know where she was taking them, but she held on tightly, and tried to breathe without gasping.

At last, they breached the waves, and Enara coughed and heaved as she rolled up the sandy shore. The grains clung to her wet skin, and the air pricked her skin as she pushed herself up on shaking arms, her hands clawing into the sand. Akhra was there beside her, not shivering at all, looking somehow radiant and majestic, while she felt as bedraggled as a drowned seabird. She flapped her wings pitifully, sending a spray of water all over them, which made the sea-woman curse softly.

“S-sorry,” Enara said. Her teeth were already clacking together, bile rising in her throat, salty as the sea. She heaved. 

“It’s all right,” she replied. “Just breathe.”

For a few long moments, all she did was cough up what felt like the rest of the ocean onto the shore. But then her breathing began to slow, and she felt more like herself than before. She coughed again, one last time, and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. The taste of brine and salt in her mouth was horrid, but that seemed to be the last of it. Her stomach had stopped heaving it up, at least. Her throat still burned. Shakily, Enara sat up on the sand. Warm hands lifted her, cradling her. Akhra’s eyes were wide and dark and faintly luminous in the low, pre-dawn light. And she smiled, showing a row of pearl-white teeth. The incisors were a little sharper, a little more pointed, but that was hardly the most dramatically different thing about her. Enara looked down at the sea-woman’s tail, curling and uncurling almost lazily on the sand, the fins long and delicate-looking, flicking the edge of the sea as it rose and retreated.

“Are you all right?” Akhra asked, gently.

Enara nodded. “I am. Or… I think I will be.”

“Good.” The sea-woman looked relieved.

Enara smiled shyly at her, and the other woman smiled back. At this sight, Enara felt a fluttering of shyness and joy in her belly. The sea-woman’s face was so beautiful, so strange and different with her angular, high-cheekboned beauty. Her hair was long and deep green, spilling across her shoulders like ink, or seaweed. Her skin looked so very soft.

She wanted to touch her again. What were these thoughts? Why could she not control them, control herself, her feelings? And why, in this moment, did all of what she had known, all of what she had clung so fiercely to all of her life, seem less important than the kindness she saw in her enemy’s eyes?

Enara did not understand.

She wondered, in that moment, if perhaps this was beyond understanding. Perhaps this was more in the realm of feeling.

And she felt so very much.

She realized her hands had indeed reached out to touch the sea-woman’s skin. But she did not move them.

“Why… you came to the cliff to… to see me?”

She nodded. “I… I needed to be sure… I wanted to see you again. Selfish of me, I know.”

“And foolhardy,” Enara said, scowling. “You could’ve been killed!”

Akhra only gave her another closed-mouth smile, and tilted her head to the side. “To die without seeing you again, that would be a terrible death.”

Enara felt her cheeks flush, her throat grow tight with emotion. She had felt that way, too, but had been unable to understand it. Unable or unwilling to name it and accept it. In the cave, between them, something strange had happened. Something that had never happened between people of their kind.

“And the storm?” Enara asked, leaning closer, drawn forward as if by magic, to gently caress the underside of the sea-woman’s breasts. “What of the storm?”

“Let it come,” Akhra whispered.

All sense and reason flew from her like fluttering starlings when their mouths met once more.

The kiss deepend, as if they had both been on the edge of something. It was wild and wonderful, terrifying and exhilarating. Enara knew that there was a threshold across which there was no return, and she hesitated, trembling not in fear, but in exquisite awareness of what this meant.

When they parted, Enara was trembling. “I’m not going back,” she said.

“Come,” Akhra whispered, her luminous eyes as wonder-filled as Enara’s, damp with emotion that neither could not speak of. It was an emotion they alone could feel, one that could never be described. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Safe. What safety could there be, for a pair like them? They would defy both of their people, just to try and live… but maybe they could build something from all of this death, and hate, and fear. Maybe they would be the first of many who would bend, and yield, and learn.

Enara nodded.

She wrapped her arms around her lover, and felt the tremor of need beneath her skin. And as the dawn rose around them, the lovers were there, embracing on the shore.