“She’d come out if she were. She cannot allow another to hurt you. I heard what she said to you on the shore.”

What?

“I’m there fairly often, you know. It’s not difficult to conceal myself. I saw her standing before you in her true form as well, on another night. Ready to push you into the sea, drown you, and eat you.”

Madeleine shook her head mutely. Hæra would never have done that, she’d said so.

“Ah. She’s never told you about that? She must have forgotten.” His rumbling voice growled with scorn. “Perhaps she was too busy learning about love.”

Oh Lord. He had been there; he’d seen and heard everything. Were those the only times they’d been spied on?

Hæra had been reluctant to walk on the shore but had convinced herself otherwise, for Madeleine’s sake. Madeleine should have paid attention to Hæra’s instincts, not her own.

She kept looking into his eyes. Maybe that was wrongheaded—he might take it as a challenge—but this thing had tried to kill Hæra and might be set on doing it again. She wasn’t about to cower before him. “What do you want from us?”

Asgall’s laugh had no joy in it, but it was a nightmare breed of horse and man, both of them cruel. “You say, ‘us.’ As if you share the same life. As if you understand what she wants.”

Madeleine lifted her chin. Just because his words were confident didn’t mean they were right. “I’m pretty sure I understand Hæra more than you do. It seems you weren’t exactly close.”

“True. She was always a fool. Why our father indulged her, I’ll never know.” Asgall slowly backed away from the door. One step, two, three. Was he leaving? Would that be a good thing, or was he going to find Hæra?

Either way, it gave Madeleine a better look at him as the sky began to lighten in the storm’s retreat. His hide seemed to shift from black to dark blue, depending on how he moved. His head was longer than Hæra’s, his body larger by several…inches, or whatever you used to measure horses, she didn’t remember, she couldn’t remember anything.

“Still,” he continued, “we had something in common. A desire to take flight and unleash the storm.” His dark tail swished. “Did she tell you about the Stormhorses?”

Madeleine swallowed. “Yes. I take it that some of them just passed overhead?”

“You take it correctly.” When Madeleine flinched, he snorted again. “Calm yourself. Calder died several tides ago. None of the others save our mother know her human form.”

“You never told them?” she asked in astonishment. “Not you or your mother? And…isn’t it a risk for you to come on land too, if they could see you from the sky?”