Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

teeth at the memory, reminding himself again that he no longer needed to fear Tieran either, Kellen having exacted the same intended murder on his would-be killer instead. Still, despite all his knowing that he no longer needed to fear any of those former ghosts, Kellen could not fend off their haunting of him.

Leave me alone. He prayed of all his ghosts. Kellen reached for his ears as if he might muffle the rising, dying screams and pleas of all the lives that he had been forced to silence in order to survive. Please, just leave me alone.

The voices of his friends and foes joined as one in his mind, along with all the anonymous others that he could not place from his fighting days in Orphan Knoll. No, Kellen Winstel, their collective voices whispered unto him. We will be with you forever.

Kellen fell forward then, reaching for the bars with his human hands, desperate for the frigid iron if only to remind himself that he yet could feel something. Stop! He begged the ghosts of his past to quiet and return to the dark chest of forgetfulness he meant to bury them in. Please!

But the ghosts of his past would not relent. Their screams came as a rising wave of agony, and his imagination the shore they meant to thunder and crash upon.

Kellen’s tentacles closed around the cage bars, bending and crinkling the iron prisons. Leave me alone! He cried, adding his own screams to the phantom, haunted ghosts of his memory, crying out against all those long dead voices shouting in equal measure back at him.

With no one living to rage against, Kellen exacted his anger against the cages that held his victims instead. He ripped the bars and walls free of their holdings upon the floor, not caring that such movement disturbed the bodies of those who had been trapped within. For each bar removed, he flung them aside like toothpicks. The bars were caught by the Salt, each quietly floating in descent. He wished they had clanged about, as he had intended them to do, if only to help the quiet the phantom calls in his mind.

Kellen did not stop until each and every former cage door had been released of the iron pins that held their Selkie denizens from escape and doomed them all to a drowning, Salted death. Panting for his efforts, his body trembling even as the Salt ran through him, Kellen heaved with the foretold knowledge that Marisa Bourgeois had imparted - that he too would never escape the Salt’s watery grasp. Though his body accepted the nourishing water passing through his mouth and lungs, his memory and mind rejected the liquid element for want of air in that other realm from whence he came.

The voice of Marisa Bourgeois stayed with him always: You will never escape, Kellen Winstel. The Salt has you in its sway now, its melody dark and deep.

Maybe I won’t escape this watery hell, he thought to himself, acknowledging his position, even as he raged against the memory of the mystic Silkie. But neither will the ones who did this to me. Kellen promised his ghosts and all of those yet lingering in the water around him, reminded of Marisa’s further words to him in the jailhouse of Tiber County. Of the monster he would become . . . and the countless others who would die in his transformation. As Kellen looked upon the Selkie dead, the tingles racing across his body warned that Orphan Knoll would forever stand thereafter as a haunted place of his own making. Kellen put the tingles to rest by repeating his singular vow. I’ll get the ones who put us all in cages. The ones who forced us into Selkie suits and trapped us all down here. He swore to himself and his ghosts, if only to quiet their voices. Next time, it will be them placed in cages and left to drown . . . or worse.

Kellen turned away to flee the dungeons. He hesitated when finding himself watched by another.

Still and quiet as the shadows that shielded her, the lady of darkness and deep watched him with the same kindly, greenish eyes that Kellen remembered his earthly mother having too. But are you really her? Kellen wondered when the Salt witch, Nyx, smiled at him in such a way as only a protective and loving mother could when looking upon her favored child. Are you really my Mom, Nyx? Have you been all along? Is that why you ran away from me and Dad? To come back here and wait for me to join you? The questions plagued his mind as the sorceress used her tentacles to leverage against the bars and find cracks among the stone walls and floor to pull herself closer to him. Or is my mom’s face just more Sancul sorcery?

The moment she was able, Nyx placed her hand upon his cheek, caressing it with her thumb. I’ve been watching you, my son.

For how long? Kellen asked, enduring her frigid touch.

Long enough, said she, her brow wrinkling. Aye, long enough to see the loss of your creation pains you now as much as it did in your life before you left us.

Before? Kellen asked. You mean this . . . this has happened before too?

Nyx smiled as she looked across the Selkie dead. Oh, yes, my son, said she. These poor, fallen mortals are but a pittance in compare to the numbers lost in your first attempts at such creation.

Kellen shuddered. How many? He asked. How many did Moros kill in trying to give the Selkies a second life?

Nyx’s gaze and voice sharpened. Not Moros, my son. The creation of Selkies were your attempts, no? Her expression softened. Or do you not yet recall those experiments either? You’re former passion and life’s good work?

Good? Kellen thought, but did not say. No . . . he answered Nyx’s question. My mind is still confused. I-I’m still fighting