“I am delighted to open this festival with some wonderful news.”
I can’t breathe.
“As many of you know, I have long been a supporter of Dr. Anton Tranek’s groundbreaking research into human adaptation. His work represents the future of our species—a future where we can thrive in any environment, colonize any world, overcome any obstacle that the universe places in our path.”
The collar is crushing my gills.
“But I believe that the best partnerships are not merely professional.” He turned to her, extending his hand. “My dear? Won’t you join me?”
The crowd murmured—not with joy, she thought, but with something more complicated. Surprise. Unease. The uncomfortable awareness that they were witnessing something that wasn’t quite what it appeared to be.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
She stepped forward anyway.
The sound system hummed around her, a low electrical buzz that most humans couldn’t hear but that resonated in her bones like the vibration of deep water. The speakers were cheap, poorly calibrated, designed for volume rather than quality. The feedback loops were barely contained, held in check by automatic dampers that struggled with every shift in ambient noise.
Vulnerable,she thought suddenly. The thought was accompanied by the memory of Valrek’s voice in the darkness of the cave, telling her that her Song could map the depths of the ocean, calm a frightened child, make a hardened soldier forget how to breathe.
Your voice can do things no human voice can do.
Before she had a chance to reconsider, she opened her mouth and hummed, low and subsonic, the same frequency she’d used to calm Lilani’s frantic breathing. But this time, she didn’t keep it soft. She let it build, let it rise, let it climb through octaves that human ears couldn’t process until it reached the exact resonance frequency of the cheap speakers flanking the stage.
The feedback was instantaneous.
A shriek of static erupted from every speaker simultaneously, so loud that people in the crowd clapped their hands over their ears and stumbled backwards. The sound system’s dampers overloaded in a cascade of popping circuits and smoking wires. One of the speaker poles toppled sideways, crashing into a nearby food stall and sending skewers of grilled meat flying.
Merrick staggered, his face twisted with shock and fury.
“What—”
She didn’t wait for him to recover. She yanked away from his grasping hands, ducked under the arm of a guard who was too disoriented to stop her, and threw herself off the back of the stage.
She hit the ground running.
The crowd was her salvation. People scattered in all directions, confused and frightened by the catastrophic failure of the sound system. She wove between them with an agility that her pursuers couldn’t match, using their bodies as cover. Behind her, she heard Merrick’s voice—no longer a whisper but a scream—ordering his men to stop her.
She ran faster.
The market square blurred past her, merchant stalls and game booths and clusters of bewildered villagers who stepped aside as she approached. Her lungs burned—not from lack of air, but from the damned collar that still constricted her gills. She reached up and ripped at the fabric, tearing the delicate silk and feeling the blessed rush of wind against her sensitive gill slits.
Almost there. Almost to the sea.
She was at the edge of the market when she saw him.
A Vultor warrior.
He stood at the periphery of the crowd, towering above the humans around him like a dark mountain. He wasn’t Valrek—he was younger and leaner, with eyes more amber than gold, sweeping the chaos of the festival with an expression of cold assessment.
And then his eyes locked onto her, his nostrils flaring, and her blood turned to ice.
No. No, no, no.
What if he were here to find Valrek, to punish him for his half-human daughter, for her?
The warrior took a step towards her, and she bolted.
Her destination changed in an instant. Not the harbor—too exposed, too easy to follow. She headed for the sea cliffs instead. If there was a threat coming for him and Lilani, she had to warn them. Had to get there first. Had to?—
