The water tore away from my face as we shot upward, faster than anything human. I gagged on seawater, coughing, barely conscious as the thing dragging me carved through the ocean.
Impossible.
Filled with colors that glowed in the dark of pink and blue, he was more beautiful than I ever could have believed.
“Koinu…” I choked, too weak to speak louder.
The shape didn’t answer, but I felt the smooth, slick surface of his body, holding me above the water as I caught my breath.
He’d come for me.
He’d known.
We sat at the surface of black waters as I coughed and sputtered, trying to remember what it felt like to breathe without burning.
I coughed black water into my lungs so violently that it felt like knives. Waves tossed us as Koinu dragged me toward the Wraith, his song low and urgent in a language I didn’t know but somehow understood:
Lights flashed aboard the ship. Voices shouted. A rope was thrown. Strong arms hauled me upward—Oscar? Bash? Val? I couldn’t see through the blur of sea and tears.
Koinu pushed me upward with a final force, slipping beneath the water.
Hands gripped under my arms and chest, pulling me onto the deck. I collapsed, coughing seawater, trembling uncontrollably. Someone wrapped a blanket around me. Someone else checked my pulse.
“Rose! Rose, breathe—bloody hell, breathe—”
Bash.
I reached for him weakly. He pulled me to his chest like he might break if he let go. The warmth of him was a shock after the endless cold.
But then the sea behind us shuddered.
Every voice on the Wraith stopped.
A low, bone-deep bass rumble vibrated through the hull—so powerful every lantern swayed.
I lifted my head, dazed, just in time to see the ocean rising unnaturally, like something beneath was pushing it upward.
The Leviathan breached halfway.
Its massive eye—gold, ancient, furious—fixed on the ship. Fixed onme.
It had followed the broken dome. It had followed the shell.
But most of all—It had followed me.
“Get us out of here!” someone screamed—Val, I think.
But even as the Wraith lurched forward, sails snapping, the Leviathan’s shadow stretched with it.
I clutched Bash’s arm as the sea swelled higher, an impossible tower of dark water rising behind us.
The Leviathan wasn’t done.
It was awake.
And it was enraged.
More enraged than before—because now it knew I had escaped its cage.
