No. Not even if your skin puddles off your bones.
I wrinkle my nose.Well, that’s a foul image I did not need.
The light thins the deeper I descend, and the water grows balmier. The ocean presses against my ears, which I must pop with greater frequency. By the fifth ledge, the serpents stop following. Except my mother. She hasn’t left my side even though she’s growing more and more restless, much like my mate.
I’m about to pitch my length of chain over yet another ledge when she smacks into me to keep me from going any lower. I try to capture her attention to show her the iron crow, but she keeps shaking her head and staring frenziedly around. If Lore doesn’t foil my mission, she might.
How much deeper, Lore?
Once your toes begin to blister, you should be able to spot me.
Funny.I glare into the dark water around me for his familiar metallic stare, but it’s either turned away from me, or my mate’s slinked off somewhere.
A fight breaks out above me between two serpents. Min—My mother tips her head up. I use the distraction to lower myself and my chain. The moment she realizes I’ve slipped past her, she releases a keening whine and flicks her tail, but the temperature of the water must grow too harsh for her because she darts backward as though she’s hit a ward.
Her round eyes grow rounder, her whining, louder. She dashes toward me and almost manages to snare my suit with her tusk, but I drop into a crouch and she misses. She looses another deep whine that seems to vibrate the entire ocean.
Are you still with me, Lore?
Where else would I fucking be, Behach Éan?he mutters as his shadows skim my skin like a cooling balm.
I climb down two more ledges before the heat becomes a little much, even for the scalding bath-lover in me. My eyeballs sting so hard from the salt and torrid temperature that I can barely keep my lids raised. Before Lore can use my discomfort to his advantage, I begin to hum a bawdy tavern song over my mother’s echoing whines.
I peer over the ledge and drop my chain, then hoist my body down. Though I never stuck a limb into Marcello’s soup pot, I’m guessing this must be pretty close to what it feels like.
My foot hits something that does not feel like coral, and I wince, because, yeah . . . not coral. My wince turns into a scowl when I realize what I stepped on—a fisherman’s cage. I crouch beside it, my scowl deepening when I spot three fish floating inside, eyes milky like the rotten ones they would sell on the Tarelexian wharf.
I slide my lips together and lower my lids a teensy bit more, the sulfurous scent of death and volcano punching up my nose.
I smell blood.
I nicked my foot on this stupid cage. I hate cages.
Show me your foot.
My foot’s fine.I grip the wiry edges of the cage entrance and pull to create a wider gap, then slide my arm through carefully and remove the dead fish. Their bodies drift up the trench like glittering lanterns.
I know I cannot save all animals, but I hate that these fish died for nothing.
How’s your air?
Fine.
Like your foot?
I lower my gaze to my throbbing foot, then regard the cage again, my eyebrows tilting toward one another as an idea roots itself inside my head. I flip the cage over so that the opening faces downward, then loop my chain through the metal trellis and secure it.
And then I reel it up to display my new-and-much-improved crow-fishing contraption. Lore’s eyes twinkle, and I think it’s with hope. I think he’s starting to believe he’ll be whole today. My throat closes with emotion, and I smile at him. When my throat clenches again, this time not with emotion, my smile teeters.
Your endeavor is creative. I’ll give you that much.
I force my lips to bend, and my heart to slow. My gills’ efficacy may be waning, but they’re still sifting oxygen.
While Lore scrutinizes my tool, I touch my bleeding toe and lift my finger to my neck to draw a line. The blood must disperse before breaching my skin because the air slinking into me remains reedy.
I must not dally.
Fifty-Seven
