A rattling tail slaps me across the face, and I blink. Sink. Something grazes my scales. I whirl to find Asha’s pink eyes steady on my rounded ones. She tries to press her palms to my forehead, but I don’t want her thoughts.
My thoughts are already too much.
Too much.
I roll away, head spinning, heart galloping. The water beneath me is so murky that I think night has fallen, but a glance above reveals a glimmering cyan striated with foam and?—
Something large and dark carves into the water. I think it’s a sinking ship, but then I spy feathers, a metal beak, and black eyes that shrink into brown ones. Bubbles snake out of Cathal’s nose as he flutters his feet and windmills his arms to reach me, but the deeper he dives, the deeper I drop, until my body hits something so sharp it tears a shriek from my mouth.
I crane my neck and wring my body until I’ve managed to unhook myself from whatever coral impaled me. I jerk around, then recoil when I meet a giant, vacant stare. Arms band around me, clasp me from behind, and then a hand snares my tusk, pink eyes replacing the colorless ones.
Asha sets one palm on my forehead, then slowly unwraps her other hand from my tusk. As she smooths it across my forehead, my gaze snicks on the giant’s eyes again. They belong to a bloodless face that’s topped with a crown made of sticks like Fallon’s, only these are as tall as Cathal and pure white, save for a black smear on top of one.
Suddenly the giant’s face fades and I see my human self walking in the palace’s Shabbin gardens, pink hair bouncing against my hot nape, sunshine glinting against my retracted tusk. Hands clasp mine, squeeze. And then Fallon’s face materializes before mine and she says, “Shift, Zendaya.”
I blink. I don’t want her to call me by my name. I want her to call me Mádhi. I want to be her mother.
“Shift,” she repeats. And then another voice, a deep raucous one, garbles the very same word.
My throat clenches as I wrench my face from Asha’s and twirl. Two tiny bubbles pop from Cathal’s lips. And then his eyes roll and his strength wanes, the knot of his arms slipping.
Air. He needs air. I coil my aching tail around his large body and grip him. And then I shoot upward, swimming fast in spite of the weight I carry. Asha swims beside me, propelling herself using her arms.
When I reach the surface, I sweep my tail and bowl Cathal’s body upward. Asha snares him around the torso. The ocean suddenly flickers, darkens, and my body shudders. When light fans across the obscurity, I find that my tail has split.
I give a hard kick. Pain flares down my leg. I hook the pink fabric of my gown and pluck it from my skin, finding a deep gouge weeping black blood. I squint at the ocean floor, toward that spot of white, but get distracted by the long, indigo slit and the scaled bodies undulating over it.
A few serpents look up. Their nostrils flare. A juvenile darts toward me but halts, scrutinizes me, then curls in on itself like a millipede, before dashing toward the underwater trench. I’m still staring after it when two rough palms seize my cheeks and hinge my neck back.
Cathal nods to the surface, to the only place where we can coexist. I use my arms to avoid jostling my legs, but stretching my arms shortens my breaths and stokes the fire engulfing my upper thigh. The second we break the surface, I gulp in the warm, bright air as though my lungs had been stripped of it since I dove off my grandmother’s ship.
Cathal’s thumbs arc across my cheekbones. “Shh.”
Asha murmurs a word which the Shabbins use when something not good happens. One glance upward reveals the reason for her word. We’ve emerged right beside the Glacin galleon, and everyone aboard is peering down at us.
At me.
Chapter 23
Cathal
King Vladimir stands at the railing of his galleon, his silver eyes stroking over Daya’s features in a way that shakes her body with shudders. “Now, what have you fished out of the deep, Cathal Báeinach?” he asks in Glacin.
“Is that a mermaid?” one of his twins shrills.
“Mermaids only exist in those terrible books you read, Izolda,” her sister quips.
Though I realize I cannot shield Daya entirely, one of my hands slips into her pink braid and presses her face into the crook of my neck, while the other curls around her waist.
“They’re great books,” Izolda mutters just as Daya releases a small whimper.
I faze the Glacins out and murmur in Shabbin, “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Though she clenches her teeth, I catch a second whimper.
Evidently, it’s not nothing.
“Would you like us to toss you a buoy?” As Vladimir caresses the dead fox ornament draped over his shoulder, his ivory bangles clink together.
