Too tight.
The dress also feels suddenly too tight. I glance at the nearest canal, desperate to jump into it. I press away from Cathal, then start walking, reaching around my back to tear off the wide band of leather.
“Daya?” Cathal calls out to me.
“I hot. I need swim.” I don’t turn around as I say it.
“Here?”
“Let her, Dádhi. There are never any serpents in these waters.”
I finally get the belt off and drop it onto the trimmed grass that is as soft as velvet underfoot. I start to gather my skirts to get my dress off when Cathal’s smoke congeals in front of me.
With gentle hands, he clasps my wrists. “Please don’t take the dress off.”
I frown until I catch him glowering at the people around us. I release the stiff gray satin and traipse right to the water’s edge. It is as clear as air, with not a single fish or coral blighting the bone-white basin. I dive in feetfirst. My dress balloons around me. I try to sink but there’s too much fabric, so I shift, my scales soaring from within and wrapping around me.
My gills must flare from how deeply I exhale, but then an odd prickle seizes them. I attempt to siphon in a breath, but no cool air cycles through my Serpent lungs. I flick my tail to steal a breath farther down the canal, but if anything, the prickling worsens.
What’s inside this water?
My tusk breaks the surface and then my head. I try to sneak oxygen from the sky but something must be wrong with my gills, because they don’t flutter.
What’s happening to me?
I sink back under and try to breathe, but the burn spreads like melting wax. I visualize my other shape, but for some reason—possibly, my rising panic—I cannot melt into flesh. In some distant recess of my brain, I hear my grandmother’s warning about the Lucins’ hatred of serpents, and I realize that someone must’ve poisoned my food or this water to tamper with my magic.
I should never have come to Luce. I should’ve listened to her and to Cathal and stayed in Shabbe.
I crest the surface of the Isolacuorin canal once more, searching for Cathal in the sea of Two-legs. Through my dotty vision, I see him. He’s crouched by the water’s edge, half-smoke, half-male. His lips move, but my roaring pulse chews up his words. I shoot nearer but misgauge the distance and bang against the stone embankment. Cathal must grab me by the tusk because my head is suddenly out of the water and on his lap.
He speaks again, but again I don’t hear him. The dots in front of my eyes become smudges. The smudges, a veil. I shake my head and blink, but no amount of headshaking or blinking manages to disperse the obscurity closing in on me.
I don’t want to die. Not again. I want to live.
I want this so fiercely that I muscle more of my clunky body out of the water and onto the land, praying to the Mahananda that exposure to air will bring about my shift, but I dangle haplessly, half in, half out.
My head must slip from Cathal’s palms, because he’s suddenly gone. Or am I the one who’s gone?
Chapter 27
Zendaya
Irefuseto be gone.
I crack my lids open. Amidst the ashen veil shines twin spots of pink. The spots become brighter, clearer, until I recognize Taytah’s eyes.
She strokes my cheek, my neck. My starved brain wonders if it’s a dream, but then I feel the faintest trickle of air carve through my scales. Priya doesn’t caress; she paints. I’m not sure what sigil she’s used, but delicious, sweet oxygen suddenly streaks through my gills and fills my giant body, which lies entirely flopped and coiled on the emerald embankment.
“Shift,” my grandmother whispers.
This time, when I call upon my other form, my scales split and my body shrinks. My lips come apart around a gasp that is so violent, it scorches my lungs. And yet I lap at the air, drinking it in tremendous drafts until my head spins from my immoderation.
“Easy, emMoti. Easy.” Priya is still drawing on my neck.
My skin tautens, tingles. She must be healing me. My lids bloat with tears.
A soft cloth swooshes over my neck and chest. I turn my head to find Fallon mopping down my skin. The whites of her eyes are as red as garnets, which makes her irises appear luminescent like the algae in the Sahklare. The thought of it makes me ache for my homeland.
