I flick my tail and rush to meet him.
We collide, and he’s thrown backwards. I bare my teeth, furious again at the last three weeks. His deception. That fucking fine print. How he tortured and tormented Mei for years.
He hurt her.
He hurt us.
He’s not going to live another day.
He crouches, staring up at me, his eyes darting around as Ronit’s glowing lights appear to be everywhere, confusing him as they refract through the water.
I lash out and hit him with my tail, which has several inches of thick poison-filled barbs that sink into his flesh.
He howls and lashes out with fire, but the oceans turns back on him, and he frantically forces it to sputter and extinguish.
I swim away into the dark, coming around behind him. He might be an expert hunter, but no one is more capable than us down here.
She came for me.
He imprisoned me.
Never again.
I don’t know if I’m sane.
I don’t feel that way anymore. I’ve fallen into a darkness, and I don’t know if I can come out again.
Something slams into me and wraps around me. I struggle, baring my teeth, my head tilted back in a roar.
The grip tightens on me, and then I’m crying, sobbing as I hold her to me, because I would recognise her anywhere. In any form.
She is mine, part of me. My saviour, the hope I didn’t have.
Home is where she is, be it in this ocean or another, on land, in this world or the next. She is my peace.
“Reed. Come away. You can’t do this. Let the others take care of it for you.”
I open my mouth to protest, but she’s right.
“Okay, I’m okay.” And I am. I’ll hold on, for her. I won’t fall into the dark.
Deux shrieks and charges us.
I spin us around and out of the way, lashing out at him, sending him slamming into the bedrock. He lays there for a second, then gets up, tilts his head back, and laughs.
My skin crawls, and the ocean seems too dark and too big. If we lose him, we could spend the rest of our lives hunting him.
Mei squeezes my hands in reassurance. “We’re taking care of this today. Don’t worry.”
My resolve settles. “Okay.”
Chapter 43
Brio
My song is not working on him, so I changed to something more insidious. Something to amplify his fear. Just a dark little ditty, repeated over and over. Something that will seem innocuous at first but then get under his skin.
I sing about his corpse floating, forgotten in the dark, the creatures that live here, and how he will never see the light. I sing about the cold and barren world that exists in these deepest parts of the ocean.
