“Shoot!” he orders. “Get the pirate—”
The rifle slips from his hold. A gasp escapes me as pale coral bursts outward beneath his uniform, forcing its way through flesh and fabric, branching out and spreading rapidly in silent defiance of the life his body once possessed. He does not scream. He stares, blank-eyed ahead of him as corals bloom within him. They soon claim his whole body and spread even further in jagged formations, creating a barrier between the guards and us.
Cailia turns her head, black-eyed and blinking.
By the way her entire body language shifts and her eyes remain dark as the abyss, it’s as if the sea itself has taken control over her being.
Chapter Forty
“Run!”shescreamsatus, before returning her focus to the magic she is still wielding.
Sable stiffens his back. He doesn’t want to leave his sister alone, and I don’t want him to either.
“I’ll protect her,” Grim emerges from the crowd, his axe raised and ready for combat. A red haze dances across his green eyes as he gives Sable a curt nod of reassurance.
“I’ll protect her with my life,” he adds, and finally, Sable gives him a nod. He would trust his First Man with his life, and with his sister’s life also, it seems.
As Grim turns from us, Sable rises to his feet, the muscles in his bicep straining at the unexpected weight of my tail. His grip around my tail tightens as he turns and runs through the path that the crew of the Noctis has formed for us, lifting me high enough so that my tail doesn’t scrape against the splintered wood. Nightglass moves in front with his cutlass raised, ready to strike, but no one dares to attack us.
Not anymore.
The wooden platforms beneath us shudder with each step, barely audible over the beating of my heart. Gunfire cracks behind us, close enough that I can smell the gunpowder in the air, each shot barely missing us. Wood splitters all around, but Sable does not hesitate. His eyebrows are drawn tight, and even when his arms begin to shake, he doesn’t slow down.
Finally, the harbor rises ahead through the fog. Dark water shifts underneath the docks, and at the sight, something in my chest lightens. A deep, instinctive pull settles there. It is so strong that it almost hurts when I draw in a breath, my lungs instead of my gills, air instead of water.
He slows his pace the moment we reach the pier, his chest rising and falling fast with his heavy breathing. Behind us, the pirates handle the remaining guards, only a few remaining. Corals and shells are glinting in the light in the distance. Cailia. I don’t even have to guess.
My gaze lifts past him, towards the left of the pier.
There she is.
The Noctis, all patched up with pieces of driftwood.
The sight of her makes my heart feel full, and I realize that despite everything that has happened, she feels like home. Itighten my grip on Sable, my fingers pressing slightly into his shoulders.
With his chest rising and falling beneath his torn shirt, he carefully lowers me onto the deck. His obsidian gaze searches mine as he brushes a strand of my knotted hair from my cheek, his touch warm and rough against my dry skin.
“Are you ready?” he whispers.
Truth is, I don’t know if I am. That tiny stretch of wood separates me from who I was and whom I have become, and somehow, it feels so final that it grates at me. What does this mean for us?
My hand rises before I can think about it too much, and I let my fingers thread through his dark hair until it is buried in it.
“Not yet,” I whisper.
His breath catches as I lean forward and brush my lips against his. Sable deepens the kiss and lets his hand slide along my side before settling against the length of my tail, where it curves between us. His fingers spread wide there, following the shape of my scales, touching me as though this is not something strange or foreign to him.
Warmth follows the path of his touch, rising through my body in waves, and when his grip tightens, the intensity steals the breath from my lungs. We draw apart after a short moment, breathing heavily. His forehead comes to rest against mine, and I inhale his breath as if it were my own.
“You know,” he whispers, “you never had to use your song on me. I was always yours. And I will always be.”
“But your shadow…” I whisper, the words barely forming. “Is it—”
The sharp lines of his face soften as he begins to smile, and that faint dimple at the corner of his mouth appears.
“Look,” he says gently, and flicks his gaze past me toward the wood at his back.
I follow the movement of his eyes.
