His shadow stretches across the dock behind him, bound to his body in a way that it never has been. It always flickered with a life of its own. Now it is calm, following the movement of his rising and falling chest, exactly as it should.
My breath falters. How can this possibly be, is it—
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
His hand lifts to cup my face, his thumb brushing away a tear I had not felt falling.
“When the hunters captured you…when you screamed,” he says quietly, “it came back to me. You used your siren song, love. It hurt like hell, but it reattached. And I have never felt more whole.”
I stare at the shadow behind him as I let the words settle. The meaning of it unfolds piece by piece, until I realize what this means for him — forus.
He is free.
He iswhole.
I did not fail him.
He presses his lips to my forehead. “I’ll explain everything later, but now we have to leave.”
“Sable!”
Cailia appears at the edge of the pier, making his shoulders sag in relief, and so do mine. I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself if she got hurt saving me. Her dark cloak has been shredded by her own corals, but besides that, she appears unharmed. Grim follows close behind her, slower, his posture uneven as he presses an arm against his blood-stained side.
When they reach us, she is breathing heavily, and blood begins to trickle down her nose. With the sleeve of her cloak, she quickly brushes it away, but by the way Sable tenses, I know that he saw it too.
“Cailia, are you okay?” he asks her, his body shifting as he seemingly fights the urge to get up and make sure of it himself.
His sister holds a hand up to stop him in his movement, right when Grim reaches her side.
“I’m okay, brother. Your first mate could use a little bit of stitching though, and a potion to heal him fully. Which brings me to...”
Her eyes shift from her brother toward me.
“Eryse.”
Cailia crouches down next to me, and despite the chaos, I notice that she actually used my real name. As soon as she’s turned away from Grim, her eyes darken, her expression suddenly serious.
“He will bleed out without the correct potion,” she whispers, only for me to hear. Her voice breaks toward the end, as if she were fighting tears.
My mouth opens, without anything coming out. I glance over her shoulder, toward Grim, where the blood stain has turned into something much worse. The shredded shirt reveals a large stretch of skin on the side of his stomach, where blood gushes out of a deep cut, dripping down his legs and onto the planks beneath him. So much blood.
Grim falters. Sable is at his side in no time, supporting him as he crumples to his knees, still fighting to stay upright. But the amount of blood he loses makes it impossible. With his arms underneath Grim’s, Sable helps him to lie down on the deck.
No.
Not Grim.
Not him, not here, not ever. He is the one who was always kind to me, who was the first to offer me a spot at the table. Most importantly, he is like a brother to Sable, whose face has now gone pale as he repeatedly tells him not to die, and that this is an order he better not refuse.
“What can I do?” I ask as I glance back to Cailia, who watches Grim with a deep frown line between her black eyes.
“Your scales,” she says as she turns back toward me. “I need a scale, only one, to make the potion—”
Before she finishes her sentence, I reach for the first scale I can find that looks loose, take a deep breath, and pluck it off, grimacing at the wet sound it makes. Pain shoots through me, but it is a small price to pay for Grim’s life, so I swallow it down, push it from my mind. All I want, all that counts, is for Grim to be okay.
“Here,” I hand it to her with a shaking hand. “Do you need more?”
Cailia’s eyes widen in shock as she stares at the scale for a brief moment, as though she hadn’t expected me to be so willing to part with it.
