He steps closer, the space between us shrinking, but there’s no softness in the movement. The color has almost completely drained from his face.
“Is that true?” I manage to say, sadness rising fast, threading itself through the familiar hum behind my ribs. “You think I will die if I try to save you? And that you’d rather fade away?”
His eyes darken. “You think sacrificing yourself will fix that?”
“I think you’re worth fighting for,” I say, and all I want to do is hug and hold him close.
With the silence that follows comes a soft breeze against my cheek, making me shiver. My hair whips away from my face moments later.
My eyes widen.
Wind.
Sable seems to be too caught up to even notice it, his chest now rising and falling fast, his dark curls dancing on his head, reminding me of the swirls of his shadow.
“My crew comes first,” he says at last. “Always.”
My hands curl at my sides. “You expect me to save everyone else and let the sea take you?”
“Yes,” he says without hesitation. The certainty and definitiveness in his voice is like a punch in my guts.
“Promise me,” he continues. “Promise me you’ll save them first. That you won’t endanger yourself for me.”
The hum behind my ribs surges, and I clench my hands over my stomach as it becomes insistent.
“I can’t promise that,” I say and shake my head. “I won't help you erase yourself.”
His gaze softens, just slightly, only for a heartbeat. “Darling, you have to. I am too far gone.”
I hold his eyes, heart hammering, the weight of everything he said pressing down on me and fueling the throbbing behind my ribs, making me feel physically sick.
“I swear to save your crew first,” I say slowly. “But after I’ve sung back the last shadow of this crew, I swear to the seas, I will sing and drag your shadow back towards you.”
For a long moment, he studies me.
“I want to see you whole,” I whisper. “I want to see that version of you that I met in the dream again.”
Moments pass. His gaze drifts back and forth, undecided, before he folds his hands behind his back and straightens.
“Aye…” His eyes drift past my shoulder, toward the Glim. “But we’ll need to strengthen your power.”
I swallow, relieved that he permitted me to at least try to save him. “How?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ilosecountofthedays that I spend submerged. At first, I try to count them by the rise and fall of the light above the deck, by how often the sky shifts from pale gold to deep blue and back again. But time in the Sea of Dreams does not seem to move in the usual way, and soon that becomes unreliable.
So I stop counting altogether, and climb into the shallow tub on the main deck that Sable has ordered to be filled and refilled with seawater over and over again.
With the lack of sleep, all I know and have become is salt.
Salt in my hair, stiffening until the strands cling together. Salt drying on my skin, crusting along my shoulders and collarbones where the scales aren’t there to protect it, collecting in the hollow of my throat and at the curve of my ribs.
I soak in it for hours, sometimes multiple times a day, then close my eyes to sleep for a few hours.
We sleep in shifts. Someone is always on watch when others are sleeping, and that same person makes sure you wake up again when it is time to. We can’t risk sleeping at the same time, not while we are still in the Sea of Dreams. But even when exhaustion pulls at me, my thoughts circle like a restless bird gliding through the air and do not settle. I lie awake in my hammock at night, staring at the beams overhead, listening to the hull cut through the current we found. Together with the wind, the ship moves faster than it should be capable of.
