Chapter 37 Lyx
THIRTY-SEVEN
Lyx
Drowning is nothing like Lyx imagined.
Everything is quiet. She can’t hear Tidus’s voice or Cav’s scream, everything drowned out by the flounder of her pulse. The light from the surface grows faint until it’s barely a pinprick overhead. Darkness seeps in. The water grows colder and colder.
Wet fabric clogs her mouth. She tears at it with her teeth, but that wedges it deeper. Netting grips raw lines into her flesh and tangles hopelessly with her tentacles. Her body fights to transform. There’s not enough room. The ropes dig into the bell of her tail.
Something brushes her back. Her body jerks, but her eyes haven’t adjusted yet. She doesn’t know what else is down here with her.
She can’t swim. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. Her thoughts scatter. Her lungs burn.
Above her, something splashes into the water.
Mucky fabric clings to her gills, and bubbles rise up around her as if the ocean itself is in distress.
A shadow passes over her, and two clawed hands find her face. In her panic, she yanks away, but the hands don’t release her. They tug on the rag around her neck, backlit by the glow of the person behind them.
Cav.
He slices through the fabric and tugs it free.
Lyx’s gills expand, and Cav grabs onto the net and swims lower.
Lyx can hardly make him out any longer, but something pulls taut and begins to vibrate near her feet.
Cav’s arm saws back and forth through the rope connecting the bag of rocks.
Finally, something snaps, and Cav wraps his arms around her waist and kicks off of the sea floor.
They surface with a gasp, and he kicks toward the stone staircase. “I’ve got you.”
Lyx keeps her head above water, gritting her teeth when the netting twists tighter. Her body is impossibly heavy, weighed down with chaos, but Cav settles her onto the bottom step to keep her lower half submerged.
His hands smooth over her face. “Can you breathe?”
“Where’s Tidus?” she croaks.
Cav sighs his relief before he cuts away at the net with his claws.
“You have to go after him,” Lyx rasps. “He wants the pearls, he —”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
He keeps cutting her free, but the air between them sizzles with what’s left unfinished.
After a long moment, his voice comes low and pointed. “What part of it was real?”
Shame and guilt curdle in her throat. They’re strange emotions she barely knows how to name.
If she were smart, she would say none of it.
She would say it was all an act, that everything she did was in service to her mission.
If she were Mollo, or Sinoe, she would laugh at Cav’s pain and lap it up to feed herself.
Even if she did, Cav would keep freeing her from the net. He would still help her. He would not abandon her.
“He was telling the truth.” She watches the waves rolling in. “I lied to get onto the ship. I spied on Heathen’s work. I was working for him.”
“And the rest of it?” Water slips off Cav’s nose and drips into the water. “Did you show me yourself in that pool because he told you to? Did you save me from Sinoe because you had to?” His eyes dip to her mouth where her fangs are still receding. “Did you eat from me because of someone else?”
She trembles, but not from cold. It’s a truth she’s avoided for so long, but…what’s the fucking point of it? She’s tired of fighting it. Tired of running from it. She doesn’t try to lie; there’s no longer a part of her that would believe it. “No.”
Cav’s breath gusts across her lips, but he doesn’t close the space. “Why did you leave again?”
That seems to wound him more than anything else. She exhales sharply.
“I’m – sorry. I thought…it would protect you. I didn’t want you to be in danger, but you ended up here, anyway.”
“I can’t help it.” He smiles tenderly. She wants to see that smile again, a hundred times over.
All her life, she has believed she had nothing and no one to answer to, but she was never truly free.
Tidus is not the only thing to have control over her.
The most obvious, maybe, but not the first. Long ago, she learned the ways of sirens.
She followed those rules as if they were laws of nature, unchangeable and innate.
She sought the things she was supposed to want.
She never questioned it. She did what she was supposed to do.
Until Cav arrived in her grotto.
That was the first time she wondered if there could be something else. Something she wasn’t supposed to be able to feel. Something more powerful than the desires she’d been taught to have.
She sent him away so she wouldn’t have to face it, but it couldn’t kill her curiosity.
She just found other names for it. Ones that were acceptable.
Ones she could deal with. Loathing. Hatred.
Revenge. If those were the reasons she looked for Cav in every port, she could understand that.
If that was why she boarded the Indulgence, then so be it.
If it allowed her to get closer to him, then she would dedicate herself to it.
But it was never the truth.
And then she left Cav again. Not because she wanted to, but because something else still controlled her. Her fingers curl into fists. She is tired of watching her choices be stripped away. She is tired of being ordered around by things outside of her control.
Under Cav’s hands, the final piece of netting falls away. He eases her tentacles free and curls one gently around his finger. “What does Tidus have on you? What did he take?”
She presses her lips together. She’s never said it aloud. That would mean admitting it’s not temporary, but devastatingly real. She’s never told anyone, but then again, she’s never had anyone to tell. The words are fragile in her mouth. “My song.”
He kneels on the step below her, a knight swearing his fealty. “Then we’ll get it back.”
Arms around her waist, he lifts onto a higher step. She grits her teeth while her legs knit back together and her other markers fade until Cav can help her to her feet.
They look out across the sea from the edge of the platform. The moon is high, but even without it, the lights of the marketplace are bright. It almost makes it hard to see the blue-flagged sloop headed for the overgrown island in the distance.
Her body aches. It’s not used to these sudden changes, tentacles spreading and sewing back together. She’s been confined to her land form for so long that she doesn’t have the strength to swim after Tidus.
There’s no way to stop him.
She sags against the wall, but Cav moves back into the boathouse.
He maneuvers through the dark, grunting and pushing until a sailboat splashes into the bay.
The wooden ship is rough and worn, a sail hanging feebly from the mast, but Cav hops inside and offers his hand. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have.”
They’ve been here before. It’s déjà vu, but this time, she doesn’t hesitate when she takes his hand and climbs down beside him. He casts them off into the water and tugs at the sails until they billow.
It’s not a rapid pace, but they’re moving. They glide along the island and nearly reach the southern port when something tears above them, and the weakened sail flutters with a massive rip down the middle.
Cav curses and tries to adjust, but their boat slows to a glacial pace. Tidus’s ship has disappeared from sight.
“Fuck!” Lyx slams her fist against the side of the ship and splashes into the water.
Cool water clings to her skin. It’s familiar. She peers over the edge of the boat and down at her reflection. Her shadow blurs the edges, and her face ripples until she and the ocean become indistinguishable.
Hesitantly, she lowers her fingers. They dip into the water, and she swears something holds onto her. With a steadying breath, she shuts her eyes and tries to sense every droplet that flows between her fingers.
Please.
She doesn’t know what she’s asking. It’s been years since she reached out to the sea.
Her cheeks burn. Maybe this is foolish — or maybe Cav’s audacity has finally rubbed off on her.
Her fingers drift through the water in search of something.
A connection. A response. She isn’t sure any longer.
No matter how she hopes, there’s nothing.
She almost withdraws, but instead, she sinks her hand in deeper and submerges up to her elbow.
Around her, the water fizzes. Hope lodges in her throat.
Take us to the island. Please. I’ll come back to you. I’ll send Tidus back, too.
Behind her, Cav sighs. “I can’t fix it. It’s —”
The boat jerks and sends Cav toppling. Lyx braces against the side, holding Cav in place when the boat takes off across the water.
It sprays up around them as they bounce along the waves.
The worn boat creaks with effort. Cav and Lyx cling to whatever they can, and behind them, a wake churns.
Cav laughs above the sound of the water.
It’s rough and choppy, jostling them as the boat moves faster than should be possible.
In minutes, the overgrown island in the distance becomes a stretch of beach before them.
The boat gives out when they reach the shallows. The vessel slows, stutters, and falls apart at the seams.
Cav lifts Lyx onto his strong shoulder and wades toward the shore. She trails her fingers into the water behind him.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The waves rush up after them and urge them forward.