Chapter 6 #2
I watch, the knife hot against my hip. The shark-mer leans forward. Its eyes come into focus. Pitch black. The empty eyes of a creature that only knows how to consume.
It has done something to him. Trench-magic. A pheromone. A siren-call. It has twisted his mind. Lured him down to play with him, to ruin him from inside out.
It's making him love the thing that will kill him.
Horror freezes me as Vaelis touches the monster's scarred shoulder. The monster leans into the touch.
My vision blurs with tears.
I can't save him. Not now. Not while he is under its spell. If I swim out, Vaelis will fight me. He will protect the beast.
I must break the hold first.
I slide back into the sponge shadows. My grip tightens on the knife. My knuckles throb.
I will not let the dark have him. I swore to protect him. I will silence this monster's song.
I don't swim fast. Fast movement attracts attention and triggers the chase.
I back away slowly. Inch by agonizing inch. My spine against the trench wall. My eyes locked on them. Vaelis's red hair floats, tangling with the shark's gray shadow. Then a ridge of rock blocks my view.
Only then do I let the scream build in my chest. An overwhelming, silent thing. I force it back down. My lungs burn.
He is compromised.
The thought hammers with my pulse. He is compromised. He is compromised.
I swim toward the Reef. The water fights me, thick as oil. The image burns behind my eyelids. Vaelis laughing at the monster that could bite him in half. It was not him. It could not be. Vaelis is careful. Vaelis is proud. Vaelis does not worship death.
It's the monster's voice.
The Elders' stories surface in memory—tales meant to frighten the young. Basalt-Kin do not sing like shallow sirens; they hum. A vibration travels through water, frequencies so low they infiltrate your bones, scrambling your equilibrium until up becomes down, until death becomes love.
He has been poisoned by sound.
And I am the only one who knows.
The Council would exile him if I told. They wouldn't care about the charm, only that he crossed the wall. They'd detect the sulfur, find the obsidian, mark him tainted. Rank, home, life, all of it forfeited to the executioners.
I cannot tell Taren. He follows the rules, would report Vaelis out of duty.
This falls to me.
I bypass the barracks, avoid the spires and plaza. My path leads to the Silt District. It's the lowest ring where waste collects, the part of the Reef we pretend doesn't exist. Cloudy water heavy with rot carries the sharp taste of old blood from the butcher.
Pulling my dark cowl up, I conceal my face, my markings. Down here, I am not Mira the Vanguard. Just another shadow seeking a dark remedy.
The fissure appears, a narrow crack in the reef's foundation marked with bleached urchin spines and tied with black kelp.
I squeeze through.
The cave behind the fissure is tight. The air is filled with ancient magic. Rough walls, lined floor to ceiling with sealed glass jars. Pickled sea-toad eyes. Dried puffer-sacs. Bundles of toxic kelp, tied tight.
"You swim too loud for a guard," a voice croaks from the deepest shadows.
My hand drops to my knife. "I'm not here as a guard."
Something large uncoils. Something wrong.
It is not a creature I know, but something that has forgotten its own shape.
Ancient. Older than any Elder. If she was once a mer like us, her scales have long since dissolved into memory, replaced by loose, pinkish-gray skin that hangs in sickly folds.
She is blind, her face a smooth expanse of slick mucus.
Barbels, long and impossibly sensitive, wreath her jaw, twitching as they taste the water, tasting me.
"You never are," Oona wheezes, coming closer. She turns her eyeless face toward my voice. Her barbels twitch, tasting the fear bleeding from me. "My visitors are desperate lovers. Or righteous killers. Which are you today, little bright-scale?"
"I need to break a hold." My voice stays steady.
Oona laughs. A wet, bubbling sound. My skin crawls. "A hold? A love-knot? A binding spell of the heart?"
"A siren's hold," I say.
The laughter dies.
Oona's head tilts. Her barbels twitch again. "There are no sirens here. The Reef is too loud. Too bright."
"Not from the Reef," I say. "From the deep. A Basalt-Kin. A shark-mer."
Stillness.
"Ah," Oona breathes. "The heavy ones. The deep hummers." She swims closer. Her face almost touches my cowl. She smells me. "You carry the trench on your skin. The bitter scent of betrayal."
"I need to stop its song," I say, ignoring her taunts. "It has someone I care about. It has confused him. Twisted his mind. He thinks he's safe in the dark. I need something powerful. Something to break the charm."
"A potion won't break a shark's charm, foolish girl. It's not magic. It's biology. They vibrate the bones of their prey. They make the victim's heart resonate with their own."
"Then how do I stop it?"
"You stop the vibration," Oona says simply, turning away from me. "You take the dark instrument away."
"I can't fight it," I say, frustration sharp in my voice. "It's too strong. If I strike and miss, it will tear me apart. And if I somehow manage to kill it, the one I am trying to save might completely break over what I've done."
I know Vaelis. Vaelis would never, ever forgive me if I murdered his captor in front of him.
I saw the terrifyingly gentle way he touched the beast. If the shark dies a bloody death, Vaelis will turn him into a martyr.
I do not need the shark to be dead. I need the shark to be useless. I need it to be pathetic.
Oona hums. A low, grating sound of approval. She floats slowly toward a high shelf crowded with dark, jagged bottles.
"Not a loud death," she mutters to herself. "Just silence. Yes. Absolute silence is the true opposite of the deep."
She reaches up with a trembling, clawed hand and selects a small, unassuming vial. Carved from a single piece of dense, gray sponge. She carefully uncorks it.
A tiny cloud of dark purple liquid swirls out of the opening, dissolving instantly into the water.
"The pure venom of the Hush-Urchin," she says reverently, holding the vial up to the dim light.
"Found only in the deepest trenches of the Abyss.
It does not kill the body. It numbs the throat.
It aggressively seeks out the vocal chords, the deep resonance chambers, the hum of the gills.
It completely paralyzes the ability to create sound. "
My heart skips a hard beat. "Permanently?"
"Nearly nothing in the violent sea is permanent, child. Only the displacement of time. But it lasts long enough. Long enough for the intoxicating song to fade from the blood. Long enough for the charmed prey to wake up and realize it is holding a mindless monster's hand."
She holds the gray vial out toward me. "If the beast cannot speak, he cannot charm. If he cannot hum, the biological resonance shatters. He becomes exactly what he was born to be. A fish. A mute, dumb, ugly brute."
It's perfect.
Without his voice, the shark is nothing to Vaelis.
He can't spin his dark webs of lies. He can't vibrate Vaelis's bones into submission.
Vaelis loves beautiful, articulate, elegant things.
If the terrifying shark becomes a silent, stumbling, mute animal, the spell will break.
Vaelis will finally see him for the horrific threat he truly is.
"How do I give it to him?" I ask, reaching out.
"It must be ingested. Or it must enter directly through the blood. But the stomach is far faster."
My fingers stretch toward the gray vial.
Oona snatches it back, her milky eyes narrowing where they should be. "The price?"
My hand freezes. I carry no currency. My patrol scripts—marked, traceable. The Council would know.
Then, the burning weight at my hip.
I reach into my belt. My fingers close around the jagged shard. The obsidian Vaelis had hidden so carefully in his wall. I pull it free.
Oona gasps. A sharp, wet sound.
Her barbels quiver violently, tasting the heat radiating from my palm.
"Trench-glass," she whispers, reverence in her voice. "Fresh from the vents. It still carries the fire."
"Is it enough?"
"More than enough." She lunges. The speed shocks me. Her clawed hand snatches the heavy rock from my grasp. She cradles it against her chest, crooning softly to the dark stone.
She tosses the gray vial. I catch it.
"Be careful, little guard," Oona rasps, melting back into her rotting shadows. "Silence is a heavy thing. Once you give it, you cannot take it back."
"I'm not giving it to him," I say, my voice firm as I tuck the vial deep into my pouch. "I'm taking it back for Vaelis."
The fissure spits me back into the murky water of the Silt District. The rot tastes different now. Cleaner. Purposeful. The vial sits heavy in my pouch, a single cold truth against my skin. A weapon. Not of steel, but of silence.
But I can't simply swim to the boundary and force the dose down the shark's throat. Vaelis is always with him. He hovers, a faithful shadow. He watches.
I need to separate them. Or better yet.
No.
I need Vaelis to witness it. I need him there when the crushing silence falls. I need him to watch the mighty shark try to speak, to see its jaw work uselessly, to witness the dark power drain away like sand through fingers.
But I cannot be the one to do it. Not directly. Vaelis would see. He would hate me for the deception. I must be stealthy.
I swim upward toward the light, my mind a frantic, tactical whirl.
I need bait. A reason for the shark to lower its guard, to be vulnerable.
The memory surfaces. The shark's hand, made for rending flesh, taking the stolen fruit from Vaelis's palm. So gentle. So impossibly trusting.
The beast believes it is safe with him. That arrogant trust is its greatest weakness.
I will use Vaelis's own gift as the weapon. I will lace the fruit.
The barracks come into view, pristine and ordered. Just as the loud shift-change whistle blows across the plaza. The sharp sound vibrates through the water, calling the faithful back to duty.
I am faithful. I am the most fiercely faithful thing in this entire ocean. I will protect my own, no matter the cost.
My fingers brush the shape of the vial through my pouch one last time.
I am so sorry, Vaelis, I confess silently, though the words feel hollow. I am not sorry. I am righteously determined. You will hate me for a little while. But one day, when you are safely back in the light and the dark song is gone from your mind, you will understand.
I swim out and join the tight guard formation, falling into line. My face is a flawless mask of stony duty.
But my eyes are fixed on the dark, crushing water beyond the boundary wall.
Enjoy your voice while you still have it, monster. Tonight is the last time you will ever use it to call his name.