Chapter 15 #2
His protective anger falters, replaced by a heavy, reluctant pity.
"The Abyssal Draught," he whispers, the horrific realization dawning on him. "It's aged her by decades... It burned her out from the inside."
I nod confirmation, looking back down at Mira.
Her milky eyes track my scarred hands, confusion warring with suspicion in their depths. The thin, trembling fingers of her right hand clench into a weak fist, a futile attempt at defiance that betrays her fear.
"What is he doing with his hands?" she asks Vaelis, her voice a dry rasp. "He's casting a dark spell on you—"
"He is talking to me, you fool," Vaelis says proudly, lifting his chin. "Since you took his real voice away, we had to build a new language together."
Mira stares blankly at my scarred hands, then at Vaelis's face. A bitter scoff escapes her cracked lips. "Talking?" The word hangs in the water like poison. "Mindless beasts do not talk. They only growl when they're hungry."
Locking my dark eyes to her milky ones, I lift my large hand. I point to the water-skin resting in the sand.
Thirst.
I point to the sailcloth blanket wrapping her shivering shoulders.
Warmth.
I point to the heavy kelp curtain covering the door to the freezing ocean.
Life.
I gave you all of these things.
She does not understand the specific signs, but she understands the intent behind my gestures. Her eyes fix on the fresh water, to the warm blanket saving her life, to the sturdy curtain that keeps the crushing dark at bay. The defiance in her eyes crumbles, replaced by a deep, shuddering shame.
"Why?" she whispers, her voice barely audible above the hum of the engine. "Why didn't you leave me to die in the dark?"
I turn to Vaelis. I want him to translate the truth for me.
Vaelis lets out a heavy breath. He turns to face me, his golden eyes softening with an emotion that sends a tremor through my frame. His fins flutter gently.
"Because Kael doesn't leave broken things behind," Vaelis says to her, his voice ringing with a certainty. "Even the things that have hurt him."
Mira's milky eyes shift to Vaelis, her face a mask of exhaustion and defeat. There is no deception in her eyes, only the stark clarity of confession.
"You're right, Vaelis," Mira rasps, the sound like stones grinding together. "I poisoned him. You thought he lost his mind in the kelp forest and abandoned you like a feral beast, but he didn't. He disappeared because of me."
My muscles lock tight, the memory of that day flooding back with the force of a rogue wave. I turn my face toward the shadows of the curved wall, unable to bear the weight of Vaelis's attention.
Vaelis freezes at her admission, his fine gills flaring wide.
"The fruit was laced," Mira continues. "I coated the skin with a heavy neurotoxin.
I knew you couldn't smell it, Vaelis, but he is a Shark-kin.
I feared he would smell the rot. I anticipated having to try again, that he would know it was a trap.
And yet… He still consumed the fruit. And then he disappeared into the trench. "
"What?" Vaelis pales, his golden eyes widening with horror. "Why?" he asks.
"Because of you," Mira says, fixed on Vaelis's shocked face.
"He knew the trap was meant for you. I laced the fruit to guarantee your safety, and he swallowed the poison to keep you clean.
He played the feral beast to force your retreat.
He understood my logic, Vaelis. He knew your true place remains in the Reef. With me."
I stare at the sand floor, shame burning hot in my chest. I recall the raw terror in his golden eyes when I bared my teeth at him, the desperate need to drive him away from danger.
I recall the blinding agony of the venom twisting my spine, the darkness that clouded my mind as I sank into the trench.
It was a necessary trade. My sanity for his life.
I brace for his disgust. I wait for him to pull away from the desperate thing I have become.
The realization shatters his composure. Vaelis drops his face into his hands, his lean shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
A vibration tears from his throat, a ragged gasp of understanding.
He weeps for me. He understands the monster broke its own mind to build a shield around him.
The weight of the revelation shifts the entire water between us.
Vaelis glides through the water, his crimson fins cutting through the dim light like twin blades.
I flinch at his approach, turning my heavy head toward the shadows of the curved wall.
His fingers, delicate as sea-coral, close around my jaw.
He forces my eyes to meet his own, those golden pools swimming with tears that spill into the warm water around us.
"You poisoned your own blood to protect me," Vaelis whispers, the silent words warm. "You shattered your own mind to keep me in a place you thought was safer than the Trench. You are no monster, Kael." He presses his forehead against my rough, scarred skin. "You are my protector."
The feral armor I've built around my heart cracks.
My arms wrap around his waist, pulling his body flush against my chest. I bury my face in the crook of his neck, the scent of him filling my senses like life-giving oxygen.
A heavy, silent sob tears from my throat, vibrating against his collarbone in the warm water.
Mira closes her eyes, turning her pale face away from us in shame.
"You are both fools," she mutters into the sand. I squeeze Vaelis tighter, gathering myself until he pulls back to wipe the tears from my face with his thumb. "Both of you," Mira continues. "The High Council will skin you both alive if they catch you inside the perimeter."
"That's why we need your help to find Oona," Vaelis says, kneeling beside her. "You are Vanguard. You know the active patrol routes. You know where the blind spots in the perimeter are located."
Mira laughs again. A dry, hacking, hopeless sound. "I can't even lift my own head, Vaelis. What tactical use am I to you?"
Reaching down into my heavy belt pouch, I pull out a broken chunk of wax. It is the heavy, hardened seal from the empty vial of Abyssal Draught we found discarded in her patrol pouch when we pulled her from the Wastes. It bears the deeply pressed thumbprint of Oona the Trench Witch.
I hold it up into the blue light.
Mira's milky eyes snap open. She recognizes the dark wax. She knows what the symbol pressed into it means. It is the physical proof of her terrible, desperate bargain.
I place the heavy wax seal into her trembling hand. It's cold to the touch. It smells of bitter herbs and dark magic.
I point a finger toward the east. Toward the looming Silt District.
Guide us, I sign.
"Guide us safely to Oona," Vaelis translates for me, his voice a low hum in the warm water of the shell. "She took your life force. Show us where she hides, and maybe you can demand those stolen years back."
Mira clutches the broken wax. Her thin fingers curl around the rough edges, turning her knuckles bone-white. The effort seems to exhaust her, her hand trembling with the strain.
She looks up at me. She studies me for the first time without the lens of her military prejudice.
Her milky eyes trace the jagged scar on my forehead.
The wound I received fighting the Great White to save Vaelis's life.
She notes the protective way I float between her and the open door, not to block her escape, but to physically shield her from the freezing draft.
"The Silt District," she whispers, her eyes darting to the floor. "You need the North quadrant. The intake pipes are quieter on the third patrol shift."
I nod my head in thanks.
Rising up to my full height, I swim back to the steering wheel. The iron groans under my touch, the metal protesting my weight.
"Ready for the approach," Bolt grumbles, coiling himself around the pistons. "Let's get this over with."
I steer the shell through the dark water. The journey is rough, the water growing heavier with pollutants as we near the city's underbelly.
We are an exiled shark, a martyred prince, an imprisoned eel, a headstrong shrimp, and an old betta-mer.
A strange, chaotic crew.
As the sickly lights of the Silt District appear in the dark distance, glowing with a murky, toxic yellow hue through the heavy smog, a truth settles over me.
We are all broken things.
And broken things fit together in beautiful ways that whole things simply cannot.
We hit the heavy smog layer an hour later.
The water quality dramatically drops. The stench hits me first—a foul cocktail of raw sulfur and untreated sewage that burns my sensitive gills. The ambient visibility drops to zero, the polluted water clinging to my scales like a shroud of filth.
"This is perfect," Bolt crackles from his copper cage, his electric light dimming in the toxic haze. "I can't see a single blasted thing out there. We are going to crash this house into a solid wall."
I can see, I sign to Vaelis, my movements quick and confident in the darkness.
"He can see fine," Vaelis tells Bolt, his voice full of unwavering trust. "He can navigate this mess."
I can. My dark eyes are biologically adapted to the pitch-black void of the trench.
I don't need ambient light to navigate. The glowing red heat signatures of the thermal vents shine like warning beacons.
The jagged, magnetic interference of the city's buried power lines pulses against my lateral line, a chaotic rhythm only I can read.
We are entering the rotting underbelly of the Reef.
The place where the beautiful, glittering city dumps its unwanted trash. A terrifying landscape of rusted iron pipes, crumbling stone masonry, and towering, unstable mountains of forgotten debris. The water here is full of decay, the water sluggish and heavy with sediment.
The perfect place to hide a shell made of garbage.
"Go slow," Mira croaks from her place on the floor. I turn to face her. "There are acoustic mines placed near the main drain entrance."
I freeze at the wheel, my muscles locking in place.
Mines?
"Steer hard to the left," she wheezes, pointing a trembling finger into the dark. "Hug the stone wall. The military sensors are sensitive to vibration."
I turn the heavy iron wheel to the left. The shell groans in protest at the sudden shift, the metal joints creaking like dying whales.
We swim past a cluster of dark, floating iron spheres chained to the seabed. Proximity mines. They bob, their iron surfaces covered in layers of grime and sea growth, waiting for a careless traveler to trigger their deadly payload.
If we had gone straight down the main channel...
I glance over my shoulder at Mira. Her face is chalk-white, beaded with sweat from the simple act of speaking.
Her thin chest rises and falls in shallow, painful-looking movements.
Yet her milky eyes remain fixed on the dark water outside, her fractured mind focused on navigating the perimeter that threatens to crush us all.
I dip my heavy head in a gesture of gratitude.
She offers no acknowledgment. Her eyes shut, and she sinks deeper into the sailcloth blanket, her body returning to the state of hibernation the draught has forced upon her.
The shell grinds to a halt.
The hidden fissure. Oona's secret cave.
It lurks behind a rotting curtain of toxic kelp, the fronds heavy with black sludge. A towering wall of fallen masonry debris conceals the entrance, a testament to the city's decay.
I guide the House of Drift into the dark shadow of a collapsed ventilation tower. The shell merges with the surrounding wreckage, becoming another pile of refuse. To any passing military patrol, we are invisible.
With the engine silenced, I tap on the copper pipe beside Bolt's cage.
Two soft strikes. The eel's blinding light dims to a faint glow. The mechanical hum fades into nothing. A heavy, oppressive silence descends upon the cabin.
I turn to Vaelis.
He stares at the dark cave entrance beyond the kelp curtain, his luminous face drained of color. The crimson fins that usually blaze with defiance now droop in the stagnant water.
Terrified.
He is a Prince of the light, a creature of warm waters and glowing coral gardens. This foul darkness, this suffocating stench of rot and decay, is alien territory.
I glide to his side, my rough hand finding his trembling one.
Right here, I sign into his palm, the gesture simple.
His fingers tighten around mine. "I know."
He reaches down. He picks up the empty glass dart, its wicked form a reminder of the poison that stole my voice. He grabs the silver hand-mirror, caressing it gently before tucking it securely into his belt.
"Let's go get your beautiful voice back," he says, his voice a thin blade of determination cutting through the oppressive silence.
My sight returns to Mira's still form on the floor.
"She stays here in the shell," Vaelis says, his golden eyes following my direction toward Mira's still form. "She can't swim. Not yet."
I dip my heavy head in agreement.
Reaching over to the helm, I grab a spare iron scraper from the console. I wedge it against the steering wheel, locking the heavy column in place with a sharp twist. The metal groans in protest.
I look to Bolt's copper cage, his electric light dim in the toxic haze.
Guard her safely, I sign with stiff fingers, pointing a clawed digit toward the unconscious betta-mer.
Bolt sparks a sharp blue arc against the copper bars. "I'll do as I please. I am not a hired babysitter, shark."
My brow furrows, crossing my arms over my broad chest in a silent challenge. The water around us grows heavy with unspoken tension.
"Fine," the eel snaps after a moment, his coils tightening with irritation. "For the record, I was going to guard her to begin with."
I turn from the cage, my attention returning to the mission at hand. I push open the heavy kelp curtain, the rotting fronds scraping against my rough skin. The freezing, toxic water of the Silt District rushes into the warm shell. It is foul, the stench of decay.
Vaelis chokes, his fine gills flaring wide as the sudden assault of pollutants hits his sensitive respiratory system. His crimson fins droop in the murky water.
I take a deep, grounding breath. It tastes like my home. Not the good, warm home I have built with Vaelis in the Wastes. The old, suffocating home. The dark home of the unwanted and the discarded.
I swim out into the freezing dark, my powerful tail cutting through the sludge with practiced ease.
Vaelis follows my lead, staying close to my side.
We swim together toward the hidden fissure, toward the witch. And for the first time since the silence took my voice away, a physical vibration builds deep in my throat.