Chapter 22
The Night the Sea Kept Me
Kael
The toxic smog of the Silt District clings to my scales like a second skin, oily and suffocating. I drive my tail hard through the water, Mira cradled against my chest. Her frail form weighs almost nothing, like a hollow shell of brittle bone.
She clutches the human syringe tight against her withered breast, the purple liquid inside the glass pulsing with a strange, unnatural light. A giggle escapes her lips, a jagged, fractured sound that rattles in her ruined lungs.
We breach the clearing's edge, where the dead coral casts skeletal shadows across the murky depths. The House of Drift rests in the gloom, Vaelis floating near the rusted porch.
His hands are dark with engine grease that smears across his smooth cheek as he secures lashings on the outer hull with a heavy iron wrench. The kelp coils at his side, fresh and vibrant against the decaying landscape.
He looks like a survivor of the Trench, his crimson fins cutting a sharp, beautiful path through the murky water as he moves. He looks like mine.
Vaelis turns his head, his golden eyes catching our movement through the smog. The kelp drops from his grasp, falling like a wounded sea creature. He swims toward us, his powerful tail propelling him through the filth with determined grace.
He stops a few feet away, his attention darting from my face to the old betta-mer in my arms. I watch as his eyes search her gray skin for any sign of improvement, any flicker of the vibrant hunter she once was.
He finds none. She looks exactly the same, perhaps even more unhinged with the wild smile stretching her pale lips.
"Did it work?" Vaelis asks, his voice tight with concern.
I shake my heavy head, the motion sending ripples through the smog.
"The witch is dead," I proclaim, my deep voice vibrating through the water. "She confessed there is no cure for the Abyssal Draught. The rot is permanent."
Vaelis pales, his face losing all color in the green-tinged light. He looks at Mira with pure shock, his fins fluttering with distress.
"Mira took the entire cavern down," I continue, watching Vaelis's expression shift from shock to disbelief. "She combined the volatile potions. She collapsed the foundation. The cave buried Oona alive."
Vaelis stares at her, his jaw dropping open as his mind struggles to comprehend.
Another ragged giggle bubbles from Mira's lips. "I took care of the problem, Vaelis. No pathetic, bottom-feeding trader is a match for Witch Mira. I ended her miserable reign. I am the true alchemist. I am a force to be reckoned with. I am the real Witch of these waters."
I glance at Vaelis, biting the inside of my cheek to suppress the proud smile threatening to break across my face.
Vaelis does not smile. Deep concern lines his forehead as he swims closer, his attention locked on the frantic energy radiating from the dying mer.
"Thank you," Mira whispers, her milky eyes clearing for a fraction of a second as she looks up at me. "Thank you, Kael."
The sound of my true name on her lips stops my breath. She does not say monster. She does not say shark or beast or exile. She speaks the name my mother gave me.
"You helped me fulfill my destiny today," Mira says, her voice a rough scrape of gratitude.
The syringe is clutched against her chest, the glass held against her pruned skin.
The purple liquid inside pulses with a faint, sickly light.
"If I don't have much time, I will do what I can with what I have left.
I think... maybe I can still have purpose. " Her voice cracks on the last word.
I go completely quiet. A strange, heavy warmth blooms in my chest. The ocean balances the scales in mysterious ways.
Vaelis sighs, reaching out to grab Mira's thin arm. "Mira. What do you have there?" he asks, his eyes dropping to the glowing object clutched against her chest. "What is that?"
"NO!"
The word is not merely spoken; it is a shriek that cracks the water, a sound of pure, unadulterated fury.
Mira convulses in my grasp, her frail body contorting with a strength that seems impossible. She violently rips her arm from Vaelis's gentle touch. Her entire form contracts, a desperate knot around the glass syringe, shielding the purple glow as if it were the last star in a collapsing universe.
"Stay away!" she snarls. "Do not touch it. It isn’t yours!"
Vaelis recoils, his hand floating in the water between them, caught in the aftershock of her intensity.
With a final, writhing thrash of her tail, Mira slips from my arms, her body striking the water with a pathetic splash. She doesn’t swim with grace, but with the desperate, scrabbling urgency of an old sea creature fleeing a predator.
She claws her way toward the rusted porch of the House of Drift, leaving a trail of disturbed silt in her wake.
“Mira!” Bolt's voice cuts through the sudden silence. "You crazy old bat! You're dripping filth all over my clean floor! Get back inside!"
Vaelis stares at the empty doorway, his face a mask of disbelief and concern. He slowly drags a greasy hand down his face, the engine grease from his earlier work now a dark smear across his jawline.
"She's alright," I tell him, my voice a low rumble. "Must be leftover adrenaline from the fight."
"Leftover adrenaline, you say?" Bolt grumbles from his cage. "No. This is Mira." The eel curls back into a ball, falling into rest before our next journey.
"Come with me," I say, reaching out to catch Vaelis by the wrist. His skin is soft against mine, a small comfort. I pull him gently away from the shell, into the deeper gloom.
"I want to show you the damage," I tell him, my voice dropping to a near whisper. "I want you to see it before we leave."
Vaelis nods, his golden eyes searching mine. He lets me lead him.
We swim together through the sprawling ruins.
The water grows colder the further we travel from the House of Drift, the light dimming until we navigate by memory and touch.
We swim shoulder-to-shoulder. The physical proximity grounds us both.
My rough gray scales brush against his smooth flank with every synchronized thrust of our tails, a constant, reassuring friction.
"She thinks her ultimate destiny is to be a crazy old magic witch of the deep," Vaelis says, his voice filled with a soft, disbelieving wonder. A sad laugh escapes his throat, bubbles rising toward the unseen surface. "She is… completely out of her mind."
"She is determined," I correct him, my eyes fixed on the path ahead.
A faint smile touches Vaelis's lips, barely visible in the oppressive gloom.
"She was always a little different," he reminisces, his voice carrying a soft weight through the water.
"Even back in the Vanguard training yards.
The only mer with the gall to question the instructors directly, earning us extra hours of patrol for our trouble. "
He pauses, his golden eyes distant. "She devoured the forbidden texts, peering into doors she was explicitly told to keep shut.
When everyone else feared the stories about Oona, she hunted for her.
Pried information from tight-lipped Elders.
She never fit the perfect mold they wanted for the Reef.
Never had the patience for it." His tail gives a lazy flick, stirring up a cloud of silt that dances in the faint light. "Like me."
He turns his head to look at me. His golden eyes, faint and luminous, catch the last of light from the distant glow of the House of Drift. "I wonder if that is why she never seemed to leave me alone," he muses. "She saw another outcast hiding in plain sight."
"She seems more herself now," I note, observing the way the water carries us. "The burden of the Council's lies is gone. She is free."
I reach out and trace the sharp line of his jaw with my thumb, the skin there smooth and cool.
"But I must remind you," I rumble, my voice dropping an octave, a private sound meant only for him. "You are significantly more beautiful than any other outcast in this ocean."
Vaelis laughs again, a bright, genuine sound that clears the heavy tension in the water around us. "She doesn’t seem all that upset about the lack of a cure," he says, leaning his cheek into my palm, his eyes closing for a moment.
"She accepts her fate," I rumble in agreement, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw before slipping down to stroke the smooth skin of his neck. "She made her peace with the ocean."
I look toward the dark expanse of the Silt, where Mira disappeared.
The toxic gloom seems to press in. I can’t help but wonder about the glass syringe she clutched so desperately, about the purple liquid that pulsed with a faint, sickly light.
What desperate alchemy could possibly offer purpose to an aging betta-mer?
"I'm not sure what trouble she's up to next out there," I continue, my voice low, "but hopefully she's returned."
I pause my swimming, letting the current hold us. I swim there, in the silent, cold water, my hand still on his face.
"Is it alright if she stays with us?" I ask, the question feeling strangely vulnerable in the vast emptiness between us.
I have spent my entire life as a solitary Basalt-Kin, a lone shadow in the endless dark. Now I find myself building a strange, fractured family within the old walls of a forgotten shell.
A slow smile spreads across Vaelis's face, his golden eyes crinkling at the corners.
"You have a soft spot for broken things, Kael," he teases, his fingers tracing the jagged scars on my throat. "Of course she can stay. We will care for her until the tide comes to claim her."
We resume our journey through the murk, our tails moving in synchronized strokes through the cold water. The silence between us is comfortable, heavy with unspoken understanding.
A few minutes later, the ruins of Oona's cavern loom before us, a wound in the ocean floor.