38. Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
My arms tremble uncontrollably as I hold them all in my power, my fingers curling tighter as if I can physically grip the threads binding them to me. The terror claws at the edges of their minds, as it does to mine. I can feel it as though it is my own.
Killing them might give us the upper hand again.
The crew will survive if only I can push a little further.
The issue is the edge that I can feel rising inside of me, an invisible boundary between me and my power that I may not cross.
It is absolute, and I understand with terrible clarity that if I push beyond it, there will be no returning from what I become.
At the edge of my vision, a presence rises. Darkness creeps upon me as Sable’s shadow forms at my side. The familiar shape gives me a brief moment of comfort, but is soon replaced by a devastating realization.
I haven’t sung his shadow back. And I might never get the chance to.
“Let them go,” he pleads, and the sound of his voice makes me shiver, sickness rising in my throat.
“I can’t.” I whimper, a tear wetting my cheek. “I can’t risk losing you.”
The physical form of Sable still tries to cut through the chaos, his blade flashing with deathly precision, beheading one of his attackers without mercy.
He doesn’t even look twice at what he has done.
Instead, he moves forward, already striking again, disarming the next man who dares to step into his path.
It is like with his shadow gone, he is something else entirely.
For a suspended moment, I understand him completely.
He looks like how I feel.
“I‘m sorry,” I whisper instead. “I wish we had more time.”
My fingers curl inward with the last strength I have left, pulling tight on the invisible threads binding the hunters to my will. Obedience floods through me as all four of them turn to walk towards the railing in perfect, silent unison.
My throat burns raw, but still, I hold them.
I hold them as their hands grip the wood.
I hold them as they climb.
I hold them as they jump.
The moment they disappear, everything breaks.
The power feels like a punch in my gut, so overwhelming that it steals the breath from my lungs, the sudden collision of everything I gave and everything being returned tears through me faster than my body can handle.
I am thrown backwards as my legs give out beneath me.
The deck tips violently before the shattering pain of my hip striking the railing hits.
“Risa!” he screams my name before the world slips away from me.
I fall.
Cold air rushes around me as the sea rises to meet me, its dark surface swallowing the last fragments of light from the ship. It meets me with a crushing force, the freezing cold exploding around my body, swallowing me whole, as it has done many times before.
Above me, the surface fractures the light into broken shards. There’s movement there. Something dark, twisting and shaking with the swaying of the waves. A man. His shadow. He dives downward without hesitation, reaching for me instead of returning to the man he belongs to.
I realize that he will never return to himself.
That he will never be whole.
Because he chose me.
No.
His shadow cuts through the water, refusing to abandon me as the sea pulls me deeper into its seemingly endless dark. The pain that had consumed me moments ago fades away as I drift further away from the fragile world above.
Something else enters the water. As I drift in and out of consciousness, it descends steadily toward me, its shape widening as it falls, passing through Sable’s shadow without resistance.
I force my eyes to open again when coarse fibers brush against my arms and tighten around my body.
A net.
Unseen hands above begin to pull, dragging me upward against the will of the sea. And even though drowning is a scary way to go, I’d rather sink to the bottom of the sea than fall into their hands.
Sable’s shadow seems to understand this. He stays close, his form wavering in the broken reflections of the lantern light above as he reaches for the ropes binding my body, again and again, but no matter how urgently he tries to tear them apart, they don’t give in.
He shakes his head in panic, not in denial but in helpless acknowledgement that he cannot free me. But then his eyes widen, and his mouth forms a single word meant only for me.
Look.
His gaze drops toward my legs as pain begins to take root.
It starts as pressure, but quickly grows into something far more deliberate, something structured. It spreads through muscle and veins with an increasing intensity as my body begins to change. To shift.
Without being driven by any conscious thought, my knees draw together.
The bones beneath my skin begin to shift and realign, their fragile human structure collapsing inward as something stronger takes its place.
The pain sharpens as the transformation continues downward, my lower legs lengthening even as the joints dissolve.
I reach for the hand of Sable’s shadow as the surface comes closer.
“I am here,” he says, as his fingers wrap around mine, squeezing. The voice sounds distant, muffled by the sea, but it reaches me anyway.
My legs form into something seamless and whole.
The muscles along them tighten and strengthen as they fuse, forming something powerful and unmistakable.
I feel its weight even through the net that binds me, feel the subtle, instinctive awareness of its presence, and though I cannot move it freely, I know it belongs to me in a way nothing ever has.
My tail.
It is beautiful.
Not in the way human things are beautiful, not fragile, but powerful and whole. Scales and muscle form a pink armor that I’m sure would help me travel far, if only I weren’t captured.
A flicker of light beneath me draws my attention away from my tail.
Faint at first, barely more than a thread of light, the Glim pulses weakly through the water as if it has been waiting for my shift.
My chest tightens as it drifts closer, its glow strengthening with every pulse.
It lingers in front of me, then flares, sudden and bright, before vanishing completely.
The scales of my tail catch the remaining light filtering through the water, their surface shimmering in soft shades of pink and pearl, iridescent in a way that reminds me of the Sea of Dreams.
The net tightens as I am dragged higher, the fibers biting deeper into my skin as the surface breaks around me and cold air replaces the sea's comforting embrace.
It is only then that I realize I should’ve drowned.
I was under the water for what felt like an eternity, and there’s no way I held my breath for that long.
My body convulses violently at the sudden absence of water, the air more suffocating than drowning has ever been.
I open my mouth on instinct, but nothing comes. Panic surges through me.
I gasp again, my jaw straining open, but my lungs only stutter, useless. Moments ago, I was breathing without effort, and only now do I understand that I was never holding my breath at all.
Trembling, my hands reach for the side of my throat.
My eyes widen in shock. Gills. Of course, I have gills. But do I have lungs?
“Breathe,” Sable’s shadow says, his voice insisting. “Just breathe. Slow.”
My eyes meet his as the net jerks hard, hauling me fully from the sea, the water pouring from my body in heavy streams. My chest spasms again as I try to force air into my lungs that now feel so foreign, so purposeless.
The deck comes into view. With the lack of oxygen, the voices around me become distant and distorted.
Violently, they drag me over the railing, my tail heavy and unresponsive beneath me as exhaustion settles into my bones.
My vision flickers, and I force my eyes open.
Sable stands near the main nest, his body held back by three men gripping his arms and shoulders as he fights against them in desperation.
Blood streaks his skin, and even from here, I can see the rapid rise and fall of his heaving breaths.
He shouts my name, over and over again, and my world narrows down on him.
On his grey eyes, and how they remind me of the sea before a heavy storm.
On his voice, stripped of command and certainty as he fights against the men holding him back.
Desperate. My gaze lingers on his face, on the strain carved into every line of it, on his dark hair that usually sits on his head like a crown, but is now flat and soaked through with blood.
They drag me away from him. Each movement sends a jolt through me, but the pain barely registers beneath the suffocating absence of the sea. His gaze never leaves mine, not even as the distance between us grows and they haul me up towards the plank that connects the two ships.
“I’ll find you!”
His voice breaks on the promise, the sound tearing through the fog closing in around my mind. His shadow presses close and sticks to my side, but as I try to reach for it, my hands do not move. Darkness creeps inward, swallowing the last fragments of light and sound.
The last thing I see is his face, not the man held back by the hunter’s hands, but the shadow that chose me, who still refuses to let me go.
With what is left of me, I scream, and the sound tears out of me, carrying a strained, almost creaking note as it echoes through the cave.
Then everything disappears.