39. Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
Even the men on the neighboring platforms glance over at that number, their voices faltering. Gold like that can change a whole lot for a simple man like this hunter. It buys ships. It buys lives. Freedom.
Grimsbane lets out a low whistle.
“Generous,” he says, though the word carries no gratitude. His eyes flick over her again, over the clock and the faint shapes beneath it. “But not enough.”
“Three hundred,” she says as though it’s nothing.
“You don’t understand,” he replies with a nasty smirk. “I’m not selling to you.”
When I glance upward, his hand slides lower, below where the rope binds my tail, his dirty fingers reaching for my scales.
“If you lay a hand on her again,” a voice says behind him, “I will cut it off and shove it down your throat.”
The hunter freezes. He turns slowly, the muscles in his face tightening as he searches the crowd behind him.
Nothing.
But I know who that sinister voice belongs to instinctively, and let it wrap around my injured body like thick, sweet honey.
With a beating heart, I let my gaze flit over the crowd, searching for the pirate stupid enough to set foot onto the human king’s territory, just for the sake of me.
A doomed siren past the point of saving.
I know it’s him by the way he stands. Tall and broad-shouldered, his face hidden beneath the shadow of a cloak pulled below his dark brows.
Then he lifts his head.
Pushes the cloak from his face.
My pulse stutters.
Sable, you stupid, stupid pirate.
When Grimsbane realizes, the confidence drains from his face with his blood.
“You,” he whispers.
Sable does not answer, his gaze remains fixed on the hunter’s hand as it finds my tail, fingers tightening around it where the rope holds it up. He takes slow, deliberate steps towards me. I writhe as he nears, screaming into the cloth for him to be careful.
When the hunter digs his fingers into my flesh, and I cry out with the pain of it.
All hell breaks loose. Sable throws the cloak off his body and pulls out his cutlass in one swift movement.
His arm moves in a clean, decisive arc, steel flashing once in the lanternlight before cutting through flesh and bone with practiced precision.
The hunter’s hand falls away from me, severed so cleanly that for a moment it does not seem to register with him that it is no longer attached.
Blood pours out of the wound in heavy gushes, delighting my siren.
His scream tears through the market as he stumbles backward, alerting the men from the nearby stands.
They soon surround us. When another hunter lunges toward Sable, he closes the distance in two long strides and raises his blade again.
Their weapons collide with a sharp clang, and soon the man grunts under the pressure of Sable’s strength.
With the twist of his wrist, he forces the hunter off balance before smacking his head with the handle, sending him crashing into the wooden posts beside the stand.
Around us, the fragile illusion of order collapses with the force of the sudden violence. More men throw back their hoods, revealing faces I know as well as my own.
I recognize Grim first, mainly because of the axe he carries.
He frees it from beneath his coat and drives it into the chest of the nearest hunter, the impact forcing him backward off the platform.
Nightglass emerges at his side, his blade already dripping with blood, and throws himself into combat with a nearby member of the hunter’s crew.
More men of the Noctis follow, hidden moments ago among merchants and buyers, now step forward with drawn steel. I recognize Nightglass, Match, and even the cook.
They all came for me.
Cailia reaches for the rope above me now, her fingers working quickly as she loosens the knots.
“Mhh!” I shout into the cloth as figures in bright, red uniforms make their way to us from the edges of the market.
A few already have their hands on their weapons, fingers curling around the hilts of their swords, though most of them carry guns.
With sharp eyes, they scan the chaos, looking for whom to kill first.
Royal guards.
Cailia looks towards them once, a faint crease forming between her brows.
“Brother! Guards!” she shouts at Sable, who’s engaged in a fight against a man the size of a giant.
His gaze briefly flits towards them before he focuses on his attacker again.
If they capture him, he’ll be hanging before the day ends.
The thought of them putting a rope around his neck makes me physically sick, and I gag.
I refuse to believe that there is even the slightest chance this will happen.
Cailia moves toward Grimsbane, who is now lying on the ground, trying to escape death by clutching onto his arm, and reaches for the needle-thin knife that hangs on a cord around his neck. A flute. The very tool that was supposed to be the end of me is now about to cut the ropes that bind me.
“Sable!” she screams again as she yanks the cloth out of my mouth. “You’ll have to catch her! That tail looks heavy!”
Glancing down at me, she smiles wryly. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I croak, the words barely making it out of my dry throat.
The giant throws himself at Sable, his blade aiming for his ribs, but the captain turns before it can land, driving his cutlass forward and opening the man from shoulder to chest. I smile.
He is brutal. He is relentless and unfearing. And he is mine.
Suddenly, the rope gives, and I drop. For one terrifying second, there is nothing beneath me, nothing but the certainty of impact—
And then he catches me.
His arms close around me with a force that drives the remaining breath from my lungs. My tail hangs uselessly between us, my wrists still bound, my body weak, and yet, he holds me as though I weigh nothing at all.
Gently, his hand cradles the back of my head.
The world around us stills. All the chaos, all the violence and pain of the moment falling away, until it is just us staring into each other’s eyes like we’d never expected to do so again.
Against all odds, he is here, alive, with a beating heart. And he is holding me.
“I told you,” he says quietly, a gentle smile spreading across his face, “that I would find you, darling.”
I can offer a trembling smile in return as his words settle somewhere deep inside of me, in a place that has been hollow for so long. My fingers tighten around the stiff fabric of his coat, pulling him closer.
“I—”
The effort of speaking scrapes against the open wound of my sore throat. His hand shifts, his thumb brushing against the back of my head.
“Shh,” he whispers.
The sound is softer than anything I have ever heard from him, softer than the sea when it rests without wind. I open my mouth again.
“Don’t,” he says.
I swallow, forcing back the words. I wanted to thank him. For coming. For choosing me, even now, even here. For believing me to be worth saving.
He lowers his head slightly, his forehead almost brushing mine.
“I know,” he says.
Behind us, the sound of boots striking wood carries across the platform, followed by the unmistakable crack of gunfire as the first shot disrupts the air. Sable turns his head, his body already shifting before the next shot follows.
A red wall of bodies forces its way forward, rifles raised, smoke curling from their barrels. The crowd scatters in panic as screams erupt all around us and merchants abandon their stands.
That’s when Cailia steps forward.
She lifts her hand toward the empty seabed below us, her fingers spreading slowly as though she reaches for something buried in the depths of it.
Whatever she takes from it, I cannot see, but I feel it in my bones.
An ancient kind of power, the same magic that I felt in the womb of the sea.
She redirects her hand towards the approaching guards, who falter at the sight of a woman stepping into their path so boldly, and into the gunfire that has now ceased.
They all freeze until one of the guards steps forward, his rifle outstretched and pointed at her face.
“Shoot!” he orders. “Get the pirate—”
The rifle slips from his hold. A gasp escapes me as pale coral bursts outward beneath his uniform, forcing its way through flesh and fabric, branching out and spreading rapidly in silent defiance of the life his body once possessed.
He does not scream. He stares, blank-eyed ahead of him as corals bloom within him.
They soon claim his whole body and spread even further in jagged formations, creating a barrier between the guards and us.
Cailia turns her head, black-eyed and blinking.
By the way her entire body language shifts and her eyes remain dark as the abyss, it’s as if the sea itself has taken control over her being.