Chapter 22
The normalizing suit felt like a coffin made of wire and malice.
Ariella sat in the shuttle’s passenger cabin, her wrists bound to the armrests by elegant silver restraints that Merrick had called “safety precautions.” The suit clung to her body like a second skin—smooth, seamless, and devastating in its efficiency.
Every inch of her modified flesh was compressed beneath its surface, her gills flattened against her neck, her bioluminescent patches dimmed to nothing.
She couldn’t breathe properly.
It’s not water, she reminded herself desperately. You’re breathing air. You know how to breathe air.
But the suit made even that difficult. It was designed to suppress everything that made her unique—her enhanced lung capacity, her bio-acoustic sonar, the very essence of her connection to the sea. What remained was something hollow and gasping, a shell wearing her face.
“You look lovely.”
Merrick’s voice slithered across the cabin, and she forced herself not to flinch.
He sat across from her in a leather chair that probably cost more than her father’s entire laboratory, his legs crossed at the ankle, a crystal glass of amber liquid balanced in one hand The shuttle’s interior was all polished wood and soft lighting, designed to project wealth and sophistication even as the windows showed nothing but churning darkness.
“The suit does wonders for your complexion,” he continued, swirling his drink. “You almost look… normal.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“You can breathe perfectly well.” His tone was patient, paternal—the voice of a man explaining something obvious to a particularly slow child. “The suit simply prevents you from doing anything… inconvenient. We can’t have you trying to swim away during the ceremony, can we?”
Thunder rolled outside, and the shuttle shuddered slightly. Her pulse skipped nervously, but Merrick didn’t even glance towards the windows.
“Sir.” One of his mercenaries appeared in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral. “Captain’s reporting the weather’s getting worse. He’s recommending we delay departure until—”
“We’re not delaying anything.” Merrick’s voice never rose above that terrifying whisper. “The arrangements in Port Cantor are finalized. The guests will be waiting. We leave now.”
“But sir, the storm—”
“Is a minor inconvenience.” Flint-colored eyes turned towards the mercenary, and even across the cabin, she could see the man shrink. “I’ve invested too much time and too many resources to let a bit of weather derail my plans. Tell the captain to do his job, or I’ll find someone who can.”
The mercenary disappeared.
Merrick turned back to her, his expression smoothing into something that might have been a smile if it had reached his eyes.
“Don’t worry, my dear. Captain Voss has navigated far worse than this. We’ll be in Port Cantor by morning, and by noon tomorrow, you’ll be Mrs. Merrick Bane.” He took a delicate sip of his drink. “Your father will be free of his debts, and you’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Everything I’ve ever wanted.
The words cut like broken glass.
She thought of Valrek—his golden eyes, his scarred hands, the way he’d held her like she was something precious rather than something to be owned.
She thought of Lilani’s giggles and sticky hugs and endless questions about the Star Lady’s glowing stars.
She thought of the sea cave at dawn, when the light filtered through the water and turned everything to gold.
That was what she wanted. A family. A home. A place where she belonged not because someone had paid for her, but because she was loved.
And it was being stolen from her.
“Please.”
The word escaped before she could stop it—small, broken, desperate.
Merrick raised an eyebrow.
“Please what?”
“Let me go. I’ll… I’ll find another way to pay my father’s debts. I’ll work, I’ll dive, I’ll find salvage—”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” His voice hardened almost imperceptibly. “Your father made his choice, and now you’ll honor the consequences. That’s how civilized societies function, Ariella. Contracts mean something.”
“This isn’t a contract.” Her voice cracked. “It’s slavery.”
“It’s marriage.” He set down his glass and rose, crossing the cabin to stand over her.
His manicured fingers tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“And you should be grateful. Most women in your position, with your… limitations, would never attract the attention of someone like me. I’m offering you status, wealth, protection. ”
“You’re offering me a cage.”
Something flickered in his expression—annoyance, perhaps, or wounded pride.
“You’ll learn to appreciate it.” He released her chin with a dismissive pat. “They always do.”
The storm hit with full force twenty minutes later.
One moment, the shuttle was lurching through heavy swells but maintaining its course. The next, the world tilted sideways, a wall of black water slamming into the vessel with enough force to send everything flying.
She screamed as her chair tore free of its moorings, the silver restraints cutting into her wrists as the shuttle spun. Glass shattered somewhere nearby—the elegant windows, maybe, or the display cases full of Merrick’s collectibles. Emergency lights flickered on, bathing everything in angry red.
“Report!” Merrick’s voice cut through the chaos, but for the first time, there was something other than calm in his tone. A hint of fear.
“Wave breach in the lower hold, sir! We’re taking on water—”
Another impact. This one felt different—not water, but something massive striking the shuttle’s hull with a grinding screech of metal.
Cliff debris, she realized dimly. The storm is throwing rocks.
The lights went out.
In the darkness, she heard men shouting, equipment crashing, the terrible groan of a vessel breaking apart. Water was everywhere suddenly—pouring through breaches in the hull, flooding the cabin, rising around her ankles and then her knees and then her waist.
The restraints held.
I’m going to drown, she thought with bizarre calm. Trapped in this chair, wearing this suit, I’m going to drown like a human.
The irony was almost funny.
But then the water reached her chest, and the suit began to malfunction.
She felt it first as a tremor—a brief pulse of sensation returning to her gills, her skin flickering weakly beneath the suit’s surface. The compression systems were failing, the electronics shorting out in the flood.
Yes.
She didn’t think. She just acted.
She found the suit’s seams—the emergency releases Merrick’s technicians had assured him were escape-proof—and pulled. The fabric resisted, then tore, and suddenly she could feel the water against her skin, cold and wild and alive.
Her gills flared open.
The first breath of water was like being reborn.
Sensation flooded back—her skin blazing brilliant indigo, her Song returning as a distant hum in her bones. The suit fell away in pieces, and she was herself again, suspended in the flooding cabin, her body finally doing what it was designed to do.
Survive.
She ripped free of the restraints—the silver cutting deep into her wrists, drawing blood that swirled in the water like smoke—and oriented herself in the darkness. The shuttle was sinking fast, tilting towards the bow, debris and bodies floating everywhere.
Valrek.
The bond was still there, still muted by distance and the chaos of the storm, but she could feel him. Searching for her. Coming for her.
Hold on, she thought desperately. I’m coming back to you.
But first she had to get out.
She swam towards what she hoped was the nearest breach, her enhanced vision cutting through the murky water—
And stopped.
There was something in the cargo hold. Something small and golden and familiar.
Her heart stopped.
Lilani.
The girl was unconscious.
She floated in the flooded cargo hold, her small body limp, her wild curly hair drifting around her face like a dark halo. One of her hands was still clutching the strap of a storage crate—she must have hidden there, stowed away somehow, and the impact had thrown her free.
No. No, no, no—
She dove towards her, her body cutting through the water with desperate speed. The shuttle groaned around them, metal screaming as it tore itself apart. They had seconds. Maybe less.
She reached for Lilani just as a massive chunk of the bulkhead crashed down.
She barely twisted aside in time, the debris catching her shoulder and sending her spinning. Pain flared, bright and sharp, but she ignored it. She had to reach Lilani. She had to—
“Ariella!”
Merrick’s scream was distorted by the water filling his lungs, but she could hear the raw terror in it.
He was pinned beneath a collapsed section of the bulkhead, his elegant suit reduced to tatters, his hawk-like features twisted into something almost unrecognizable.
Blood seeped from where the metal had crushed his arm, creating dark ribbons that danced in the current.
His free hand reached for her.
Grasping. Always grasping.
“Please.” The word was a gurgle now, his mouth filling with water. “Save me. I’ll give you anything—the contract, your freedom, anything you want.”
But she wasn’t looking at him anymore.
She was listening.
Her Song reached out into the darkness, searching, searching. The shuttle’s groaning metal created a wall of noise that threatened to overwhelm her senses. She pushed harder, her skin flaring bright indigo with the effort.
There.
A heartbeat. Faint, but unmistakably there—the rapid flutter of a child’s heart, growing weaker with each passing second.
Lilani.
The girl was sinking, her small body pulled down by the undertow created by the shuttle’s descent. She was maybe thirty feet below her, but her heartbeat was a beacon, drawing Ariella towards her with the same inexorable pull as the tide.
Thump… thump… thump…
The rhythm was slowing.
“Ariella!”
Merrick’s hand caught her ankle.