CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
Noctis fought to stay conscious, his powers waning with him. I remembered what it was like to not be able to pull oxygen into my lungs and the sharp pains that accompanied the panic.
Gods. I need to get him above the surface.
“Back to the ship,” I demanded. He shot a gust of air at our backs, propelling us up, but it dwindled quickly, his feet frantically kicking in hopes to push us through the surface. I beat my tail, but it wasn’t enough. The surface was too far. His breath was too little.
He’s dying. He’s drowning. This is my fault.
Each second became critical, Noctis’s head nodding in and out of consciousness. My free hand raked through the water, clinging to the waning god in my other arm.
His power died off, legs slowing, and he fell limp. Too limp. I was left to swim carrying the lifeless body of the god.
Open air slammed into me as our heads broke the surface. Noctis didn’t move. Didn’t gasp for air. Didn’t breathe.
No. No, no, no…
“Here!” Calvin’s voice cut through the onslaught of my mind, tearing me from my hysterics.
He tossed over a rope, and I wrapped it around my wrist and hand, holding firm to Noctis’s body as the crew pulled us back on board. He nearly slipped when we reached the railing, but Jun and Zahara pulled us both to the quarter deck.
Noctis was dead. I was sure of it. His scars that normally glowed a matching hue as his hair dulled, unnatural paleness painting his skin. Zahara kneeled over the god’s body and pumped her overlapping palms into his chest in a rhythmic move. Over and over.
Noctis died saving me. I paced the deck, watching Zahara blow air into the god's mouth and resume shoving her fists into his still chest.
I begged. Begged for anyone to save him. I wasn’t sure why I cared, but watching the god’s lifeless body made me weak. My chest ached in immeasurable agony. My knees collided harshly with the deck’s wood, my head spinning viciously against my will.
“Jun…” the plea fell from my lips. The healer looked up at me wracked with devastation.
“I…I can’t heal what’s not alive.”
Calvin draped his arm over my shoulders, pulling me into his side. I couldn’t let him die. No one deserved to die rescuing me. He needed to live. Needed to protect his Bound.
A violent gasp rang through the silence, halting the compressions against Noctis’s chest. Then frenzied coughing erupted as the god came to. He knelt over in a fit of choking, spitting up swallowed water.
I shook, nearly in sobs, then tore off and dove back into the ocean.
Careful not to go too far away from the ship, I swam in wide circles.
I searched everywhere, but to hell with quitting.
Not after Noctis almost died for the cause.
My fear worked as bait for what I needed.
What I initially entered the depths in search of.
Finally, when the Tide Reaper crashed into my side, I pivoted and launched from the depths like a spear. I struck the hull with a thud, fingers like claws gripping the slick wood as I hauled myself up.
It would follow, and that’s exactly what we needed. The beast did as I had expected, landing before me in an ichor-drenched heap, and I gripped the strategically placed rope at my side, binding the Tide Reaper’s ankles before it could pounce.
Sleep slipped through my fingers, the night offering no rest. Tenderness wracked my body from the previous day’s events, but when the sun began to leak through the wooden floor above the hammock, my nerves insisted I jump from bed.
I’d tried to get Noctis into the hammock himself to sleep the night before, but he refused, threatening to slip into the mesh bedding along with me. Instead, his fiery wings flattened beneath him on the pallet beside me. He slept peacefully, as if death didn’t lurk to reap him mere hours ago.
I pressed my boot gently into his side, nudging him from whatever dream held tight to his consciousness. He squinted as the filtering sun spilled over his face. Then, his confused, icy-blue gaze met mine as he lifted himself up.
“I have a surprise for you,” I said, arms stiff at my sides.
He tilted his head, smirking. “Should I be flattered or deeply concerned?” His voice was thick with sleep, rough in a way that felt too intimate.
“Neither. Just get up.”
“You sure it’s not a confession? Because I’m ready to pretend to be shocked.”
I groaned. “You are the worst.”
“And yet,” he drawled, standing with an infuriating grin, “here you are. Bringing me surprises like we’re something.”
“I could still push you overboard.”
“Romance is a slow burn,” he leaned in and murmured against my ear, brushing his hand across my elbow so gently. “Yours just happens to come with threats.”
Shivers prickled across my skin, and I forced myself to remember why I was angry at him. Deception wears teeth and leaves deep wounds with a weight that candied words can’t hide. Flattery only has temporary sweetness that eventually fades.
I turned without a response and led him toward the main deck and around to the foremast. The ravaging Tide Reaper writhed against its restraints, a fierce snarl playing against its features, tattered clothes and bristly hair in patches across its head.
It lunged forward but the rope around its throat snagged it back, bone snap echoing in the morning air.
Noctis’s face dropped all amusement, realizing the harm I placed myself in when he succumbed to sleep after nearly drowning. His features morphed into something unrecognizable, brows downturned, eyes thinning into slits, dimples peeking from the drawn upward smile. Pride.
“You did it.”
“Looks like you aren’t the only one who can tie a good knot.” I reciprocated the grin, the same self pride mimicked in my own gaze. “Now, see if it has enough of a soul to use for our ticket into the Shadeborne Bound.”
The god hesitated, eyes bearing into the Tide Reaper then nodded and shifted toward the irate creature.
He shot his hand out, and the Tide Reaper froze as if bound by the Threnai’s spindles, wind pressing into its body and holding tightly.
He reached both palms, gripping the terrified creature’s face.
Noctis closed his eyes, and his hands glowed a faint dark blue hue, slowly encasing the dead sailor’s frail body like a slimy goo.
It pulsed with a heartbeat under the god’s order.
“Eerie,” Calvin softly muttered, startling me.
If this worked, the ‘equal weight, equal loss’ would mean that another Tide Reaper or something else just as evil would be killed alongside it. I could live with that.
The rest of the crew silently stalked over, stopping to watch Noctis drain the remaining soul from the Tide Reaper.
The creature fell in a heap to the floor, Noctis’s hands still holding up where they gripped its face as if relishing in the feel of devouring a soul as the God of the Forsaken. He exhaled and turned to the crew.
“Looks like we can dock now,” he declared as we neared the harbor of the Waning Isles.
A rotten scent filled our noses, and I wasn’t able to shake the burning sensation that went through my sinuses. Like flesh decomposing in the summer sun. A sheen glaze interfered with my vision as my eyes fought against the rancid odor of the island.
How could anyone live in this?
Elderly men and women hobbled the streets, wearing matching drapery style clothing, off-white fabric that wrapped around their bodies, down to their calloused, bare feet. Dried leather tied the coverings around their waists and skimmed the ground in their wake.
“Excuse me.” Zahara stepped before an older, frail woman, her hand reaching to clasp the hunched over inhabitant. “Do you know where the entrance to Shadeborne Bound is?”
The woman cocked her head questioningly. Her brown eyes held no emotion—no sense of self—as if driven entirely by something or someone else.
“North. Temple.” But her cracked lips did not move in sync with the accented sound that exited. Her lips mouthed the syllables, but the words did not come out until after her mouth closed.
What the—
Zahara swallowed and took a step back.
She bowed low before the woman in thanks, eyes glued on her. “Thank you,” she muttered, and we walked north.
“This place is… weird,” Zahara murmured under her breath, but I caught it and hummed in agreement.
I studied the people around, especially the ones in conversation.
The asynchronous words to sound sent chills down my spine, reminding me of the Nethergill I narrowly escaped the day prior.
Then, I noticed the twitching. The people on the island jittered at random, however, all at the exact same time.
One person twitched their arm at the same moment another mimicked the motion in their neck.
Every inhabitant I witnessed did it, as if they jerked according to a shared clock.
Their leathery skin breathed together, stretched and compressed with their movements as they carried on life’s daily activities. In fact, I searched but couldn’t find any inhabitants that did not have the textured, tree bark like skin.
We walked through the villages and neared the ivory temple.
Its spires peeked over the harbor shops and homes, casting a pearlescent shimmer across the city.
Massive arched doorways opened to the white marbled interior, revealing towering pillars etched in ancient runes lining the walkway to the far side of the temple.
And at its end stood a single unguarded door.
This is too easy. Nothing we’ve done so far has been straightforward.
Uneasiness crept into my body as we neared the door of the empty temple.
“How do we get in?” I whispered to Noctis at my side, but the furrow in his brows told me he did not know.
“Is there someone we can ask?” Calvin questioned, looking around. But Jun gestured to the temple room, at the lack of anyone’s presence.
Zahara cut in. “There’s a hand mark.” She leaned in closely to the iron-clad door, tracing the outline with her eyes.
Calvin jumped forward, his own hand extended and placed it within the etchings.
His eyes flew open, face flushing a ghostly pale at contact.
A gurgle rumbled within the chamber, echoing and bouncing between the pillars.
The air around us tightened, as if the world itself drew in a breath and forgot how to expel it.
Oh, no…
Calvin’s fingers twitched. His jaw slackened as it dropped open. Like a shadow peeling from a surface, his soul stretched agonizingly slow from his throat.
“Stop it. Now,” Zahara ordered, her voice sharp but unsteady.
Noctis stepped forward, his hands gripping Calvin’s shoulders and lifted him off to the side, breaking the connection before his soul became sacrificed instead of their offering.
Calvin stammered, dizziness knocking him over. He chuckled nervously. “Let’s just say… I don’t advise anyone else to try that.”
Noctis reached for the door.
“You aren’t actually considering doing that, are you?” I asked, disbelief thick in my voice.
He looked over his shoulder as his hand hovered before the mark. “Be careful, darling. It almost sounds like you would care if I got hurt.”
Calvin cut in. “Even though you treat flirting like a sacred duty, we do still need you breathing. It would make this mission a hell of a lot harder losing the one person who can forge the trident. We should find someone first.”
But Noctis pressed his palm firmly to the tracing on the door, the indent perfectly sized for his hand. The crew stared for a while, waiting for something to happen, but the door stood unchanged. Noctis shoved into it, yet it held firm.
“The ticket was a soul,” Jun said, cutting through the silence. “Can you deliver it to the door somehow?”
Noctis nodded.
“Wait, can you switch souls and bodies? Like trading hand-me-down cloaks?” Calvin asked, pure intrigue in his voice, but Zahara elbowed him in the chest.
The god closed his eyes to focus.
Veins of shining sapphire power surged through the rune’s grooves, starting from the top and slowly lacing their way to the floor below us.
It snaked under our feet, sending us into a panic trying to dodge stepping on the enchantment.
The room hummed in response and gradually got louder, a constant drum of sound as it accepted its payment.
Then, the door slowly creaked open as if drifting by the wind.
Before us stood a cavernous entrance, the endless stone steps the only way down.