CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I saw red. Blood fountained in rivulets across the deck, Zahara’s arm unattached from its respective body, drowning in it.
The shock that covered the captain's face would haunt my nightmares—an addition to what lurked behind my closed eyes already. It took seconds for Zahara to collapse on the main deck herself, leaving the ship’s wheel spinning uncontrollably.
The realm tilted, barrels and supplies sliding viciously, and I narrowly threw myself out of the way before they slammed into me. Jun sprinted to Zahara’s side, checking for a heartbeat as he flipped her to her back.
“He has no power to heal her…” Calvin whispered. “He used it all on me.” Fear. Guilt.
We watched in shuttering panic as Jun worked on her, removing his belt and latching it tightly around her shoulder to stanch the spurting blood. Her body sagged, collapsing without support.
“I can help her, but there’s a cost,” Laziel’s low, terrified voice cut through the silence.
Jun jumped to his feet, a blade unsheathed and at the mer’s throat barely after the words left his mouth.
“You’ll help her. No fee,” he seethed. I stepped backward at the sight of Jun, his quiet normal standoffish self turning to threaten the merfolk with no mercy.
I could get behind this side of him.
Laziel nodded quickly. “Not a fee. There’s just a cost to oceanic healing.”
“Do. It,” Jun gritted through his teeth.
Laziel took two steps back, separating himself from death, and threw his body over the railing of the ship.
“Oh, gods,” I breathed. “Can’t you give him power? Like you did for Calvin?” I asked Noctis, searching him for answers, but he shook his head.
I couldn’t watch this. Couldn't bring myself to look, like maybe if I looked away, it wouldn’t be real. Not Zahara. Not a woman who spent her life saving others. Not her. Not like this.
“I can only amplify the power that’s already there.”
No…
When I finally looked, it wasn’t sudden. My eyes pulled to find Zahara’s still body as if they were dragged against every instinct I had. For a heartbeat, I almost convinced myself I’d misunderstood what I saw. But reality settled in like a heavy, unbearable weight.
Zahara was going to die.
We waited in dreary silence, Jun’s fingers cupping the captain’s neck to keep her pulse.
His lips moved in rapid succession, counting the space between her heart beats.
Her severed hand still clutched the blue cloth she always used to fidget with, like even in the moment everything was taken from her, some small, familiar habit refused to let go.
Jun slipped it from her fingers, unfolding it meticulously.
A child’s shirt.
It was so small. So incredibly small. Everyone looked at it in question, but I knew. I knew exactly who Zahara lost to the sea two years prior. It was no wonder she played the part of mother to Jun and Calvin so well. She knew exactly what it was like to love and lose.
I was ready to burn the world for Zahara. For her loss.
Laziel burst through the water, his legs shifting back in mid-air as he crashed before us.
“Here,” he breathed, extending his hand to Jun. Sludge covered his palm, a sickly blend of gray and brown mush that oozed and breathed like a monster in a marsh.
“Are you wanting an infection?” Jun seethed, his face dropping in disappointment.
It hit me. I knew what Laziel offered, like a memory resurfacing at once when my eyes planted on the mush.
“It’s safe,” I blurted, shocking myself at the intrusion. “A kelp and living coral mix. It will slow the blood loss and heal the wound.”
I knew, because I’d watched my mother use it to reseal the scabbing gashes that she scratched into her flesh and the sores beneath the dull hair she pulled from her scalp.
Jun searched my eyes for truth, then hesitantly scraped the slop into his hands and stooped down to Zahara’s severed arm. His eyebrows drew downward in harrowing concentration.
The belt wasn’t enough to stanch the blood that trickled from her wound. It painted the wooden beams and Jun’s once brown pants. Zahara’s chest only faintly rose and fell. It slowed with every passing second.
Jun lathered the slop along the dismemberment, and I half expected it to slide right off at the slick wetness the blood created.
However, it stuck firmly, shifting without a touch.
It spread around the tethered remnant of her arm just below the shoulder, forcing itself into all the caves of the stump and skin around it.
It pulsed faint green like a festering blister, and we all waited in dreadful silence.
The waves crashed into the ship, rocking us fiercely, regardless of Noctis’s attempt at containing the wheel with his powers. The sails were shredded and careening us to the motion of the ocean.
And even in the chaos, the crew waited for Zahara’s breaths to even out. To strengthen. The strength of a motley crew is nothing without their leader.
“She will come back to us,” Calvin whispered, reaching for Jun’s hand. Their fingers intertwined for a second, but Jun quickly retreated. His eyes held haunted gazes, as if the woman fighting for her life brought him back to his past. Like it was all his fault, and he deserved no good.
The sea froze—stopped in time and space. Laziel conducted the water with palms outstretched, the currents obeying his command, waves waiting for his word.
“How…” I murmured in disbelief. The amount of power the male controlled brought an uneasy feeling.
“So you can see if she’s breathing normally again,” the merfolk replied, nodding toward the captain.
The rise and fall of Zahara’s chest steadied, each breath stronger than the last, a quiet but unyielding proof that she lived.
“A crew that keeps defying death,” Calvin chuckled, but the pain in his words was palpable.
With the help of Laziel’s oceanic manipulation, the ship glided gently into the port of Corvenwald Isle. Noctis worked to tie the mooring line to the harbor while Jun and Calvin carefully carried Zahara to the captain’s quarters below deck.
I leaned against the ship’s railing, overlooking the bustling market side and village that guarded the entrance to Aetherkin Bound, just like I comfortably did before any excursion beyond the waves.
It buzzed with energy, melodic tunes traveling to my ears from the horse-drawn carriages that transported live bands of musicians.
The island was beautiful, grassy hills and lively people, and secretly, I found it comforting.
Solace arrived not in the end of the day’s chaos, but in its fading edge—when Zahara’s survival was no longer a question
Noctis and I would make the venture to the Aetherkin Bound together, leaving Calvin and Zahara behind to rest. Jun refused to leave their sides, and Laziel couldn’t be trusted yet to travel to another Bound in search of the third trident piece.
We did, however, tell him his powers would be necessary to get the ship to safety if they were attacked again in our absence.
In the moment, I bit my tongue, stopping myself from telling the full truth, since the merfolk man was nothing but helpful since our meeting. But running the risk was too great as we approached the end of collecting the trident fragments.
I wasn’t entirely sure what the plan was once we forged the trident.
I didn’t even know exactly what a titan was, but I trusted my crew.
Each step closer to finding the Aetherkin Bound piece was sooner that I would have to travel to the Oceanwrought Bound.
I would have to relive the part of my life I’d worked so hard to bury.
As if sensing I’d lost myself to my own mind, Noctis approached on heavy-leaden feet.
“My Bound is loyal,” he said with confidence as he overlooked the harbor. “They deserve so much more than me.”
“Sometimes we say they didn’t deserve us to make leaving easier. I’m sure you didn’t take the choice lightly.”
I knew the feeling of losing it all, even though my losses dealt from a hand not of my own. I recognized the quiet, hollow ache of being unloved by those who were meant to love me most. Maybe he and I did have something in common.
Noctis huffed. “I’ve never regretted it a day.” And he walked down the gangplank toward the harbor market.
I jogged to catch up, sucking the tangy juice from an orange I snagged from the breakfast spread on the ship as we walked through Corvenwald Isle. Noctis led the way like he knew the streets in his dreams. Perhaps he did, as the very isle we stood on housed the entrance to his own Bound.
“Any revelations since the last time I asked? Memories?”
I shook my head. “If you’re waiting for me to remember you, I’m afraid it isn’t going to happen.”
“Afraid? Sounds like you’ve been searching for the memories of us.” He smiled over at me, and my heartbeat quickened under his smirk. “I was honestly hoping you’d remember someone else… well, something else, really.”
My eyebrows lifted as I scoured my mind for any recollection of something missing in my life, except it offered nothing. Then, something popped into my head.
Shit…
"Are we married?" I gasped, the words tumbling out before I could catch them, wild with confusion and the sharp edge of fear.
Noctis’s laugh cracked open, loud and raw, like it had punched straight through his composure. He doubled over, clenching his stomach. I slapped the back of my hand into his bicep.
“I don’t like this reaction,” I murmured uncomfortably.
The god straightened, a smirk still uncontrollably plastered to his face.
“No, we are not married. However, I’m quite offended you seem terrified of that possibility. Marrying a god is not as simple as seeing a high priestess and far more than a Blood Tie that we already share.”
“How does one marry a god, then?”
Noctis stopped walking and met my confused gaze. His head cocked to the side, studying me with pure intent. “I could demonstrate the process for you if you’d like to see it firsthand. With me.”