A Daughter’s Grief
Chapter Eleven
A Daughter’s Grief
SADIE
Kyros finally leaves. His crimson tail snaps once against the water’s surface, and then he’s gone.
I don’t move—not immediately. I remain where I am, dripping onto the stone slab, and listen to the quiet. It presses in from every direction, thick and awful. There’s no hum of a boat engine, no Tipper clanging around in the galley, no Dad yelling for somebody to get their ass on deck.
Nothing.
The sudden silence makes the realization more painful.
They’re dead.
I sink onto my side, the stone rough against my cheek. It smells faintly of mildew, but I don’t have the strength to turn my face away.
My grief doesn’t come gracefully. It tears through me, ripping me apart like tonight’s ocean storm. A broken noise claws its way out of my throat, and then I’m crying so hard, I can barely breathe. I curl inward, my wet hair plastered to my skin and my chest caving in on itself with each sob.
Dad is dead. Tipper is dead.
Dad, with his stupid mermaid maps and coffee breath. Tipper, with his loud, foul mouth and booming laugh.
Gone.
Murdered.
I press my fist against my mouth, memories flashing behind my eyes. Dad in the wheelhouse, grinning when he thought he’d found something strange on the sonar. Tipper folding himself under the galley doorway and asking where the hell Dad had found Kyros.
I’ll never have another moment with them. Never make another memory.
And the worst part—the part I can’t seem to wrap my mind around—is that I didn’t see it coming. I welcomed Kyros onto the boat. I joked with him, tried my best to be friendly. I sat across from him as if he were just another man. I almost considered liking him.
My stomach twists, violent and painful.
This is all because of Kyros.
He did this.
I sit up too quickly and nearly fall off the stone slab. My head pounds, and my chest still feels wrong from drowning. Almost drowning. Maybe drowning. I’m not sure what to call it.
I can’t let myself fall apart.
Now isn’t the time to grieve. I need to keep moving.
I need to survive.
Right now, I’m trapped in an underwater cavern in a city full of merpeople who believe my existence is an impossible mistake. And Kyros is somewhere above me, breathing easy after killing the only family I had.
Rage moves through me, drying my tears.
I shove my knotted hair out of my face and look toward the water. The chamber is dim, the water beneath the air pocket as black as a starless night, but it’s the only way out.
I’m alone, and I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get this opportunity again.
This might be my only chance to escape.
The thought is insane. I don’t know where the tunnels lead or how deep underwater I am. For all I know, there are guards patrolling the chamber. The one thing I do know is that there are massive, serpentine creatures circling the city’s edges, but they let Kyros through without issue.
Staying here isn’t an option.
I slide off the stone slab, hissing as cold water closes around my legs.
I can do this.
I take one last breath and drop in. For a few horrible seconds, instinct and reason battle it out inside my brain. My lungs seize and my throat burns, my body screaming at me to go back up and breathe air.
Instead, I force myself down deeper.
My chest convulses, my panic growing as I clamp my mouth shut and kick hard, pushing away from the air pocket. Every cell in my body is revolting, but I’m no quitter. I’m not going to start being one today.
I inhale water.
The pain is immediate—sharp and vicious and so, so wrong. Water rushes into my mouth, down my throat, and into my lungs. I gag around it, my limbs jerking as the change rushes through me. My eyes burn so badly, I think they might melt from my skull.
Then, just as suddenly, the agony eases.
My lungs expand.
I float for a moment, trembling, before looking around. Everything is fuzzy underwater, but I can just make out the dark cavern entrance. I swim toward it, the water pressure heavy against my limbs.
The tunnel leading out is narrow and dim, and the algae gives off just enough light to see the black stone walls and the sharp turns ahead.
I swim inside. There are several paths.
I don’t know which direction leads to freedom, so I choose the only thing that makes sense.
Up.
At least, I think it’s up.
The tunnels slope and twist in ways that make it almost impossible to tell. More than once, I have to plant a hand against the wall to steady myself. The currents down here are nothing like surface water. They move with purpose, funneling through the corridors like guiding hands.
I keep expecting fingers to close around my ankle or a chirp to sound behind me—maybe even for Kyros to emerge from the dark and drag me back to that chamber. But nothing happens.
A current brushes along my side, and I hesitate before angling myself with it. I need to go faster. To my relief, the current carries me forward. I move with the pull rather than fight it, shooting forward.
Another stream of water cuts across the corridor ahead. I’m not sure how to navigate it, and I make a last-minute decision to angle myself into it the same way as before. It catches me and swings me around the bend.
A thin, desperate thread of hope uncoils in my chest. Maybe I can do this.
I push harder, following the tunnel as it widens around me. It eventually spits me out into the open ocean, on the outskirts of the city. Yes.
White, spiraling pillars surround me, with strands of bright, glowing algae lighting the paths. The water here is warmer.
I hide behind a nearby column of rock.
Merpeople move through a current ahead of me, their tails flicking lazily as they let the water carry them between towers. They’re too far away to see clearly, but there are enough of them that swimming into the open would be suicidal.
My pulse pounds.
Think.
I flatten myself against the stone and look around. The water beyond the pillars and algae is dark, but the space between me and that darkness is well-lit. I continue scanning, bubbles erupting from my mouth when I notice a narrow opening between two tall structures.
There’s no algae lining the way, leaving a thin path of darkness.
An oversight.
Hopefully one that leads toward freedom.
I wait for the cluster of Mer to pass, then shove off the pillar and dart for the gap. No one notices. I kick hard, ignoring the burn in my muscles as I slip between white stone walls and into a quieter stretch of water. I keep going.
Farther.
And farther.
The sounds of the city dim behind me. No more constant chirping or flickers of tails.
Dad used to tell me not to fight the ocean when it got rough. Move with it, Sadie. Don’t waste your energy trying to overpower something bigger than you.
My throat tightens, and I kick harder. I’m not dying down here.
As I near the top of the spiraling structures, there’s another light. It’s far above—just a pale wash of light filtering through the water. It’s not algae light. It’s real.
Sunlight.
My heart stutters as I surge forward, reckless now. I’m going to make it. I can already imagine the cold ocean air and the choppy waves. Maybe there will even be a boat off in—
The current changes. There’s no warning.
It slams into me sideways, and I barely have time to gasp before the force of it rips me off course. It hurls me toward a narrow cut of rock and drags me down so hard, my shoulder scrapes open. I twist, trying to grab hold of something, but the walls are too slick and the water is moving too fast.
The light vanishes as I’m swirled around.
No. No, no—
The current corkscrews through the passage and slams me into more rock, wrenching me deeper into the dark. I can’t stop. The current is too strong, impossible to fight as I’m pulled into a nearby trench.
Down. Down. Down.
My head slams against one wall, then my hip against another. I’m being bounced around like a damned ping-pong ball.
A warm trickle slides from one nostril and dissolves into the water in front of me.
Blood.
Ah, shit. I’m going to be crushed.
The current spits me out into open water so abruptly that I tumble head over heels through blackness. I flail, disoriented, before searching around. There is no algae. No towers. No light. Nothing but darkness.
Pure, endless, crushing dark.
Fuck me. I can’t tell which way is up, and my chest heaves with ragged, uneven pulls of water. I’m deeper than before. I know that. Heavy pressure wraps around my lungs, compressing them until every inhale feels thin and insufficient.
I turn in a slow circle, desperate for any sign of Tideborn, but there’s nothing but black water and the distant roar of the current behind me.
Then the darkness shifts, and I go completely still. This isn’t another current. Something is there, and a small part of me hopes it’s Kyros. Far off in the black, deeper than I can comprehend, a shape moves. It’s larger than anything I’ve ever seen before.
Definitely not Kyros.
It glides through the water with impossible slowness, so massive that my brain can’t make sense of the scale. It has a long body with jagged fins along its back, and its head is easily the size of a truck. Maybe even larger.
I don’t breathe.
Two pale eyes open in the black, locking in on me.
Every instinct in my body screams at once. I kick backward, but the water is too heavy and I’m moving too slowly. The creature seems to sense that, too, as it approaches with a smooth calmness. It’s in no rush.
My mouth opens with a soundless cry.
The creature responds.
The water around me vibrates, and a deep, bone-rattling sound rolls through the dark. I feel it more than I hear it, the vibrations punching through my chest and settling in my ribs.
The creature continues forward. Its body is blacker than the water around it, swallowing what little light exists down here. As it nears, I can make out more of it. Rows of jagged fins and a mouth that looks too wide and too full of teeth to belong to anything friendly.
Whatever this thing is, humans sure don’t know about it.
They’d never enter the ocean again if they did.
I try to swim away. I really do, but my body won’t cooperate. My muscles aren’t strong enough to push against the pressure, and my head is spinning from my uncoordinated trip through the current.
The creature draws closer. And closer.
It opens its mouth, again revealing its sharp, crooked teeth, before darting for me.