Chapter 36
The irony isn’t lost on me.
This is exactly how Sage died. Swimming for a boat that got away from her. Of course, she had no tropical storm to contend with, and I am more likely to be dashed on the rocks than drown, but still.
Perhaps this was meant to be. Maybe this is why I came to Florida. It is time for me to reap the consequences of my actions. It is time for karma to give me what I am due.
My body is lifted by the buoyant wave I’m floating on; my nose pulses with pain, warm streams of blood trickle down my face and into the sea. I wonder if Viv is okay. I’m guessing she was thrown from the boat as well, but she, unlike me, had on a life vest. She might make it.
I kind of hope she does. Despite what she’s done. No one deserves to die like this.
“This is my fault,” I whisper into the water, letting tears fall to join their salty siblings. “I’m so sorry.” I murmur it at first. Then I roar it, to the sky swathed in black clouds, the stars I can’t see. “I’m so sorry!”
I killed my best friend. If I die here tonight, breathing in the ocean, torn apart by sharp reef rocks, it will be my own fault. Every action I’ve made since September when I picked up Sage’s phone on Persephone and spotted the anchor was my own responsibility.
The wave I’m riding finally flings me loose, sending me plunging back under the surface. Something rough scrapes against my shin and I jerk away before realizing it’s another big rock.
I surface again, rain sprinkling my cold lips. The rocks have to mean I’m not far from the shoreline. If I can get to Ligia, I could survive. But which direction is the island?
Trying to keep my head above the churning water, I look for any indication of light, any glimpse of Empress, but the visibility is bad, and I’m too low to see much of anything.
Something slimy brushes against my bare calf, and my heart jumps. We’re far from the mainland—there could be sharks out here. Or any other manner of nasty sea creature. Thrashing, I try to swim against a wave and get dunked under.
When I resurface, a face emerges from the water, floating next to me.
Dark hair, snarled in a tangled knot. Forehead and eyes barely above the surface, barnacles clinging to soupy skin. Slowly, a nose rises, a swollen mouth.
Unlike me, the face does not move with the ocean—she’s steady, anchored, as if she’s standing in the surf. Her black hair spools in the dark water so that I can’t tell what are her locks and what are waves.
I recognize her. Not Elena. Sage.
A wave knocks me under, my gasp cut off by a flood of saltwater.
When I claw my way to the surface, I am alone again, bobbing, choking and splashing, surrounded by clumps of rancid seaweed.
Shame bleeds through my tired body as I blink away the sting of the sea, eyeing the seaweed, which is pale and tangled.
I understand now. What I was seeing must have been my own guilt, manifesting, breaking free from the confines of my mind where I tried to leave it. Triggered by talking about Sage for the first time in months.
A haunting I deserve. Just like this is a death I deserve.
Maybe I should stop fighting. Let the ocean take me. Join Piper and Elena under the waves.
As I soften my limbs, the ocean explodes with light.
Warm, yellow pools flood across the surface, illuminating the dark green water rising and falling against me.
I crane my neck, looking around for the source, and spot Empress to the north, glowing like a firefly at the mouth of a forest. Someone must have realized Viv and I were missing.
They either turned on all the lights to look for us or in the hopes it would help us navigate in the black ocean.
I weep as I stare at the yacht in the distance.
Every single light has been turned on, including the rooftop spotlights.
The effect is a wide aura of illumination that spills out into the ocean, reaching the edge of Ligia’s waters, showing me the path to the island’s dock. It’s not far; I could make it.
Spinning my arms and legs against the current to keep myself above water, the hopelessness drains away. I have a chance to survive. To get justice for Elena, to give myself a second shot at life, despite what I did.
I stare at the seaweed floating around me, spitting out tangy water and words at the same time: “I’m sorry. But dying won’t bring anyone back.”
The storm is above me, but it’s also within me now because I’m in it. We are one and the same.
The waves hurl me forward and pull me back, but I swim with them instead of fighting them. Rain slaps the surface of the water, but the wind has calmed. It’s like I’m in a snow globe filled with watery gray ink. I pull myself closer and closer toward Ligia.
Something looms out of the darkness so quickly I don’t have a chance to turn away or steer myself clear.
When I slam into it, it’s slick and smooth and curved.
Automatically, I wrap my arms around the shape, affixing myself against it like a barnacle.
My arms meet on the other side, and I glance up.
The underside of the dock is dimly illuminated in the light from Empress.
I’ve been thrown right into a piling. Which means…
I’ve reached Ligia.
I don’t have the strength to pull myself up on the dock, which is elevated above the surface, but there’s another option: the wooden pilings that drive down into the ocean floor.
The dock juts out pretty far into the water due to the rocky, shallow shoreline.
I can use the pilings to guide me to land.
My clothes don’t even feel like fabric anymore, sodden and rippling around me.
My nose has stopped bleeding, but it aches dully as I tenderly press one cheek against the piling.
My arms are numb, shaking. I’m exhausted and freezing, but I’m the only one who knows the truth about what happened to Elena. I can’t give up on getting her justice.
I can do this.
The waves jostle my body, but a renewed rush of adrenaline floods my system.
Taking a deep breath, I shift my body around the side of the piling so I’m facing the next one.
Then I release my arms, push off from the piling, and shoot myself over to the next one, churning my legs frantically.
It’s not graceful, but it works. I slap my arms around the next piling, heart racing, and repeat the process.
I’m doing it!
I’m moving along the dock from piling to piling like a crab. The waves try to dip me underneath the surface, but their insistent charge toward Ligia’s shore is actually helping me, shoving me forward, making my bid for each new piling faster.
I don’t know how long it takes. Time ceases to exist in a way that makes any kind of linear sense. The space between pilings is my life now—that fear, that danger of slipping into a stronger current and being carried out to sea all encapsulated in one microcosm of a second.
Until suddenly it ends.
My toes scrape against the pebble-lined bottom, my body lurches forward as I struggle to find purchase against the crowd of waves butting for space on the shore.
I push forward, following the steady line of the dock until a huge wave throws me unceremoniously on shore.
I crawl forward on bruised knees to a damp, cold beach littered with rocks and seaweed.
Gasping, chest tight, face tingling and sore, my hands are two numb oven mitts, and my entire body is violently shaking.
But I made it.
I drag myself to a bare patch of sand, heaving, then turn my head, staring up at the night sky, letting the rain spackle my face. I open my mouth so I can swallow droplets of fresh water.
There is no sign of the moon, no glimpse of any stars. Only a vast swath of clouds. I let my fingers sink into the wet sand and scrunch them together, feeling the comforting evidence of solid ground.
I wait until my heart rate has slowed marginally. I wait until my body is shivering so hard that my limbs are moving on their own like a possessed marionette.
Only then, finally, do I get up.