Chapter Thirty-One
I couldn’t breathe. Moonrise came so quickly–I was still mostly unconscious. My head pounded and throbbed in time with the splitting of my fins. They ripped apart like paper, and I rubbed the scales away with my hand. They flaked and fell off, floating around me like clumps of death. It was gross in a way I’d never experienced, like a peel sunburn but much worse.
The pain from my legs reforming was terrible enough for me not to care too much about wading in my merman viscera though.
“Oh no, it’s time already,” Caspian said. My hands were still bound behind me, and I tried my best to kick my way up to the surface, but we were so far down, so deep in the water that it wouldn’t matter.
I was so glad that I told Merrow I loved her.
Water filled my mouth, but my human brain and lungs had returned, and the human instincts along with it. I thrashed in the water, desperate for air. My lungs ached and burned. The last of my air was already running out, and I just leaned into the blackness. Some part of me knew deep down that this was how it would end–drowning, but now that it was here, there was so much more to life that I wanted.
Caspian’s hands yanked me upward, but I was already fading. My vision grew dark and my body felt heavier and heavier. I couldn’t move my legs anymore, and I drifted away. The sound of Caspian swearing and shouting my name was the last thing I heard before I succumbed to the darkness.