Chapter 34

I hover in blackness,my bones liquid, my lungs deflated sacs, my hands cracked and blistered from the explosion. Drawn by strong current, I drift, spineless, like sentient sea flora. Pain blooms.

I just destroyed a boat and killed a human being.

All with a burst of fire from my bare hands.

No one should possess such power without the ability to control it.

Randy is gone. I've fulfilled my purpose by destroying him.

But now there's no one to stop me.

The ocean speaks inside my head, its voice rumbling up from the depths, disrupting my disjointed thoughts. Look, it says. Your place is above. Not down below.

Darkness shimmers around me. Sensation returns, and with it, searing pain. I close my eyes again and let the current deliver me where it wants.

As the tide tugs me along, a matrix of light materializes on the ocean floor. The gridlines converge and lift, pointing upward to the water's surface where soft daylight beckons. Directly above it, a shadowed mass floats.

Suddenly buoyant, I rise, my head breaking the surface to brilliant daylight. Gentle waves push me forward until I'm entangled in a giant clump of seaweed, large as a floating island.

A body is entangled at its center. I claw at the seaweed, pushing my way through it, fear slashing away my stupor, my own pain forgotten. I make my way closer and cry out. The slick black hair is unmistakable.

It's Liam.

Tearing at the foul-smelling tangle, I reach him. Liam's face is swollen, purple with bruises, lips cracked and bleeding. I grab his wrist, relieved to find a weak pulse. Even though he's insisted he can't die—what if he's been tricked into believing that?

"Liam? How the hell? What are you doing here?" I say over and over, but get no response. I have no idea how to help him, with both of us hurt and adrift in the sea.

At last, he lifts one hand, trying to point. "Over there," he says, his voice a rasp. "Take us there."

I squint at a small bump on the horizon where a tiny, craggy landmass juts up from the water: a miniature island I'd once thought I'd spotted from shore.

Could this tiny land mass be the place he's retreated to when he's needed to hide out?

But Liam is barely conscious, so I can't ask him. It takes hours for me to slowly propel us there. I'm not sure where I get the strength to hook him under his shoulders and drag his dead weight onto the jagged shore, but I do. Vibrations quake beneath my bare feet and sing into my veins. Liam's tiny island is heavily warded, covered from top to bottom with glyphs whose power repels any oncoming vessels.

The entire thing can't be more than one hundred yards across. At its center, sparse trees ring a mound of rocks that resemble an ancient cairn. The mound emits a powerful energy, drawing me toward it, so I heave Liam closer and lay him beside it.

"Liam," I say. "Where are Evan and Aurora?"

But he doesn't answer.

The sun sinks below the horizon, and though the night is mild, Liam trembles uncontrollably in only a tattered pair of shorts. I gather what brush and dried leaves I can find and pile them on top of him, but his teeth chatter and his shoulders quake. Though my burned hands sting and ache, I gather more twigs and light a fire with two chunks of rock, a useful survival skill I picked up from Tyler's Boy Scout days. Liam and I are alone here, neither of us likely to last much longer if I just curl up into a fetal position and quit.

I peer across the ocean's dark expanse and a deep chill slides between my ribs. Fear that Randy will somehow resurface, alive, renewed, and vengeful, settles into my bones.

I stare at my burned hands, the faint glow of the glyphs still visible beneath raw flesh. I don't dare use the horrible force I unleashed. I'm afraid to even think about it. Next time I might destroy much more than a pleasure craft.

But with Randy gone, is there another bigger, scarier fish in the Atlantean food chain waiting to consume me?

I curse my mother and her well-meaning overprotectiveness beneath my breath. How can anyone have sat on a secret so large—that their own child was potentially a weapon of mass destruction?

It's possible she didn't know. I'll grant her that. But still.

The night drags on, the ocean tranquil and dark. There's no sign of Randy or any weather pattern disturbance.

Our tiny fire crackles valiantly against the ink-dark night and my thoughts drift back to Tyler, anger at Randy's campaign of brutality clenching my throat. Is it possible that Tyler/Fionn knew his death was imminent? That he intended to warn me about Randy's plans for me, but never had the chance?

I study Liam, the curve of his cracked lips, the razor-sharp bones of his cheeks, and stiffen with rage over the abuse he's suffered. Though he's repeatedly insisted that he can't actually die, he was determined to keep Aurora from suffering this same fate—a living death.

The night drags on, warm and breezy, but Liam continues to shiver, still unconscious. It's probably a bad idea, but I lie down beside him and scoot close until there's nothing between us but a layer of leaves and my inhibitions.

I wrap my arms around him. From his continued quivering, it's apparent that's not enough, so I fling a leg over him and roll my entire body weight on top of him. I breathe in his briny scent and try to squelch the desire that this closeness rouses in me, reminding myself that if he were to wake up right now, he would probably throw me off him in horror.

But he doesn't. In fact, with the leaves trapping the heat from both our bodies, he finally settles into rest. And that means, through the long night, I get to have my arms around him and feel his chest rise and fall against mine. I get to fall asleep with my cheek pressed against the bare skin at his collarbone, pretending that this isn't just about trying to save his life.

Finally, as morning light steals across the barren terrain of the island, Liam's lips part. He moans softly and I lean in close to hear.

"Something I need," he says, his voice a grating rasp. "Inside the mound."

For a moment I'm puzzled. I don't want to move. "Please," he adds.

I slip away, loath to give up the feel of his skin against mine and leave him sprawled alone on the rocks. The gray dawn light reveals a small opening in the cairn, barely large enough for me to reach inside. My hand bumps against a metal box. I bring the box to him and open it. Within is a folded sheet of pearly-gray leather. I gape at it in amazement. It's magnificent.

It's his seal skin.

"Alone. Sorry," he says.

"You'll be okay? I'll just—I'll be on the other side of the mound."

Liam squeezes his closed eyes tighter and clutches the leather to his chest. "Leave me, please. I'm sorry," is all he says.

Waiting behind the mound, I try to envision his transformation. Then I hear a loud splash and scramble around to the other side to discover that Liam, along with his seal skin, is gone. All that's left is the open metal box. I stare at the empty waves and the scientist in me tries and fails to imagine how this change transpires—what happens to the human part of Liam when he becomes a seal.

I watch and wait for him to appear, bounding through the waves in his seal form. But after the sun has climbed high in the sky and he still hasn't come back, I know he's gone. I saved him, and he's left me here, injured and stranded.

This is a fine kettle of fish, no pun intended. Evan and Aurora have vanished, and judging by Liam's condition, they might be dead. I've probably killed Randy Lambert, severely injured Wade, and destroyed Evan's boat. I'm stuck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, burned and bruised—also a lethal weapon. No matter what he does to push me away, I'm still in love with a boy who spends most of his life at sea. And has apparently left me here to my own devices.

It's a long swim back to the main island, but I can't languish on this patch of rock forever. I ease myself into the water and trust that the veins of light that brought me here will usher me back to shore…or claim me at last. I can't say I care, one way or the other.

The waves grow choppy. The tide pulls me out, further and further. I'm growing tired, my limbs aching and heavy.

Maybe this is my fate, after all.

But something slides beneath me. A seal—Liam?—propels me swiftly inland, pushing me onto the beach. My bare skin next to the seal's slick hide, I try to speak to him, but of course, I get no response. Still, somehow, I'm comforted.

He didn't abandon me, after all.

With a bob of its head, the seal dives under the water and is gone.