Chapter 13

I’m reeled through inky layers of muted reality by a brutal pain—deep and throbbing.

Deadly.

Like I’ve been gaffed in the chest.

I drag a gurgling breath through my gills, then another, still parched and left with the desperate desire for more. Growing frantic, I open my mouth, gulping crisp air down my throat as a bolt of pain strikes my inflating chest, like a fist punched through my ribs and tore out something vital.

Head spinning from the drugging rush of air, a face flashes through my mind: lilac eyes, hair the color of sunken treasure, a crescent moon smile.

Orlaith.

A gouge of pain rips me back as I heave a strangled gasp. I peel my eyes open, pulling gentle half breaths, heart stilling as I take in the size and shape of my surroundings through blurry, sleep-stung eyes.

A small room, one corner stacked high with a collection of unfamiliar bounty—little boxes, rusted toys, a leaning stack of mugs. Most of the bits are made from stone or metal or wood, missing chips and pieces.

Not my trove.

The walls and roof are made from a familiar treasured stone packed with a kaleidoscope of muted colors that ricochet off every chipped facet. A stone born from one place and one place only …

Lychnis.

Must be a dream.

Nobody makes it onto that lonely relic anymore—not since the water around it became still and haunted.

I draw another breath that impales me with a gnawing blow.

Not a dream, then.

The magnitude of that realization, of where I am, is overshadowed by the cold silence within my ribcage …

Too silent.

Panic flays me.

Zykanth isn’t boiling in my chest, slithering, alert, and tapping at my ribs. Not even at the sight of four walls carved from the stuff he’s feeble for, roughly hewn in a way that makes my aching heart flutter. That would usually have him losing his fucking mind. What’s more, I’m laid out on a soft nest in the corner with thick, white pelts covering my legs.

My weakness.

Wild fear coils up my spine, frighteningly aware that every moment I’m severed from Zyke weakens our connection.

Weakens him—something too many of us learned the hard way.

‘Where are you?’

Nothing. Like he’s burrowed so deep inside my chest I can’t catch even a glimpse of his silver scales.

But he’s there. I can feel his dull and distant beat.

Faint ...

Why is it so faint?

A memory strikes, and I’m sucked into its churning fury.

Zykanth growing sick of following the ship from a safe, comfortable distance. His desperation to take over the reins. He just wanted to catch a glimpse, see her for himself. Confirm she was okay.

And then he wasn’t.

I remember the deadly thud of pain—too close to Zyke’s heart. Remember his savage surge of pulverizing violence.

The boat tipped. Screams silenced in increments as sharks tore and thrashed and chewed.

Drifting into the deep, dark hollows, leaving a plume of blood in our wake. I shoved him inside my chest so I could cradle him close. Protect him. Heal him.

He didn’t even fight.

The sight of the bolt straight through my chest.

The encompassing blackness a never-ending unknown as pain overrode my ability to function.

Giving myself to the sea’s pull.

A guttural sound rips up my throat, and I grip a fistful of furs, tugging them down.

My breath catches.

There’s a large scale stamped over my pectoral, concealing the wound I can feel gored right through me.

It’s bronze and shimmery.

Not mine.

I pick at the edge. Try to peel it up—

There’s a sharp hiss, some hasty shuffling, and then my hand is slapped.

A dainty, ethereal face eclipses my view of ... everything. Long, wayward hair littered with twigs floats around a fresh, unfamiliar face like a scribble of whitewash. I look into wide, sunshine-yellow eyes framed by alabaster lashes that brush snowy brows as she scans me up and down.

She’s half my size but assessing me like it’s the other way around. A brown shirt almost swallows her whole, hanging to her knees and rolled to her elbows, concealing most of her shape bar spots where the material’s torn or frayed—small windows that reveal hints of filthy, sun-brushed skin.

“Who are you?”

I don’t recognize the croak of my voice.

Her brows knit together, and she tilts her head to the side. She wraps the furs up around my chin, as though she’s tucking me in for a nap.

“No.” I pull my arm free and bat her hands away, shoving the pelt down so I can pick at the massive scale fused with my skin. “I need to see how bad it is.”

How close they got to killing him. Killing us both, had I not been fast enough to preserve myself.

Another sharp hiss has me looking up to see her lips peeled, revealing bright white teeth and canines much sharper than mine.

“You win.” I whip my hand away. “Just ... put your teeth away. I’m in no state to tussle.”

She makes a clicking sound with her tongue, pats the tapered edges back into place, and brushes her fingers over the seam between scale and skin, making a chill crawl from my tailbone to the base of my skull. She tucks the furs over my chest, hiding the burst of gooseflesh that broke out across my body, and scurries toward a workbench that takes up the length of one wall, pitted with a basin.

Bare legs; long, slender, golden-brown ... dirty.

Bare feet that remind me of Orlaith.

My heart dives.

She grabs a bowl hewn from the same sparkly stuff that makes up the walls, stuffs some kelp in the hollow with a few other things I don’t recognize, and sits cross-legged on the ground. Setting the bowl before her, she hunches over and begins grinding down the contents with the blunt end of a thick stick.

Odd.

“Did you ... bring me here?”

She continues to pulverize the mixture, putting her entire body into it.

I sigh and try to look around—hard to do while I’m horizontal. “I’m sitting up,” I warn, and she flicks her hair off her face, watching me through shrewd eyes.

Grind.

Grind.

“Right. Here we go.”I use my elbows as leverage to crank my upper body off the nest of furs, but the motion casts an agonizing bolt through my chest.

I groan, face twisting as I reach for the wound.

There’s a flurry of movement, then her warm hands are on me—poking and prodding. She pushes close to my sternum, striking me like there’s a knife on the end of her finger, piercing through flesh and muscle and—

A scream saws out of me, wild and unleashed.

Head cocked to the side, she watches ...listens? Then she pinches the edge of the scale.

“What are you—”

Shepulls.

I roar.

She absolutely used some sort of adhesive to stick that thing down, because there goes a layer of skin.

Panting through the red haze of throat-cinching pain, I look down, eyes bulging as I take in the gruesome wound in my chest ...

My pulse pitches.

It’s a big, fleshy crater unlike anything we’ve ever sustained.

Even so, Zykanth should’ve healed us by now.

Unless …

The bolt must’ve nicked our heart.

The female drops her head close to the wound and sniffs, long and deep, then prods at its edge from a different angle. Another barreling wave of pain curls through my chest, forcing my body to buck as a hoarse cough hacks free.

Something warm splatters down my chin.

The female snarls and darts to her heaped treasures, pausing with her hand outstretched, like she’s reluctant to disturb their ramshackle order. She delicately shifts tarnished trinkets and gnarly bits of driftwood, easing a coil of rope from where it’s looped around the hook of a rusted anchor.

I’m still gasping through the pounding echo of pain when she straddles my crotch, manhandles my arms, and binds my wrists together with hands so fast they blur.

“Woah, hang on—”

She struggles to knot the thing, hissing at it.

“Look,” I spout as she gives up and tucks the tail between my wrists instead. “I like where this is going, and I’ll absolutely regret saying this, but I really don’t think this is the right time.”

She lifts her bum, sets my bound hands atop my crotch, and sits on them, pitching my pulse for an entirely different reason.

I realize just how bare she is beneath that oversized shirt. Just how soft and warm and—

My brain empties. Even the pain seems to dull.

Her hand plunges into me in a searing punch of pain straight through my fucking core. Brows knotted and eyes closed, she roots through my torn and bloody flesh.

I scream so loud my voice cracks as I jerk my arms and buck my hips.

Try to toss her off.

She tightens her thighs around me and continues to rearrange my insides. My body begins to shut down from the overwhelming surge of pain. A dark haze swells at the edge of my vision, sweeping me under, and my head lolls to the side …

Darkness.

I drift through a void of muddy delusion, ripped back to consciousness by another savage surge of pain. A violent roar claws from my throat as the female whips her hand free from my gaping wound, bloody fingers pinching something short and pointy, eyes glazed like she just won the fucking treasure hunt.

Sharp, shuddered breaths cut through my clenched teeth while she inspects the piece from all angles, her hand slathered in glossy blood drawing wiggly lines down her arm before dripping off her elbow.

She hisses at it—this vicious, wild sound.

I really hope she got it all. I’m not doing that shit again.

She dashes to the wooden door, rips it open, and darts out, leaving me smothered in blood and battling every painful gasp. The room floods with brisk air and a blinding wash of prism light, and I’m just squinting around, trying to find a piece of cloth to pack inside my wound when she returns—loudly—dragging something long and hard along the floor. It’s only once she slams the door and snips off the glow that I realize what it is.

The bolt that tore through my fucking body.

What a morbid keepsake.

“How did a … little thing like you manage to … lug that all the way … here?” I force out between labored breaths, watching her scan the barbed head.

No answer.

Piecing it in place, she clicks her tongue and tosses the intact bolt against the wall in a surprising show of strength. It clatters against the ground, the sharp sound echoing off the walls.

My cheeks fill with the remnants of my tortured breath before I slowly blow it out.

Guess she’s stronger than she looks.

The rope around my wrist unravels on its own, and I’m just slipping my hands free when a bowl of teal coagulated goo is shoved under my chin.

I blink up into wide, expectant eyes.

Tempted to scrunch my nose, I look at the putrid contents ... back again. “Eat? Really? Right now?”

The pain in my chest makes me more inclined to gag than swallow, and the thought of trying to stuff that crap down my gullet does nothing to quell my queasiness.

Her head tilts to the side.

I sigh, rubbing the ache from my wrists while easing up to the challenge, then dig two trembling fingers through the muck.

Hissing, she slaps my hand.

Got that wrong.

She pretends to spit in the bowl, then shoves it under my chin again.

“You want me to spit in it?” I say, brows raised.

She blinks.

I pretend to spit, pointing at the bowl and nodding. “Yes?”

Another blink, followed by a slow nod, quickening until her hair is a blur of motion around her pretty face.

Progress. Kind of.

I move my tongue around my mouth. Dry as a bone. “I have none ...”

She frowns.

“Mouth. Dry.” I point to my lips. Poke out my tongue.

Her eyes widen, and she leaps off the bed, dashing to the corner of the room where a large bucket resides. She gets behind the thing and shoves it along the ground, sending water sloshing over the edge, until she stops right next to the nest and collects an armful of furs. I’m lugged forward, groaning as she stuffs them behind my back, then scoops water within her cupped hands and awkwardly brings it to my mouth.

Some dribbles free, paving clean paths through the blood painting my chest.

I peek up, catching her stern stare and my breath.

Right.

Tentatively, I open my mouth. Her silky fingers graze across my sensitive bottom lip, wetting my tongue with a small tip of icy water—barely enough to swallow since I’m wearing most of it.

Even so, I moan at the crispness that lacks a salty pinch. Realize just how thirsty I am.

She scoops more, and I line her cupped hands with my much larger ones and guide them to my mouth, gulping whatever makes the journey past my dried, cracked lips. Before I even have a chance to ask, she repeats the process, brow pinched as she watches me gulp. And gulp.

And gulp.

How long have I been out?

“Thank you,” I gasp, curling her fingers up to signal that I’m done.

She grabs the bowl of muck and she shoves it in my face again, nodding vigorously.

The corner of my mouth kicks up, but she snarls and shoves the bowl closer.

Not a smiling matter, then.

I spit, and she’s swift to plow her fingers through the muck, mushing it all together before scooping up a healthy handful and stuffing it in my wound.

Motherf—

I scream through bared teeth.

Damn her to the depths of The Shoaling Seas—I’m certain it hurts more than the fucking bolt did when it punched through Zyke’s chest.

She continues to ram the wound full while I growl, huffing, puffing, unable to flip her off without drowning myself in guilt.

Just as I’m wishing for a swift and brutal death to end my suffering, the pain begins to ebb.

I tip my head, staring at the roof. “This is a tiny house of pain.”

She wipes me down, cleaning up the bloody mess, then sets the scale back on my pectoral like a bandage, patting the edges into place with a surprisingly gentle touch for someone who just rooted around inside me like a vulture.

“I really hope this isn’t an every-hour-on-the-hour ... thing.”

Seemingly satisfied, the female darts to the trough that’s brimming with water on the end of her workbench. There, she stands transfixed, eyes tracing something I’m unable to see from this angle.

If she pulls out an ocean leech, I’m gone.

In a blur of motion, her hand jolts into the water, hauls out a sleek, red fish by the tail, then bashes it against the sharp edge of the bench.

My mouth dries.

“You’re a vicious little thing ...”

Her attention sways back to the water as she repeats the process, this time slaughtering a fat, glossy black fish double the size of the other.

She sits cross-legged on the floor with her bounty and scales both fish with a sharp stone—scattering little round disks all over her bare legs and feet.

Clever. Maybe she hates scales getting stuck in her teeth, too.

She uses the same tool to hack off the heads, then plonks the bodies in a large bowl before padding toward me. She climbs atop my legs and sets the bowl in my lap, grabs the smaller fish, bends it backward, then takes a hearty bite from the bulging underside.

Frowning, I watch her chew—transfixed on this strange female with cheeks jammed full of fish.

Her gaze flicks up, two bolts of blazing yellow striking me like a shaft of sunlight.

She grabs the other fish and shoves it at me, nodding enthusiastically.

I take the thing, pointing at it with my free hand. “Eat?”

She swallows, looks from me to the fish, and shapes the word with her plump lips.

I find myself struck with a slap of disappointment.

“Well, thank you,” I say, taking a large bite from the plump underbelly. The tough, sable skin bursts beneath the force of my sharp teeth, giving way to fluffy wet flesh that tastes like the sea smells on a winter’s morning.

My stomach grumbles the moment I swallow, and I take a deeper bite, watching the strange female feast. There’s nothing tidy or quiet about the way she strips the bones and sucks them clean, a few rogue scales dusting her cheeks and arms and me.

She works her way down the fish’s body—devouring every scrap of flesh, including the organs and entrails.

I find myself wondering who sheis. If she has a name. How she ended up on this precious, untouchable island, surrounded by a small trove’s worth of questionable keepsakes.

Her lashes sweep up. She stops chewing, head tilting again.

“Malakai. My name.” I set my hand upon my chest.“Mine.”

She swallows, eyes wide as her gaze bounces from my face to my hand and back again.

“Mal-ah-kai. Can you say that? Gleish taj nah mi-nam, Malakai?”

Holding my stare, she takes another bite and chews, clear fish juice dribbling down her sharp chin.

“Vicious? Should I call you that?”

Blink. Swallow. Another bite. She grabs the hand that’s holding my fish and pushes it toward my face.

Sigh.

Under her intense scrutiny, I get stuck into my meal, mind churning …

If we are where I think we are, how did she end up all alone on this island? How did she manage to get me here?

Why won’t she speak?

And Zyke … I wish he’d give me something.

Anything.

But he’s so deep, I can’t summon a single scale, and without a tail, I have no chance of outrunning the beast that haunts these waters. Which means I’m stuck here, on this island, with this strange and silent female—more weak and vulnerable than I’ve ever been before.

Oceans apart from Orlaith. From where I last saw her looking up at Zykanth with flat, fearless eyes I barely recognized moments before he buckled beside the ship …

That, above all else, frightens me the most.