Cailia reaches for the rope above me now, her fingers working quickly as she loosens the knots.
“Mhh!” I shout into the cloth as figures in bright, red uniforms make their way to us from the edges of the market. A few already have their hands on their weapons, fingers curling around the hilts of their swords, though most of them carry guns. With sharp eyes, they scan the chaos, looking for whom to kill first.
Royal guards.
Cailia looks towards them once, a faint crease forming between her brows.
“Brother! Guards!” she shouts at Sable, who’s engaged in a fight against a man the size of a giant. His gaze briefly flits towards them before he focuses on his attacker again. If they capture him, he’ll be hanging before the day ends. The thought of them putting a rope around his neck makes me physically sick, and I gag. I refuse to believe that there is even the slightest chance this will happen.
Cailia moves toward Grimsbane, who is now lying on the ground, trying to escape death by clutching onto his arm, and reaches for the needle-thin knife that hangs on a cord around hisneck. A flute. The very tool that was supposed to be the end of me is now about to cut the ropes that bind me.
“Sable!” she screams again as she yanks the cloth out of my mouth. “You’ll have to catch her! That tail looks heavy!”
Glancing down at me, she smiles wryly. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I croak, the words barely making it out of my dry throat.
The giant throws himself at Sable, his blade aiming for his ribs, but the captain turns before it can land, driving his cutlass forward and opening the man from shoulder to chest. I smile.
He is brutal. He is relentless and unfearing. And he is mine.
Suddenly, the rope gives, and I drop. For one terrifying second, there is nothing beneath me, nothing but the certainty of impact—
And then he catches me.
His arms close around me with a force that drives the remaining breath from my lungs. My tail hangs uselessly between us, my wrists still bound, my body weak, and yet, he holds me as though I weigh nothing at all.
Gently, his hand cradles the back of my head. The world around us stills. All the chaos, all the violence and pain of the moment falling away, until it is just us staring into each other’s eyes like we’d never expected to do so again. Against all odds, he is here, alive, with a beating heart. And he is holding me.
“I told you,” he says quietly, a gentle smile spreading across his face, “that I would find you, darling.”
I can offer a trembling smile in return as his words settle somewhere deep inside of me, in a place that has been hollow for so long. My fingers tighten around the stiff fabric of his coat, pulling him closer.
“I—”
The effort of speaking scrapes against the open wound of my sore throat. His hand shifts, his thumb brushing against the back of my head.
“Shh,” he whispers.
The sound is softer than anything I have ever heard from him, softer than the sea when it rests without wind. I open my mouth again.
“Don’t,” he says.
I swallow, forcing back the words. I wanted to thank him. For coming. For choosing me, even now, even here. For believing me to be worth saving.
He lowers his head slightly, his forehead almost brushing mine.
“I know,” he says.
Behind us, the sound of boots striking wood carries across the platform, followed by the unmistakable crack of gunfire as the first shot disrupts the air. Sable turns his head, his body already shifting before the next shot follows.
A red wall of bodies forces its way forward, rifles raised, smoke curling from their barrels. The crowd scatters in panic as screams erupt all around us and merchants abandon their stands.
That’s when Cailia steps forward.
She lifts her hand toward the empty seabed below us, her fingers spreading slowly as though she reaches for something buried in the depths of it. Whatever she takes from it, I cannot see, but I feel it in my bones. An ancient kind of power, the same magic that I felt in the womb of the sea. She redirects her hand towards the approaching guards, who falter at the sight of a woman stepping into their path so boldly, and into the gunfire that has now ceased.
They all freeze until one of the guards steps forward, his rifle outstretched and pointed at her face.