Abandoned him to burn alone.
He’d cast away his pride and sank to his knees to ask for aid.
Like an impotent beggar. An insect. A flea.
He’d called for help.
But none of them answered.
None of them cared.
1
Selena
The screams came from one person.
But they pierced me from every direction.
Sound travels faster below the waves. Water particles are more densely packed than air. Tighter. Closer. It penetrates the skull from all sides, bypassing the eardrum and conducting sound waves directly across the occipital bone.
They were odd thoughts to have while wrestling for my life.
But they were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I listened to my sister’s screams.
We’d followed Thaan down to the pier.I want to marry your mother,he’d said.Will you help me ask?
No,Cebrinne had scoffed, tossing her blue-black hair in thinly veiled contempt.
But I’d always been the kind one. The patient one. The pleasing one.
I’d said yes.
Cebrinne followed us, glaring at the merchant sailors who sent eyes in our direction. It didn’t matter if their glances yielded vague disinterest or fervent craving. They all annoyed her. At sixteen, she wasn’t afraid to gnash her teeth and order them to turn their eyes. If compassion and warmth were built in the fleshy shape of a man, Ceba would have said she liked the taste of blood between her jaws. She’d never been afraid to bite.
Thaan led us past the marina. I watched the line of his tall shoulders as he walked. The back of his head, his salt-and-pepper hair.Past the smaller docks. Past the beach the town flocked to when the sun drenched the market in sticky heat. Cebrinne’s steps slowed. Mine did, too, my eyes wandering over the broken boats and smashed buoys. Torn nets, snapped wood, abandoned chests with busted hinges. The wasted equipment of the pier. Forgotten under layers of rust and algae and time. Rotten and old, dim under the full moon.
Ceba’s hand grazed my arm. “Let’s go, Senna. I don’t like it here.”
I didn’t like it, either, and I let her pull me the opposite way. We turned to leave. And found the way back had been blocked.
I don’t know how so many of them appeared behind us without making a sound. They stood like statues carved from ancient marble, their eyes hard, their gazes cold. Their bodies almost naked. A jolt of electricity flashed down the back of my neck, my fine hair suddenly standing on end.
There were maybe thirty of them. Tall, beautiful. Dripping wet. Men and women. A trail of water followed them, betraying their steps. A fabric like thin silk stuck to their skin, plastered by water.
They hadn’t come from the town. They hadn’t come from the port.
They’d come from the sea.
Cebrinne’s fingers tightened over my arm. Her breath hitched. My pulse suddenly struck the walls of my ears, each beat a wicked whip through my head. We squeezed together, though Ceba stepped between me and them.
“Our mother isn’t coming, is she?” Cebrinne asked Thaan, though she didn’t face him. She faced the people from the sea.
He didn't answer her. Behind us, Thaan only commanded, “Get them in the water.”
They began to move, pushing us to the waves. A strangled whimper shredded my throat as my eyes darted from one face to the next, desperate for someone I recognized. A shop owner from town. A sailor from port. But I didn’t know any of these faces.
Cebrinne braced for them. Her muscles became lead, fists hardening to stone as she locked eyes with the one in the front. He aimed for her theway a red wolf aims for a hare, a lupine scowl warping the scar that ran the length of his cheek to his chin, eyes hungry as his pack flocked around us.
