He tore her from me.
We tried to stay together. Our arms tangled; our bodies fused into one trembling animal. He may as well have ripped a piece of parchment in half.
Cebrinne fought for me. Clawing, snarling, grappling. I screamed as her hold left mine, my own hands feral for the grip of hers. But someone else had reached me as well, and I was thrust in the opposite direction.
I looked up, staring into the penetrating gaze of steel-gray eyes. “I’m sorry,” the owner of those eyes said. His fingers locked around my arms, holding me against him. He was something between a boy and a man, not much older than I was, but he was twice as strong.
I shoved at his bare chest, but I might have shoved against the cliffside rocks for all the good it did. “Let me go.” My voice didn’t sound right. It was ragged. Withered.
The boy’s eyes fell to the pebbled shore. His long hair streamed from his head like rough-spun threads of rusted gold and brown.
He didn’t let go.
Sea spray hit me sideways. A splash from behind my right shoulder, and I realized Cebrinne no longer stood near me. Thaan watched coldly, arms crossed and back straight. “Deimos will finish with the other one. Wait for him,” he said to the boy, inclining his head toward the waves in a silent order to enter.
The boy wrapped an arm around me, lifting me off my feet.
“No,” I said, arching to look back at Thaan. “No.”
But the boy held tight. He fell backwards into the surf, taking me with him. And the moon spun as gravity threw us upside-down.
The sea opened its maw, swallowing us in a cold gulp, ribbons of bubbles churning toward the surface as we sank. They carved patterns through the strands of pale light, fleeing between long black fingers of seaweed.
I wrestled against him, my lungs frantic at the absence of air, but it didn’t matter. His arms chained my body, a bolt tight and secure around my limbs. Everything tumbled away as we fell into the dark. The sea hummed its rhythmic poems. I'd grown up loving the sea, but I was suddenly a stranger to the calm and soothing voice of the ocean.
The sea was a grave, its lullaby my tomb.
The people followed, one by one, into the water after us. The moonlight glinted off their bodies. Twinkles of blue and silver, tiny flashes there and gone. Something wrapped around my hips, forcing my kicking legs together. The boy who held me settled his forehead against my temple, gray eyes soft. Pained.
Movement broke through the moonlight behind him, calling my attention deep below where Cebrinne floated face-up, staring numbly at the sky. Several of them held her in place. Not people.Things.
Things with long tails and armored scales. Built with compact muscle, reptilian and shining. The one that had pulled Cebrinne in drifted just above her. Deimos. He clenched her chin between his fingers, battling for control of her mouth. The motion jerked her from her haze, and she thrust her face away, fighting to pull right and then left. But there were too many of them anchoring her arms, her knees, her feet. Deimos pressed his mouth to hers.
Her chest deflated as she exhaled.
My sister’s captor broke away with a forceful push. Her screams echoed throughout the sea, and the people grabbed her, charging for the surface. I fought to follow. And then realized Deimos was heading for me.
Fear rippled through me in a violent cascade, every muscle and bone desperate for escape. Coming, coming—almost here. My heart thrashed in my chest, a surge of white pain as my blood whipped my veins.
I don’t know why, but I turned into the boy holding me. Burrowed my face into his neck, delving against his hard torso as his hair stroked my cheeks. Hiding my mouth and the single sob that erupted from my lungs.
The boy’s thumb slid over the curve of my shoulder, sweeping across my chin. Coaxing me to look up. I buried in tighter. My lungs threatened to burst, the oxygen within me stretched to its limit.
Hands grabbed at me from all angles, wrenching my hair back, caving in around my jaw. Angling my face to the side. To Deimos. His mouth loomed inches from mine, that scar across his cheek a pale slash under the watery light. Cebrinne’s screams continued from above, piercing the air somewhere overhead.
Screaming my name.
I writhed, muscles taut and somehow quivering at the same time. Deimos reached for me as he had for Cebrinne. But the boy holding me leaned forward, cupped my cheek against his hand, and breathed.
Seconds lengthened. Strands from the moon danced around me. Screams separated and joined in the midst of the quiet, whirring ocean. I’d always loved science. Loved thewhyand thehowas much as thewhat. And it occurred to me, then, how strange sound became underwater. A thing chased but never caught. A thing felt but never touched. Like shadow or time or gravity. Or raw, consuming fear.
The pad of a thumb drifted across my lower lip, tapping softly. Almost as though asking me to wake up. And steely eyes hovered just beyond, swerving in and out of the sound as it penetrated my skull from above. My gaze flickered to his. Waiting. Those eyes hesitated and then closed.
His mouth returned, smooth and soft and careful. Not a kiss. Yet his lips spread across mine in a gentle brush of skin. Warmth hummed under his touch. I stopped fighting just for a moment, pressing the air he’d given me back into his lungs.
A hand forced its way between our faces. The gray eyes ripped away from me, or perhaps I was ripped from him. Suddenly, he was gone, beyond my grasp, and I was dashed to the surface above where I broke the waves in a brutal gasp for air.
They passed me from one set of hands to the next. I couldn’t focus on who held me. My legs had begun to twist and turn and stretch. My toes curled, my knees flung themselves straight, contracting and loosening at once. They changed in color, deepening to the rich hue of iron, shimmering violet at the edges.
